Reselling Products on eBay
The easiest and fastest way to start your online business is to join eBay and launch your own auctions. You will get your potential buyers checking what you have to offer in no time.
Before you do that you need to check the auction’s fee structure. And this your first step to understand that eBay services are NOT cheap – it will take you some auctions closed without any bid to realize how fast eBay fees accumulate.
Nonetheless there are thousands of eBay Powersellers who make their living off eBay – I guess the number is declining and in the past there were a few times more of successful eBay entrepreneurs. There are a number of reasons of this decline – growing competition (= shrinking margins), growing eBay fees, and most recently – financial crisis.
But in my opinion, eBay membership is a must for any online dropship affiliate entrepreneur:
- keep updated of new products hot selling on the market at this moment (Shopping.com top searches is also a good source),
- test new dropship products (demand, competition, margins, seasonality, etc – maybe it makes sense to buy wholesale and increase your margins),
- test your dropshippers performance (no minimums, prompt shipment, returns handling, communication, etc).
Yes, reselling products on eBay is still a viable option to do money online.
How do you define what products at least potentially are good sellers? It is a few steps algo.
1. Your first step is observing eBay Pulse for a long time. My belief is that you should check it daily and make notes for a couple of weeks. Begin with narrowing to some product categories to observe. Then make notes of products and product lines in those categories.
2. Next step is to check your list of products with Google Insights for Search (including Rising Searches) – see general demand for these products outside eBay
3. Back up this demand data with some keyword research tools - WordTracker, Wordze, etc…
4. Set relations with some verified dropshippers
5. Launch just a few auctions (with professional template) to see if your previous calculations are correct
6. Grow to the status of a Powerseller
7. Launch eBay Store and your own website selling the products in addition to eBay auctions.
You are welcome to check our online product research here:
Jigsaw Puzzle Drop Shippers
Coffee Dropship
Feng Shui Drop Ship
Diaper Bags Dropshipper
Though we did not target eBay as our key sales channel those posts should be of some practical value – you will see step-by-step market analysis of this or that product.