How and where to find suppliers for any online business

You are about to learn the Top 5 ways to avoid the scams and find genuine / reliable suppliers for any drop shipping business…

If there is one thing that almost every budding drop shipping entrepreneur will need to have access to, it is reliable Drop Shipping suppliers for their particular internet business niche. This is an important element that no serious online business owner can overlook – as without this you don’t actually have a real online business.

Despite its obvious importance, it can be very difficult to find genuine & reliable wholesalers / drop shipping business suppliers that will actually ship out the products that they glowingly advertise on their website. You are in fact much more likely to get ripped off before you find a genuine supplier.

There have been numerous horror stories of people who have sent their money, sometimes several thousands of dollars via direct bank transfer, PayPal or worse via western union, only for the item/s that they paid for never to actually show up at their door – with the products advertiser never being heard from again. This can and indeed does happen – yes less than it used to, but it still does.

As a seeker of reliable Drop Shipping suppliers, there are several steps that you can take to protect yourself. Let’s take a look at a few of the things that you can do step by step…..

1. Use one of the many heavily trafficked supplier sourcing platforms.

Time was when if you were trying to find a genuine supplier for your business you had to do things the long hard & risky way – which would usually go a little something like this:

  1. You would begin by conducting a simple Google search that would include search terms along the lines of: “wholesaler suppliers”, “Drop shipping suppliers”, “Wholesale suppliers ‘my country’”;
  2. From there, up would come dozens of potential ‘suppliers’ on the front page of Big G.
  3. You would click into one of the 1st-page results, find products that are of interest to you.
  4. You would fall for their sales spiel and get in touch with the websites owner in order to obtain their payment details
  5. Once you had acquired their payment details, you would ‘Western Union’ them your hard earned cash.
  6. You then would just wait eagerly – keeping all of your fingers & toes crossed hoping that your order will actually show up.

2.Take the time to actually view & check out their sellers feedback profile

Whichever wholesaler / drop shipping supplier directory you are using, if they are half-decent, they will usually always have their own built in feedback feedback/rating system that will allow you to view the kind of experience that other users have had with them.

This facility may be there, but the onus is on you to ensure that before you actually place your order, you take a look at the feedback profile of the seller you are intending to purchase from.

Sadly all too many times people only do this once they have already sent a payment & things appear to not be going as smoothly as they should – i.e they have already been waiting for ages for their order to show up.

Remember to only use a verified supplier!

3.Never pay via Western Union or pay the supplier directly!

westernunionno

Thanks to the many secure suppliers sourcing platforms, there really is no need to be sending your money directly to a supplier – especially not via western union. This is one of the least secure ways to pay. If you use western union or send money, once the funds have left your bank account or credit/debit card, they are essentially untraceable. Anyone could be collecting the funds and there would be no way to be able to track or trace them should things go wrong – let alone you being able to get any of your money back.

Money directly to a supplier you will have little to no come-back should things go wrong.

4.Never pay directly to the supplier upfront

The beauty of the platforms that we recommend in our suppliers’ handbook is that they all have some pretty stringent customer protection structures in place on their platform.

One of our particular favorites is actually a platform that will act as a 3rd party escrow service. The way that they operate makes it absolutely pointless for a potential scammer to even sign up to use their platform. Here is how it works…

  1. You sign up for an account with the platform and enter your personal details as well as payment information.
  2. You browse for potential items that you would like to purchase
  3. You click to buy your intended item/s
  4. You pay for your items, but here is the key………… instead of paying the supplier directly, you send your money to the supplier sourcing platform who will hold your money safely in their bank account. That’s right, the seller Will not receive your money at this point.
  5. Your intended supplier just receives notification of your order and is informed that you have paid & your funds are being held safely in escrow.
  6. Safe in the knowledge that you have indeed paid, the supplier then ships out your order directly to you.
  7. You receive the order and check for any damage as well as whether or not it matches the listing page description.
  8. Once you are satisfied that everything is ok with your received package, you then have to log in to your account and let the platform know that you have received your order and that everything is ok with it.
  9. Only then are you able to manually click on the “release funds to seller button” which will indeed do just that.

SO as you can see, the fact that a seller will only receive the money after you have logged in and confirmed that everything is ok means that it is just not possible to not receive what you have paid for if you use the platforms that we recommend in our guide.

5.When and where possible use a Credit Card!

This is a critical one here. If all else has failed you will be so happy that you paid for your order using a recognized credit card.

The major credit card companies usually offer their customers built-in protection against any purchases made via their credit cards. This includes items paid for but not actually received.

Conclusion

Although if course it is not 100% possible to guarantee being able to avoid those who are intent on scamming and parting us from our hard earned cash, as demonstrated above, there are a few steps that we can take with a view to protecting ourselves from such scams. It just take keeping a sensible & rational head on before placing your order.

 

 

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