Business To Business Ecommerce

The realm of internet marketing is one that is perennially wide open. That is to say, there are a great many opportunities available to those that exploring their options in ecommerce. Also, since the internet is global in scope, it is possible for a very small e-business to expand into a huge one within a relatively short period of time. Specifically, many highly successful and wealthy entrepreneurs have made great fortunes exploring the concept of business to business ecommerce. Consider their success a major reason why it is worthwhile to look towards one of the more popular forms of business to business ecommerce: drop shipping.

Drop Shipping Explained

The term “drop shipping” may seem exotic to some. This is probably because the name is hardly something that can be described as, well, descriptive. In reality, what drop shipping involves is little more than consignment selling without having to maintain anything in your own personal inventory. Rather, you would advertise a distributor’s product and sell it on their behalf for a markup. Once a sale has been made, you would perform the traditional business to business ecommerce strategy of buying the item from a distributor or manufacturer and shipping it to your contracted buyer. And here is the greatest benefit of this strategy of all: you do not have to perform the shipping. The distributor/manufacturer would handle it for you.

A Sample Method

What would be a basic sample of this type of business to business ecommerce? Essentially, a distributor would be selling s statue for $20 + $5 s/h. You would launch your own marketing campaign selling the item for $22.50 +$5 s/h. A customer would pay you the $27.50 and then you would pay the distributor $25.00. The distributor ships the item and you walk away with a $2.50 profit. Yes, it really is that simple of a concept.

The Lack of Overhead

What makes this such a successful venture is that it does not involve much costs in terms of overhead. Since you do not have to store inventory, you do not have to pay for such costs. Your costs mainly would be in the realm of internet marketing which could entail web hosting/publishing, auction site fees, promotional blogging costs, article marketing, etc but these methods are not exactly known for being outrageously expensive. As such, your costs can be rather miniscule compared to other traditional methods.

Customer Service

If there was one “sore spot” with this type of business to business ecommerce it would be that you are responsible for the customer service. While customer service duties are not entirely costly, they can be aggravating at times. Some customers are not exactly known for their congeniality and this can make dealing with them to be a little tough. However, it is not all that difficult to contend with customer service issues as long as you understand what is necessary to perform such tasks properly. Once you get the proverbial hang of performing customer service related duties properly, you will find them to be a lot less difficult than you initially assumed. At this point, you could say your drop shipping business to business ecommerce venture is all smooth sailing. Well, at least that would be the plan!