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.

We have researched the potential of diaper bags drop shipping recently. What other buzz products might fit drop shipping business model (at the moment we are not focused on the product sourcing – there are service providers that will dropship nearly any product or brand for you; we are focused on spotting attractive product niches)? What about feng shui drop ship? For those unfamiliar with feng shui, it:

(pronounced fehng-shway in English) is an ancient Chinese system of aesthetics believed to utilize the Laws of both heaven (astronomy) and Earth (geography) to help one improve life by receiving positive Qi (an active principle forming part of any living thing).

There are millions of people worldwide who accept the system principles, and, as a result, it is an attractive market niche. Feng shui books are probably your drop ship business choice…

Fast research shows that feng shui system is in the crisis like our economy. Another check shows that feng shui books demand is steady over years and our product idea might be not so bad… Let’s go on. We would like to see the demand broken by keywords – to tell the truth, I am not impressed:

feng shui

Now it is time to check the competition – if it is tough for our main keyword – forget about feng shui dropship through your own website, but probably you should test it on eBay. Well, the competition scene looks attractive – it will be not hard to climb to the top of search engines for a number of feng shui dropship long tail keywords. But when you are even on Google top it is not yet a guarantee that your visitors will turn into customers. You need to learn how to convert them

Despite low competition I am concerned with low demand. So, you see that it is hard to be sure if it is going to be a profitable product niche until you try it.

If you want to increase your online dropship business success you need many things taken into consideration:

• reliable wholesale dropshippers,
• online marketing techniques,
• multi channel promotion,
• cash flow control,
• top notch customer service,
• design and coding basic skills,
• copywriting skills,
• experience to manage part or full time staff,
• many more…

Today I would like to discuss one more essential brick in your successful online business wall – product selection.

Products you choose should be suitable for online sales – no need to touch or smell to buy, wide selection to beat offline competition, lower prices than offline stores offer.

One more thing that you should always keep in mind – products that are on the demand rise right now and your belief that this buzz is likely to grow and last.

Sample – Apple iPhone. Dropship Apple iPhones and accessories right now and you are nearly guaranteed a nice dropship business income.

The demand is huge What you need to meet that demand? Just to take a liitle part of that huge iPhone market share? Yes, products – Apple iPhones.

Go to spot wholesale dropship merchants to these two places – this one and this. They both offer catalog preview – so no need to spend your money before you make sure they list the products you need. I would definitely start with this step keeping in mind that Apple has some restrictions about who distributes iPhones and how.

Even iPhone accessories could be great for generating lots of online sales, and I am 100% sure that the products suppliers do have huge selection of iPhone accessories

If you have some doubts about dropship business potential – and lots of people do not believe it is possible to make money online selling products that you neither own nor store – then your starting point is out 40+ detailed dropship business case studies