Drop shipping and Ecommerce

One of the absolute worst thing I hate to see is the economy being used to lure people in to a scam. I have seen and been told by members of what I would call the newest ploy by these guys the lets beat the recession drop shipping products scam. I think it is sick. Believe it or not I really do care about the members of the PSU. To the extent that I even opened up an e-commerce division because my members who were trying to open up e-commerce stores were getting scammed to death in that field as well.
If you think we just did it for the money think again. We offered every member of the PSU a fully working Zencart website that was 100% theirs to keep forever for $150.00
Your looking at ten hours to build it, 3 hours for revisions, and 5 hours going through keywords and SEO with our guys and explaining how these things work (which can be the hard part). You have roughly 18 hrs or $8.50 an hour. Granted we only did 8 of them but the point is we offered to do more, and we did them because these people are our friends.
That ended today it was a once in a lifetime thing and now they are $350.00 which is still one heck of a deal. I am a huge fanatic about starting an online business the correct way. I have done this for years and what I try my best to share with member of the PSU besides drop shipping is how to correctly get involved in e-commerce from the start, save a dollar while doing it, and avoid any and all scams.

The scams online are crazy, and it is not just with drop shipping companies it is all over the internet. I wanted to get a 1-800# for the PSU so if people had questions or the members needed support they could reach me or my staff immediately. So I Google “get a 1-800 number “,and a couple listings came up. The first guy I talked with was very nice he said he was out of the office and he would call me back within a few hours, well I am the type of person that will compare prices before getting anything and 2 hours to me is like an eternity. I noticed Office Depot also sold 1-800 numbers so I called them sure enough they had the number I wanted so I bought the number, paid for my first month, and altogether paid $40.00.

A couple hours later the first guy calls me back and he says hey I found that number you were wanting. It is a $100.00 with a $40.00 activation fee. If I had not checked around I would have been scammed out of $100.00 . This goes to show scams are every where and I believe the economy has a lot to do with it. People are broke, they can not find jobs, and it is just going to get worse.

Their is a light at the end of the tunnel. The economy is shaking the foundation that retail stores have stood on for over 50 years. However online sales are still holding strong, and at the end of it all I truly believe online sales will continue to grow. Their are a couple of reasons why and I will start with prices. Retail stores have to pay for the salesman, the space, the warehouse, the lighting, and even the gas it takes to get the products there. Online you can eliminate quite a bit of that which makes the prices cheaper.
I worked for a major department store when I was a teenager, and the salesmen would make commission off of all the items. I remember some of those guys making 200-300 dollars a sale off of some of the bigger items everyday. Those big sales at a retail store these days just don’t exist not like they did in the 90s. The reason being well obviously the economy, but also because of the internet.

With products being cheaper more people are shopping online it took a while for people to get used to the internet. In the 90s it was still very young but now it has evolved to another stage. It is now a way of life. What we try to help people to do and one of the main reason we started the e-commerce website program is to help people to capitalize on it now because I truly believe within 10 years e-commerce sales will be 2 to 1 over physical stores.

If you really think about it the internet has taught people within really the last 15 yrs a totally new way to shop. Drop shipping has been there from the beginning and it will clearly be there throughout as the demand for e-commerce will continue to increase. I guess one of the biggest questions is can an average person get started in this business and really make money?

I think without a shadow of a doubt you can if you will give it 100%. If not I would not be here today. The most important thing to remember is if any place makes starting a business seem like a walk in the park leave, click out of the site, and go the other way ! I have heard people say “well I don’t intend on starting a business I just want to make some extra money, and I have to say to that drop shipping is probably not for you.

You will be competing against people who do this for a living 24/7 and when I say competing that is exactly what I mean. Think about Ebay for a minute. Do you shop there ? I do and I sold products there for a long time. When I buy something from there, and maybe I am just a picky guy, but I look through every listing until I find one that suits me. I purchased a new Palm Trio cell phone a few weeks back to take with me on a trip. It took me two days to find one but I wanted one with a car charger, and one that was close to where I lived. I ended up paying a little more and I did not mind one bit because I got one that was bundled and it had free shipping which ended up being overnight because the company I got it from was 30 miles away.

The reason I got this phone though was because it was fully described, they had a 30 day return policy, the pictures were excellent and they were professional which let me know they would quickly resolve an issue if necessary. You would not believe how many phones are on Ebay and the sellers description would be about 2 paragraphs long. I wanted to know details about my purchase. I had to know if it would run on a 3g network, how long was the battery life, how big the screen was, if it had touch screen capabilities ect?
So the seller who got my business did not get it because he had the absolute cheapest phone online. He got my business because he took the time to properly explain to me the phone. Thus winning the competition.

I do believe that anyone can make money drop shipping products, but only if your dedicated and will go the extra step. Like the seller of the cell phone.

Happy Bday Andrew Your dad loves you!