Welcome to part two in my post about sourcing products to sell in  your start up business. In the last post, we talked about small quantities of custom manufactured product and drop shipping. There were a few issues with getting this post published so click here if you haven’t read it. In this post, I’ll cover custom logo drop shipping and digital products.
Custom Logo Drop Shipping
I’ve made this category name up myself. It’s an idea I’ve had for awhile but not had the right idea to take advantage of it. Using sites such as cafepress.com.au and zazzle.com.au, you can add your own images or logos to base items such as mugs, t-shirts, clocks so on and so forth. The great thing about these sites is that you can order in quantities as little as one.
This means that theortically, you don’t need to carry any stock at all! You set up your website etc with images of your products, then when a customer orders from you, you order from cafepress/zazzle and have your customer assigned as the delivery address.
If you could come up with the types of images, logos or slogans on these items that people will pay for over the item itself, this could be an awesome business model.
I’ve tested a few ideas I’ve had with this type of model but none have flown yet. It’s something I’d love to crack one day, but until then, it’s an idea slowly burning a hole in my brain…
Digital Products
I don’t have any experience in producing digital products as yet. Like physical products, there are resources out there to help you ‘manufacture’ your digital product. Whether it’s an ebook, an online course or tutorials, or even an iPhone app, there’s people selling  their skills and know-how meaning you don’t have to be constrained by your lack thereof!
What you basically want is to hire a freelance writer, programmer, designer or whatever to get the job done. To find the right person for the job, head over to elance.com or oDesk.com. Both elance and oDesk are basically big job notice boards where you post your job and freelancers respond wanting the job. Ideally you’d have a few responses so you can pick the right person for the job. You can also browse freelancers and contact them directly.
The great thing about these sites is that being online, they make full advantage of geographic arbitrage. That means you can hire a writer or programmer from another country, paying them in the local currency, saving your coin. Of course, you can also hire local freelancers through these sites, but the option is there. A mate of mine developed an iPhone app with a developer he found through oDesk who was based in Romania or somewhere like that. They did a great job.
if you’re not sure which to use, there is a very comprehensive article over at Gather comparing these two resources. It’s from the viewpoint of a freelancer but will give you a good idea as to what to expect from each.
Go For It!
Often, just knowing where to look and who to contact can be the biggest hurdle in starting something. This truism is amplified in business. I hope these posts have been useful in helping you jump this hurdle. At the very least, you now don’t have the excuse of not knowing where to get a product made… So go for it!
