Many people know that drop shipping can lead to an extra income, but it can also supplement your current income and become your full time job.

As with any business there will come problems and pitfalls. The trick is to deal with these problems when it comes to drop shipping the way you would in any other business. OF course you will run into pitfalls and set backs when starting a home based business using drop ship service from a drop ship company. As with any other business, you'll be faced with times that may make you want to give up, however, good hard work and steady research can make your drop ship business successful.

Researching drop ship businesses before you buy. Finding a good drop shipper can be a task in itself. Most you'll find will only want to be the middleman for you. And by doing this, they take the profit from you and keep it for themselves. However, finding these middlemen are not as hard as it seems. You have a great research tool at your fingertips right now. That's right, your computer. Finding the products that others are selling on auction sites such as ebay will give you a pretty good idea as to what you can make for a profit and what will cause you a loss when running your drop ship business.

Drop shipping can lead to other problems as well. Another problem of drop shipping is that you may sell the product only to find out that the drop ship supplier is sold out. This is a very bad situation, and could lead to lost future sells from a negative feedback. It's always best to research the drop ship company before you do any business with them. Do they list their current stock on their website? Do they offer some sort of hold program or mini warehousing for you so you can get some sort of guarantee that the drop ship product will be in stock when you need it? These are questions that you'll need to have answers for before doing any sort of business with a drop ship company.

Also look for drop ship companies that require a tax id. Although this is not a requirement for some true drop shippers, its helps to identify them as a true wholesaler. If you don't have a tax id, and want to open a drop ship business, I would advise you look into it, it may help you get the products at a lower price.

Some drop shippers offer online forums that allow their users to communicate sales tactics and other discussions of their products. This is very handy as you can read others experiences with that drop ship company. Be weary though, the forum may have all the bad posts removed and only the praises remain for that company. Hang around a while and you may learn a lot about that drop ship company. All in all, drop shipping can lead to your online success; it's all up to you!