subject: Host Your Own Site... Just Do It [print this page] If you're a bright eyed, bushy tailed, fresh faced, highly cliche marketer chomping at the bit to align yourself with a good drop shipper and start making sales, you need to hold up. While the energy you bring to the table is admirable and wonderful, it needs to be tempered. There are a few steps you are going to need to take. Let us assume, since you are a smart person, that you have thoroughly investigated the credentials and business practices of the drop shipping company with which you intend to work. If not, close this article for now and go do that.
Alright, are they reputable? Good. Let's proceed. Working with a bad company makes you into a bad business person, which can ruin both your reputation and your likelihood of ever being especially successful. Genuine success takes more work than running a quick hustle, but the rewards far outweigh the struggles. Now that you know you're working with a company which will back you up properly, you need to secure your own end of the bargain. You need a site, friend. And not just any old site, either. You need one that you have complete control over, and where you can shift it if anybody gets shifty.
We can discuss the finer points of web design at a later time. preferably after you've had a few cups of coffee. Unless you're a graphic design student, the art and science of building web sites can quickly become the art and science of getting very well acquainted with the insides of your eye lids. Suffice it to say, you are going to need to either be a good web designer yourself, or have someone else on your team who is. A great web site will represent you as a top quality professional, and the kind of person that people will want to deal with again and again. And part of having a great web site involves making sure you have excellent hosting.
You are going to need to do your own research, as it regards hosting services. Since this is the Internet, anything which is said today is going to be massively debated in thirty seconds, proven false tomorrow, and finally vindicated a year or two from now... when it no longer makes any difference, because the sites are all gone and the technology is obsolete like 8 track tape players.
The nature of human beings is to try and get everything in a "one stop shopping" kind of vein. A lot of people start into drop shipping with the intention of finding a drop shipper who will also build (and host) their sales site. This is the worst mistake you can make (other than picking a dishonest drop shipper, which you did not do). You need to have a site that you design, with products that you select, with ad copy that you (or someone on your team) will write and edit as time goes on. Done properly, you can build a great business with decent income. Done poorly, you will wish you'd just sold flowers out of the trunk of a car.
