I have mentioned in another automotive dropshipper business post that auto parts are not on top of products for online sale, but despite the fact this is one of the most popular categories on our dropship case studies list.

To tell the truth, I have never heard of the HID kits before, so it proves that market research is a must for any sort of business including a dropship venture.

I have mentioned a few sources of ideas to discover popular products that sell online via dropshipping – eBay popular products & Amazon top sellers. A few more sources that I have recently applied – Shopping.com top searches & Internet Retailer 500 list of top US online stores. These sources are just a starting point – get a vague idea about products you feel inclined to promote & sell online, then make sure you see some space for your dropship business on the market (demand, competition, etc).

Once you are certain about the product category to test for dropship business – turn to the product sourcing (free trial is the cheapest way) & run your test on eBay on a shoestring – will those products really sell before you invest more time into them…

Now I suggest you to have a look at another dropship business case study (you can find the entire list here) to learn what it takes to run & promote a dropship project.

Automotive Parts — eCommerce Dropship business

$1100/month Profit for October 2008

•    URL: www.blindinghid.com
•    Established: Mon Apr 07 2008
•    Uniques/Month: 3,300
•    Monthly Revenue (USD): 1,100
•    Google Pagerank: 2

Description:

General Information

I am putting my automotive part dropshipping business up for sale. We sell HID kits (kits that convert halogen headlights to HIDs). Customers find our business through search engines, select the kit that fits for their vehicle and order the kit via paypal. We take our commission and forward the rest to a dropshipper.

Dropship Information

We use a USA dropshipper that provides constant e-mail support for the products we sell. If you are unfamilar with dropshipping the concept is basically getting wholesale rates and having the supplier deal with shipping your product. You don’t need to do anything except forward paypal payments to his e-mail with the order information and address.

Website Details

Registered for another year and a half throuh GoDaddy

Pagerank 2

Runs off of Wordpress with a complete admin backend.

I hired two professional SEO experts who are currently in the process of achieving high SERPs for other keywords.

Revenue Details:

$1100 profit in October, strictly organic google/yahoo/msn traffic. Check attached screenshots for paypal.

Traffic Details:

September: 3000 UV
October: 3300 UV

Everything sells online – I guess I have read this in the preview to Top 500 Guide (list of top US online stores, see the complete list here). And I share this point when daily I come across e-commerce stores and online auctions that sell stuff I could never think about promoting online

Dropship neon sings – I doubt that you can do full time living off that, but I am unfamiliar with the market and can be wrong. The fastest way to research a market online for free is with Google Adwords Keyword Tool – you will learn about demand as the service now shows search estimates and you will learn about competition – as the service indicates how much it costs to get certain positions in Adwords listings.

On the other hand it is that sort of niche stores that are focused on very narrow product category that allows them to relatively cheap advertise their product line on the Internet and helps to gain excellent search engine rankings - as a result they get highly targeted and free organic traffic.

Neon Sign Ecommerce Site - Dropshipping

•    URL: www.neonsignoutlet.com
•    Established: Sep 30 2007
•    Page views/month: 250
•    Monthly Revenue (USD): 0
•    Google Pagerank: 0
•    Uniques/Month: 100

Description:

Ecommerce site for sale that sells neon signs.  All items are dropshipped so you have nothing to stock.  All the hard work is done and all you need to do now is drive traffic to the site.  For anyone that has built an ecommerce site you now how time consuming and tedious the listing of products is.  Well…all that work is already done for you.  All the site needs is traffic.

Most items have a 30% markup or more.  I will provide the dropshipper company information to the buyer.

Cost include $50 per month for hosting of the Shopsite ecommerce platform with Lexiconn.com.

Site has had about 100 visitors so far in October, most of which is organic traffic.

Revenue Details:

Site has not made any sales yet

Traffic Details:

Around 100 visitors a month, mostly organic traffic.

Perfume products are no doubt popular with drop ship affiliates And remember - the holiday season is coming and despite the crisis people will spend billions on gifts (though it is clear that shopping expenses will be cut in most families).

So, it looks like dropshipping fragrance/ perfume products is not a bad idea. – you need the product knowledge and reputable merchants dropshipping discount perfume – all this takes time so there are no chances to be properly prepared by this holiday season, but more holidays are coming…

We have not discussed in detail promotion techniques that our case study site owners apply, but you can read about that in the descriptions of the web projects for sale. I would just like to mention that from my own experience PPC (once worked great) gets more and more costly – especially AdWords You have to compete against top e-commerce brands and it is next to impossible to bid on keywords as much as those brands can afford.

And Google sets requirements so high that now you can’t just go and buy 10 000 keywords and be sure that they will drive you traffic at .10$ per visitor. Those times are gone…

Comparison shopping engines are still efficient traffic vehicles – check Shopping, Nextag and Shopzilla

For those interested in e-commerce topic, I would recommend checking e-commerce basics packed into one article It is not a tutorial or complete list of e-commerce promotion tools, but it is a good up-to-date primer to those who need the starting point.

Established Ecommerce Perfume Website

10K Revenue / Year - Established 2005

•    URL: www.skinfragrance.com
•    Established: Fri Nov 04 2005
•    Uniques/Month: 2,200
•    Page views/month: 7,000
•    Monthly Revenue (USD): 300
•    BIN: $10 100

Description:

Offered for sale for the first time is online retailer Skinfragrance.com. Skinfragrance is an online perfume/fragrance retailer. The site has been online for since Nov 2005, and with little promotion has done around 38K in sales over that period. (Read more in “Why am I selling” below) Skinfragrance.com targets the high end market of Perfume / Cologne. Site currently carries around 5000 to 8000 products at any given time.

We are ranked for numerous terms:
#6 Google - best selling perfume
#9 Google - best selling cologne
#9 Google - top selling cologne

Numerous other (higher traffic keywords) – a few pages deep. Skinfragrance.com can pass other sites fairly quickly based on Domain Age alone….combined with a few quality links.

What’s included:

•    Domain Skinfragrance.com
•    Current Customer List/Mailing List (Opt In)
•    Web Design / Content

Why is Skinfragrance for sale?

I started this ecommerce site in Nov of 2005 with the intention of letting the domain age. Sales started coming in quickly and I did initial promotion (link building etc) Domain is still currently included in BOTW directory among others. I have since started many other projects and have a very demanding job within the Ecommerce industry. I do not have time to take Skinfragrance.com to the next level.
I simply have not had time to update products. I have had to cancel orders because of stock issues. New owner would need to put in the 15-30 minutes a day to update products.

Skills Required:

Site is run on the Yahoo Store Merchant platform and has been since the beginning. I would expect the new owner be familiar with ecommerce sites, have some Excel Skills (loading csv imports) – some degree of programming would be great but not necessary. You will also need your own Merchant Account.

Revenue Details:

Products are drop shipped and no inventory is maintained. There is much room to grow profit margin simply by moving to a inventory & fulfillment model.

Unexploited revenue opportunities for this site include advertising of course, but also there exists a great customer interest in up to date information. Revenue can greatly be increased with simple link building, comparison engines, PPC, etc.

- I have briefly advertised with Nextag and Shopzilla and Yahoo Shopping. Good Results but I have not tracked well enough.

Generating around 10K plus a year in Revenues - Profit Margin ranges from 15% to 90% based on price of item. Most products are currently at about a 25% to 30% markup. Profit /month – Ranges from $120 to $400 (Potential is with Aged Domain) Traffic Details:

Traffic is generated via:

•    Google Organic (Product Search) - I have problem with showing images in Product search and have not had time to fix. This along would probably double traffic from this source.
•    Around 1500 – 3000 Uniques per/month - Dec much more – See Graphic
•    Organic traffic via viral word of mouth on forums, etc
•    Newsletters utilizing Opt-in subscription tool to capture browsers and push for increased conversion.
•    Repeat Buyers

What would I do to take Skinfragrance to next Level?

•    More Promotion (Via Link Building) - Would not take much – I was ranked for term “Discount Fragrances” after getting to links with correct anchor text.
•    Automate Inventory - Take Supplier XML / CSV file and automate inventory levels. This takes a little programming knowledge or outsource the work.
•    Start Stocking Products
•    Better Analytics – Install Google Analytics with Revenue Tracking

Expenses:
•    I have run a few campaigns over the years on Yahoo / Google but nothing more than a few hundred bucks.
•    $39.95 Month Yahoo Store
•    $19.95 Merchant Acct. / Month

Revenue Details:

Revenue is sales of perfume / body perfume products. We only sell Authentic Brand Name Perfumes. Sales mostly come from Google….

Traffic Details:

GOOGLE 95% - NON PAID