Frequently Asked Questions
What is Drop Shipping?
Drop shipping is a service offered by a company who is willing to stock inventory in their warehouse so you don’t have to. Therefore, when you get an order from a customer, you contact your drop shipper to place the order (making sure you provide them your customers address and NOT yours), and they are responsible for packaging and shipping the purchased item directly to your customer. This means you, as the “online retailer”, can sell a variety of products without ever having to stock anything yourself. This makes drop shipping very appealing for new and/or existing home-based businesses.
Do I have to buy more than one product at a time?
NO. Our directory of wholesale drop shippers are willing to dropship one product at a time. Of course they are willing to dropship more than that if a customer makes a bulk purchase from you.
What if I list a product for sale and it doesn't sell...do I still have to pay for the product?
NO. That’s the beauty about drop shipping. You only buy the product when a customer buys it from you first. So when the customer pays you, you use that money to purchase the product from the supplier…of course keeping the profit you made from the sale. That way it doesn’t matter how many products you list for sale at a time. If it doesn’t sell, you don’t buy it. Therefore there’s no risk.
What is a Middleman?
A middleman is a company that was created to simply pass on orders usually between you (the reseller) and the manufacturer (or wholesale supplier). A middleman will not always hold inventory (although many do) and will send your order to the manufacturer or distributor to have them send the product to the customer. They may charge extra (sometimes hidden) fees to do this, and that is typically found in the increased product cost. Keep in mind they are a business too and that’s how they make money.
How do I get product images, titles and descriptions on my website?
If you know how to cut and paste…it’s simple. The suppliers provide you with everything you need to list a product to sell. Once you setup your account with the specific dropshipper, they provide the product images, titles and descriptions so all you have to do is cut and paste the information from the dropshipper(s) to your listing. If you need help, contact [popup url=”https://directdropshippers.com/contact-us/” height=”600″ width=”600″ scrollbars=”yes” alt=”popup”]Support [/popup] and we can walk you through it.
Can I use a Dropshipper to sell on eBay and Amazon?
YES. eBay and Amazon are great places to test the product market and get instant results.
How do I know the product will still be in stock when I sell it?
Many wholesale suppliers provide realtime inventory. That means that at any given moment, you can go to their website, and they will tell you the number of items remaining before going out of stock.
What if I have a return...do my customers ship the product to me or does the Supplier take care of that?
Your supplier handles all returns. This can vary depending on the supplier since they have their own rules on returns. You should always review the suppliers “returns policy”. In most cases, your customer would ship the item back to the supplier OR to the suppliers’ manufacturer (if the supplier is not the manufacturer themselves).
What is Blind Dropshipping?
This is when the wholesale supplier will use a return label that reads something like “Fulfillment Center” or “Shipper” as the business name. Many are setup where they would have YOUR COMPANY name and logo on the packaging so your customer sees your brand instead of the supplier.
How do I calculate how much to charge for shipping when using multiple dropshippers?
This can be complicated since a customer could potentially order 2 different items from 2 separate suppliers. You wouldn’t want to charge your customer too much for shipping. But it’s simple once you understand the process. So you can do a few things:

a.) You can make sure that your suppliers use one service (e.g. UPS) to ship. Then you can use the UPS calculator to get shipping costs for the 2 products from one location.

b.) You can calculate shipping charges on each product and charge a flat fee for shipping.

c.) You can calculate how much shipping would cost if you are having to ship on the opposite side of the country, then add the shipping fee in the total product cost and you could promote “FREE SHIPPING”. That way you are not losing money on the order because all you are doing is adding the shipping fee to the cost of the product. Besides…we all love to see “FREE SHIPPING” when we’re shopping online.

What are the benefits of using a dropshipper for my business?
NO OVERHEAD! You don’t have to stock inventory so there’s no risk buying a ton of products upfront and then nothing sells. Dropshipping is also great for testing the product demand for an item. It saves you TIME and MONEY. So if you list a product to sell, and it doesn’t sell, you don’t have to buy it.
What if I can't find a supplier in your directory for the product(s) I want to sell?
Don’t worry. Once you log in, you will see various different categories of todays hot trending products for you to select from. But that’s just to get you started…so if you don’t see the product you want to sell within that category list, you can submit your own “product request” to our Supplier Research Team and they will process your request, and send you the suppliers’ that match the products you submitted to them within just 2-3 days. Keep in mind, just because you don’t see the suppliers in our directory right away, doesn’t mean we don’t have any for that niche. We have access to TONS of Suppliers that aren’t listed in our database and we can send them right over to you.
How do I know our Drop Shippers are reliable?
We go through an extensive screening process and verify each supplier before we put them in our directory. We also monitor the listed suppliers who are already in our directory and get feedback from our members so we can always adapt. If a wholesale supplier goes out of business (which has NEVER happened in the years we have been doing this), or changes their dropshipping policy for whatever reason, let us know so we can get in touch with them to see what’s going on. If necessary, we would remove them from our directory immediately.
Are the products from the dropshippers knock offs or cheaply made?
No. When we consider putting a supplier in our directory, we do an extensive screening process which includes thorough background checks on the companies to make sure they are reputable. Doing so illuminates the headache you may run into doing that on your own and keeps your customers happy.
Do you work with international Dropshippers?
Yes. The majority of the suppliers in our directory are in the United States. However, we also work with dropshippers located in Canada, United Kingdom, China and other countries around the world.
What is Affiliate-Marketing?
A marketing arrangement where an online retailer pays a commission to an external website (you) for sales or traffic generated TO the retailer (affiliate) FROM its partner (you). Want to know more? Watch this tutorial about Affiliate Linking.