Ben Means Business

OPTIMISTIC
I was always intrigued with entrepreneurship, but I found myself (like everybody else)absolutely smitten with the idea of making money from the comfort of my couch. Hence, began my journey to become the next entrepreneur to strike it rich on the Internet. The first e-business model that I ever tried is called "dropshipping". I don't know how I stumbled upon it but I got really focused on it for a while. It seemed very interesting to me at the time, especially since I was just looking for any way to make money online.

CONFIDENT
I was an e-commerce newbie and I thought that I was cracking the code to the internet's million dollar vault. So I spent countless hours studying up on dropshipping. I read as much as I could about it and thought that the concept itself was pure genius. "Dropshipping" is the process of marketing a product for a manufacturer who will then send the product to your customer on your behalf. Therefore, you are running an online store and you do not have to buy supplies or keep inventory. All you do is sell products as if you already have possession of them.

I was sure that this was a can't miss business and could not understand why everybody wasn't doing it. Well, it wasn't long before I realized that my surefire millions would not come as easy as I originally thought. Actually, no web project that I have ever started turned out to be as easy as I thought. There are always going to be bumps in road, even if you have the perfect plan.

DISAPPOINTED
The first problem that I encountered with this method was that I could not find wholesale manufacturers with low enough prices to allow me to turn a profit. It's like the wholesalers would charge a wholesale price to retailers but would inflate the price if you were utilizing their dropshipping service.

This absolutely killed my dropshipping business right from the start. For instance, the dropshipper would allow you to sell Playstations on your website for any price that you want, as long as they received $196 per sell. The average price for Playstations online was between $194-$200. Therefore, I would not be able to mark up the dropshippers price enough to actually make some money. If I added on more than a buck, I would get no sales at all. It's just not worth it to market a $200 product for which you will only receive a $1. It was insane!

That's when I found out that most of the quality wholesalers were not listed online. You had to be in "the know" to reach them. So, I began to try and find ways to make contact with these "hidden wholesalers" but to no avail. I scrolled through hundreds of websites and thousands of products to try and find products that I could mark up a bit and still be under MSRP(Max Suggested Retail Price).

REALITY CHECK
I found that there are a few dropship sites out there worth trying, but most of them are just a waste of time. They will try to get you to pay high membership prices to gain access to dropshipping products that are also overpriced. Obviously a complete ripoff. The one dropshipping product that I did feel was worth my money was The Hidden Vault Wholesale Network.

I found that a lot of the wholesalers listed on this site had the same overpriced produts that I was finding before, but there are so many suppliers to choose from that you will end up finding some good ones. Plus Jeff Yancy throws in more than your monies worth in extras(SEO E-Books, How-To Info,etc...) The site contained so much information that I had a hard time being upset with him when I didn't want to dropship anymore. I just didn't have the time to scroll through all those wholesalers and trying to find "in demand" products at low prices. I had lost interest by the time I found The Hidden Vault. My Dropshipping venture was not a success, but it was my introduction into the world of e-commerce. So, as a true entrepreneur would, I just chalked it up to experience and moved straightway.........ON TO THE NEXT VENTURE!
dropshipping, hidden vault wholesale network, Jeff Yancy, wholesale