Well, I guess our dropship case studies section lists tens if not hundreds of products that online entrepreneurs have success selling online. But the list is not final and we try to discover more products that might fit your dropship business. Candle dropship is another product that sells well online by dropship merchants.

If you are good at promoting and capitalizing from seasonal sales then candle drop ship is probably your product. If you take a look at the candle online search demand you will see that it is on the decline for a couple of the past years with the peaks at the Christmas time. A positive sign is that the United States tops the list of regional interest for candles – so, it is still the main online candle market.

OK, what about dropship suppliers? We turn to our comparison table of a few top outsourcing supplier list providers to see if we have a choice. Our check of Worldwide Brands list shows that we can go on with our research as candle dropshippers are available in a good amount:

What I like about WorldWide Brands product is their huge database of dropshippers and lots of extras like Built-In Market Research tool that provides you with the information if it is hard to promote and sell the product of your choice online. Let’s see what it has to say about ‘candle drop ship’:

Analysis: What are your chances of success in selling that product online?

Difficult

Market trends and product demand change constantly. Based on the keyword terms you have entered, this product may be difficult to sell online at this time.

If you decide to keep researching this product or product line, you should also try adjusting your keywords to include specific information about the product. (such as: Brand Name, colors, model types and etc.)

Competition

How many people are selling using the term: candle

Yahoo!
There are currently 2,571 products using your Terms.

eBay
There are currently 14,007 stores using your Terms.
There are currently 11,007 products listed using your Terms.

Google
There are currently 25,300,000 pages found on Google using your Terms.

Yes, this is the way you can start and run your dropship business nowadays:

• you get access to a huge database of verified dropshippers, drop ship warehouse wholesale suppliers
• you get access to free videos and other training stuff showing you how to choose what to sell online and how to promote it
• you get access to the in-built marketing research tools and see demand/ competition/ retail pricing/ auction pricing & more…

With the progress of dropship business tools we should also mention that online e-commerce scene has changed greatly over the past years.

When it comes to online retail business I have always been a fan of running your own online store. Unlike auction sales you keep control of the situation and avoid paying high fees. Unfortunately, the online scene changes fast, and with every passing year it leaves much less space for small entrepreneurs.

Online marketing techniques get very expensive. PPC (pay-per-click) is costly. You can advertise with some second tier pay-per-click search engines, but click fraud is high & ROI (return on investment) is poor. And MSN AdCenter, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing rates are really high – you can’t bid the same level as big companies.

CPM advertising is not efficient, used for branding primarily nowadays and require a huge budget.

SEO (search engine optimization) takes months if not years and also requires a considerable budget.

e-Mail marketing is not so powerful as it used to be in the past due to SPAM issues.

Now it is easier to discover reliable wholesale dropship companies, but much harder to sell their products.

When it comes to video consoles and games it seems to me that there will be no end to that craze about PlayStation, Nintendo, Xbox. Just have a look at the popularity of these three terms over years.

I think it should be illustrated compared to some other popular search term, say, GPS systems (if you have a habit of keeping an eye on popular Amazon products you know that GPS is always on the list of bestsellers.

The product is popular with kids, teenagers and grownups of both genders – video consoles and games target the entire Planet population!

If we approach this fact from home based drop ship business angle we will think in terms of dropshipping both video consoles and video games

Dropship distributor I would look for partnering with should be in business for some time. Huge demand is balanced with huge offer in video games industry – so it is naive to expect to be one of the few players in the niche. The market changes fast with new video games released each month – with dozens of successful releases there are thousands of failures and it is of crucial importance to know and be able to offer those few popular video games.

Where should you start your dropship merchant partner search? Wholesale dropship directory is the first place to turn to. First check these places where you are certain to find a few (not one) verified video game dropshippers:

• Worldwidebrands
• Salehoo
• Doba
• Shopster

If you can’t afford $50-100.00 investment into your home based drop ship business you can do Google research for free lists and verify found dropship merchants yourself.

A few advantages that the above listed drop ship directories provide:

• user’s community where you can find reviews of wholesale dropshippers,
• in-built market research tool that should help you to identify more hot market products to dropship,
• free 7-day trial;
• 100% refund in case you are unhappy with what you get for your money
• find more benefits of getting access to one or a few drop ship sourcing directories

What are the ways to succeed in drop shipping? There should be a few crucial elements or indicators that you should focus on to be successful with this home business opportunity. Let’s try to define them – feel free to add more in the comments as I am sure I will miss some.

PRODUCTS. We need hot products in high demand, products that are perfect for online sales. It is not a problem to define what popular online sellers are (electronics is the first off head example), but it is a hard task to spot the products that are great for online promotion and still you can be competitive with thousands of online sellers pushing the same products – merchants, their affiliates, their dropship affiliates.

Tools are a must to facilitate your research:

Google Trends
eBay Pulse
Amazon top sellers
Shopping.com top searches

A few more sophisticated:

Instant Market Research
Hot eBay Products Tool

DROPSHIP MERCHANTS. Every merchant is interested to grow their sales incl. through dropship affiliates. But not every merchant fits our criteria. As a dropshipper, you need a reliable, verified dropshipping merchant with competitive prices, likely to stay in business for years. This partnership is of great importance to define your succeeding in dropshipping.

You have a choice to find your business partner:

• Research Google or another search engine and contact those potential dropshippers that ‘lool like’ real and trustable.
• Research local merchants and set up relations locally.
• Check the lists of verified dropship merchants and get a lot of extras (merchant reviews, free dropship training, free research tools and more)

MARKETING TOOLS. What are your ways to promote your hot products supplied by a reliable dropshipper?
First turn to some platforms/ e-commerce sites that allow you for some rent fee get a piece of their traffic. The most valuable thing about joining eBay for sellers is its spontaneous traffic that you get to your listings. It is the easiest and fastest way to make sure you did the right choice with the product category and dropshipper.

Everything works as expected? And you see good potential of growth? It is time to launch your website and promote it. Now it costs much lower than in the past. GoDaddy’s coupon search and a 7-dollar domain, 3-4 dollar monthly hosting plan, eLance or SitePoint marketplace for fast and professional web store development based on some open source software.

Next steps take patience, time and money. You need to promote your online store using keyword research, PPC, SEO (link building, content development), e-mail marketing, on-site tweaking (professional design, information architecture, usability), analytics…

EXPERIENCE. If you are completely new to online business and Internet marketing – you have a long road to go. All those stories about easy Internet money are the invention of those ‘make money fast’ products owners. Your own experience is invaluable, but it is recommended to learn from other’s mistakes. Our dropship case studies divided into product categories should be your inspiration and valuable tip sources:

Anime Dropshippers
Apparel Dropshippers
Auto Parts Dropshippers
Baby Products Dropshippers
Basket Dropshippers
Beauty Products Dropshippers
Books Dropshippers
Cell Phones Dropshippers
Computers Dropshippers
Electronics Dropshippers
Food Dropshippers
Furniture Dropshippers
GPS Dropshippers
Handbag Dropshippers
etc…

The last, but not the least thing I would like to add – there are more factors that define your success or failure in dropshipping – hard work, patience, some luck… And you should remember of that.