Three Trends in Drop Ship Businesses

In recent years, drop ship businesses have been springing up everywhere. Budding entrepreneurs who have watched an infomercial order a kit to start their business, and suddenly there’s one more drop shipper around. The growth of the Internet in general, and of auction web sites like eBay in particular, has caused this phenomenon to reach record levels.

With all of the competing drop ship businesses out there, it can be challenging to stay on top. Just because you’re doing well today doesn’t mean you’ll do well tomorrow, and there’s always someone waiting to take your place. If you want to succeed, you need to stay on top of the latest trends in the industry.

Here are three significant trends happening in drop ship businesses:

1. Niche focus is switching from interest-area to demographic. The days when niche online stores catered to a specific product area are quickly fading. Instead, drop ship businesses are selecting products, which often seem unrelated on the surface, that appeal to their target audience, rather than an interest. Demographic niches, rather than interest niches, seem to be the wave of the future in drop ship businesses.  So, for example, instead of selling beauty products, a business might only sell beauty products aimed at teenagers, along with posters of musicians that appeal to teens or teen clothing.
2. Virtual bonuses and extras are adding value to businesses. Online stores are offering extra value to their customers in the form of virtual products, such as ebooks. By offering a relatively low-cost bonus to their portfolio, they’re able to distinguish themselves from both the large online retailers as well as the other drop ship businesses that are selling the same, or similar, products. An example of this is the camping equipment drop ship business who might offer a free 20-page report on camping in cold weather, or a printable PDF camping checklist that the customer can use. These virtual bonuses add value and increase sales.
3. Social Networking is producing sales results. Today, more than ever, social networking sites are proving to be amazing sources of business. Pay Per Click campaigns are rapidly being replaced by effective use of sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Time will tell how effective each of these trends is. For the time being, the initial evidence seems to suggest that drop ship businesses using these three techniques are seeing an increase in their bottom line.