Dropshipping Tips – Top 10 Tips for Dropshipping (Drop Shipping)

Dropshipping or Drop Shipping is a technique used more and more by online retailers who don’t have bricks and morter outlets or storage space for keeping stock.

The product supplied by the retailer is often delivered direct to the customer from the manufacturer or distribution company, but the contract and all paper work is between the retailer and the customer.

Our  top 10 tips for dropshipping are,

1. A reliable manufacturer / distributor
2. An effecient and reliable delivery service
3. A sensible agreement with manufacturer / distributor regards returns
4. Full manufacturers warranties are transferred to customer and product liability insurance is in place and apply to the retailer and manufacturere / distributor
5. A good relationship and understanding with manufacturer and the assurance that they won’t try to sell direct and cut you out of the equation
6. An easily delivered, niche product with high mark up
7. A reliable product which is easily described, uncomplicated, and unlikely to result in too many returns.
8. The option to have customised paperwork and unmarked packaging sent to the end customer
9. Nice credit facilty with supplier which stops cashflow problems occuring as you can then receive payment for products before you have to pay for them
10. Full understnding of distance selling regulations and water tight terms and conditions

The best dropshipping relationships are with sensible manufacturers / distributors who understand that they do what they do best; import, store, distribute and you do what you do best; market, sell. They don’t try to be smart and cut the marketer/retailer out of the deal but are happy working together.

IT and Computer Support Lichfield

Total IT Services

Computer and IT support for small to medium sized businesses in the Lichfield and Staffordshire area.

Offering IT support, Computer repair and help for Lichfield and the Surrounding areas including Tamworth, Burton, Rugeley all of Staffordshire and Birmingham etc

Business Category:  IT Support in Lichfield

Business Listing:  Total IT Services

Websites For Sale

Wheelchair Ramps - wheelchair-ramps.co.uk

Induction Loops - inductionloops.com

Exercise Bikes - exercise-bike.co.uk

Cross Trainers - cross-trainers.co.uk

Wheelchair Lifts -  wheelchair-ramps-lifts.co.uk

Platform Lifts - platform-lifts.co.uk

Farmers Directory – farmers-directory.co.uk

Wine Cabinets for Storing Red Wine

The Transtherm range offers 3 types of wine cabinets:- Single Temperature Wine Cabinets for the long-term storage of red wine  white wines and champagnes in perfect cellar conditions. Three Temperature Cabinets with 3 separate temperature zones – same function as above but also feature upper and lower compartments to keep red wine and whites/champagne at their respective perfect serving temperatures. Multi Temperature Cabinets for restaurant use allow the Sommelier to keep all wines at their respective perfect serving temperature within the same wine cooler.

Wine Cabinet information provided by Wine Storage Solutions, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire.

VatRats Relaunching Soon

With Christmas approaching we have decided that we will be relaunching VatRats within the next few weeks. This time the campaign will be restricted to weekends only and invites will only be sent out to those apply before the end of September.

The benefits of membership will soon become clear and team leaders will again be given priority spaces.

Application forms will be posted on various websites over the next 3 weeks.

Is WordPress a ticking time bomb for small business

I spend a lot of time on seo forums, business forums, newsgroups, etc. and often see small business owners ask very simple questions about their websites like how to change images, update prices, change text, etc.

Whenever anyone mentions updating, FTP details, hosting etc. a lot of these business owners haven’t a clue what any of this means.

A lot of them probably had a website built a few years ago, but have absolutely no idea of how hosting or web development works, this may have been OK when they first had their sites built, but now, as we are getting more reliant on the web, the importance of being able to control their websites is becoming more apparent.

The latest WordPress hack is a perfect example, over the past 2 or 3 years more people are using WordPress to design actual websites rather than blogs, they don’t really need a technichal knowledge so it means anyone working from their bedroom can set themselves up as a website desiner and knock out perfectly acceptable websites, hand them over to the client, take their payment then forget about them.

Jump forward a couple of years and we have thousands of outdated WordPress sites out their with owners who haven’t got a clue how to update them, even if they know they need to, they don’t have web developers they can turn to as you don’t need to be a web developer to use WordPress!!

There are now literally thousand of so called website designers out there knocking out sites daily in WordPress, Joomla and other Content Management Systems. Small business owners initially get things cheaper, don’t need web developers and the problem gets worse and worse.

Does the business owner know all the content is held on a MySQL database? (Chances are 80% of them don’t even know what one is) Do they realise that if the database gets corrupted everything is gone, have they a clue how to do back-ups, or do they think if anything goes wrong they will go back to so called website designer who set it up a couple of years ago and think he can simply reload it?

Chances are the original designer is the website design industries version ogf a script kiddie

Now I’ve nothing against WordPress, I love it and use it myself on at least half a dozen sites, but small business owners really do need to be informed about the ticking time bomb it is if they don’t have their sites built properly in the first place, don’t do regular off-site back ups, don’t keep it regularly updated and most importantly don’t have someone within the business who has at least a basic understanding of web development (or have a reliable source to do things for them)

Car Body Repairs in Chelmsford

I recently set up a directory listing for a business that provide Car Body Repairs in Chelmsford and surrounding areas.

They also provide dent removal, paintless dent removal, scratch repair, bumper scuffs, faded paintwork, stone chips, insurance repairs or a complete respray.

Sidcup Conference Centre

Set up a little race today as an experiment.

I have set 2 pages up targeting Sidcup Conference Centre

1. Sidcup Conference Centre

2. Sidcup Conference Centre

And also set up this blog post with the same title, the question is, which page will get indexed 1st?

Blocked Drains in Slough Drain Cleaners Slough

Set up another listing today, this time for someone who clears blocked drains in Slough

I don’t know what it is about drainage companies, but all of a sudden I am getting loads who want to take out upgraded listings.

This is good in one way, more money, but ackward in another, as I like to try my best to keep them all happy.

To solve this problem I try to share out the areas they cover and also but them in different, but similar categories,  i.e.

Blocked Drains

Drain Unblocking

Drain Cleaners

Drain Cleaning

Drain Relining

By doing this it hopefully gives them all a fair crack of the whip and hopefully keeps them happy.

Blocked Drains in Reading

I have been experimenting with one of my directory sites for the past few days so that I can make individual listings stand out a bit more.

All listings use the same ASP file which is a very simple template and the content is then pulled in from the database.

To change the appearence the CSS file is then pulled from the database too. Most free listings just use a default CSS file but for upgraded listings I use individual files.

A perfect example is my Blocked Drains in Reading listing, I first have a look at the site the listing is set up for, and then adjust the style sheet so that a similar colour scheme is used with their listing.