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Where are the profits drop shipping on ebay from amazon?

by Simplebuyss
10 replies
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Lately Iv been trying to drop ship on ebay from amazon and I just can't see the profits? First we got Paypal charging a 2.9% fee plus .30 cents per product that is sold, then you got ebay's hand in you'r face saying they want 10% of what I earn per product. Total that is 12.9% plus .30 cents of what you just sold, oh and you can't forget the insertion fee that's another.30 cents. Don't get me wrong Ebay is a good site but those fees are killing me lol The profits that are left are not enough and if I bump the price up a little to make up for the fees I wont get alot of sales. I already try to find the cheapest product on amazon but still manage to see very little profits? I seen people on ebay with 50 products up for sale and there getting around 15-35 or more sale a day. So I thought I could do the same but what I am trying to find out is how much these sellers actually make? Do they spend $20 on a product they sold for $25 minus
$3.82 for all the fees which leaves them to 1.18 profit per $20 dolors spent?
How much would you guys want to make profit per $20 spent? Post you'r two cents here. It could be anything related to the the topic. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
#amazon #drop #ebay #profits #shipping
  • Profile picture of the author darbok
    They're buying their products in bulk so it lowers the unit price, they're buying from wholesalers and doing their own shipping.
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    • Profile picture of the author Simplebuyss
      What about people with 500 products for sale I don't think they buy in bulk?
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel J
    Drop shipping has it's benefits (no upfront investment, no handling products etc), but buying your own inventory is going to lead to much higher profits. Remember there are different types of sellers on Ebay. There are individuals (like you and me) and there are businesses with warehouses, employees etc. These guys can afford to buy 500, 1000 or several thousand products in bulk!

    As an individual seller, I have over 1000 products listed (all my own inventory.) The trick is 85% of these products are bought in LOW quantity- sometimes only 1 or 2 of a given product. My top sellers are bought 500-1000 at a time- my mid-range sellers are bought in quantities of 20-50.

    Arbitrage is another method that a LOT of sellers use on Ebay and Amazon- simply buying low selling high- they will buy products where they can find them cheap (clearance sales, closeouts, liquidations etc) and resell for a huge profit. My average profits on these types of items is 100% (spend $20 make $20 profit)

    If you like the idea of having someone else handle your shipping, consider using a service like FBA (fulfillment by Amazon) or another fulfillment service.

    The upfront investment does not need to be massive either. My ebook teaches how to start a business on $500 or less (see signature if you're interested.)

    Dropshipping can be good, but you'll want to list thousands of products to make any kind of substantial profit this way. The margins are tiny with this model unfortunately
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    • Profile picture of the author mymoney5243
      Ebay is not Amazon. In my opinion it is a bad idea to buy from Amazon and sell on ebay. I list a lot of items on ebay and you can plan on the fees between ebay and paypal to be about 13%. There is a handly little tool called salecalc (.com) you can plug in your costs. type of auction, or buy now and get a pretty close estimate of what your profit will be. This keeps you from losing money on ebay.

      You don't always have to use drop shippers. However, they are good to have. You can find items that are on sale say like Walmart mark them up and the store will ship for you. "Free Shipping" sells best, but this can't always be acheived. You also might consider charging a handling fee, which is included with your shipping.

      I think you get the idea.
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      • Profile picture of the author Silas Hart
        In order to do this, you have to have experience in both eBay and Amazon to figure out their strengths. A lot of the people that talk about this method don't talk about how many of their items increase in price on Amazon before a customer buys it from them on eBay, meaning they lose money. Also, the margin in minimal. The only people I've seen that make money doing this are selling more than a quarter million a year in sales, and have hundreds of items selling a week and over 2000 items listed.

        Become more familiar with rank on Amazon, and use things like camelcamelcamel to find an items sales history (slightly) - if an item has a rank of 202,011 in Toys, 1 sales could make it jump into the rank of 60,000, but it might not sell again for another 4 months putting it back into the 200k rank area.

        Low rank item, IE, less than 20k in Toys on Amazon, is volitile. A price might be $90 and offer a profit of $10 on eBay, but by 7 PM that same day, 40 of that item has sold since you've listed and now the only Amazon sellers selling that item on Amazon are selling it for $110.00 - but opps, someone on eBay bought it for $90 before you could adjust your eBay listing. Now your in a pickle. This happens a lot because Amazon sells way more items than eBay. For one item in a decent rank, I'll sell it 200 times a month and maybe 30 on eBay. The difference is that big - but this is also how eBay can be profitable as with less competition in traffic can fetch a higher price for sellers.

        If you find other sellers doing this, which is easy because they all use Amazon's images and descriptions, then you will notice that a lot of them only sell items with a total sale of $50, some dont touch items less than $100. This is because they rely on a small profit margin to make a $5-$10 profit. The problem, in my opinion, is that people get confused with this method by seeing $10,000 in a month with a 4.7 profit margin, but only $470 is actual profit but then they come on places like the WarriorForum and they go to their family members and friends and say "Whoa! I'm making $10,000 a month!" - but just a couple refunds which is common and undisputable on eBay in most cases, can actually put this person in the red (they lose money) but they will never admit it.

        Another thing too... you would be suprised by how buyers react to buying something on eBay and then getting it in an Amazon box, with an Amazon invoice in it, and not everyone is too happy when they find out an item is say, $30 cheaper (from a 16% margin) on Amazon than what they paid for it. You might get away with it 99 times out of a 100, but that 1 person they leaves you a negative feedback is what eBay really cares about. I have this problem with having my items fullfilled by Amazon with multichannel fulfillment, and it's one of the main reasons I'm going to stop selling on eBay completely in 2015.
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        • Profile picture of the author DWaters
          Originally Posted by Silas Hart View Post

          In order to do this, you have to have experience in both eBay and Amazon to figure out their strengths. A lot of the people that talk about this method don't talk about how many of their items increase in price on Amazon before a customer buys it from them on eBay, meaning they lose money. Also, the margin in minimal. The only people I've seen that make money doing this are selling more than a quarter million a year in sales, and have hundreds of items selling a week and over 2000 items listed.

          Become more familiar with rank on Amazon, and use things like camelcamelcamel to find an items sales history (slightly) -.
          Of course there a many items for sale at both marketplaces. But from my expereinces the idea of selling on ebay and than buying the item on Amazon does not make sense.
          From my expereince over the last year, prices tend to be higher on Amazon than ebay, as mentioned above. Also cammelcamelcamel is indeed a very useful tool.
          One method I use on a regular (weekly) basis is to buy certain items on ebay and sell via FBA on Amazon for a good profit. Jordan Malik's book How to Buy Low on eBay and Sell High on Amazon is helpful to learn about ths.
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        • Profile picture of the author joeshmo1946
          Originally Posted by Silas Hart View Post

          In order to do this, you have to have experience in both eBay and Amazon to figure out their strengths. A lot of the people that talk about this method don't talk about how many of their items increase in price on Amazon before a customer buys it from them on eBay, meaning they lose money. Also, the margin in minimal. The only people I've seen that make money doing this are selling more than a quarter million a year in sales, and have hundreds of items selling a week and over 2000 items listed.

          Become more familiar with rank on Amazon, and use things like camelcamelcamel to find an items sales history (slightly) - if an item has a rank of 202,011 in Toys, 1 sales could make it jump into the rank of 60,000, but it might not sell again for another 4 months putting it back into the 200k rank area.

          Low rank item, IE, less than 20k in Toys on Amazon, is volitile. A price might be $90 and offer a profit of $10 on eBay, but by 7 PM that same day, 40 of that item has sold since you've listed and now the only Amazon sellers selling that item on Amazon are selling it for $110.00 - but opps, someone on eBay bought it for $90 before you could adjust your eBay listing. Now your in a pickle. This happens a lot because Amazon sells way more items than eBay. For one item in a decent rank, I'll sell it 200 times a month and maybe 30 on eBay. The difference is that big - but this is also how eBay can be profitable as with less competition in traffic can fetch a higher price for sellers.

          If you find other sellers doing this, which is easy because they all use Amazon's images and descriptions, then you will notice that a lot of them only sell items with a total sale of $50, some dont touch items less than $100. This is because they rely on a small profit margin to make a $5-$10 profit. The problem, in my opinion, is that people get confused with this method by seeing $10,000 in a month with a 4.7 profit margin, but only $470 is actual profit but then they come on places like the WarriorForum and they go to their family members and friends and say "Whoa! I'm making $10,000 a month!" - but just a couple refunds which is common and undisputable on eBay in most cases, can actually put this person in the red (they lose money) but they will never admit it.

          Another thing too... you would be suprised by how buyers react to buying something on eBay and then getting it in an Amazon box, with an Amazon invoice in it, and not everyone is too happy when they find out an item is say, $30 cheaper (from a 16% margin) on Amazon than what they paid for it. You might get away with it 99 times out of a 100, but that 1 person they leaves you a negative feedback is what eBay really cares about. I have this problem with having my items fullfilled by Amazon with multichannel fulfillment, and it's one of the main reasons I'm going to stop selling on eBay completely in 2015.
          May I ask what you are using for ebay amazon multichannel fullfillment?
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  • Profile picture of the author Daniel J
    Sorry for any confusion- I was not referring to buying on Amazon and selling on Ebay (I agree- this is a bad idea.) I was referring to FBA- Amazon's fulfillment service. You send them YOUR inventory and they store it, pack it and ship it. It is like any other fulfillment service except that if you sell on Amazon, it's all automated. They also fulfill your inventory for ebay orders (or orders from anywhere.) Hope this adds more clarity.
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  • Profile picture of the author smokeB
    what is fda?
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  • Profile picture of the author DWaters
    That is FBA which stands for Fulfillment By Amazon. Some of the third party sellers on Amazon will use this system. It means that the seller will ship their items to an Amazon fulfillment warehouse (they have many locations), the items then get listed on Amazon.com. When a customer purchases the item it gets sent by Amazon to the customer. Any customer satisfaction issues are dealt with by Amazon. The seller gets paid by Amazon on a regular basis. A few of the benefits are that the seller ships to Amazon using their extremely low UPS rate, the customer will have confidence when placing an order because they see that their order is "fulfilled by Amazon" and people have a very high level of trust in Amazon and the items are listed on the marketplace site that has more buyer traffic that ANY site in the world.
    You do not need to drive any traffic because that is where most buyers already go.
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