Worldwide Brands Review: Is it worth signing up for?

If you're here, you're probably looking to do any of the following things:

• Start a dropshipping business, where you sell products that you never have to see


• Progress away from the awful commissions you've gotten as an affiliate marketer, and look toward a relationship with a dropshipper whose commissions will be significantly higher


• Start an Amazon or eBay Powerseller business, where you sell products from a wholeseller and keep the difference between the markup and wholesale price


• Find a legitimate dropship or wholesale company (as opposed to a scammer)

You may have just discovered that dropshipping existed, like many other affiliate marketers eventually have. You're probably sick and tired of earning a "percentage of a percentage" for selling other people's items on eBay as an ePN affiliate, or for making dismal sales as an Amazon affiliate with their ridiculous 24-hour expiring cookie. Let's not forget that with eBay, you're banking on your clickers to actually WIN the auction for you to get paid - just imagine if all of those clicks that came through your site were from customers looking to make the final purchase.

A select few number of work-from-home entrepreneurs actually find out about the principle of "dropshipping," and optimistically look toward it as a venue to escape the frustration of SEO'ing their websites and promoting affiliate programs that barely pay anything worth writing home about. If you've already entered the research phase for dropshipping, you'll endlessly search for terms like "best dropshipping service" on Google, only to be assaulted with a barrage of spammy Adwords ads and garbage links. However, I can guarantee that you'll come across references to Worldwide Brands in many of these reviews and sites...I sure did, on nearly every occasion.

Worldwide Brands is a company that has a huge presence at national dropship and wholesale trade shows. It claims to do extensive research and interviews on the suppliers it comes across, and starts relationships with the best of them. In turn, it maintains a network of these dropshippers and wholesalers, so that their paid subscribers can easily search for a product category and match it up with a legitimate manufacturer or warehouse looking to sell their inventory. This is Worldwide Brands, in a nutshell: they maintain a 'standard' and pre-screen dropship suppliers to ensure their validity. As a Worldwide Brands member, you are paying a one-time fee for access to this ever-expanding list of qualified dropship and wholesale suppliers.

The main reason why switching from affiliate marketing to dropshipping might be the idea of the year for you, is that you will simply earn more money with each unit sold than you would have as a lowly affiliate marketer. Think about putting all of that time and effort in creating authority websites, adding useful content and working hard to achieve high search engine rankings for the sake of selling products that pay you far more per sale than eBay Partner Network or Amazon Affiliates ever did.

When you sell through a dropship company, you're earning the difference of the markup price (a price you determine, based on what you think is fair, and what competitors have set their prices to) minus the wholesale price (which is what the dropship company has paid for the product). It sure beats earning 5% of what a seller pays to eBay as a listing fee, or the measly lunch money you make on Amazon for selling a $200 appliance.

Here's some rough math:

• If you sell a $200 lamp through your eBay affiliate program, you earn 55% of the seller's fee to eBay, which would be 8.75% of the first $25 (or $2.19) plus 3.5% of the remainder, or $6.19 + $2.19 = $8.38 commission.


• If you're working with a dropshipper and sell a $200 lamp, say the wholesale price of that lamp is $170, and you successfully sell it for $200. You earn $200 - $170, or $30 commission, on the lamp.

Much like affiliate marketing, you won't have to see, store or ship the product, ever - the supplier's warehouse does that. You simply act as the conduit between the sale and the warehouse, passing along the customer information. This benefits you because you'll be making money for your hard work. It benefits the company you're working with, because they're making sales through your SEO and webmaster work, while reducing their inventory.

While it sounds like an obvious benefit over affiliate marketing - remember that it is not a quick solution toward making money. You'll have to price your items competitively to offset those of your competitors. Also, without proper advertising and optimization, your products will not be seen by prospective customers.

The biggest suffrage you'll endure as a marketer looking to get into dropshipping is actually finding a dropshipper who isn't a scammer or a cheat. Many of them are looking to capture the "get rich quick" crowd, who are usually uneducated in the marketing and affiliate fields, and begin with high expectations (an overwhelming number of these suppliers can be found on second-hand dropship directories like Doba and Alibaba - both of which are considered extreme "at risk" services in the dropshipping community due to unqualified suppliers). Suppliers usually fool this crowd into signing contracts whose terms wind up giving the dropshipper most of the profits, and leave the marketer or webmaster with close to nothing.

World Wide Brands claims to run a network that is completely free of these low-performing, shady dropship companies. In looking through this list, you'll find various metrics that rank legitimate dropship companies based on what you're looking to do, or what you're looking to sell.

The truth is, if you're an SEO expert, you'll probably not want to shy away from products that are in broad categories or have lesser success rates due to that factor, as you probably know that all keywords typically have many variations that are frequently searched for, and each variation has its own search volume and competition rate on Google. Therefore, with Worldwide Brands, you'll at least have the peace of mind in knowing that all of the vendors you're sorting through are in fact legitimate, and that you're protected under the Worldwide Brands umbrella, even if something went awry.

In the Worldwide Brands member area, you'll be presented with a dashboard that allows you to research dozens of broad product categories. By typing in a keyword (such as "ovens" under "Home Appliances", an AJAX-powered search suggestion menu updates itself while you type, giving you suggested keywords (such as "gas ovens," etc.). The search results page will give you a link that displays the number of suppliers who carry those products, ranked by "Supplier type," which includes drop ship whole sale, light bulk whole sale, instant import buys, and several others (you'll want to research these options, although most people choose drop ship whole sale).

When delving further and choosing a supplier, Worldwide Brands presents you with all of their contact information, and a pre-filled form at the bottom of the page which can be instantly sent out if you are interested in their business model and products for your own online store. Of course, you should never make a hasty decision. In turn, you can simply add a supplier to your "favorites" list for comparison purposes, later on. Every single month. Worldwide Brands researches and adds up to 100 more suppliers to the total supplier list in their network, making the longevity of your campaign greater as time goes on.

Each product category you choose has its own real-time marketing data, stemming from actual market research. In other words, data including competition, search volume, profitability indexes are more are instantly available for each product category and keyword (relating to a product) that you choose. This alone will alleviate a great deal of manual research that will have to be done before choosing a product to sell. Worldwide Brands also gives you updated information about retail pricing and suggested re-sale pricing for every single product on the site. The following metrics are available to you as a member of Worldwide Brands:

• Demand: Similar to having a paid Wordtracker account, this section gives you an up-to-the-minute search volume that lets you know how many people search for a given keyword term each day.


• Competition: This is no mind blowing tool by any means, but it does give you a rough estimate of how many other shops on all search engines are selling a product you're considering to sell.


• Advertising: This page pulls in paid ads from the likes of Google AdWords et al, to show how competitors are advertising the products you're looking at. It's an invaluable way to get ideas on creating your own advertising slogans and messages, as well as spying on what your competitors are doing, without having to open up multiple browsers and test keyword searches.


• Auction Pricing: This section brings up a query box with the product keyword you chose, to show you how and how much products are being sold on auction sites like eBay.


• Retail Pricing: Similarly to the aforementioned "Auction Pricing" option, this shows how much products of your chosen keyword are selling for at a flat price. It is a direct reflection of how your dropshipping competitors are pricing their items, and you must check this section on a regular basis!

The Worldwide Brands membership preview demo gives you the gist of what the member interface looks like. You'll be able to give the product search options a try, but the supplier's contact info will remain hidden.

Another feature included in a Worldwide Brands subscription is called "The Whole $ale" - it is basically a portal of information that takes you through the intricate steps of starting a dropshipping business from square one. It covers topics from legal to marketing and to technical; coming in the form of articles and videos that answer the years of questions that arise from the typical customer. What typically annoys me about the information that services like this include is how it is widely accessible via eBooks and other websites or message boards -- however, Worldwide Brands' information section is a true gem. You'll find the answers to many intricate situations that may arise, and it's all written for the common lay-person, rather than for a seasoned professional. Nothing is written or demonstrated with the assumption that you know the ropes already.

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits to being a WWB member is having the access to their members-only forum. The internet is entirely devoid of any noteworthy dropshipping or wholesale forums, making this one worth its weight in gold. This treasure trove of dropshipping and wholesale information is where you'll get help from people who've been in the business for years...as well as Worldwide Brands representatives, and newbies, too.

There's one thing I can tell you for certain (this goes for any aspect of doing business online, whether you're buying and installing website software, scripts, or anything else) -- if you don't have a support forum where your questions can be answered at the drop of a hat, you'll be in for a very difficult, frustrating and potentially grave situation. Being a Worldwide Brands member is worthy for the simple fact that you'll be able to access this elite dropshipping forum that's hidden from the 'net, at any time you want.

Yet another thing that irks me, especially when I throw down a significant amount of cash for any service, is when I don't get any technical or customer support. If I feel like the company whose service I'm buying into is your typical "faceless organization," I start off with pessimism, in fear of how my own business venture will turn out in the distant future.

As with all business ventures, you'll encounter a roadblock at some point...you'll question the current path your taking, and if you can or should have been doing better. Or, you'll face a crippling situation, where you wonder if you've really screwed something up. Regardless, I've found Worldwide Brands to be there through several means: e-mail and phone support, and of course, the member forums, where even the CEO of Worldwide Brands, Chris Malta, makes regular appearances to do some Q&A himself. Not only that, but he makes his direct phone number available for Worldwide Brands members to call, just for your own personal Q&A, whenever you want... when was the last time you've ever heard a CEO do that?

During your membership, you'll interface with the rest of WWB's team, not only on the message board, but in webinars and on Twitter.

It's these simple touches that let you know the company actually cares about upholding its reputation and reaching out to customers both online and otherwise - and it's appreciated in times where you need an immediate answer to a question of your own.

If you've done your homework and searched for Worldwide Brands reviews (which is probably how you've gotten here), you've probably seen several sites and ads saying "Worldwide Brands Scam." Ignore these, as they are webmasters looking to boost attention to their blogs and websites by creating a controversial headline.

You'll even notice that they favor World Wide Brands on their site - it's a pathetic attempt at getting attention, which gives undeserved poor publicity to this great company.

I've done a lot, and I mean, a LOT of research on finding good dropship companies and wholesellers. The truth is that is a very tiresome and frustrating process, and the quickest resolve is to find a company that has their own certification standards within their own group of chosen dropship and wholesale companies. I first came across Worldwide Brands after reading through several blogs and dropship review sites. Many of them put down Worldwide Brands, because they were upset with the fact that a Worldwide Brands membership is a one time $300 fee. However, it kind of let me know that those bloggers were either newbies in the home business world, or were looking for an easy way out by doing everything for free.

The bottom line comes down to the famous quote, "You've got to spend money to make money." You probably already know that you'll need money for a server, domain name and software - it's part of starting up a business. It also helps to know this: there is no other company like Worldwide Brands. They have a monopoly in the niche of finding, acquiring and certifying quality dropship/wholesale suppliers!

When it comes to Worldwide Brands, the $300 is easy to break even for (for myself, it took about a week through my still-existent affiliate marketing business). It's a one time fee that gives you a lifetime membership, which proved to be invaluable for my business partner and I. For its cost, you're getting a service with certified "no BS" dropship and wholesale companies that have gone under meticulous review by Worldwide Brands. From there on, it's up to you to make the right decisions on which niche to enter, which products to sell, and ultimately, which dropship company to use. I'm confident you'll feel that Worldwide Brands will help you every step of the way...sift through Worldwide Brands' portal page, read their customer testimonials and listen in to the next product sourcing radio show; then decide if it's the next big step in your personal wholesale dropship career!