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It's a Sad
Thing to Watch...
...and we know that for a fact, because we've been
watching it for many years. People like you, who work so
hard to start an ECommerce Business and build a better
future for yourself or your family, getting scammed online
over and over and over again.
There is an entire industry out here on the
Internet that is dedicated to doing nothing more than
getting as much money out of you as they possibly can.
When they find out that you're looking for ECommerce
products, like Web Site Builders, Auction Educators, eBay
Consultants, Wholesale Product Sourcing companies and
more, they start going after your bank account with a
vengeance.
Their web sites look very convincing. They make incredible
promises. They've gotten very good at looking and sounding
legitimate. You'd be surprised at some of the names of
these companies; we'll bet you know of and probably trust
many of them already.
The TRUTH is that these people are sickening. They have no
morals. They deserve no respect, and they have not the
slightest conscience or common decency. And guess what?
They are ALL OVER the Internet. Literally eight
out of every ten Search Engine Results in these
categories and more will lead you to someone who is
hell-bent on selling you as much garbage as your bank
account can stand to pay for.
So, let's show you how they operate, so
they don't Scam YOU!
Sales Lead
Generators posing as Wholesale Directories
There are several so-called "Wholesale Directories" and
"Wholesale Product Sources" that advertise heavily at the
top of the Search Engine results for Drop Ship, Wholesale,
etc. Their prices are low, they look very legitimate, they
make wonderful promises, and there's something they DON'T
WANT YOU TO KNOW.
Their "Directories" are either pure junk, or in some cases
information pirated from other places, but never updated.
They don't care, because selling and properly
maintaining a real Directory or Wholesale Source is
not what they're interested in.
THEY WANT YOUR PRIVATE INFORMATION. These low-cost
"Directories" are simply a way for them to get ahold of
your Name, Email Address, Phone Number, Home Address and
your Credit Card Number.
THEN THEY SELL YOUR INFORMATION to hundreds of other
INTERNET MARKETERS. Pretty soon, you start getting emails
and phone calls from people trying to sell you thousands
of dollars worth of business systems, training CDs,
expensive coaching programs and more.
IF YOU BUY any of these other programs, the seller of the
original junk Directory gets a COMMISSION on that sale.
That's why these people are called "Lead Generators". Your
Personal Information is the "Lead" they really want.
The product they sell means nothing to them; they don't
care whether it's any good, or whether you succeed with
it, no matter how much they appear to care. All they care
about is getting your personal information, so they can
sell it and make their REAL money by
doing that.
"Wholesale
Review" Sites with Hidden Agendas
This is something new that began happening in 2006. One
company put up a web site that claimed to "independently
review" different Wholesale Product Sources. Of course,
that company was a Wholesale Product Sourcing company
themselves, and gave their own company the best
review. Looking at the Review web site, though, you'd never
know that it was actually owned by the company that gave
themselves the top review. It was built to look
like an independently owned review web site.
That opened the floodgates! Internet Marketing
Affiliates, which are people who make money by advertising
other companies' products, caught on to that idea.
So-called "Independent Review" sites began popping up like
canker sores all over the Search Engines. The majority of
these sites are
not independent, and do not give accurate
Reviews.
The Products that get the "Top Reviews" on these
sites are sometimes the products that pay the
"Review Site" owner the highest commission! It doesn't
matter that the products getting the "Top Review" are junk
products, and most of the time the "Reviewer" hasn't even
seen the product.
There are a very FEW trusted, reliable reviews
sites where the owners actually purchase the products
and conduct independent reviews of the products. They
even use the product in their own businesses. Watch out
for the "Review Site" owners
that
are only in it for the money, and their Reviews are not
accurate and truly based on independent reviews. Don't fall for it!
Broker
Networks
In order to earn the most possible profits on the
products you sell online, you must work directly with genuine
wholesalers. Anyone who gets in between you and a real, factory-authorized
Wholesaler is simply turning your order around to someone else, and taking a
profit from it. That profit should be yours, not theirs!
Broker Networks that you'll see
advertising as Drop Shippers and Bulk Wholesalers are not illegal, and are not
scams, but in our educated opinion they are not what they want you to think
they are.
Broker Networks can best be described as
something similar to the Multi-level Marketing business model. In order to use
this "Network", and take advantage of the "millions of products" they claim you
can have drop shipped, you must first BUY thousands of dollars worth of products
yourself (many times from large retail stores). Then you BECOME a "Broker"
yourself, trying to sell those products to other "Brokers" within the "Network".
You and those other "Brokers" in the "Network" (people just like you)
actually become the "wholesale suppliers" these sites want you to think you're
signing up with.
Many times operations like these will not even
complete your "application" unless you can prove that you have several thousand
dollars to use in order to start buying products, so you can become a "Broker".
Be VERY careful with your credit card information, and ask a LOT of
questions!
Not what you expected from the advertising on their
front page, is it! If you're okay with that kind of business model, fine. Again,
it's not illegal, or a scam. Just remember that this is NOT direct wholesale
supply in any traditional fashion whatsoever.
There are some Broker Networks that claim to
be wholesale suppliers of tens of millions of products. To the best of
our knowledge, there is no single wholesale supplier anywhere on the
planet that is anywhere near that large.
There are some Broker Networks that claim to
be wholesalers of a huge variety of Brand Name products.
They are simply passing your orders on to the real sellers (other
"Brokers" just like you, and even retailers, in
some cases!) of those
Brand Names, and taking part of your profits.
If you want the best possible profit margins, the
transactions you make when you buy products to sell online should be between
you and a Factory Authorized Wholesale Supplier ONLY.
TV
Infomercials
The late
night "Home Internet Business in a Box" TV Infomercial.
The ones that
show you "Amazing Systems" that will make you
"Thousands of Dollars a Week", with little effort on
your part. They offer you "Easy, Step-by-Step
Instructions". They want to sell you "Interactive CD
ROMS that Teach You ECommerce in No Time". They offer to
reveal "Amazing Secrets of the Pros" that will make
you rich. They promise "Instant Web Sites"" and "Access to Thousands of Products That You Can Sell right Now!" They show you beautiful people lounging around pools,
swimming in crystal-clear Caribbean waters, and sitting under
palm trees while their "Businesses" magically make
them all the money it takes to afford those things.
C'mon,
folks! You and I both know better!
It's
extremely tempting to buy into the fantasy
that there are "Secret
Formulas", "Hidden Methods of
the Pros", and "Businesses in a
Box" that will make us rich with very
little effort.
Common Sense tells us it's
NOT TRUE. That it never has been true. In
our minds, we all know this. However, in
our hearts, we long for it to be so. That's
what the disreputables among these people prey on...our hearts
and our dreams.
We
at Worldwide Brands know these
people. We've been in this business a long
time. We're very good at it, and very
we're highly regarded on the Internet.
Different infomercial people have approached
us over the years, wanting us
to endorse them and let them include our
information and our Product Sourcing
Directories in their
half-hour trips to Fantasyland. We've had
multiple conference calls with the owners
of many of these companies. We've had conference
calls with the people who handle their
advertising, and produce their
infomercials. We have turned them down,
every time.
We
will not allow our name and our
reputation to be ruined by being
associated with people who claim
that getting 'rich' on the Internet is
easy. Don't let
your chance at a real business be ruined
by them.
We know the 'get rich quick' Infomercials. We actually do
stay up late at night and watch them. In
our experienced opinion, they are selling a
white-washed fantasy that has little to do
with the real business world.
They
start out by telling you that their
"Amazing System" costs only a
small amount of money. Then, when they
have you hooked, they tell you that you
need to spend hundreds more on an
"Upgrade". Then they tell you
that you need to spend hundreds more on
"Advertising and Email
Campaigns". Eventually, they'll end
up telling you bit by bit that you need to
invest thousands of dollars with
them if you
want to be successful. We have heard from
a tremendous number of people
who have
lost a lot of money to these
operations. Don't let them
fool you!
Drop Shippers of "more than 3500
products"
There are literally THOUSANDS of
companies out there who are acting as MIDDLEMEN for ONE real
drop shipping company. All of those thousands of so-called drop
shippers lead back to the same supplier.
I'm
talking about a big supplier of imported off-brand merchandise that does
drop ship directly from their warehouse. They sell some nice
products; I actually worked with them a few years ago. You won't
find any well-known brand names there. Their line consists of
about 3,500 widely varying products, mostly decorative
figurines, home accents and giftware. Again, you won't recognize
any of the brand names...it's all imported merchandise, probably
mostly from China and the Pacific Rim. We'll call this company
"XYZ Wholesalers", for the purpose of this discussion.
That's not their real name, of course.
You
can sign up with "XYZ Wholesalers" directly and sell
their merchandise on your web site, for a hefty account
maintenance fee. I did that a few years ago, as I said. However, I no longer
work with them. I found the products difficult to sell, for one
very good reason. As I said above, they have signed up THOUSANDS
of people, who are all trying to sell this exact same
merchandise on the Internet. That kind of competition, plus the
fact that there are so many more people (millions of people!)
already trying to sell giftware in general on the 'Net, made it
impossible for me to make any real money.
Now,
here's the problem: along comes Joe Reseller. He signs up with
"XYZ Wholesalers" as a retailer, and has the right to
sell their products on the Internet. Then he advertises himself
as the WHOLESALER. He tells you that he IS a company like
"XYZ Wholesalers", and tells you to sign up with his
web site. He'll drop ship all those products to your customers
and make you rich. What he's really doing is sitting in his
bedroom in front of his computer, re-sending your orders to the
REAL "XYZ Wholesalers", and making a profit from you
that you should not have to pay.
$3 Lists of Drop
Shippers and Wholesalers
Ever
see an ad like that on an auction site? So have we. We buy them. OK, we
KNOW we're getting ripped off, but we just have to
see them. A few days after paying for them, we get two Xeroxed
pages in the mail containing the most worthless information
we've ever seen. Or, we get an Email that's supposed to be a
Product Sourcing list. (An EMAIL!) Or we get a $15 CD chock full of
the same garbage the guy who charged us $3 was peddling. If I thought I could make money on the Internet
selling wooden birdhouses made in somebody's garage, I'd go into
business with my neighbor.
These lists sell for anywhere from
$2.50 to about $59. Why do you think they're so cheap? Because
nobody had to put any EFFORT into them! It's easy to hit a
search engine, type the word "wholesale", throw the first 20
responses on a piece of paper, and sell it for a few bucks.
Will
it help you earn money? NO!
98% of all Wholesale
Directories on the Internet
We're the other 2%. :o)
Yes,
we bought them. ALL of them. They call themselves
"Ultimate", "Essential", "Connection", "Directory Pro", "Global",
"Millennium",
"Central", "Wholsalers.xxx," and "Incredible" lists and sites of
Drop Shippers and Bulk Wholesalers. Some of them even have names
that sound like the names of famous, well known web companies,
in a sad attempt to associate themselves with legitimacy.
Again, we knew we were
getting substandard information.
I've seen these things floating around for YEARS, and have tried to
use them before. But just for the sake of doing our research
before telling you what they are really like, we bought them.
These
printed lists and "directories" of Drop Shippers and
Bulk Wholesalers have
been circulating the same, tired old listings around and around
among themselves for years. If you think you can make money
selling customized return mailing labels, or novelties like fake
vomit and dribble glasses, or used books from some dingy old
warehouse, then by all means, give it a try.
They
all claim to contain "hundreds", or
"thousands" of companies who will drop ship for you.
Some of them contain hundreds of listings, but that's easy. Once
again, just go to a search engine, type in "wholesale"
and copy the first 500 responses you get. Then slap them in a
rag-print magazine and call it a "Directory". Same
result.
Our Research Manager actually spent
a month trying to contact ALL of the 202 "drop ship" listings in
one
of the oldest and most well known of these (don't ask which one;
you know you've seen the ads!) Only 18 of them responded,
and only 3 of them (THREE out of 202!) were real drop shippers.
The 18 companies who did respond didn't know they were even listed in this
"directory".
When
we research wholesale suppliers, we contact EACH AND EVERY COMPANY WE
LIST. Then we ASK THEIR PERMISSION to list them. After we verify
that they are a REAL Wholesaler Supplier, we enter them in
the wholesale database and list their
products, their brand names, their email addresses, phone
numbers, physical address, contact person, credit information,
ordering procedure, etc., etc., etc. NONE of these other so-called
"directories" do anything remotely like what we do.
We're constantly amazed that they get away with it.
Lists
and "directories" such as this sell for anywhere from
$7 to about $59. They look very legitimate. We've even
seen a couple of new ones surface in the past few months.
Amazingly enough, they're circulating much of the same worthless
information that the OLD ones are! Must have taken a lot of
research, don't you think? :o)
'Super Drop Ship and
Wholesale CDs'
You've
probably seen these on auction sites as well as web sites. Tell
you what, we'll make this one short and sweet. Read the warning
above this one, dump all THAT junk on a CD, and sell it for six
bucks. Same thing.
'Complete Home
Business' Opportunities
Have
you ever come across a "Home Business Opportunity"
like this: (?)
-
They'll create a storefront for you -
They'll provide you with THOUSANDS of products
that they'll drop ship for your store! -
They'll provide you with Merchant Services so
you can accept credit cards without having to open a bank account! -
All for a ONE TIME PRICE of just $50! (Or $149,
or $300, etc.)
Wow,
doesn't that just seem too good to be true?? That's because it
IS too good to be true. Oh, sure, they'll do what they say. It's
a legal business. But tell me this...just how much money do you
think you'll make?
Think
about it for a minute. THEY establish accounts with wholesalers.
THEY mark those wholesale prices WAY up. Then they get YOU to
put in all the time and effort to SELL those products to people,
at a VERY slim profit margin for YOU.
Congratulations!
You've just become a commissioned salesman for someone else's
business!
Um,
not quite what you had in mind, was it?
Wholesalers with
Membership Fees
Run
across one of these yet? A company who claims to be a "drop
ship supplier" or a "bulk wholesaler", but has a "setup" or
"membership" fee?
Let
me say this very clearly:
A Real Wholesale Supplier does not charge a Fee just to do business with you!
ANY
company that wants you to BUY YOUR STORE'S PRODUCTS FROM THEM, and wants
you to pay a setup or membership fee, should be AVOIDED at ALL
COST! Almost without exception, these companies have raised
their so-called "wholesale" product prices so high
that you will never be able to compete on the Internet. Your
prices will have to be so much higher than anyone else's that
you will never make any real money.
And
guess what? You don't get to SEE these companies'
"wholesale" product prices until AFTER they have your money!
See how that works? There will be a NO REFUND policy. Bet on
that.
Wholesale Middlemen
There
are a LOT of places out there who would have you believe that
they are wholesale suppliers, when they are not. We spend a great deal of time sorting
these profiteers OUT of our list of Directory candidates. Here's
how they operate:
-
They put up a site that contains all kinds of
unrelated product lines, and tell you they'll drop ship for your internet
business. -
They may charge a small account
setup fee. -
You sign up with them, thinking that they are
an actual distributor, and you place their products for sale on your site. -
Your customer orders a product from you, and
you send the order to this fake "drop shipper". -
The fake "drop shipper" in turn
places the order with the REAL supplier, and has it sent to your
customer. -
You end up paying a lot more than you have to
for the product, because the fake "drop shipper" is marking up the
price to YOU. -
You lose profits that should be yours.
Many
of these people are very clever. Their sites look legitimate and
they present themselves well. All they really are is just
another middleman that is sponging off of your
hard work. You
DON'T need them.
Free Drop Ship or
Wholesale Information
This
is an easy one. Once again...you get what you pay for. No
exceptions.
We've
checked out these sites. Over and over again, we see them
listing companies that we've turned down for inclusion in
the Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool. Middlemen, companies that charge large
"membership" fees and then give you over-inflated
price lists in return, companies that require minimum orders in
the THOUSANDS of dollars. The producers of these sites are
simply hoping to get people to click on them so that they can
claim high numbers of visitors, and sell advertising space. We've
never seen anything useful on one of these irresponsible excuses
for an informational site, no matter how sincere they claim to
be, or how many false "testimonials" they list.
This is a Real
Problem...
...and more and more
people are victimized by these Scammers every day.
Have
you come across a Scammer that's found a newer, lower and
dirtier way to cheat you out of your money? We'd like to hear
about it. We may post your information on this page, in order to
prevent them from doing the same thing to others!
Click
Here to tell us about the Scammer you found!
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