One of the basic forumlas for making money on the internet is drop shipping.  This means you are advertising items for sale on your site, newsletter, ezine, etc that are actually located at another company with which you have a relationship.  When someone buys one of the items from you, an order is placed to your dropshipper, which mails the item directly to the purchaser.  The dropshipper sells the items for a cheaper price than you would pay if you bought these outright yourself.



This seems simple enough, and it pretty much is.  The catch is finding drop shipping companies out there.  Also, you'll need to create a website that can feature items you want to sell, get the website hosted, advertise and promote your site on the search engines, and hope your efforts build enough traffic to your site to start generating sales.

As you may have guessed, the above tasks can be difficult.  Just finding decent and reputable drop shipping companies on the internet can be hard.  It is almost if they don't want to be found - perhaps this is their way of keeping away the inexperienced, or those who aren't able to generate enough sales for them.  Fortunately, several enterprising companies have created tools that help you streamline this whole process.

Enter Internet Speedway.

I purchased the Internet Speedway software back in early 2005.  They offer you a website that is set up to display items from certain dropshipper companies.  All you need to do is enter a name for your site and enter whatever text you would like for the pages.  There is a function that lets you place items for sale from a drop shipping category on your site.  They also allow you to enter items from other sources, so you can place an item you want to sell on the site that doesn't come from a dropshipper.

Overall, I found the interface to be fairly easy for someone with basic levels of computer skills.  The software includes a merchant account service, so you don't need to open a new account in order to accept payments.  Your choice of categories of items for the drop shipping is limited to one if you have the basic package of Internet Speedway.  You can add additional categories for an extra monthly fee.  I find the catalog selection to be limited; in several cases items are sold out or unavailable.  The option of adding other items is appealing, but it doesn't outweigh the limited selection.  Besides, if I wanted to sell my own items, why would I sign up for a drop shipping program?

Be warned about the trial period for Internet Speedway.  Their offer indicates you get a 90 day trial period.  What they don't tell you is this trial begins from the moment you order Internet Speedway on the phone.  Right off the bat you've lost several days, up to a week in your trial period.  I stuck it out past the refund deadline.  Then I realized I needed to start promoting my website.

When I began trying to promote my Internet Speedway site I was a novice at web promotion.  I tried calling the Internet Speedway support line for assistance.  Right away, the person on the phone began trying to sell me on an upgraded version of my Internet Speedway purchase.  I appreciate the fact they are selling a product, but knowing what I've learned recently about search engine marketing, it could have been done a little differently.  My argument is that they should make the lowest level of investment be the "upgrade" version that gives you assistance with marketing their site.  Based on the limited selection of their drop shipping categories and restriction of their website templates, I was not inclined to throw the kind of money they wanted towards more of their software.

Another charge you should be aware of is the hosting service fee.  The Internet Speedway person did mention this on the initial call I had with them.  What this means is through your Internet Speedway purchase, you get 1 year of free hosting for your site.  After that they charge you a monthly fee.  While a hosting fee is a fact of life if you want to have a website on the internet, you can find cheaper deals than what they offer.  I soon cancelled my Internet Speedway account, a few months shy of the end of my free hosting.  I later found a hosting provider that charged me the same as Internet Speedway but offered me a lot more server space and complete freedom to put the site up that I wanted.

While the "all in one" tools that make setting up an ecommerce website can be attractive, I suggest you look for opportunities elsewhere than Internet Speedway.