Your drop shipper is taking a lot of responsibility off your hands, but the fact is, you can never fully trust anyone other than yourself to do the job properly. For that reason, a large part of successfully using a drop shipper involves good management skills.

• Email or phone the dropshipper twice weekly to check up on stock levels. A drop shipper may not necessarily tell you if supplies are getting a bit low.
• Keep 2-3 ‘buffer’ items on hand in case you have orders that can’t be fulfilled through sudden stock shortages. This gives you more control over the ability to provide solid customer service.
• If the drop shipper is located internationally, then make sure you specify in your listing description that items will take 1-2 weeks to ship after payment. Honesty is the best policy - don’t try to hide anything from your buyers, this will only increase their mistrust of you if things do go wrong.
• Include your policy on returns in your listing description.
• If possible, use a dropshipper who is willing to add your brandname to the packages. For example, Msome let you upload your logo to their website where they will print it onto all your packages. They will also put your address as the return address, rather than their own company name.
• Consider enhancing personalization by giving your drop shipper hand-written thank-you notes to include in the packages. Not all drop shippers will be agreeable to this, but you can always try.
• Note that eBay has a new policy that requires you to list the location of the goods at the time of listing. If you are using a drop shipper, this means you must list China, Hong Kong, or wherever they are located. Some buyers may find this off-putting so I highly recommend including an explanation for the location in your FAQ or description. Explain the benefits to your customer – they are receiving unique goods at a much more affordable price than they could otherwise get! Don’t forget to offer a full guarantee and refund/returns policy to allay any fears over quality.
• Very Important!Follow-up every sale with a customer satisfaction survey. It is critical that you keep tabs on how well your dropshipper is performing. There’s no doubt you’ll be the first to know if the service is extremely bad, but you are less likely to hear if service is mediocre, even though it may still be bad enough to discourage customers from returning. Remember that eBay buyers are now able to give feedback on different aspects of the sale, so it’s now doubly important to ensure every stage of the sales process is excellent.