Drop Shipping

Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to wholesalers, who then ship the goods directly to the customer. The retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.
Some drop shipping retailers may keep "show" items on display in stores, so that customers can inspect an item similar to those that they can purchase. Other retailers may provide only a catalogue or website.
Retailers that drop ship merchandise from wholesalers may take measures to hide this fact to avoid any stigma, or to keep the wholesale source from becoming widely known. This can be effected by "blind shipping" (shipping merchandise without a return address), or "private label shipping" (having merchandise shipped from the wholesaler with a return address customized to the retailer). A customized packing slip may also be included by the wholesaler, indicating the retailer's company name, logo, and/or contact information.

Many auction sellers are surprised to find out they can sell merchandise they
don’t own, may never see and best of all, definitely don’t have to ship. There
are many companies who will drop ship items for you.

Drop ship is a sales strategy used by many businesses, especially small companies.
These are often the companies who can’t afford ads.
They don’t have a large sales staff and they can’t afford large spreads in national magazines. Therefore, they will sell merchandise at reduced prices to small buyers like us. We act as their unofficial sales people.

It’s a win-win situation. The company sells more merchandise than they could
ordinarily sell. Your Net auction business wins because
1) You don’t have any financial investment in the goods you are selling. If
the merchandise sells on the auction you receive payment from your buyer and
send part of the money to the company. Most of them will mail to your
customer with your mailing label on the box. If the merchandise doesn’t sell,
you have not risked your money and have no capital tied up in merchandise.
2) You do not need to bother with the shipping and handling of these
items. You are free to pursue your real love -- finding exciting and salable
goods.
3) Many of these companies have professionally created catalogs and/or
pictures that you can use on your auction site. The quality may exceed that
which you can achieve with your own camera or scanner.
4) There are no goods to store. This can be a huge advantage.
5) This works best with higher-priced items. If you are going to sell 50
widgets at Rs.100 each, you are either going to have to take possession of them
and mail them yourself, or you are going to have to pay a gruesomely
expensive shipping charge to your supplier.

Some of the drop sites can be found at :-
http://www.dropshipsites.com/

Caution: There is a caveat to all this. Not all drop shippers are real and some of it might be pure scams. Normally it is found that online drop shippers belong to this category, but not all of them. To find a real drop shippers, don't use search engines. Instead, find a broker who has list of real drop shippers.

Here are the important points.
i) I didn’t ship anything! My distributor handled all that for me and I didn’t have
to bother with it at all.
ii) The company guaranteed it for 30 days so I didn’t have to concern myself
with that part, either.
iii) I risked no money at all, except for the fee that I paid eBay for my listing.
The great part was that most of my customers paid me through PayPal.
iv) It was so convenient and quick. I ordered my customer’s product right
online. There was an account sheet that was created especially for me,
complete with ID and password so that no one else could access it. I then sent
an e-mail copy of the order to my customer so that they felt comfortable that
they would soon receive their merchandise.
v) There was no extra work to repeat the auction indefinitely. I spent
approximately half an hour creating an ad, and I just re-submitted the same ad,
again and again.

So there you are with the various ways of sourcing and selling goods online.