Marketing Tangible Products

Finding sources for marketing tangible products

Marketing tangible Products  is selling tangible items that you can hold, feel, or eat.  Items like electronics, clothing or health products.  Things that would be shipped by snail mail or Mr. Brown.  This certainly is an option.  You would need to do research to find products people are looking for, and which have enough demand to be profitable.

Tangible products can be sold as an affiliate, however, the focus in this section is about you, through your web property being the seller. This offers a larger share of the total retail price set (with the possible exception of electronically delivered items, as in information-software and the like) compared to pre-selling tangible items as an affiliate. That is the positive.

The less appealing part of this type of marketing is that there is more responsibility. They are your customers, and require customer care which you will need to provide. You will also have to set up a payment system, and submit the orders to your supplier. And don't forget about shipping. Although your supplier will ship the items unless you decide to go full bore and create an inventory and stock them yourself, you will have to allow for shipping cost.

Another hurdle with marketing tangible products through your home based business is finding a good drop-shipper.  In order to provide profitable,  in demand, quality products without a lot of out-of-pocket expense it is necessary to find a reputable drop-shipper. This takes some research.

The advantage to drop-shipping is that you sell the product and then pay the drop-shipper. For home based businesses marketing tangible products this avoids buying things and laying out money for products that may not sell, or products which lose their popularity. 

A drop-shipper will ship products to your customer under your label as if you had shipped the item yourself.  If they are reputable they provide quality products, ship the products and the customer remains your customer.  You would also need to be able to buy at a price point that would allow you to sell at a marketable price and still retain enough profit for yourself.

Here is the one drop-shipping source that I feel confident about.  They also offer two free books for download (Chris Malta's free books can be found in the right panel of the page, once you go to the above link) that could prove to be beneficial to anyone marketing tangible products either from their own website, or through online auctions.

Marketing tangible products can be a very profitable home based business. Be aware that there are a lot of people out there selling lists and information on drop-shippers that are useless.  Many of these lists are outdated and full of dead links.  Some of them never had really good information even when they were first available.  I hate to bring such a negative note here, but I just want you to be aware of the pitfalls.

Drop-shippers can be found by doing extensive research yourself, and contacting potential suppliers. Sometimes, manufacturers or suppliers that have not formerly drop-shipped can be persuaded to do so, and many successful marketers have gone this route.

If you live in a metropolitan area you may find local manufacturers that you can contact in person. The library can also be a source of information. The Thomas Register is a great resource. Check with the information desk at your library and ask about other  publications that would have similar information.

Before getting too committed to a drop-shipper it is a good idea to order merchandise yourself to check out the quality of the products. This will also give you an opportunity to find out about their customer service and if they ship in a timely manner. The drop- shipper's performance will reflect directly upon your business, so you want to make the right decision.

Products you order when testing a drop-shipper that you neither have a need for or a desire to keep yourself, could be sold on online auctions to recover your costs.

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