Drop shipping is neither a sport nor a game. It is a business. And in business, customers neither want to deal with beginners nor intermediates.

Customers want advanced service, advanced communications and advanced reliability. Simply stated they want to deal with someone in the advanced class.

When you start your drop shipping business it is like jumping into the middle of the ocean. If you are a beginner, you will simply drown. If you are intermediate enough to stay on the surface, your competitors will try to put you under. And you will be torn apart from below by the sharks out there that prey on the newcomer. It is not the time to start learning how to survive. You must be advanced before you jump into drop shipping.

More than 95% of the drop shipping businesses fail within the first year. There are many reasons. But generally it can be said that they did not have enough experience to understand how tough business really is.

Business is a constant war. You will be fighting competition for your market share. You will be fight competition for search engine position. You will be fighting to survive every day and it will never stop.

You will have to be set up to survive the fight. You have to start your drop shipping business in the advanced mode.

How do you jump from business level beginner to business level advanced? You do a business plan!

A properly written business plan is more than a writing exercise that you put in a soon forgotten book.

First it is a beginners training manual. In writing your business plan, you are forced to think through the details of what you must do to compete in the market.

For example, it will make you think about what is your unique selling proposition. Remember that tens of thousands of other drop shippers like you may be advertising the same products as you. You have to create yourself some unique position in the market to outsell them..

Second it is a test procedure that takes you from beginner