Anyone starting a business, online or not, faces the problem of how to source products that he can sell profitably. The Hienote Directory offers a unique selection of niche products from some of the best drop shipping wholesalers to solve your problem. They are a little under the radar, i.e., not so widely known as a couple of other wholesale directory sources. I was attracted to Hienote because I’d heard only good things about them, the cost was low, and I figured the markets wouldn’t be too saturated with their wholesale suppliers’ products since some of them are less well known. I can tell you in hindsight that some of the Hienote companies are not listed in other wholesale supplier directories.

If you’ve read the FREE ebook, then you know the Hienote philosophy is to find unique, sellable items that are available from true drop shipping wholesalers. They pride themselves on checking out the suppliers’ products themselves and they like to find wholesale drop ship companies face-to-face at trade shows. The Hienote directory takes a quality and variety over quantity philosophy to adding products; they are not a directory of everything under the sun with millions of goods. There are both good and bad things about this.

A good thing is that Hienote can and does guarantee that all of their suppliers are willing to drop ship in single quantities and that they are researched to be tier one wholesalers (not middlemen, in other words). This was great for me since I was indeed starting a business without much money and bulk purchasing wasn’t an option. Especially if you want to stock more than one product in your store, then your initial set up expenses will be substantial with bulk purchasing-to say nothing of the cost for storing the goods after you’ve bought them. It is discouraging to find wholesalers with neat products, only to learn that they won’t work with you because you aren’t prepared to buy at least $5000 of merchandise. Other paid lists of wholesale suppliers may be longer, but they also include bulk wholesalers who won’t work with you unless you have more money to spend.

A drawback to the Hienote approach is that they may not have very many products in a niche you are keen on. However, you can preview the contents of their wholesale directory online before purchasing a membership. Paid members and wholesaler drop ship companies are protected since the preview doesn’t say exactly who the suppliers are or give out the current wholesale price. The search process isn’t as smart as I’d like, which I why I created the video to demonstrate how to search the inventory. As an example, searching for “bedroom furniture” doesn’t show any entries, but searching for “beds” does show a few products that are beds, which is a type of bedroom furniture. Other supplier directories can also be like this. If you are a member and you are having trouble finding a suitable supplier for something, Hienote can conduct custom searches for wholesale drop ship companies.

Hienote currently offers a low, one-time fee for lifetime membership (January 2010). A membership also gets you two more ebooks about dropshipping. You can choose to pay for the ebooks separately through their website without becoming a member, but it is cheaper to just pay for membership in the site and get them as a bonus.

You can use these wholesale drop ship companies for starting your own eBay business or selling through your own website or opening a physical store. Once you are confident you’ve got a winning product, negotiate better prices with your suppliers by offering to buy in light bulk or bulk quantities so you can make more money. Good luck in your quest for drop shipping wholesalers!

Click to see the official Hienote Directory website

Why are good drop shipping wholesalers, or any wholesalers for that matter, hard to locate? The reason is simple: bona fide tier one wholesale suppliers are often busy places that don’t have to advertise. They don’t need to be contacted by just anyone with an internet connection. Many of them do have websites, but they’re usually not highly optimized to rank on hot keywords, so any wholesale drop shipper you find online without too much effort is most likely a middleman. Small accounts can be more trouble to them than they are worth, so the established wholesalers might only want to deal with bigger fish. Think about it. if you were a wholesaler, which call would you rather take:

A) “Hi, this is Sharon Turner. I just opened my home-based business and I’d like to sell your cute toys to make money online!” -or-

B) “Hi, Joe. This is Mike Patterson again from Sears. We like your product and we’ve budgeted $200,000 for our order. How soon can you ship it?”

If you discover that a supposed drop ship wholesaler is paying for sponsored links in search engines, this should be a major red flag to you. It is probably a middleman. Another warning sign is a place that wants to charge a monthly fee for you to do business with them. Buy low and sell high is great in theory, but making it work is always the trick-just as with the stock market. Finding good drop shipping wholesalers in your niche is vital when you have a small starting budget. There is no point to setting up to sell anything if you have no prospect for earning a profit.

Reliable and trustworthy wholesale dropship companies do exist and can be used successfully. You’ll have to hunt around and also do your market research to see how competitive your pricing will be. While some hot areas-certain electronics niches come to mind-may be difficult to compete in, there are many others where you can work profitably. The manufacturer of a product should be happy to refer you to their distributors, which is a good way to check whether or not a business that represents themselves as a distributor is actually another reseller.