Dropshipping is getting harder. Really. And there are a number of obvious reasons:

- It is expensive to promote products online. It is getting more and more expensive. And dropship affiliates that have low profit margins are not competitive with the merchants or manufacturers.
- More and more merchants enter online space. More and more producers start online e-commerce to cut the middlemen.

So, the question is if dropshipping business model is likely to be a lasting business strategy remains open. Is it a smart move in a situation when competition gets tough to acquire an established dropship business? Probably it is, as you get valuable assets – established website, reliable merchants, customer base…

New case study is maternity and baby clothing store.

Well established, great reputation

• URL: http://www.InStyleMoms.com/
• Established: Thu Jun 30 2005
• Uniques/Month: 3,200
• Page views/month: 24,000
• Monthly Revenue: $1500
• Google Pagerank: 4
• Sold: $11,000

Description:

Comprised of drop ship accounts, this web boutique has the potential for massive growth!

* Established 7/2005
* $1,500/month in gross revenues
* Net Revenues average 25% of gross as the sales are drop shipped from the vendor. The new owner may want to consider wholesale of the best sellers to increase net profit. I would be happy to recommend the top sellers.
* Approx. 3200 Unique Visitors per month based on Google Analytics
* Established vendor relationships with top-selling designers, the best in the business.
* We have a google ranking of 4
* Site was redesigned and renamed in November 2007
* Included in sale is a Blog that ties directly to the E-Commerce site (instylemoms.blogspot.com)
* Email list includes nearly 600 emails. Current account is with Constant Contact
*Aloha Cart shopping cart and administration.
*Currently using PayPal to process credit cards and PayPal payments. Aloha Cart has capabilities to use other merchant accounts.
* The current monthly expenses are

$30/mo for Constant Contact newsletter with 552 subscribers

$24/mo web hosting. There are cheaper options available but I have found the one I am using to be reliable.

Sale includes web site, current stock of merchandise (approx. $200 worth), ongoing ad relationship with a popular maternity information website and blog, 30 days of support during the transition.

Revenue Details:

Online sales of maternity, baby, nursing products and mom-inspired clothing.

Traffic Details:

Based on google analytics. I also have stats via cpanel

I have recently noticed the trend in the online business forums – more and more internet entrepreneurs who were previously involved into development content based websites and promoting affiliate programs (sample: dropship affiliate programs) turn to starting their own e-commerce ventures. And most those ventures are drop ship type businesses.

It is a sign that the competition is likely to get tougher in the limited online space for dropship businesses. The winners will be those with established and reputable dropship stores with a long list of regular customers, having close relations with merchants, also those who will offer new hot products and stay on the edge of latest technologies and marketing developments.

Another sign in the dropship industry – dropship business owners find more and more ways to drive traffic and promote their online ventures. A few years back 90% dropship sellers got their traffic through eBay.

Now I see dropship sites:

• promoted in shopping comparison engines,
• drive traffic with pay-per-click engines,
• accepted to top online directories like DMOZ and
• even achieving top Google rankings for competitive retail products…

Just a few of my observations.

And now another case study for beginners and advanced dropship entrepreneurs. Our never ending show of providing you with the samples of dropship businesses, how they get promoted and what they really sell and earn.

• URL: www.mysunshades.com
• Established: Sun Feb 12 2006
• Uniques/Month: 4,000
• Page views/month: 22,000
• Monthly Revenue: $3,500 – $4,000
• Google Pagerank: 2
• Min Bid: $15 000
• BIN: $20 000

Description:

This auction is for a total Sunglasses E-Commerce package just in time for the peak Spring & Summer Season!

MySunShades.com deals with “single” pair sunglasses targeting your average consumer.

iWholeSaleSunglasses.com is a”wholesaler” targeting vendors and corporate functions.

About MySunShades.com:
Created On: 13-Feb-05
Length in Business: 3 Years
Yearly Revenues: 35-40K
Profit Margin: 85%
Item Sale Price: $15.95
Item Purshase Price: $2.00-2.50

Inventory: 8K Worth of inventory is included with this sale.

Note: MysunShades.com purchases its sunglasses from an exclusive wholesaler at great rate. The site has been submitted to all the top online directories for 3 years now, which give the site it’s great first page google keyword ranks (see images). Also, We have been added to a lot of affiliate coupon sites. There not much to say then the site is very successful in it’s “niche”.

About iWholesalesSunglasses.com:
Created On: 01-May-06
Length in Business: 2 Years
Yearly Revenues: 15-20K
Profit Margin: 25%
Item Sale Price: $34.95
Item Purshase Price: $25-27
Dmoz listed

Inventory: NONE, this site is all dropship you DO NOT carry any inventory.

Note: iWholeSaleSunglasses.com is a DropShip site, and also has been submitted to all the top online directories such as DMOZ (approved), which give the site it’s great first page google keyword ranks (see images). Also, there is not much to say then the site is very successful in it’s “niche”.

Reason For Sale:

Its been 3 years since i was in this business, its time for new ownership to step in and add their own fresh touch to these successful websites.

Revenue Details:

Check Description for Details.

Traffic Details:

All Search Engine NO advertising!

If you think that there are no really big players in the dropship industry then the below case study will make you think. It is also a sample for those who run dropship businesses on a small level and are not sure if there is a way to expand their drop ship venture.

We have an extensive section covering a large selection of profitable dropship businesses so far, but it is the first time we publish a case of drop ship store generating over $1,000,000 in sales monthly. Do you think it is possible to easily find verified dropshipping merchants to meet & handle that amount of orders?

How to grow this sort of drop ship business? What human resources it takes to build ad maintain? How much it cost to develop and run? What are the marketing costs of such business? And what promotion techniques are applied to generate that much in sales? Find all your questions answered below.

Our recent case study of a really BIG dropship business.

• URL: www.payhalf.com
• Established: 30 Jun 2006
• Uniques/ Month: 5,000
• Page views/ month: 25,000
• Monthly Revenue: $1,000,000 gross in sales
• PageRank: 7

Description:

This is a first class auction for e-commerce site. Over $175,000 was spent developing the site. We had a team of 4 of us 3 full time one part time and grossed over $2,000,000 in 2 months with a 10% markup (October and November can show merchant reports to verify this) but due to other projects could not keep up the pace as we have a call center and several other businesses to manage. We did not stock any merchandise we were a drop ship company and listed products then pushed our product feed to pricegrabber, shoppzilla.com, nextag.com, ect ect, we spent less than $25,000.00 with these comparison sites to generate the $2,000,000 plus in sales.

The site is coded in custom php, mysql. Can support over 200,000 products and currently has a database with close to 200,000 products including detailed descriptions, pricing and images.

Expect to get hit with 250+ orders per day and it took us a while to get our dropshipper to get the correct/ realtime inventory levels so that we did not get an order for something that was out of stock. But by the time we got all that corrected our other businesses were taking off and we just did not have the team to support the growth. the site has been up since then just not taking orders as again we do not have the time to fulfill all the orders that would result in turning the ordering back on. Also if you notice these reviews were very early on you wont see any recent ones as all the issues were again corrected.

We do not stock anything and do not ship anything but we still have to perform order entry into the vendors site which was a lot of data entry. Don’t get me wrong 2-300 orders per day is nice but when you get behind and cannot get all the orders in per day you start to get behind really quick and then you customers who are not happy.

Site also has a comprehensive admin panel and is already integrated for paypal and verisign.

Site also has customer admin.

Also has an affiliate backend to where affiliates can load and list and sell their products on the site. You can charge them what ever fee structure you want on this or allow free listing to promote website growth and then monetize the site by selling google ads, chitkia ect ect. We did not do this but wish we had of as we are sure we left a lot of advertising dollars on the table.

Also partially finished sections as follows:

Barter section to where users can list items and barter back and forth other items for free or for a fee your choice.

Has a classified section similar to craigslist.

Has a merchant control center where users can import items from eBay and other sites.

Has a community section as well customized in phpbb.

This is a great match to implement a few social shopping web 2.0 features and with the catchy payhalf.com name turn this into a really high profile site.

The domain name is a premium one and we get offers weekly for people wanting to purchase it for high dollar amounts.

Revenue Details:

This is a first class auction for e-commerce site. Over $175,000 was spent developing the site. We had a team of 4 of us 3 full time one part time and grossed over $2,000,000 in 2 months with a 10% markup (October and November can show merchant reports to verify this )but due to other projects could not keep up the pace as we have a call center and several other business to manage. We did not stock any merchandise we were a drop ship company and listed products then pushed our product feed to pricegrabber, shoppzilla.com, nextag.com, ect ect, we spent less than $25,000.00 with these comparisons sites to generate the $2,000,000 plus in sales.

Traffic Details:

Traffic comes from google, yahoo, people are coming to the site to purchase electronic goods, affiliates list items for sale also.