Dropshipping on eBay should be approached with more caution than usual. Please do not misunderstand me this can be a very lucrative type of business but there are potential warning signs that it is better for you to know about now than later on.

If you are completely new to eBay approach the initial stages with a degree of caution, eBay is not the easy going site that it was when it first began and mistakes made early on in your new found enterprise can alter your future dealings with eBay for a long while to come.

For example when a person makes a purchase on eBay they are asked to leave feedback of how the transaction went? This feedback takes the form of five stars and many buyers think (quite rightly I would have thought) that leaving a four star rating is good. WRONG. If you wish to get ranked highly on eBay you need to get a top ranking.

So if either you or your future Dropshipper are slow in delivering the goods then it will be you that run the risk of getting a bad eBay rating not the Dropshipper.

There are basically just two different types of Dropshippers,

• There are the wholesalers, they buy in goods from manufacturers and then distribute directly to the end users on behalf of the sellers,

• And then there are the manufacturers who do not deal with Distributors but they distribute their own products directly to the end buyer, once again via a seller.

The main problem can be that sometimes (not often) wholesalers run out of certain items and if you have been promoting a popular product and when you make a sale they don't have any left, then you have a problem (not them) and even if they tell you that they will be getting some more in soon, trust me you are going to have an unhappy customer...which in turn means you are going to have an unhappy eBay!

Then there is the other type of dropshipper (the manufacturer) who actually makes the product and then dropships it for you directly to the purchaser. You are on much safer ground here because manufacturers are much less likely to run out of a product than a wholesaler.

There is however a solution to prevent this particular situation from occurring with either type of dropshipper and it is this: If you are promoting an item that is selling quite well (and you can easily find out how well by doing a search on eBay) and the item is not too expensive, let us just for sake of this exercise imagine that you are promoting a product that you can get from either of the Dropshippers for $20 and sell for $40. My advice would be to buy from either of them at least 5 or more at the discounted price and keep them at your home. Do not sell them. Then if a customer buys from you and you phone up (or email) to place the order, if you do get the dreaded "sorry, we are out of stock at the moment, we should be getting some more in soon" then you can send one from your stock and then everyone, you, the customer, and eBay can all walk away smiling.

Then take your ad off of eBay until you are sure that both the Dropshipper and you have more in stock. Trust me this works.

Forget all of the hype and the photographs of warehouses crammed with merchandise, this is your business and you need to keep everyone happy, and as you can see, it's not really that hard to do, in fact it's easy!!