Ecommerce Fulfillment Services

What is a Fulfillment service?

When you make a sale, you would instruct them to ship your product to your customer by providing your customer order and shipping information. Ecommerce fulfillment services offer a great alternative to running your own order fulfillment operations. The fulfillment company will pick, pack and ship your product and provide you with a tracking number. In this arrangement you would ship your products to the fulfillment company. In the event that your customers need to return your product, they can also receive, process the return and send a replacement exactly as you've specified. Upon arrival, they will receive, organize and log your products into an inventory management system, where you can manage your products online.

Benefits of using Fulfillment Services:

Fulfillment services provide you with many great benefits. When your order volume grows they are already ready to scale up with your operations. And that's not all, you actually share all of that cost among other merchants, that which allows orders to be fulfilled for much less than that of your own set up. You don't have to incur any large operational and upfront fulfillment expenses, because the fulfillment companies are already set up with all the infrastructures necessary, including warehousing space, labor, inventory and shipping management, for you. That will leave you with more time to focus on growing your business. Good fulfillment services can ensure your orders to be shipped, tracked and delivered on time. Criteria to select a fulfillment service:

• Company Size: Must meet your processing performance requirements
• Costs: Select a structure that's best for your order frequency and volume
• Time: Quick turn-around and late cut-off time
• Location: Typically in the middle of the country or close to your customers
• Shipping Service: Should match the services your customers use
• Order Entry: Should accept email, CSV import and online input
• Customer Service: Multiple contact methods and extended hour.
• Error rate: 3% or lower, and offer express replacement delivery

Dropshippers

Why Dropshippers don' t work?

These middleman dropshippers not only make money from you by charging a monthly fee, but then rip a percentage of profit from each of your orders. These companies often advertise aggressively on many sourcing information pages and jam the search engine results.Make sure that you eliminate the middlemen and go directly to the source, such as the Wordwide Brands Directories. So, with your other expenses, you'll make so little profit, that you might rather be working for somebody else, just to cut the hassle. Be aware of the many middleman Dropshippers that plague the Internet today. They sell you a monthly membership for $30 a month, or so to access their catalog. Then they compile and maintain a virtual inventory catalog of the dropshipper's products. When you make a sale, you would typically go onto their website and place an order. The way they work is that they sign up with a small number of the large and real dropshippers, which you can find, yourself, through methods described on the previous Wholesale Distributors page. In the end, they've left you with only a very small margin. They in turn, redirect your order to the real (or actual) dropshippers, who will ship the product directly to your customers...

Why Dropshippers do work?

Dropshippers do all the product sourcing, warehousing, inventory maintenance and order shipping for you. The ideal dropshippers would offer you a true wholesale price that you can't find lower anywhere. The major benefits are that you don't need to buy any inventory or incur any inventory and fulfillment related expenses. You can only offer what they are carrying, just like any other competitors of yours who use the same dropshipper. More importantly, you have to rely on them to ship out your product which means it can take a day, or so, more, for them to ship out your orders than if you do it yourself. They should only charge you a very low dropshipping fee or nothing at all. Pay carefully attention to these extra fees, as they could add up and eat away at all of your profit. Some companies try to make more money from you, by charging you higher shipping rates than standard carrier rates. The disadvantages are that your dropshippers are wholesalers that only carry the types of product and the quantity that they want. Some companies even provide product descriptions and photos for your web listings.

Market Demand Research

IS IT CURRENTLY IN DEMAND?

This will be your Supply Number. Doing your market supply research is a little more involved. Count the number of stores that sell your product in each store directory of Ebay and Yahoo then add them to the total number of paid ads found in Google and Overture to get a complete total Yahoo Stores:

Go to shopping.yahoo.com/stores/sd.html

Hint: Get the total number of the matched results.

Google Ads:

Go to google.com

Hint: Count the "Sponsored Links" on the right

Ebay Stores:

* Goto ebay.com

* Click on "Advanced Search"

* Click on "Find Stores" under Store on the left Search menu

* Input your search product name and select "Store name only" radio button and search.

* Get the number of resulting match records found for your search.

IS IT CURRENTLY UNDER SUPPLIED?

Make sure that you use as many different versions of your product name and type variations as possible, to obtain a more accurate count of searches for your product. Then Check your email and open the email from Word Tracker. Follow the below Word Tracker step-by-step instruction to do your market demand research. Click on the link to open the Word Tracker welcome screen, then click on "click here to start the trial" to begin your search.

• Enter your product name, and its variations, or the product type to find out the actual search keyword and its search count.
• Go to wordtracker.com
• Click on "Take A Trial"
• Input Your Name & Email and click on the "Start The Trial button"
• Add up all the counts of all the relevant keyword variations and that will be your Demand Number.

Marketability Calculation

(Marketability Ratio = Demand Number / Supply Number x 100)

The higher the marketability ratio indicates the better chance that your product will sell at a fair market price. You should use a similar type of product that you know well, as a point of reference for comparisons of your new product. Before making your final decision, you should consider other factors as well, such as product profit margin, special supplier advantages, or deep industry knowledge.

Market Research Software

It's a one-of-a-kind research program that is available on the Internet today. The Market Research Wizard is a very handy and inexpensive program that does all of the above calculations, and more, for you, by just entering your product keyword.

Dropshippers

Why Dropshippers do work?

Dropshippers do all the product sourcing, warehousing, inventory maintenance and order shipping for you. The disadvantages are that your dropshippers are wholesalers that only carry the types of product and the quantity that they want. They should only charge you a very low dropshipping fee or nothing at all. You can only offer what they are carrying, just like any other competitors of yours who use the same dropshipper. The ideal dropshippers would offer you a true wholesale price that you can't find lower anywhere. Some companies even provide product descriptions and photos for your web listings. Pay carefully attention to these extra fees, as they could add up and eat away at all of your profit. More importantly, you have to rely on them to ship out your product which means it can take a day, or so, more, for them to ship out your orders than if you do it yourself. The major benefits are that you don't need to buy any inventory or incur any inventory and fulfillment related expenses. Some companies try to make more money from you, by charging you higher shipping rates than standard carrier rates.

Why Dropshippers don' t work?

Make sure that you eliminate the middlemen and go directly to the source, such as the Wordwide Brands Directories. These companies often advertise aggressively on many sourcing information pages and jam the search engine results. When you make a sale, you would typically go onto their website and place an order. They in turn, redirect your order to the real (or actual) dropshippers, who will ship the product directly to your customers. The way they work is that they sign up with a small number of the large and real dropshippers, which you can find, yourself, through methods described on the previous Wholesale Distributors page. They sell you a monthly membership for $30 a month, or so to access their catalog. These middleman dropshippers not only make money from you by charging a monthly fee, but then rip a percentage of profit from each of your orders. So, with your other expenses, you'll make so little profit, that you might rather be working for somebody else, just to cut the hassle.Be aware of the many middleman Dropshippers that plague the Internet today. In the end, they've left you with only a very small margin. Then they compile and maintain a virtual inventory catalog of the dropshipper's products.

What is e-commerce?

Here's the formal definition: "Electronic commerce or e-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services to Internet users". Everything is hosted on servers, and serviced by hosting companies. This type of online business typically involves an e-commerce site, a web site that has a product catalog, a shopping cart, and a checkout system to handle shipping calculations, and processes credit card payments. In addition, an e-commerce site is commonly comprised of a graphic user interface, to display information and a database to store the product and transaction data. You may already have some idea about "what e-commerce" is. For the purpose of this web site, let's just focus on the form of e-commerce that sells products to Internet users only; because it is popular, and it needs more in depth discussion.

Pros and Cons of e-commerce for sellers:

• Takes orders 24/7, thus maximizing sales opportunities

• Distributes product information to customers, more rapidly

• Carries a larger inventory by leveraging drop shipping services

• Tracks customer buying pattern data, to improve the seller's business

• Saves costs and improves efficiency

• Might incur lost revenue due to credit card fraud

• Offers more competitive prices due to lower overhead

• Takes a large number of orders simultaneously

• Must cope with customer's security and privacy issues

• Expands the market with new customers and sales potentials

Pros and Cons of e-commerce for buyers:

• Saves time by not having to go to the local stores

• Products not available in stores can be found, online

• Purchases can be made from wish lists

• Buyers can avoid holiday crowds

• Buyers can find products online, more easily

• Buyers can shop when local stores are closed

• Gift wrapping can be avoided

• Concerns with identity, privacy and credit card security.

• Buyers may be able to find better prices, online

• Buyers can have gifts sent directly to recipients

• Purchasers can earn loyalty points

• Price comparisons are much easier, online

Business registration

Before getting down to the paper work, you need to decide what form of business you want to have. For the best recommendation that suits your current business needs, consult your accountant. Setting up a new business, as a legal entity in the United States, is a fairly easy task.

LLC and Corporation

For a small fee they do all the paperwork filing for you, and send you the final documents. A good resource that helps you with this is Mycorporation.com or DBA. If you choose to form an LLC or Corporation then you may need an additional filing with your state.

No matter what is your business form, you need to file a fictitious business name or DBA (doing business as) with your County Clerk-Recorder's Office. Once filed, you're required to publish the name in a local newspaper to complete the registration. There you'll be asked to search for your new DBA to make sure it is available before submitting the application.

Business Bank Account

With a copy of the fictitious name filing on hand, you now can go to the bank to open your new business account. Depending on your bank's new account policy, they may require you to submit proof of having published your fictitious business name, before completing the account opening for you.

Resale License

You'll be required to report and pay the withheld tax to your State. The resale license enables you to purchase products from your wholesaler without paying sale tax. As an ecommerce retailer, you'll need to obtain a resale license at your State Board of Equalization's local office. However, you could be obligated to withhold sales tax from those customers who reside in your State.

Follow the all of the steps to complete your PayPal verification process, which includes requiring you to submit your bank account deposit information. After you are verified, you are ready to accept PayPal payments, and can apply for Paypal Pro, a merchant account processing service, when you are ready to sell your products, online.

Competitor analysis

How to find your competitors?

Your competitors can be found as the top 10 ranking ecommerce sites on the major search engines and directories such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask. To do a competitor analysis, you need to locate your major competitors, companies in your line of business that are most visible to your potential buyers. They are the regular advertisers in your industry magazines and search engines.

How to spy on your competitors?

Another approach is to differentiate your offerings so that you target your own special niche; so as to not be in direct competition with them. Study their strengths and weaknesses and see how you can tailor your offerings to beat theirs. A great competitor analysis tool is the free Alexa Toolbar. After you've gotten a list of your most important competitors, you should visit them all to find out how professional their site is, what their strong products are; their promotions, their prices and their customer service (and return policy).When you browse a competitor it will tell you how busy they are by their traffic ranking; who their competitors are, by related sites and who is linking to them. By using this tool, you can narrow down your competitor list to the most important ones.

Competitor Price Watch:

Since every competitor is competitive on a certain types of products, you may want to bookmark each of the competitor's promotion and product pricing pages to stay on top of them. Ideally you should have up to 3 links next to each of your product prices to show the current price of your competitors and each of the 3 competitor product pages can be opened by just a click. Price monitoring is probably the most important competitor analysis for ecommerce retailers. In such an event you can review it and update your price immediately, as necessary. If you are bookmarking hundreds or thousands of pages, then a monitoring software such as Compressweb Web Monitor is essential, and a big time saver. Look for this competitor "bookmarking" feature in your ecommerce solution because it is such an important tool in today's competitive marketplace. In addition, you should obtain a monitoring software to spy on these pages; so that you'll know when a competitor's price changes.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO Watch)

Another important factor in competitor analysis is watching your competitor's search engine ranking. For the competitors that rank high on the top 10 of the major search engines; study their SEO structure. Especially when you are starting out, having other sites with related industry content linked to your site can be a great way to improve your own current ranking. Visit these sites and ask them to link to your site as well. We will soon have a separate website, to address this topic in greater detail.. This is call "Link Popularity"; and with the Alexa Toolbar, you can find out who is linking to your competitors.