Plus, I’d like to think that in most cases we can be better at selling their stuff than they are Areas like SEO, PPC, conversion rate optimization, accurate descriptions and videos, related articles, showing relevant upsells, making it easy to find the exact product they’re looking for, etc.

It’ll be an interesting experiment if and when the time comes.

That’s kind of funny. No, we actually have quite a bit of troubles with our vendors. The reason I don’t bring them up is because I don’t deal with them. Greg does a fantastic job with it. He brings up all of the issues at our meetings, which are twice-weekly. There is always some new issue of how they’re trying to screw us this way or that way. Generally we give Greg our 2 cents and then he makes the call and deals with the issue. George works with him on the finance side of things (making sure we have enough free cash to make large purchases), but again that’s something I’m pretty far removed from. Basically, the things that stress me out and keep me up at night are the things that I know I’m going to be relied upon to come up with a solution for. Not that I don’t care about the other issues, but if I spent too much time thinking about them I would be spending less time on the functions of the business where I can have the most impact for our team. This blog is mostly an extension of what I’m thinking about, so just naturally I’m going to post more about programming and less about supplier relationships.

As far as good information out there, it’s tough. I tried the exact same thing you did while I was in college and didn’t have much luck either. Nev is the only one I know personally who runs a successful dropshipping company and is willing to share a lot with people for free. In 2007 he did a 6 part series about the ins and outs of his business. Very very interesting read.

This is going pretty tangent but..

I tried to do a bit of research in to drop shippers a couple of years ago. I wasn’t highly motivated, since it was I was just trying to get a feel for the market. It seemed saturated with scams. Sales letters with stories of guys on beaches if only you’ll subscribe to their exclusive drop shippers report for only $xxx.

So much of that stuff, that it was impossible (ok, probably possible. Just not a matter of an hour or tow on Google) to get an idea what the actual deal was. I have no problem paying for actual information, e-books or services, but that kind of a scene makes me want to lock my wallet.

On a more general note, whenever you bring up difficulties, these are almost always on the retailing side, never on the supply, sourcing side. You mention potential difficulties in coding the features into your site, automating & making sure you don’t create any nasty surprises for your customers. But you don’t seem worried about finding a decent drop shipper. Has sourcing always been relatively easy for you?