Looking for some Quality Info on Ebay Selling and Dropshipping

For me I found it difficult to shop from ebay becos I am from Nigeria but what I did is to purchase a third party address from a company in UK but currently, I am buy and sale in Nigeria from my uncle's address in UK

My recommendation would be to open an account on ebay right now and start selling some $1 stuff to get rid of their stupid limitations as soon as possible...
You don't want to find a good dropshipper, build a good sales plan - just to realize that you have to sell in very low volumes for a few months before they even allow you to sell big...

I'm probably going to make some people angry, but eBay does not like dropshipping. I wrote a 220 page book on dropshipping on eBay and then decided against finalizing it because eBay changed how they felt about it. eBay wants to confirm that their sellers hold the inventory in their possession. A lot of people who gross $20,000/mo are getting shut down because they can't prove they have the inventory on hand.

I've been a member of eBay since 1997. It was very much like the wild west when it first started, and was really a lot of fun. Not so much anymore. My general comment is that I have never seen a company work so hard to destroy the community that built it.

That said, IMHO research is critical to doing well on eBay. I used HammerTap while I was actively selling, and use Terapeak now to research the actual pricing for things that sell. HammerTap gave me a lot more useful information for creating listings but only went back one month (at the time ... don't know what it does now.) With TeraPeak, I can go back a year to check pricing.

And then I check the site for current items being sold. With the default listings being "Best Match", I will only list things that will show up on the first page, i.e. only a small number of that item are up for sale at any given time.

Writing effective listing titles to get people to actually look at your listing is critical. Your keywords MUST be in both the title and body copy. Most people I know of will generally use search instead of browsing the listings, so that will catch both browsers and searchers. Copywriting is a nice skill to develop to pull people into your listing, and then get them to read the copy!

One thing I was amazed at when I first started was the number of people listing things where basic research would have shown these items were not selling at any price ... or prices that would be fine for hobby sellers but certainly were otherwise not worth the effort.

Also be careful of what categories you list in. A friend was President of an organization that had a mint condition CB donated to them. One of the members said they could sell it on eBay and did. The buyer filed a SNAD (Significantly Not As Described) dispute, returned a piece of junk, and PayPal returned their money. After protesting this horrendous decision, both PayPal and eBay said it was not their problem. It was probably a situation where the type of people who buy from that particular category are not the type of people most of us would want to deal with.

Many other horror stories exist. In general, I *think* those stories are becoming the exception but I am still careful what I list.

And that advice given above to start now with small items is right on!!! I haven't bothered to find out how the seller limitations are arrived at, but limitations exist on both the number of items that can be listed as well as the total monthly gross sales.

You might subscribe to EcommerceBytes (formerly AuctionBytes) as they give quite a bit of useful information. There is no charge for it.

One site I used to visit was PowerSellersUnite. It showed the various sites by number of items listed.

While I have little experience on Amazon, you might also take a look at selling there. I have no hard numbers, but quite a few *former* eBay sellers are finding Amazon more cost effective. I don't know why as I only sell books (very occasionally) there.

Hope this helps.

Marvin

PS - This topic probably is not appropriate for the offline forum.

Thanks for the insight.

Look for offers by catchtheniche / Tad 100. He's a pro at ebay.

I completely agree with Marvin. eBay isn't what it used to be. It's hard to make money on there now, although not impossible. I will share some of my experiences with you.

eBay is how I made my first real money online (enough to quit my job). In 2005 I found a niche product that was selling well on eBay, that was selling for $60-80. I found a factory in China that sold them for $14 including shipping. I bought 500 units on a personal loan from my father in law, and listed 20 a day as auctions, and sold all of them. Long story short, my first month I did over $10,000 in sales, my second month I did over $30,000. I continued building that business til 2006, and offered more options of that product. I ended up selling $268,000 in 2006.

I dabbled in dropshipping but never made a profit. It was total bull. The dropship companies don't give you good enough pricing to make a profit. In fact, almost every single product I found in the dropshipper's site I could buy CHEAPER on eBay. I know it is POSSIBLE to make it with drop shipping on ebay, because I met 1 guy who was successful with it. But he wasn't subscribed to one of those ridiculous dropshipping list scams. He called a fire place company and worked a contract to be the only guy on ebay to sell that brand of fireplace. Then he sold them on eBay for between $400-5,000, at a 10% profit. That is how to dropship. Think about it, any profitable items will be sold by everyone immediately. THese lists are not exclusive and not easy to make a profit (on ebay that is).

I've met several people who've built ecommerce site with a drop shipping arrangement, but not ebay. With your own site, you can position yourself with uniqueness, and give your customers a reason to buy from you as opposed to people who go on ebay and simply search "exact item name here" and sort by price and buy the best priced item.

In 2007, I, Xbox 360s were one of the top 10 produts selling on eBay. I did a ton of research and found that there were guys selling refurbished ones for $240. Much cheaper than new. The benefit to this? I don't need a deal with a giant company like Microsoft, I just need to find someone to sell me some repaired Xboxes. So... I found a supplier that refurbished them, and I worked out a deal where I would buy 300 XBox 360s for $170 each. After fees and shipping and everything, I pocketed $30 per unit. Not much right? But for the amount of volume of demand, I could literally make as much as I could list. By the way, the $51,000 was the largest check I'd ever written in my life.

Anyways... I priced mine on ebay at $5 lower than the other guy, and basically owned the refurbished xbox 360 market on ebay. I ended up having to hire 2 temp employees for that holiday season just to ship the things. We sold thousands of them. After it was all said and done, I would not recommend doing that kind of product if you have a choice, because return rate was like 10% due to UPS rattling something and the xboxes being janked around and needing repaired again, but if you can handle those kinds of issues, go for it (with electronic items I mean)

Those had a good run, but eventually other people copied me and I couldn't compete, so I simply moved to newer ideas and left them to gnaw on the bone while I looked for more meat.

In 2008, eBay was pissing me off due to the reasons Marvin probably experienced as well. I decided to take the training wheels off and try my hand at niche ecommerce on my OWN sites. No longer under the thumb of eBay, and cheap ass buyers who are just looking for the lowest price.

Long story short, I adapted the first eBay product (the one I was selling on eBay for $60-80) and created a brand for it, had the Chinese factory print my logo on the product, etc. I call it micro-branding. Nothing major, same product, just with a slicker look and better packaging. I then focused on building up that micro-brand's reputation online through strategic endorsements and online reviews. Since there weren't much for brands in that particular niche, the brand became reputable. I was then pricing the $60 item for $150, and because of the brand, people paid it. I did over $3 million in that product. I spent over $300,000 a year on Google Adwords for a couple years, but it paid off. I then streamlined my process and outsourced my shipping and order processing so it was an employee free, practically automated business. I'm not revealing that product for obvious reasons, but the process I mentioned here is duplicatable in any niche.

In conclusion, if you're looking to get into eBay because you've bought into the lie from these drop ship companies that it's easy (let alone possible) for you to make a ton of passive income on eBay, then I'll just give advice that there are more profitable ways to make money selling physical items. If you're looking to get into ecommerce, I recommend building your niche site away from eBay. You can use Adwords or Facebook Ads or SEO as the replacement for eBay fees, and control your pricing better. Best of luck!

Disclaimer: I'm not going to discount anyone else who feels eBay is better than I've made it out to be. I'm not saying I have the best methods, I am simply giving my experience on the matter. Cheers

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