One viable option for people who want to start their own business on the Internet is to find a genuine wholesaler and set up an online store where you can retail your goods for a healthy profit.

You can either "do it yourself", or if you are in a hurry and don't have the time, inclination or technical know-how to build your own online store, you can set one up quickly and easily with eBay or Yahoo.

Getting your store set up is the easy step... Finding a genuine wholesaler can be more problematic. Of course, you can do a Google search, but go careful because the search engines do not distinguish between the genuine suppliers and the rip-off merchants.

When searching for a wholesaler, check whether they offer dropshipping as one of their services, so that with each product line you want to sell you can choose between dropshipping and wholesaling.

With dropshipping, you don't have to handle any products you sell. Instead, the wholesaler ships the product directly to the customer.

With wholesale, you take delivery of a consignment of products and then pack and ship out products to customers.

Some wholesalers offer different quantities of goods at wholesale. Chris Malta of WorldWideBrands has coined the phrase "light bulk" to define smaller quantity wholesale consignments as distinguished from "large volume" consignments.

Here is an article I posted to my website earlier this week explaining the difference between dropshipping, light bulk and large volume wholesale, and how each option can be best used by an e-commerce retailer seeking to maximize profits and minimize risk.