I've been in the wholesale buying and selling business for years. Even started a wholesale distributor sources service about 6 years ago. In this time, I've gotten every question, complaint and compliment you can think of. The thing that stands out the most to me is peoples genuine lack of knowledge when wanting to get into this business. The interest in wholesale products is greater now than ever thanks to the hot topic of doing business online with drop shipping and selling on ebay. These two things go hand in hand with the wholesale business and a huge percentage of people trying to start an online business are looking for wholesale product distributors so they can buy products cheap and resell them for a profit. Makes perfect sense right?

Well, here's the rub. There's an endless supply of companies trying to sell "Sources" and "lists" of companies that drop ship wholesale products. While it's true many are not as they seem, there are some very legitimate sources. The major problem I discovered is that people will purchase list after list of sources and spend countless dollars looking for the perfect wholesale product that they can buy or drop ship and then complain when the lists pile up, their wallets become empty and they are no closer to starting a profitable business than they ever were.

So...what in the world do gourmet chocolate chip cookies have to do with the wholesale drop ship business?

Think of the wholesale, dropship, ebay business from this perspective....you get on my email information list for secret, gourmet recipes. A couple of days later, I email you with great excitement about this new gourmet recipe my sister "secretly" tells me about that will practically guarantee the best darn batch of chocolate chip cookies one person would ever have the pleasure of tasting!

She asks me if I'd like to have the ingredients. Of course I beg of her to hurry up and tell me. We'll, she does one better....she hand delivers all the exact ingredients to make these wonderful cookies, tells me how much I'll love them and leaves. Anxiously, I crank up the old oven, grease up the butter bowl and cookie pans and begin to dive in. Ten minutes into this cooking splendor and it hits me like a wet spatula.

She didn't bother to give me the recipe, so I have no idea what mixes with what, how much goes into which mix, how much of a pinch of what goes where. Now what a situation I have here for myself. I have ALL the ingredients to make these magical cookies but absolutely no idea how to actually make them. At this point, I could take these golden cookie ingredients and turn out a batch of total crap that I wouldn't feed the neighbors dog, not because I didn't have the right stuff, but because I didn't know how to put it all together. I didn't have the recipe.

The same thing happens in the wholesale drop ship sources business! In most cases, some of the lists you can buy are not really much to write home about...BUT, you could have the best list of the best types of products sitting right in front of you and if you don't have some sort of directions, instructions...or recipe, if you will....you're flying blind my friend! There is a method to making anything work. It's up to you to try and find the method(s), put them together and then use them to put the products to test and to YOUR advantage.

Here's something shocking that I've witnessed first hand with some of my customers. I've had two different people email me about the same wholesale distributor company yet with totally different perspectives. One person thanked me profoundly for introducing them to this source and went on to tell me how good they had done selling some of the products on ebay. The other, at a different time, emailed me, about the same company, griping and moaning about how horrible they were and how the products they purchased never sold. After some reply emails from me and a bit of investigating, I realized that one customer had a good bit of experience on ebay already and the one that complained had never sold on ebay before but hastily bought some merchandise without doing any sort of homework first.

The point here is that the blame does not always need to be put on the source companies or the wholesale distributors themselves. Many times the blame starts with the individual who is complaining because they are, in a sense, buying the ingredients but leaving the actual recipe on the shelf. If you've never baked cookies from scratch, it would be silly to try and do it without a recipe...even if someone gave you all the exact ingredients. This business is the same so why do so many people skip the recipe and jump right into trying to handle the ingredients?