One of the most progressive trends in the area of e-commerce has been the rise of drop ship products. Now, any entrepreneur can start a ecommerce website without the problems or expense of having to stock a bunch of products. Dropshipping simply means that you can sell items that you do not stock yourself. When you get an order for merchandise, you simply purchase the item from your wholesale drop ship provider, and the supplier ships the order on your behalf.

Suppliers that provide drop ship features send your client the item in either a unmarked package, or along with a box that has your company’s name and address printed on the invoice. Your customer does not know that their item really comes from a drop ship products supplier. If you have concerns that this type of commerce technique is not legitimate enough for a small entrepreneur, know that big websites such as Amazon and Target also use partner suppliers to send their orders. In a sense, they are dropshipping, too.

Locating a good source of merchandise that are allowed to be drop-shipped is often hard for newbies. There are many ’scam’ sites that say they provide drop-ship services, but are in reality middlemen that are simply selling you a service that you could find cheaper yourself. Remember, if your drop ship products directory won’t give you the name and number of the primary firm that actually makes the product, they are not a reputable drop ship service, only a middleman.

A good way to find companies that drop ship is to use a ecommerce provider directory. There are dozens such services on the Internet, some decent, some not so good. So how do you find out the best service to use? Simply look to see that the provider of the products you are buying from is the original maker or producer of the product. A drop ship source directory that sends you to a middleman that sells many products from different companies is generally a middleman. Stay away from these kinds of services, or you’ll be paying more and getting less.

Once you have located a dropshipping service that is not just a middleman, then you can get in contact them and establish an account with those companies. Drop shipping is one terrific way to get started in e-commerce, just be sure you are dealing direct; don’t’ use middlemen.