en they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have thi

The number one problem with the dropshipping business model is the out-of-stock problem. You come across this all over the place. Dropshipping is a very attractive business model because it does not require you to hold any inventory. For those who do not know about this, it is a special arrangement where the distributor is set-up to send the product directly to your end customer. The customer usually doesn't know where the product came from, or care. This arrangement has become very popular for Internet-only stores because they typically don't have the storage or capital required to stock actual inventory.

However, this brings about a new type of problem. With a regular store, the owner and the customer can generally tell what's out of stock by looking at the shelf. In the online world the shelf is virtual and the customer is simply looking at pictures and reading descriptions. This leads to the common out-of-stock problem for dropshippers. This is amazingly frustrating to customers, particularly when they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have this

know about this, it is a special arrangement where the distributor is set-up to send the product directly to your end customer. The customer usually doesn't know where the product came from, or care. This arrangement has become very popular for Internet-only stores because they typically don't have the storage or capital required to stock actual inventory.

However, this brings about a new type of problem. With a regular store, the owner and the customer can generally tell what's out of stock by looking at the shelf. In the online world the shelf is virtual and the customer is simply looking at pictures and reading descriptions. This leads to the common out-of-stock problem for dropshippers. This is amazingly frustrating to customers, particularly when they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have thi

nly stores because they typically don't have the storage or capital required to stock actual inventory.

However, this brings about a new type of problem. With a regular store, the owner and the customer can generally tell what's out of stock by looking at the shelf. In the online world the shelf is virtual and the customer is simply looking at pictures and reading descriptions. This leads to the common out-of-stock problem for dropshippers. This is amazingly frustrating to customers, particularly when they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have thi

ing at the shelf. In the online world the shelf is virtual and the customer is simply looking at pictures and reading descriptions. This leads to the common out-of-stock problem for dropshippers. This is amazingly frustrating to customers, particularly when they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have thi

en they find out after they have already paid for an item.

The solution: Only use dropshipping distributors who have automated inventory systems that update regularly. Do your homework before signing up with a distributor and make sure they have this feature. Additionally, as an online store owner, you will have to invest in some type of automated inventory update on your end. You need a way to take this information from the distributor and update it on your web store very frequently.

We've accomplished this at our store by building a job that runs every 4 hours. The job pulls the most recent inventory data from our distributors and updates the quantities on-hand for all 15,000 products in our store. Using this strategy, we have not had ANY out-of-stock problems. We think that in the long-run this will be a competitive advantage for us, until it eventually becomes expected of all stores. In the mean time, we plan to offer a run-you-own estore front for others to benefit from the automation we've built into the store.