June 11th, 2009
eBay sellers have a choice of product sourcing that depends on their revenue intentions and goals:
- sell on eBay your unneeded home stuff
- sell on eBay products you buy at garage, yard and other sales
- sell on eBay products you buy wholesale from eBay & other wholesale sources incl. directly from China
- sell on eBay items you get from VERIFIED dropshippers – expect to get big ticket items to sell on eBay from this source.
I have capitalized the word ‘verified’ as it is the most important thing to pay attention to while selecting your product sourcing partner Just go to Google and enter any product you need a dropshipping supplier of – you will get hundreds if not thousands of merchant listings, but 99% are crap – overpriced, poor dropship affiliate support, out of the business already etc…
And you need a reliable, active dropshipper with competitive prices – otherwise your plans to make money on eBay selling products there are destined to fail from the start.
Online market gets highly competitive. A few years back there were 1-2 top players – providers of verified dropshippers and wholesalers lists. Now I personally know of 8-10. But I will list (in no particular order) four – reliable companies that stay in this business long enough to understand what eBay sellers and drosphip affiliates really need:
1. Doba
- eBay Certified Service Providers: one of 30 companies that are eBay certified
- Inc. 500 List company – among the fastest growing private companies in the US
- Selection of over 1 200 000 products
- Free trial
- Free eBay training
- A few level program – for eBay beginners and advanced sellers
Learn more…
2. Salehoo
- Over 8 000 pre-screened suppliers for any product category
- Supplier list includes wholesalers, dropshippers, manufacturers, etc.
- Over 65 000 happy customers
- Lots of free guides – get as a bonus with their database access
Learn more…
3. Worldwidebrands
- Oldest and top dropship market player
- Over 8 000 000 wholesale products
- Instant Market Research tool to spot top products to sell online
- Free training (about 20 videos and 20 e-books)
Learn more…
4. Dropshipping Wholesalers
- Cheapest list of verified dropshippers
- Over 500 000 products to dropship from top brands
- Selected product suppliers from China
- Free education e-books
Learn more…
Posted in Dropship, eBay | No Comments »
February 27th, 2009
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.
Posted in Dropship, eBay | 1 Comment »
November 25th, 2008
There are tons of paid third party tools and services (even eBay pushes Marketplace Research by Terapeak priced $24.95 per month) that promise you to show what products are hot on eBay.
But the fact is that those tools get most of their data from FREE eBay sources that we list below. Why should you pay for something that you can get for free?
All tools allow you to browse listings by category! Make a nice combination of the tools use and you are likely to find a few hot products in no time.
1. Completed Listings
2. Popular Products
3. eBay Pulse
4. Popular Terms
5. Popular Keywords
Posted in Directory of Ideas, eBay | No Comments »