eBay

I think this is the wrong place to be asking this!

You are way better off creating your own website and finding high ROI items to dropship.

Outside of high ebay fees and tough standards, you have to account for how much true profit you are going to do deal with. Most of the time you'll find yourself dealing with products that have 25% margins BEFORE ebay takes 10% of that away. It's fairly easy to optimize ebay since they have a momentum based formula when it comes to selling.

It would also help build credibility to your dropship vendors if you have a real website. Probably use a platform like volution or something to get started.

DONT dropship unless you personally know the personally know the person that is shipping out your item.

At the end of the day, if the items aren't of quality, or they aren't shipped out it is on YOU not your drop shipper. Try buying items in bulk at wholesale prices and then selling them on ebay. That way you are in total control.

Another bit of advice, stay away from fakes! It may seem tempting because of the low prices and huge markups, but eBay will literally tear you apart and you can kiss your PayPal away before you can say "But, but, but..". Stick to genuine items, make sure you know the quality of them, and buy low sell high!

Thanks honestim,

It's going to take a lot more thought than I imagined to make the decision.

I like your plan. I started like this: First I opened a buyers account and began to build a good feedback reputation. I bought stuff that I would buy anyway from ebay sellers. Like, printer ink, paper,batteries anything I would normally buy in a store and I still do.

If you don't have much money, buy cheap stuff like: base ball cards, coupons, stamps, anything cheap just to get 10 or 20 positive feedbacks.

Watch how sellers pack and ship and learn by their mistakes and how they do things right.

After that, register as a "seller". Check your stuff and see what sells the most on ebay. Start with stuff that you can afford to lose if the bidding does not go high enough for you.

After you get some experience, auction or sell your better stuff. When you run out of stuff to sell, sell other people's stuff for a fee.

Learn how to buy stuff on ebay cheap and resell later for a profit.

There's a lot of stuff you can do. Jump in and try it. It's a lot of fun. Just learn the rules, do things right and stay out of trouble.

Drop shipping is a lot more risky and complicated so I would stay away from that for right now.

There are a lot of good books you can read on the subject too.

There are not many ebay fans in this group so don't expect too much information from them because ebay is small potatoes compared to IM.

For me, ebay is a good side income in my niche for right now but I would not want to make it a full time career. The advice from the other posters is where the big money is.

Hope this helps,
John

In stead of drop shipping, I like to use Fulfillment By Amazon. You know it will be delivered when promised, and you don't have to warehouse anything.

Thanks for all the advice. I'd prefer to stay away from Amazon as it's a lot harder to manage by the looks of it.

Ebay is saturated with low price items. If you are going to sell on Ebay, you need to find high dollar items, $100 or more, with a good profit margin built in. Ebay fees will eat you alive if you are not careful.

I believe it is better to start your own website and promote affiliate products or create your own product.

Hi,

Why not sell on both an ebay store and e commerce store?

The problem you have with ebay are the fees, insane buyer protection, and a feedback system that can strip you of seller status overnight and potentially harm your business. The competition is definitely competitive, low margins etc.

One thing ebay does provide is traffic to your listings and plenty of it, which is something that will more than likely be lacking in a new e commerce store.

Selling an item on ebay is a great way to direct that customer to your online store.

As a basic example, you can send promotional material with the item you sell on ebay, promoting your e commerce store, offering a discount, loyalty card etc etc.

This kind of system works fantastically well with sticky items, and is a good way to get that traffic from ebay to your own site.

I use both Fulfillment by Amazon and multichannel Fulfillment to Ebay and it works well...but it can be expensive, as Fluff mentioned, you really need to look at your fees.

If you want to make a lot of money and earn more than 5 or 10% profit use this strategy:

Import products from China and resell them on eBay.

For example this seller from USA is selling product from China.
8GB SPY CAMERA PEN HD 720P HIGHEST QUALITY CAMCORDER DV | eBay

Same product on Alibaba:
720P Camera Pen products, buy 720P Camera Pen products from alibaba.com

Always offer great customer service, the customers will keep on coming back!

Try to understand the total process first. Give more times to find out the pros and cons of every method. Though the way of learning is "learning through mistake". Just start it, wish for the best.