With the right partners and products, drop shipping business opportunities really can be the ideal home-based business.  As any smart business person knows there’s tons of money to be made online. In fact, online retail sales were calculated at an all-time high last holiday season, and yet they still only account for roughly 5.5 percent of total annual retail sales. The bottom line? There’s still plenty of room in the world of e-commerce for entrepreneurs who are interested in making serious money, even for those who want to make it rich.

The question is this… If you’re not terribly tech savvy, where do you begin? What resources are at your disposal? And how do you even begin to manage it all?

While starting and running any successful online retail business, no matter what its size, takes a lot of hard work, there are a number of ways you can mitigate your level of risk while minimizing the seemingly overwhelming range of tasks that will fall to you as a small business owner, not the least of which is drop shipping. Drop shipping is a proven business model that has enabled countless online retailers to manage their businesses, all from the comfort of their own home or anywhere else for that matter.

In a nutshell, drop shipping entails your forming a partnership or multiple partnerships with wholesalers who stock their own inventory and then allow you to feature their products on your website, products you then markup to reasonable and competitive retail prices. Customers then place their orders online through your store and pay you directly. Once payment is received, you in turn place the order with the drop shipper, who then handles the backend fulfillment on your behalf, including the packaging of goods and shipping them directly to your customers.

The benefits of drop shipping, especially for an inexperienced online entrepreneur, are many. First, it lessens the overall risk at start-up, saving you lots of money and tons of hassle. Imagine having to find, warehouse, fulfill and ship products on your own — pricey, inconvenient, cumbersome and stressful, right? Second, it gives you something that many would say is even more precious than money…using drop shipping gives you more time — time to focus on everything else it’s going to take to run a profitable online enterprise. And lastly, by using drop shipping you can manage your business from anywhere in the world, as long as you have a computer and an internet connection.

Now, there are hundreds if not thousands of really good, solid drop shipping wholesalers out there for you to consider, all of which takes considerable research and significant effort. But hey, if you’re up for the task, then go for it!

For the rest of you, there is another option.

Companies like My Business Venture offer a totally turnkey, step-by-step business opportunity that fully integrates the drop shipping and wholesale products catalog concept into their overall business model. At the same time, they also provide full website development guidance and creative options as well as ongoing and comprehensive marketing and customer support services. It’s everything even the most inexperienced prospective small business entrepreneur might want or need to start and grow his or her online store into a successful retail enterprise, all in one place and at a start-up cost of as little as $295.

Whether you opt to build your own e-commerce business entirely from scratch or seek out a great company like My Business Venture to help you get things off the ground and keep them running smoothly, it’s important to be realistic either way. Know what you’re getting into and be prepared and willing to work hard if you want to ensure you’re online retail store will be a resounding success.