As we all know paying attention to small details is important to all businesses, but it is critical to successful online drop shipping.
Online Drop Shipping
Today, thousands of drop shippers make high paying net salaries from the comfort of their homes.
The most successful drop shippers understand that they are not selling a product, they are simply selling detailed information about a product.
It is important to understand that there is a difference.
Merchants must evaluate their suppliers on the basis of price, customer service, and their shipping policies.
What should also be considered is the quality of the merchant’s product data that they provide you as a drop shipper, and how frequently the supplier updates that data.
Successful online drop shipping mandates that close attention be paid to the accuracy and quality of the product information that is being sold.
Although many suppliers frequently sell the same product lines, the product data they provide to their shippers varies from supplier to supplier.
Although this may seem inconsequential to you as a drop shipper, it is important that close attention is paid to small details.
For example: Suppliers often include outdated or irrelevant categories with information they provide about a product.
Product data that is listed in one supplier’s paper catalog may not be relevant and therefore should not be included with the drop shipping information.
In addition, suppliers often have identical SKUs (Shop Keeping Units) for entirely different products.
Because most successful online drop shipping entrepreneurs use multiple suppliers, bulk uploading of identical SKUs from different suppliers can obviously cause some serious problems with an order.
This is only one of many examples where details are essential to successful online drop shipping.
Relevant data for one product is often easily overwritten with data from a totally different product when you bulk upload identical SKUs from several suppliers.
For the above example, the problem can easily be solved by simply adding a unique prefix or suffix to identical Shop Keeping Units before the data is uploaded.
Adding unique prefixes or suffixes to identical SKUs is the easiest way to distinguish between suppliers who use the same SKU.
Another important detail that can be critical to successful online drop shipping, is understanding the data listings you get from your suppliers.
Distinguishing between active, out of stock and all other items can be a problem with different suppliers.
If the stock list supplied by your dropshipper is only limited to active items, they may have removed the out of stock or inactive items that are skipped when you re-import (refresh) the data.
Because attention to details is so essential to successful online drop shipping, it is important that the formatting of all the data provided by each supplier remains coherent.
If it is not, you could encounter errors with weight, price, availability, UPC codes, etc. of the available product database.
By paying close attention to the quality of the data your suppliers provide you before you provide it to potential customers, you can minimize these potential issues.
Product weights, item descriptions, the quality of images, etc. are all important and even when your supplier does provide you with quality data, you should always review the product information before uploading it to your online store.
When you finally transfer product data to your online store, make sure the data appears in it’s proper category or location with no missing values.
Paying attention to details is important to every business, but it is critical to successful online drop shipping.
One of the most important aspects of making money online in 2013 will be the ability of webmasters to provide unique content vs copied or scraped content.
Since the latest of Google’s updates, Panda and Penguin, it is has become common knowledge that Google does not rank copied or scraped content.
In order to rank in Google in 2013 and have any chance of becoming successful, you will NEED to provide unique content to your website on a regular basis.
If you are not adding unique content to your website(s), your percentage of failure is just going to continue rising.
Many authors and webmasters, including myself, either don’t have the time to crank out unique content on a regular basis, wind up experiencing writer’s block, or just become a little lazy when it comes to writing article after article on a daily basis.
The conventional solutions for getting unique content include rewriting PLR articles, articles found in the public domain, using software to “spin” articles, or hiring expensive “ghost writers” to do the work.
All the above solutions for getting fresh unique content provide mixed results and could cause more problems with your site ranking than a solution.
Trying to “trick” Google instead of just giving them exactly
what they want, i.e. unique, quality articles on a consistent basis is a fool’s errand.
The best solution for those who prefer original fresh content is to have it written by professional writers however, the cost can often be prohibitive.
A Google search recently unearthed a website (one of several) that pays thousands of freelance writers across the globe to write articles on any topic under the sun and provides webmasters with fast, cheap, professionally written content for their websites.
As a writer:
At this particular site, iWriter, anyone can register for free and begin to earn money almost immediately.
Once you register, you will be able to earn up to $15.00 for every article you write for other individuals.
You will be able to work at your own speed, select which topic or topics you would like to write about, on as many or as few articles you wish to write about each day.
As a business owner and/or webmaster:
If you’re tired of writing your own content for your website or just don’t have the time or expertise to do it yourself, you can get articles for as little as $1.25 from the writers at iWriter.
Because thousands of freelance writers from across the globe have instant access to your article quickly, professionally and cheaply, content can be created in a time sensitive manner.
In many cases you can have an article written for your website in under 30 minutes, and you can even have it automatically posted to your WordPress blog if you like.
iWriter claims to be the world’s first and only service created solely to facilitate the process of hiring someone to write articles for business at a price that simply cannot be beat.
To date we have to agree with their claim.
If you’re tired of writing your own content for your website, or just can’t find the time to do it yourself, iWriter could be the solution to your dilemma.
If you are a writer looking to earn some additional income and like the advantages of working on your on schedule, it is definitely worth a look.
In any event, starting in 2013, all webmasters will need to provide unique content vs copied or scraped content if they intend to prosper and provide Google with what they want.
eBay Partner Network officially removed the domain validation requirements for their users on February 21st of this year.
- eBay Partner Network
Prior to this date, only validated websites were allowed to participate in their program and third party sites like Blogger, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, etc. were not allowed to participate in eBay promotionals.
As part of their program, eBay Partner Network required publishers to show proof of domain ownership by validating their websites by inserting a bit of html code into the body of the site.
That meant that hosted sites on Blogger and WordPress.com platforms were ineligible for participation in their program.
Their initial announcement last month stated that from February 20th, the restrictioin would be lifted and third party platforms could be used to host content and promote eBay however, it was vague as to whether or not third party social media sites would be included in their domain validation change.
Starting on February 21st., eBay Partner Network’s pilot launch allows partners to promote eBay on any site, as long as the promotions remain in accordance with their code of conduct.
As of right now, sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. are acceptable platforms for promoting eBay however, eBay Partner Network reserves the right to filter and withhold compensation for traffic that they believe does not comply with their terms.
This means that as long as the spirit of their Code of Conduct is adhered to, compensations will be made.
“Spirit” means that you can promote eBay on your own Facebook Wall.
It does not mean that you can promote eBay by spamming the Facebook Walls of all your friends with links to eBay. Spirit also means that you can’t promote eBay on gambling sites, adult content sites, etc.
As long as eBay’s brand is kept “clean” and the promotions are kept ethical; third party promoters should have no problem with eBay Partner Network’s eagerly awaited domain validation change.
EBay Partner Network will be closely monitoring traffic and link placement to ensure that their partners continue to send only quality traffic to eBay.
If you have a question about your eligibility or the quality of traffic you plan to generate, contact them before you start placing links all over Facebook or Twitter.
Because URL shorteners have become such an integral part of social networking, eBay Partner Network is allowing their users to shorten URLs through the use of three authorized sites:
Google
Bitly
Twitter
Shortened URLs from other sites are not acceptable and will not be recognized.
The domain validation change has been long waited for by WordPress and Blogger users as a welcome income addition to their existing AdSense revenues.
EBay Partner Network program is excited about the change as a significant improvement to their existing program, as they should be.
We hope the pilot is successful.
