Drop Shippers? Horror Stories or Legit Jobs

My 2 cents ... if you're looking at Terapeak to see what's "hot" and then trying to dropship on eBay using a middleman like Salehoo, you're going to lose your shirt. That's a newbie path to failure as everyone is lazy and trying to do that with little to no profit.

Major companies use dropshippers, and they sell on eBay all the time. It's not obvious they are dropshipping.

Think of just about any niche. For instance, pool supplies for the upcoming summer. All those companies on eBay selling those products do not have million square foot warehouses with millions of dollars of product sitting on their shelves. They all use a couple dropshippers - product providers who do not use a service like Salehoo, but which deal with real retailers that are licensed, willing to go through a credit check, etc.

Treat your business like a real business, instead of trying to pick-off a bunch of unrelated products that seem hot for the moment, and get suppliers like your corner store, but which will dropship, and instead of a horror story you are more likely to have legit success.

There is not actual "wholesale discount" for things like the Wii.

Let me first start off by saying that I make a good amount of money on eBay (well, now it's mostly Amazon.) every single day.

I would never use dropshippers that advertise themselves as dropshippers. Why? Because you can drop ship with non-drop shipping websites. I did it with Halloween stuff in Sept. and Oct. With using a company that advertises, chances are there is more competition. More competition means that your profits will be cut in half. Trust me, I know. I've used sites that within a month, competition grew and people were selling the same thing I was for less, so much less, that they weren't even making money with eBay and PayPal fee's. These kinds of newbies would come in waves too. I sold the very expensive version of Wall-E as soon as a dropshipping company said they had some. I sold a couple, then two weeks later I've got competition selling it for $1.00 or 2 more than what they were getting it, despite the fact that they were losing money due to fee's. They didn't care. In their mind, if they made a profit of $2.00 per toy, but sold 10 of them a day which they figured they could since they priced it so low, then they would do very well and probably make a good $20.00 a day doing pretty much nothing. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that if you are selling a $300 on eBay, they aren't going to charge you less than $2.00 in fee's. This is why drop-shipping for companies that advertise themselves as drop-shippers does Not work.

There's a key to earning money in wholesale, and all of the big names are doing this. First, I'm going to say SaleHoo is a crap listing of all of the "wholesale sources" and "dropshipping services". I bought it, everything is on Google anyways. I'm not saying its a pointless product, maybe its great for someone that just doesn't feel like researching sources themselves.

Save your money and back track. Someone in this thread mentioned Terapeak and I recommend them. Venido isn't bad, but their research function is half assed compared to Terapeak. Find a new hot trend on eBay (or try to figure out what WILL be hot on eBay by browsing hundreds of thousands of items that are not being released in the U.S. just yet). When you find a great product, use Google. You MIGHT be able to find the company, which will more than likely be from over-seas, that is selling your product or a distributor in your country.

Here's the layout of what wholesale is right now, and I want to tell you about wholesale so you may have a better understanding of "dropshipping." Hopefully I can explain it well enough, I'm usually not the best at explaining things quickly like I am now.



A) Thats little ol' YOU. You need to buy things to sell on eBay or where ever else for profit. You go to:

B) These guys have the "connections" - They communicate to you through their advertising. They tell you they have the best sources, usually, these are the guys like SaleHoo, where you have to pay for their information. Well, all these guys know are really (C). They do not know (D). They could if they really wanted to, but they don't.

C) These guys are those little websites, sometime with broken english, poorly made websites, you know the type. All (B) really knows is (C). However, C, whom are the true middle-men of this operation, they communicate with not only people like (A) (B) but they can talk with (D) too! In fact, they pretty much represent (D).

D) Before I talk about these guys, note the big difference between (A) and (D). Notice how (A) through (D) kind of blends or transitions. Why? It's because of several things, like the huge language barrier between counties such as Taiwan, Singapore, China, Vietnam, etc. It's actually pretty hard for (A) to go directly to (D) - but that's why there is little competition. Less competition actually means more $$$. Who really are these guys in the (D) group? Well, they are regular citizens in those countries that actually produce the things you can buy. Some of them are managers that have the ability to get you deals in bulk for cheap.

Now, something you have to realize. Is that (D) wants to make profit, but as mean and degrading as it this may sound, they don't understand the key points in business that (B) and (C) do, and that's usually why they Are in group (D). It's just how it is. (D) will sometimes try to be (C) by cutting deals with us English speaking folks, because of the assumption that we all have a bunch of money. Most of the time, it's a great deal too! However, if you want to maximize your profits, you have to get down to their level, and make the same kinds of deals that they do with other people in group (D). People in (D) trade things amongst themselves based on their economic prices and the value of their currency. You want to do that, you want to convert your money to theirs, and buy things at their prices.



Now, with some simple research, you can find your contacts in group (C). This is usually pretty reliable, and you can make some good money selling pretty much anything you want, however, you have another middle-man, and they make profit every time you buy, which means less money for you. It's all about getting to (D). All of the really successful people that sell things online is going to group (D) to find their products, and it's not impossible if you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend.

I got my contacts through (C). How? I used to live in China for a couple months. I went to one of the best places to find deals on things, several things, which is the massive market in Yiwu. Heres a small video I found on Youtube.


That's (C) - They have their contacts with (D), but thats how they make money. Well, it took me a while to realize and find out how to go directly to (D) after I spent a couple months already buying and reselling from (C). Am I going to tell you? Nope.

I just wanted to make a long winded post to show my understanding of reselling wholesale products on the consumer market place, such as eBay.

And by the way, Alibaba sucks. Don't trade on there, there are MUCH better and more direct sources on there. 90% of people on Alibaba are dropshippers with increased prices due to targeting consumers with more money.

This is such a hard question to answer. I sell products that I buy for $2.00 in small quantities and sell for $75.00 once or twice a day. I sell products I buy for .60 (cents) and sell for $6.00, and I sell 20 a day. Then theres also products that I make only a dollar profit, but I try to upsell things that "enhance" the product.

Also, you being in Vancouver has its advantages. You will be able to cut down on expenses such as gas and storage by being able to take a quick trip to the harbor to pick up your stuff. Wish I had that luxury. In fact, I've thought about moving to Nevada or California just to be able to take advantage of that.

As far as finding a wholesale supplier, look for buying your products as direct as possible. Don't be surprised when major companies do not want to supply to someone only looking to buy $1,000 worth of products, when they can find people looking to spend $20,000 at least once a month.

E. Brian Rose hit a good point. Depending on what you plan to sell, you might be able to get your supplier to drop ship for you! This usually only works with higher value/higher margin goods, but it might be worth investigating depending on your background/experience.

Some b2b computer suppliers will drop ship for you. I'm not sure what other industries would do this...