I am a drop shipper and believe it or not everyone has truth in this topic.
There are scams. There are middle men. There are good guys. Basically, if you
have to pay a fee, then, don't do it. You should not have to pay a fee at
all. Just as many other's have said do your research. I cannot tell you how
many hours I spent researching and researching. At first, it was trial and
error. Try BigCommerce.com as your platform. Communicate with the sellers
prior to drop shipping and get an agreement. For instance, SAKS FIFTH has an
drop shipping program. I found out by researching and speaking with the
company itself. Continue to research by defining your search and eventually
you will hit the mother load! Many people sign up for the first company they
see, which as someone said above will not be very profitable. Find a company
that has different items. Also, be sure to check your shipping rates. Once I
had my site up and running I received over 1800 hits in less than 48 hours
and was loaded with orders. Also, look as professional as possible. See about
getting a toll free number and business emails that match your domain. Keep
at it and it will pay off!!

Do some research by Google or drop shipping forum, so many information there is.

Thanks for your replies. This thread is now read-only.

Hello Kim, Not sure if you were able to find the information you were looking for, but. I'm in the process of doing some research on various drop shipping companies online. They're pretty easy to get started with. But, most of them require you to pay some sort of fee to process your application up front, but afterwards you can start shipping merchandises to your customers. Choose from a variety for wholesalers in their database. ---This post was edited to remove a commercial link. Read our discussion policies for more Community best practices.

Thank you so much for your information.

Hi Kim. There are many franchises out there that offer 'drop shipping' as a home based business.  Some of them even include a web-site.  When evaluating a company like that, check carefully their product offerings and prices.  If every Joe on Ebay is going to sell the same product cheaper than you - then you won't be very successful.  If you are able to find a niche where you can get and provide great pricing in a drop-ship model, then building your E-Storefront is very important.  There are do-it-yourself options, which are very very inexpensive but not as attractive, functional or secure as getting a real shopping cart. If you have technical aptitude, hire a professional design company to build out your website and then take over managing the details in the cart.  Depending on the level of customization, this could be anywhere from $2K - $5K. Expect to pick up fees along the way - domain names, hosting and SSL certificates.  We do this type of work all the time.  Please feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions.   Good Luck!!  

Drop shipping is really associated with the so called 'make money at home' schemes. In theory, there are 1,000s if not 10,000s other people trying to sell the same product. You'll find very very very few people actually make a profit off of drop shipping.... SMC was an infamous program that got lots of people to invest money who never saw any products sell due to the same products being available all over the place. Try to find actual vendors that will let you sell their products on your website; you can easily have them setup the invoice to appear it's from you. You get paid via your customer, you pay the vendor directly and the product is sent directly to the customer.   A website can be as cheap as $5.00 a month, depending on your needs. Web design is what actually costs; and the cost of the ecommerce software if you don't use an open source platform. Do your inital research before you spend any type of money or invest in so called drop shipping.

Putting up a website with shopping cart can be inexpensive if you find a webhost with cpanel that offer a free shopping cart through Fantastico (many hosts will have this).   The drop shipping schemes online are many and very competitive in price. It would be more competitive of you to find a wholesaler in your geographical area that sells a product you want to resell online and then sell this.