Yes, dropship affiliates adore auto parts product category. Though as I have mentioned commenting other similar case studies auto parts are not a great product category for online sales and miserable part of online shoppers buy car parts & accessories via the Internet.
On the other hand one can choose some niche to focus – you can dropship Yokohama tires or some motorcycle parts
Need another hint? Check product selection with some verified dropshippers and define 2-3 auto dropship product subcategories
You can also learn more about possible niches and revenues you can expect reviewing these cases:
Dash Kits Auto Accessory Dropshipper
Auto Accessory Dropshipper
Car GPS And Audio Dropshipper
Car Audio Dropshipper
HID Kits Dropshipper
Car Accessory Dropshipper
Auto Parts E-Commerce Site + data ~ $10,000 monthly sales
Professional, unique design, thousands of dollars in transferable site assets.
• URL: www.aorperformance.com
• Established: Mon Mar 31 2008
• Monthly Revenue (USD): 10,000
• Min Bid: $10 000
Description:
A fully automated and functioning Auto Parts website.
AOR Performance is an ecommerce site specializing in Automotive Aftermarket Parts. This is a very robust website with very unique features programmed into it. This is NOT a template site. All products can be drop shipped through a number of wholesalers with warehouses all over the country. Orders can be placed and fulfilled through a number of wholesaler websites.
The site has been designed with very robust features which require very little technical expertise to operate and makes the maintenance and updating of the site very simple. The site is built on the x-Cart shopping cart and numerous custom scripts and features have been added. Currently, the site is populated with parts from over 40 different manufacturers with a total part count of over 36,000. This means that the site consists of well over 36,000 pages all of which can be indexed and advertised on sites such as froogle for free.
This is NOT a template site. The site was built to mimic and compete with multi-million dollar auto sites such as JC Whitney and AutoAnything.com. Although adding individual products to your website is very simple with this site, it is also very time consuming and not very practical. One must consider that each product is made for a particular vehicle and may only match select years, makes, models, submodels, engine types, etc. The data for this site has been purchased through a data vendor which supplies all the necessary information for each product. This data can be automatically uploaded to the site each month with important changes and new products from the manufacturer. If a product is now being made that will fit a 2010 model for example, the site can automatically update your pages to reflect this change from the data supplier saving you months of data entry time.
The site uses a very user friendly search. Automotive products are extremely difficult to sell online due to the unique application of almost every part. In order to avoid customers purchasing the wrong items and dealing with the hassles of returns, the site is programmed to ask the exact questions needed to determine which parts fit the person’s vehicle. For example, if the user is looking for floor mats, the site will ask them what year, make, and model vehicle the floor mats are for before providing the results. A more complicated example would be if the user is looking for an air intake kit, the site would have to ask for the year, make, model, submodel, engine type, etc. in order to provide accurate results.
Perhaps the most useful and unique feature added to our site is the Ebay File Exchange script. We have added programming that makes it possible to download all or part of your product database into an excel spreadsheet which can instantly be uploaded into your Ebay store or for auction. You can upload thousands of products into Ebay complete with pictures, details, custom prices and shipping costs, shipping times, canned text, and more as well as complete fitment information allowing the customer to see exactly which vehicles the part was made for. The intuitive program produces great product titles optimized for good search placement within ebay.
Features:
• Automatic Populating Script- site currently setup to accept updated data from the data supplier on a monthly basis and update and add all products accordingly.
• Ebay File Exchange Script- Easily and quickly add thousands of products to your ebay store or for auction within a matter of minutes. These export features can also work for sites such as Amazon.com to maximize sales. (currently new Ebay File Exchange users limited to 1,000 listings per day)
• Google / Froogle Product Database Support- Automatically download a complete Google datafeed of your products to promote through the Google shopping network for free.
• Affiliate Programs Setup and on Hold- Accounts have been purchased and setup with Google Affiliate and Share-a-Sale affiliate programs. The $1,650 in setup fees for these programs has been paid and they are ready for the new owner to use.
• SEO scripts purchased and installed- Upgraded SEO support scripts have been purchased and integrated into the shopping cart making it easy to self perform SEO on a daily basis.
• Live chat script purchased and installed- Chat live with your customers through the live chat software which is self-hosted and has no recurring monthly fee.
• Custom Pricing Script- Automatically set your prices according to manufacturer and for a percentage above your cost that you determine.
• Data for 40 Manufacturers- The data for the 40 manufacturers has been purchased and paid for in full. Full rights to the data will remain with the domain name for the owner’s use. Data includes pictures, product details, required parts, fitment information, etc. Price paid for full use of data for these manufacturers is over $8,500.
• Hundreds of additional manufacturers and tens of thousands of additional products ready to be uploaded immediately- The new owner can opt to purchase data for thousands of additional products from different manufacturers and have the site populated instantly.
• Customer Gallery- Customers can post pictures of their cars to share with friends. Other users can comment on each gallery as well as tag them on numerous social bookmarking sites.
• X-Cart Gold shopping cart used and licensed for lifetime updates.
• Social bookmarking script- Social bookmarking links added to every page allowing users to provide you with free backlinks and SEO.
• Category, subcategory, and sub subcategory support.
• Support for all major credit cards, online checks, Paypal, and phone orders.
• Sitemap and SEO performed- $3,000 has been spent getting backlinks to the domain and making the vast database search engine friendly.
• SSL Certificate- SSL certificate has been installed for safe transactions and has approximately 1.5 years remaining. History
• In one month, I became a silver power seller on Ebay selling close to $8,000 a month with only 1,000 of the 36,000 products in my database listed.
• SEO was performed by eBrandz for 2 months on the domain name. Site has been optimized for SEO and seen favorable results.
Costs
• Website currently runs on a very robust dedicated server with 6mb RAM, RAID HDDs, and dual core processor. Cost: $189/month. This is overkill for current traffic.
• There are currently no advertising campaigns going on so there will be zero costs transferred to the new owner.
Operating Time
I haven’t done any marketing for the site for several months and haven’t added any new content. As it is, I spend about 30 minutes about 4 days a week fulfilling orders from the site and from the eBay sales.
New additions and updates to the product data are available on a monthly basis from the data vendor. If the new owner takes advantage of this service, the updating of the site is done automatically and takes absolutely no user interaction.
Profits
Through primarily ebay transactions, the site has generated revenues from $6k-10k monthly. Profits are contingent on which items sell, what the margin is set to on those items, etc. After selling fees, monthly expenses, and product costs, the site has made almost $1,000 in profit in it’s best month. However, this is all dependent on price settings, supplier relations, and which products are advertised and selling. It is highly likely that a dedicated buyer will far exceed these figures but they are only provided as examples and aren’t implying or guaranteeing future earnings.
Why am I selling?
This site has been an ambition of mine for several years. I’ve been working on it part time getting everything in order as my time and money allowed. The site and consequent Ebay listings were providing around $10,000 in sales per month for a few months while I worked it. However, I’m realizing that I just don’t have the knowledge of internet marketing or the ambition to learn it to take this site to where I had envisioned it going and I don’t have the money to spend for someone else to do it for me.
If you’re an internet marketing whiz and/or have the money to hire one, this site has the potential of competing with the multi-million dollar competitors out there such as JC Whitney and AutoAnything. There are thousands of auto part sites out there but very few of them provide a powerful and friendly user search and tens of thousands of products. Those sites that do tote these features are the multi-million dollar sites stated above.
Revenue Details:
Revenue is made through direct sales from the website itself and the ebay listings that the website creates from the data with its creation script. All orders are drop shipped from suppliers across the country.
Video games, consoles and accessories are 
