Wholesale

Making Your eBiz Legal: Why and How

If you plan on buying from Wholesale Distributors for your own stock or you intend to dropship. This is a very Informative article and if you plan on going beyond ebay with your garage sale stuff this needs to be in your plans. If you are running a retail website or would like to and you want to buy wholesale ”get legit” There is a video at the bottom that is related. the article is from Worldwide Brands, by Chris Malta & Robin Cowie

It’s not uncommon for new Internet retailers to be intimidated by the thought of acquiring reseller certificates, EINs, and DBAs. But if you sell physical goods on the ‘net, you can’t afford to let a little paperwork stop you from experiencing the benefits of being a legally recognized business. Because, if you want to buy your inventory from real wholesale suppliers, you must be an official, legal business. The Taxman Cometh According to eBiz attorney Cliff Ennico, of CliffEnnico.com, wholesalers require proof that you’re a legal business for a very good reason. They keep this proof on file, to protect themselves, should they ever be audited. In the U.S., wholesale transactions aren’t taxed. “Wholesalers don’t charge taxes to their retailer customers, because those retailers are going to charge taxes to their customers,” explains Ennico. “As long as someone is paying taxes on those goods at some point during their journey to market, the IRS is happy.” However, if the IRS were to catch a wholesaler selling tax-free goods to an end consumer, that wholesaler would wind up in a world of legal and financial trouble. So every business they sell to must demonstrate that they’re a legally authorized reseller, buying their goods for resale and not for personal enjoyment. I’ll Need to See Some ID, Please… As an online seller, you’re responsible to collect and pay sales tax on all sales to customers in your own state. Therefore, you’re required by law to register for a state sales tax ID (a.k.a. reseller certificate) when you set up your business. Registering is as easy as going to your state tax authority website, clicking on ‘Forms and Publications’, and filling out the registration form. (One helpful resource is TaxLinks.com, a website that provides links to the state tax authority websites for all fifty states.) Typically, you’ll use a copy of this document to verify your business’ legitimacy. Not every state imposes sales tax on retail items, however, and that complicates the issue. If you live in a tax-exempt state, you’re unable to acquire a reseller certificate. In that case, a wholesaler will need another form of identification proving your business’ validity. Some of the most common alternate forms of proof are as follows:

What is Bonanzle?

“Quite simply, [Bonanzle is] the best I’ve seen in my four years of reviewing and writing about start-up marketplaces” –Vangie Beal, on behalf of Ecommerce Guide.

Bonanzle

At Bonanzle, we think that online shopping is stuck where online search was 10 years ago, in the age before Google. Many users today think that eBay and Craigslist are “good enough,” and the “rules” for online shopping are set: items get posted through a series of selling pages, buyers browse static listings, buyers buy items and hope that sellers are trustable.

We think there’s still a lot of room for improvement over the precedent that eBay and Craigslist set 10 years ago (and that the eBay/Craigslist lookalikes have copied ever since).

Here’s how we think online shopping ought to be:

• Relentlessly simple. Remember five years ago when it was easy to post and browse items on eBay? We have spent more than a year designing the easiest selling process, and re-invented the concept of a “store” to revive that refreshing feeling of ease eBay once gave you.
• Instant. Every seller on Bonanzle has the option of tying their Instant Messenger to their group of items, so buyers can get questions answered (or deals made) instantly. For local items, sellers can pre-schedule pickup times to take the guesswork out of which of those Xboxes you could pick up today.
• Engaging. On Bonanzle, the journey to buy or sell your items is part of the destination. With built in user-to-user messaging and pervasive chat, you’ll find that shopping isn’t nearly as lonesome as you remember it being on Craigslist.
• Safe. It sucks to have no idea who you’re dealing with. At Bonanzle, we’re committed to building a community of friendly, everyday people. Bonanzle is not (and will never be) a place for adult content or unseemly message forums.
• Free and Almost Free. There is no reason that you should have to pay a percentage of your item sales to The Man. At Bonanzle, listing is free and fees are dirt cheap. They’re also guaranteed not to raise an iota through 2010.

What Does “Find Everything but the Ordinary” Mean?

While everybody is welcome to sell on Bonanzle, our most successful sellers are those that have items that aren’t new, shiny, and mass-produced. Why? Because we believe Amazon already does a darned good job at helping people find new DVDs, CDs, electronics, computers, and books. We specialize in helping you buy and sell everything else.

I’m Still Not Sold. Is Bonanzle for Me?

“[Bonanzle] is without doubt the cleanest and easiest to use selling platform I’ve ever listed anything on.”
– Auction Wally, Marketplace Writer & Antiques Expert, in article eBay Alternative Bonanzle is Super Simple

“The runaway winner as our Best eBay Alternative is Bonanzle. This startup combines an easy listing process with cutting-edge features such as on-the-fly image cropping and live chat and an avid seller community.”
– SmallBusinessComuting.com, Marketplace Journal, in article 2009 Awards: Reader’s Pick the Best Small Business Tech Tools

“Bonanzle is putting the fun back into online selling.”
– Randy Smythe, Marketplace Analyst, in article You Can Find eBay’s Soul At Bonanzle.com!

“If there was just one eBay competitor to watch, I might just put my money on this one.”
– Scott Pooler, Marketplace Journalist, in article Bonanzle – Bodacious eBay Competitor Gives Birth to Fresh Merchandising Format

“There’s a reason Bonanzle is experiencing tremendous growth. Well, ten and a half reasons, actually. But it all boils down to a simple business model that promotes communication and builds trust among members, a simple interface that’s easy on the eyes and even easier to use, tools that make simple things even easier, and reasonable rates.”
– Salehoo, marketplace review blog, in article Bonanzle: An exciting eBay alternative

… And that’s not to mention the many thousand positive messages about Bonanzle on the Powersellers Unite forum, making it the most talked about eBay alternative in the four year history of this popular site!

Intrigued?

Sign up for an account now, or jump straight to selling your items. It won’t hurt a bit, that’s the whole point!

Your Drop Shipping problems can be reduced or eliminated.

After deciding what products you will sell, you are immediately faced with many challenges.

First: “To stock my products, will I need to rent store or warehouse space? I was hoping to sell by Internet, mail order, or export, but I don’t have much storage space for inventory at home.”

Second: “Will the supplier even deal with me if I don’t have a retail location? I was counting on keeping my overhead down by operating from home.”

Third: “I know that many manufacturers and distributors have a minimum order, sometimes in the thousands of dollars. I don’t have that kind of money!”

Fourth: “Even if I did have the money, why should I tie it up in inventory? How do I know if the product will even sell?”

Fifth: “I guess I will have to add extra insurance coverage for my inventory. Maybe I better upgrade my security system while I’m at it.”

Sixth: “The shipping charges are going to kill me. First, I have to pay to get the goods here (freight-in). Then, I have to pay to ship the goods out to my customers (freight-out).”

Seventh: “If I expand and hire employees, how will I control the inventory? How will I know if my employees are stealing from me?”

Eighth: “How much time and money am I going to spend packaging and fulfilling orders?”

These problems can be reduced or eliminated by drop shipping.

Don’t Get Taken by a Fake Wholesale Supplier!

We grabbed this article Written by: Chris Malta
to keep you aware and to inform you of potential “fake” suppliers out there. I know a few people that got mixed up in these systems for large amounts  of money.

Written by: Chris Malta
If you want to start your Home-based Internet Business for very little money, you need Wholesale Suppliers who Drop Ship.
 
 Why? Because working with drop shippers eliminates the need for you to carry expensive inventories. You don’t have to rent a warehouse, hire employees, establish accounts with UPS and FedEx, etc. You can sell the best brand names on earth from your home computer, and make good money at it.

Wholesale Suppliers who drop ship send the products you sell directly from their warehouse to your customer, with your business name on it. All you do it take the order from your customer and pass it to the distributor. You keep the difference between the wholesale price the distributor charges you, and the retail price you sell to your customer for.

Of course, there are a lot of places out there that want you to THINK they are wholesale drop shippers. They’ll set up accounts with, say, 10 real drop ship suppliers. Then they’ll call themselves something like “GetYerStuffHere.com”, and claim that THEY are the wholesale drop ship supplier. Then it’ll go like this:

1. GetYerStuffHere.com will place advertising all over the Internet proclaiming to be the greatest source that ever existed for all kinds of great products, and they’ll drop ship all those products to your customer.

2. You’ll get all excited because YOU can actually place everything from Sony electronics to Coleman Camping gear on your web site and sell it.

3. GetYerStuffHere.com will charge you an account setup fee, to cover their “processing”. (Note: REAL Wholesale Suppliers almost NEVER charge you an account setup fee).

4. GetYerStuffHere.com will send you a nice, shiny list of products and show you where to get the product images and descriptions to place on your web site.

5. You’ll get all excited, and put all this great stuff on your site, set your prices so that you can make a profit over what GetYerStuffHere.com.

6. You’ll launch your site, and you hardly sell a thing.

Huh? What happened? Nobody’s buying! You can’t survive on just a few orders a month!

Disappointed and discouraged, you start to go out and check other web sites that carry the same products. Maybe they have better images. Maybe they have cooler descriptions. Maybe their pages look nicer. You find that it’s none of those things. So what DO you find?

The other sites’ PRICES are lower. A LOT lower.

You just got nailed by one of the most popular scams on the Internet.

GetYerStuffHere.com took you for a couple of hundred dollars in exchange for a CD full of product images. They may have even locked you into a contract where you have to pay them every month to be a “member” of their “distributorship”.

Oh, GetYerStuffHere.com DOES ship the products they claim to. Of course they do. It’s just that when they get an order from you, they turn around and place your order with the REAL Wholesale Supplier, and take a profit. By the time YOUR price is calculated, you’re paying not only wholesale, you’re paying GetYerStuffHere.com’s extra markup of anywhere from 10% to 30%.

In order for YOU to make a profit, you naturally have to mark up the prices you get from GetYerStuffHere.com. By the time you do that, you can’t compete on the ‘Net. Your prices are just too high.

At this point, you can do one of two things:

1. You can lower your prices to the point where you’re making mere pennies on your products in order to compete.

2. You can bypass these jokers and go to the REAL sources.

I’ve been in Systems Engineering for 19 years. I’ve been involved in ECommerce since it began. In that time, I’ve seen this scenario played out over and over with companies I’ve done work for.

The real sources can be hard to find. They don’t market themselves as Internet Wholesale Supplier. They are established wholesale companies who have been supplying big chains like Sears and Kmart for a very long time.

Many of them are now realizing that a good part of their future lies in Internet sales, and they are establishing drop ship and light bulk wholesale programs. There are even a few big name manufacturers who are beginning to supply Home-based Internet Businesses right from their factories. That’s where YOU need to be. In direct contact with the actual Wholesale Supplier or factory source.

When you’re looking for a drop shipper, here are a couple of things to be careful of:

1. Any company that tells you that they’ll set up your entire web site AND PROVIDE THE PRODUCTS FOR YOU will NOT make you rich. They’ll make THEMSELVES rich on your setup and hosting fees, and you’ll piddle along with thousands of other small sites all selling exactly the same things at the same prices.

(NOTE: Don’t confuse this with companies who just offer to set up your ECommerce web site. There are a lot of great places out there that will build and host sites for you. It’s when they tell you that you HAVE to sell the products that THEY provide that you should run for cover.)

2. Any distributor who wants you to pay a “membership” or “setup” fee is probably not a true Wholesale Supplier.

3. If it sounds too good to be true, it’s too good to be true.
Written by: Chris Malta