Hi

Is anyone else finding that the wholesaler price is more or less what you would have to sell the item for? I've been looking at dog carriers, collars, beds ect and every site I've looked at the wholesale price to too high. I've looked at a few other items just looking around and they also seem the same as what you would sell on ebay for.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

You are facing two issues.

1. you are most likely not looking at genuine wholesale prices as wholesale works on volume pricing, and a price can't be given until the wholesaler knows the volume you are buying!

2. Even if you do find genuine wholesale prices, you are then going to try and compare those prices to a wholesale marketplace, so what you will find is that the prices will, if not be the same, be very close.

You're wasting your time trying to buy wholesale from one supplier and then try to sell those products for a profit to another wholesaler, which is what you are in essence trying to do.

Even in the event that you buy in a large enough volume to make some margin, you would have to be prepared to invest quite a lot up front for small gain in margin, and rely on volume sales and time to make money with wholesale.

Thanks for the reply. Im a little confused though - are you saying its not woth buying wholesale?

-------Even in the event that you buy in a large enough volume to make some margin, you would have to be prepared to invest quite a lot up front for small gain in margin, and rely on volume sales and time to make money with wholesale----------

That's pretty much how it is done on ebay, other sites don't have a s much competition, and you have the opportunity to make more margin, but of course that is balanced against lower traffic volume.

There are wholesale opportunities on ebay outside the big hot sellers that are completely saturated, people often refer to them as niche, but you don't really need a niche market, just one that is not saturated as the top selling products are.

You can also consider second hand items, they will cost you way less, and actually make you more margin that any wholesale price can, if you buy right!

Liquidated stock is also an avenue that presents opportunities on sites such as ebay, but again, you have to buy right and in enough volume to create margin.

You can make money on ebay, you just can't make it the way all the so called guides will tell you. All those e-books and garbage will do is tell you what you want to hear, not what you have to do!

5 days later

fudjj,

So what's the purpose of buying products at whole sale or dropshipping them if you say you don't make much money with them?

You can make money on ebay, you just can't make it the way all the so called guides will tell you.

What I have found from selling on eBay is, by the time you pay out all your fees from eBay you really don't gaining much or might be loosing when you are only profiting a few dollars more from products when selling wholesale/dropship items.

Plus if dropshipping product into eBay or other online sites you have to check daily to see if the items are still in stock or not been discontinued. Two days later I had a wholesaler who discontinued a very lot of his items. Good thing I caught this and not had sales from his items.

OK, let me start by saying that buying wholesale and using a Drop Shipping platform are two very different things. I know that Drop Shippers call themselves wholesalers, but they use that name as a marketing term knowing it generates an image among sellers of inexpensive prices, when some drop shippers couldn't be more removed from the word wholesale!

Sure, some suppliers are much better than others, but you would be better talking to other members involved in the industry as to who is better to deal with. jg42122 would be in a better position to give advice on that point that I am.

You've pointed out two key issues with drop shipping already, there are a few others, but no need to cover everything as you seem to have a pretty good idea that this type of format is not serving you well.

When you are talking about wholesale products, then you are talking about buying in volume, and your price per item will be governed by the quantity you are buying in.

Of course when you are marketing on sites such as ebay, wholesale price doesn't cut it on most occasions, as the marketplace is usually set at wholesale price or below on most items, certainly on the more popular items.

As you are in the states you could consider liquidated stock, just research what you are buying first before jumping in head first if you did decide to use that option.

What sort of products do you want to sell?

Hi That is my first question .

1.What do you want to sell?

2.Where do you want to sell it?

3.Do you have a tax id?

4. Do you want dropshippers or wholesale?

I can help you out but I have to know those things first.

a month later

I have been following some of your post and I'm very interested in selling on the net. I have been looking for years seems like to get started but don't know where to start. I'm very much into the outdoors and electronics. I don't have a tax id and would like to start out drop shipping. Thanks for the post there are very informative. May I add you as a friend?

Hi dalem07,

I would suggest if your wanting to go the dropship route I would get a tax id and only look for those dropshippers wanting a tax id. Typically they will be the lesser of evils running an honest dropship business. As far as you wanting to sell electronics, right now you probably would want to sell on other avenue's and not ebay because ebay is flooded with electronics. My suggestion to you is if you want to sell electronics then you should consider a niche market and not something as popular as PS3's or iPods.

10 days later

SERIOUS QUESTION!!

For those of you who have been making over 100k/year or more selling goods online. If you could think back to when you first started,, If you had 10 grand cash to buy one product in wholesale and resell it online,,, WHAT WOULD IT BE? WHAT have you been making a profit off of lately and what product do you make the most profit from?

either email me with your input or respond to this post and my other posts. THANKS

That's pretty much an open ended question, and really can't be answered simply.

We don't know what volume you are talking about buying in, and we don't know what margin you want to make, and the list goes on.......

Anyone answering a question with that sort of criteria to judge a response on would only be delivering a guess at best!

Dreamland......ain't going to happen, and anyone who offers to tell you how for a few dollars will be stealing your cash!

You can turn 10,000 into 20,000, but it takes time and it takes a serious plan and understanding of implementing that plan.

Best advice I can offer I think, start small, take 500 and jump into pond, learn to swim around a bit and see if you can dodge all the sharks. It will be invaluable experience for you, I'm sure.

O, Ok Im talking about trying to make at least a 5000$ profit from 10000$ within 2 weeks.

ok well i have an idea that may fit along those lines, but first i have to make clear that this, like any investments, has some risk to it. when i first joined salehoo i had talked with fudjj many times about the customer return ps3's. you would have to talk to fudjj for an exact quote but i believe that it is around your price range. i never could afford it and have had to put my ebay/ps3 business on hold for a while b/c i never had the proper amount of money to invest, but i did manage to turn $250 into $1000 in about 3 months.

what my advice is, is to buy the ps3 pallet from fudjj and there will be working ones, and non-working ones, i would sell the working ps3's on craigslist and maybe some on ebay if you cant move them fast enough locally. you will probably get slightly more off craigslist and will save you a ton on ebay fees,..........

sorry but my ps3 only allows me 2 enter so many words, idk why?

anyways, as for the broken ones, there are a couple ways to sell them, for one you can sell them as is on ebay for around $100 to $150 depending on the model, doing so you would take a slight loss per broken 1 but hopefully more than make it up from the working ones you sell. or i can show you how to part out those broken ones, doing so you would probably break even on the broken ones, and make your money off all the working ones,

now as i said before there is risk involved, though the supplier, fudjj, i doubt you would have to worry about, im sure any1 thats been a salehoo member for more than a week will vouch for fudjj.

the risk is that these are untested ps3's, and the working/non-working ratio may very. you would be better off consulting w/ fudjj those kids of details but if this intrests you, or any 1 else i would be more than happy to share my knowledge of parting out ps3's w/ any1 intrested, just thought i'd throw it out there

sorry just wanted to add that this is a huge investment, so i want to make sure to state, that you should do alot of research to make sure this is right for you, though i did make a lot of money off the broken ps3's, there is a lot of work involved if your going to part them out

2 years later

I tried to sell some latest electronic stuffs on E bay. It ended up, before I even sell any product, I got the bill of more than $50 from E bay.

I think E bay sucks.

I like the idea of selling on the flea market.

I'm starting by selling my products locally (Saturday market) first before I can afford to have my own website to sell from instead of E bay

I get this idea from salehoo forum. great!

Hello again Koroi,

Selling on flea markets is a good way to start. It allows you to save up enough capital to do serious trading online.

I would suggest exploring other online auction sites, such as Link hidden: Login to view and Link hidden: Login to view. Many of our members who have left eBay have moved on to sell there and some a doing really good too!

It would also be good to have online exposure through auction sites before you start your own website, that way you already have an online presence of some sort where new and potential customers can refer to your auction listings when they visit your website. Personally it's nice to have a form of reference when I buy from a new website (store) - it just gives that safe feeling :)

And like I mentioned in my reply to your other post, having both live listings and a webstore is a great way of redirecting traffic flow to either or both.

Cheers :)