Wholesaler = A business that will sell products to you substantially below the retail price, and without charging you sales tax.

Dropshipper = A business (normally a wholesaler) who will ship products directly to your buyer, allowing you to eliminate the cost of reshipping the product from your location to your buyer. Most will label the products under your name and your buyer will never know you used a dropshipper.

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Scan the Businesses for Sale section on eBay and you cannot help but see dozens, if not hundreds of ads selling access to Wholesalers who will sell to you for pennies so you can re-sell on eBay for dollars and get rich.  Others offer to "sell" their eBay business, which is allegedly earning $5,000 a week, for only $4.99 (plus shipping).

Sound familiar?

The sad fact is that most of these ads are for the same, or very similar product.  A worn out CD listing of 10,000 supposed Wholesalers, most of whom have gone out of business, or at the very least allowed their websites to expire.  The sellers of this trash are hoping you will find enough "live" links on the disc that you won't feel completely ripped off and demand a full refund.

There are plenty of legitimate Wholesalers out there, waiting to do business with you, if you can find them.  What you should be looking for is a business that insists on you providing them with your State-issued Sales Tax Certificate.  This is the mark of a true Wholesaler.  They will sell to you, and without charging you State or Local sales tax, as long as you have a valid Certificate.  These are issued by your state, and generally are free to obtain (or at the most, cost $5-25).  Listing the Sales Tax collection office for each state is beyond the scope of this article.  If you cannot figure out which office in your state issues these certificates, do what I did.  I asked to see the certificate hanging on the wall in a convenience store around the corner from my house.  I copied the agency name and contact information directly from their certificate.

FINDING WHOLESALERS AND DROPSHIPPERS

After you have decided which product you want to sell on eBay, you need to find the original source for that product to insure you are buying at the lowest possible price.  The easiest way to do that is to obtain one of those products (or at least find one in a store somewhere) and copy the name and address of the manufacturer.  Then run a Google search to find the direct contact information, such as the phone number and mailing address for the Product Sales department.  If that information does not seem to be on the website, look for a general information phone number (or ANY phone number) or email address, and simply call and ask to be connected to their outside sales department. Just be aware that many manufacturers will require you to buy in huge amounts; if this is the case, see if they will refer you to one of their licensed wholesalers who generally will sell to resellers in smaller quantities.

Another way to find sellers is to use Google (or any other search engine) and type in the name of the product you are looking for, along with the word "wholesale" and/or "dropship" and see what results are obtained. As I warned you earlier, a true wholesaler will demand to see a copy of your Sales Tax Certificate before they will sell to you.  If the vendor you find online does not ask for this Certificate, then you can bet they are not a true wholesaler, and they will be selling to you at a much higher price than what you might otherwise pay.

The easiest way to find true wholesalers is to use the database at twomillionproducts.com.  Like the name says, they have accumulated the Manufacturer and/or Wholesaler contact information for over two million products, and the database is constantly being updated.  Twice in the past year I've found a link which was dead (out of the hundreds I've researched).  I notified Customer Service, and the link was gone within 24 hours.  These folks are really on the ball when it comes to keeping their information fresh and relevant.

I hope that you have found this guide helpful...at the very least, I hope it will cause you to think twice before you spend any of your hard earned money on the mostly worthless "Wholesaler/Dropshipper" information being peddled on eBay.  Good luck to you.