Follow On TwitterMailbag: Order Fulfillment Advice, Approaching Vendors, Hosted Shopping Cart Solutions
It’s been a long time since the last mailbag but most of the questions that I’ve been receiving lately have either been fully covered on this blog or have required quick one or two sentence answers. For those of you sending me questions, please add as much detail as possible so that I can better address your concerns.
Incidentally, I’ve also just compiled an ebook that I’m giving away which outlines the fundamentals of how to create a niche ecommerce website. It’s free and you can download it by signing up for my newsletter. In any case, onto the questions.
Steeeve . . I don’t know how I found this page, must be the Lord workin’ I am trying to finally launch my greeting card business. Everything is finally in order after so much hard work and money invested. I finally figured out that what I need is an order fulfillment company to work with me. However I discovered that when it comes to order fulfillment places, they charge for everything and if a person only orders one or two greeting cards, you make no money. There must be some sort of fulfillment service company that TRULY caters to startups. Please help if you can. God bless you and your family.
In general, order fulfillment companies are going to always be more expensive because that is how they make their money. In other words, order fulfillment companies like ShipWire.com charge a lot of money because they don’t stand to gain anything from working with you outside of collecting your money.
In order to find a more economical solution, I suggest that you look for a company to work with in which the relationship is mutually beneficial. You mentioned that you run a greeting card company. Instead of looking at generic fulfillment companies, why not contact and partner with a printing company? That way when you sell more greeting cards, both you and the printing company make money together. The printing company does what they do best and you make money from the design of the greeting cards. It’s a win win situation.
Thank you for your posts! I love them all as they are very resourceful. I hope you can help answer my question. How do you approach supplier for an e-commerce website? Some of them want to see website first but then in order to complete the site, I would catalog content. What would be the best way to go about in this situation? look forward to hearing your suggestions. Thank you in advance!
I’m going to be posting a blog entry on this soon, but the short answer is that not every supplier will require you to show them your website first. In fact, my wife and I rarely get asked this question at all. There are a wide variety of wholesalers that each cater to different classes of buyers. The key is to find a supplier that caters to your specific business size and volume requirements.
When my wife and I first started out, we didn’t have a website and we never brought it up. If you know what you want and how much you want to buy and speak with confidence, the right vendor will always deal with you. That being said, if you do have a website, you might want to mention it but it’s not a requirement.
Thank you for your articles. Right now I’m deciding between whether to open up a store using Yahoo vs Ebay. Which one should I choose?
Ack! If you’ve read any of my articles on how to create an online store, you would know that my philosophy is to try and avoid both of these services altogether, most of all Ebay. Read Why You Should Never Start An Ebay Store to get an idea why.
If you have the motivation, you should always try and host your own online store rather than relying on a third party hosted solution. Both Yahoo and Ebay charge hefty fees(more so Ebay) to sell products online whereas you can avoid those charges altogether by hosting your own website.
Did you like this article? There are many more articles like this on entrepreneurship, kids and money and how to open an online business on this website. Read about our journey how we went from earning 0 to 100 thousand dollars in 12 months with our online business. Looking for some laughs? Read about some of our crazy customer stories.
Ready To Get Serious About Starting An Online Business?
If you are really considering starting your own online business and quitting your day job, then you absolutely have to check out my guide on How To Create A Profitable Online Store In 5 Easy Steps.In this guide, I reveal the steps that my wife and I took to earn 100 thousand dollars in the span of just a year. Best of all, it's absolutely free!
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For what it’s worth, my anticipated strategy will be to fulfill out of my home to begin with. For one, I plan to start small so it should be manageable, and I will have too many SKUs to make outsourcing affordable. Most importantly, I want to understand what’s involved, first-hand.
It’s like hiring someone. You’ll make a more educated decision if you’ve done the job yourself.
P.S. Happy holiday to my fellow Canadian readers!
Hi Alexa
That sounds like a sound strategy to me if you sell small, low volume items. With a greeting card business though, I think it makes sense to have a printing company handle most of the order fulfillment. Otherwise, you could run out of space at home very quickly.
Steve, sorry – didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing with you. I like your suggestion about partnering with a printing company. I was addressing more the theme of doing things yourself, in general (to your eBay comment).
@Alexa,
Oh okay. I understand. BTW, it’s always cool to disagree. My wife tells me I’m wrong all the time:)
I hear that Yahoo trumps eBay stores too even due to the cost. What would we do without fulfillment, it really is an amazing thing.