The first step is to find a genuine wholesale company that specializes in dropshipping. Be warned that not all companies who claim to be dropshippers are actually that. Some of them are little more than middle men who buy from true wholesalers and add a mark up before offering the products on the Internet! Even if they claim to be wholesalers on their webpage, you will need to check this out and compare their prices with other online wholesalers.

It is pretty easy to check prices, just pop over to Google and do a search on a few of the items that you are interested in selling. For example, if you want to sell iPods, you can look up the regular price at Buy.com or any other regular vendor and compare it to your so-called “wholesale” price on the dropshipping company’s site. This will give you a good idea within a minute or two of how the prices rate.

Having discovered a genuine dropshiper who offers fair priced items (and these can take some finding) you will need to check how good and reliable their product quality and shipping systems are. Although this can involve some work it is well worth the effort in the long run. Once you are set up the last thing that you will want is customers complaining to you and having to refund their money.

The only way that you can check the quality and shipping is to set up an account t with the dropshipper and order a sample of the product you intend to sell. Don’t worry about having to pay for it, since you will be selling it on Ebay anyway and shipping the first one from your home! This way, you get your money back without any problems, and you get to see if the whole system works.

It can pay to carry out a market test on two or three different dropshipping companies so that you can compare the quality and service and decide which is the best and quickest responder is. Check their websites for back ordering details as well, since this could affect you in the case of selling on Ebay. You will want to know basically how long items will be back ordered and what their refund policy is in these cases. This is another good reason to have two or more dropshipping companies then, you can always go with one when the other is out of stock.

Having chosen your dropshipping company you are ready to go. Most companies supply stock photographs that you can use in your listings but I would prefer not to use these. Take your own digital photographs of the sample items that you received and use these. This will set you apart from other dropship sellers and give potential bidders more confidence In your service.

Don’t go mad to begin with, just start with one or two auctions and see how things go. If you have no problems and your clients receive the product they ordered through the dropshipping company, you will have proved the system. Now you can go ahead, with full confidence and start expanding your product range.

Taking the time to find a reliable dropship company will pay you in the long term. If you choose a poor company and they let your customers down it will be you who is responsible and will be answerable for any customer complaints. Checking out your suppliers before you sell is a generally good business policy anyway, so get in the habit of doing it.

By Dave Bromley

Dave Bromley is the former publisher of UKAuctionline and is now a semi retired writer and Internet consultant. You can visit his blog at http://www.ukonlineauctionnews.com