Hello, I have just signed up and am quite confused. Do I have to sign up with all suppliers before i can sell their products on e-bay? Can I sell 1-2 items or do I have to buy a pallet of 1 item? any information would be greatly appreciated,I am new to this and am looking for some supplemental income.
If you are new to the marketplace I think the first thing that you should do is to spend some time researching different products and decide on some product lines that you think you might want to sell. One good way to do this is to spend some time on ebay's catagories and see what all is actually selling. It helps a great deal if you have a product that you are familiar with and also that you have an interest in. Once you think you have a product, the next thing you want to do is visit the 'completed listings' page (it's located on the ebay 'sitemap' page. Click on the catagory for your product and see what the item is actually selling for and how well. This will give you an idea about how much you will want to actually pay for the item and what you might be able to resell it for to make a potential profit on that particular item...
A good way to start is by selling items that you may have hanging around the house and no longer have a use for. Everybody has things stuck in their closet and attics, garage etc...By doing this you will gain some experience about how to list and what works and what don't. Plus you can gain some feedback at the same time....
I myself don't dropship. This is just my personal opinion from 10 successful years in the business..The main trouble with dropshipping is that you have no contol over the items you are selling. Delays in shipping and quality of the items can absolutely kill your business..Another downfall is that you are competeing with thousands of other sellers selling the same items from the same dropshipper..In addition most dropshippers are not giving you 'true wholesale' prices. They are just middle men buying from a wholesaler and then selling the item to you..As such you are paying too high a price to make any kind of sustainable profit...
Too, don't get sucked into thinking that you must sell the 'hot' items such as electronics, designer handbags and clothing..Most new sellers see these items selling on ebay for high prices and think they can get rich overnight. But in reality the sellers that you see selling these products and buying in huge quanitites and making only a very small profit on them.. They make their money by selling large quanities of the item and thus only need a small mark up to make an overall profit at the end of the week..In other words they only make a couple of dollars per item, but when they are selling hundreds of items per week they don't have to make a large profit on each item...
Keep in mind too that ebay is a 'below wholesale' market. It will be very hard to make any type of profit buying you items at a wholesale price unless you happen to find a good nitche market..(a nitche is a specialized item). You might want to think about buying goods from liquidators, closeout and surplus dealers. By doing this you can get the goods way below wholesale prices and inturn sell at very low prices and still make good profits on the items since you are paying pennies on the dollar for them...
For instant we buy truckloads of liquidated goods from deptment stores for around 5-7 thousand dollars.......I know that sounds like alot of money,,BUT, keep in mind that that truck has hundreds of items on it and the average resell value will probalby be about 25 grand...
True most people don't have 5 grand to buy a truck load, but you can also buy a pallet and do just as well. As a matter of fact you can buy a pallet of goods from Jimmy's group for around 400 dollars and it's listed at the top of all of the forum catagories on this site...
Another thing is to think about selling ordinary everyday items that people use everyday. These items sell alot better than most people think and you can make very good profits from them very easily...For instant, one of my daughters sells coffee mugs and kitchen accessories on ebay..Simple things to let the lady of the house dress up her kitchen..Place mats etc...She buys them at her local dollar and thrift stores for about a dollar to a dollar and a half and resells them on ebay for 14-21 dollars..Thats a very good profit..It's nothing special, but its something that people use everyday. And she makes about 3 grand a month on ebay selling these simple items....What I'm trying to say is to think 'outside of the box'. You don't have to be selling iphones or channel handbags to make money...