Great Stuff!

This is great stuff because firstly, you never get your hands dirty with anything except the money and secondly, you never have to have stock on hand which will cost you money to handle and store allowing you to work from the comfort of your own home without boxes of product turning your home into a warehouse facility.

So, let’s take a look at advantages of using a dropshipper first of all.

The Pros

· You don’t need a stock inventory which saves time and money storing it;

· No need for significant outlay investment to get started;

· Dropshippers are likely to be agreeable to sell “light bulk” units i.e. a smaller order size than a wholesaler/manufacturer – you will find suppliers willing to supply 1 unit per order;

· Allows you to concentrate simply on marketing and managing money without any need for involvement in logistics.

And now for the other side of dropshipping.

The Cons

· There are a lot of scams with supposed “dropshippers” taking your money for product which is never dispatched (meaning you have to refund your customer) or more frequently, sending product which does not match those ordered by the customer (again a refund situation);

· You may not be getting such a great discount on the goods to place your mark-up because you are not buying wholesale but in much smaller volume;

· You have no control over the packaging so there is no opportunity to create brand awareness through the products you sell;

· Different dropshippers will charge different shipping fees and these can make the whole proposition unworkable from your point of view – take care you know exactly what you will be charged by the dropshipper;

· Multiple dropshippers supplying multiple products can be expensive when it comes to the dropshipping fees being levied; and

· Delivery issues can arise and you will be out of the loop but your customer will be expecting you to deal with it.

Due Diligence:

You will need to source a reliable dropshipper, not necessarily the cheapest for you but in terms of a supplier delivering what is ordered when they say they will is priceless in the eyes of your customer and this reflects directly on YOU! If the order/delivery process is messed up, the customer will blame you and no-one else so you must develop a good working relationship with your dropshipper – look at this as being a team in partnership to get the goods where they need to be (the dropshipper’s job) and to collect the money and disburse it fast and efficiently (your job) – either one of you fails and you both fail, both do well and you will do very well! Keep in mind that small manufacturers love to work with eBay sellers and often time you have less competition online to deal with either

Sourcing Support: If you prefer to have someone reliable pre-screen manufacturers and suppliers, check out SaleHoo – that’s all they do … getting the stage ready for you to sell up a storm!

Wishing You Rippling Success! Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section!

Please check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions

Now it is time to look at developing yourself further as a professional eBay money maker and sourcing goods for sale which are new and customers will want now and again and again.

Identify Products.

Once you have identified which products are selling on eBay, and more importantly are selling today, you need to source the products in a cost effective way so you can achieve good margins and develop a consistent product range to sell. The major sources for products at prices which will allow you to make a good margin and make good income for yourself are the wholesalers, but where do you find them?

Understand how the distribution chain works in global terms.

The manufacturer makes the product and they will sell them in bulk or high dollar value transactions; they usually do not deal with the public as they are not interested in selling one DVD or one MP3 player – they are selling them in volume such as thousands or in high value transactions of tens of thousands of dollars. Wholesalers are the major customers of manufacturers.

Wholesalers buy in bulk from the manufacturers; sometimes they are one and the same but more usually they are not. A wholesaler will buy in bulk a range of products and by using their bulk-buying capacity are able to negotiate extremely low prices for the products they are carrying. Wholesalers will in turn sell to retailers at lower volumes or total transaction values with an enhanced price for the individual units compared to the manufacturer which is where they make their profits.

Retailers are customer facing i.e. they sell to the public and this includes you as an eBay auction seller – you are known as an eTailer in this instance because you are selling online and using eCommerce. Retailers apply a mark-up to the products they have sourced which the customer pays and this is where the retailer makes their profit.

As you can see at each stage of the chain, mark-up is added until a final price is established which the customer pays. Your challenge is to source products at the lowest cost, highest quality and in greatest demand which you can sell for the most profit and get them into the hands of customers paying you for them.

A form of wholesaler is a dropshipper; they will take your order after you have sold an item and ship it directly to the customer. You are responsible for selling the item and collecting the money as well as handling any customer issues; the dropshipper is instructed by you to send the item to the shipping address provided which bypasses you, direct to the customer and you pay the dropshipper for the product supplied leaving a profit which is yours.

Now you understand how the distribution supply chain works and where you stand in it, it is time to move on to the detail of how to get the most out of your wholesaler or dropshipper and make some serious money. This we will discuss next time.

Wishing You Rippling Success! Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comment section!

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions

There is NO SUBSTITUTE for a reputable, HIGH QUALITY SOURCE for products which are COMPETITIVE and IN DEMAND!

If you do not have products which will sell, are of great quality and which you can buy yourself at rock-bottom price you will quickly find you have no business!

The key to MAKING PROFITS is to buy cheap and sell high but you also have to make sure you can sell the items before you commit to investing BIG MONEY and also make sure you can get the goods as your NEED to supply CUSTOMER DEMAND.

This is where developing WHOLESALER relationships is CRUCIAL – I cannot state this strongly enough – YOU HAVE TO GET IT RIGHT!

SALEHOO IS A FANTASTIC WHOLESALER RESOURCE for any eBay professional because:

· They offer COMPETITIVE PRICING to you, the seller;

· They have a WIDE PRODUCT RANGE for you to select from and thus help develop your NICHE MARKET;

· They are RELIABLE in delivering goods to you and to your customers;

· They are constantly sourcing NEW PRODUCTS CUSTOMERS WANT with over 8,000 verified manufacturers and sources;

· They are HIGHLY SKILLED AND EXPERIENCED in supplying eBay sellers with over 65,000 very happy registered members.

If you select a wholesale partner who does not match these qualities, the downside for you and your business will be catastrophic! BAD WHOLESALERS will mean:

· You have to buy in bulk from them increasing your FINANCIAL RISK AND INVESTMENT;

· You get left with stock you CANNOT SELL;

· POOR SUPPORT for eBay professionals means you cannot be sure what you are being sold will be in demand by your customers;

· POOR QUALITY means you are left with disgruntled buyers which damages your FEEDBACK and eventually will DESTROY your business;

· The wholesale market is FULL OF SCAMS and new eBay sellers LOSE MONEY!

When you come to choose your wholesale partner here are some RED FLAGS to watch for in order to avoid losing money due to bad decision making or an OUTRIGHT SCAM:

1. The wholesaler does not provide a verifiable and real address;

2. They don’t have a telephone number or are unprofessional when they answer it;

3. They ask for your “sales license” – wholesalers do not sell to the public, they only deal with retailers and have no need for any licensing information from you;

4. They won’t let you have samples, especially if you are looking at a large order being placed with them;

5. They are slow in responding to email queries or won’t answer at all – look for their email address not being the same as their company website – all emails to Salehoo will use NAME@salehoo.com for instance;

6. They won’t take a credit card payment and worse, insist on a money transfer using Western Union or similar and even if sent to a different address or country – this is a SCAM; and

7. The website is using stock photos or content you have seen somewhere else – this is a copycat scam – AVOID!

Using a reputable wholesaler like SALEHOO will allow you to enjoy COMPETITIVE pricing, BRILLIANT products and CUSTOMER SERVICE for you and your customers – EVERYONE WINS!

Any stories to share? Would like to hear about your experiences with wholesalers!

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions!

Though there are millions of people selling stuff on eBay, bluntly many more simply do not feel they have the time or the experience to do it themselves. They really need someone else to do it for them and even if they are selling on eBay themselves, they know they can get a better price if they were to sell their items through a third party who really knows what they are doing; by now this is you and you will be their TA.

This is what a TA is; a seller who sells items on behalf of third parties and takes a commission off the sale proceeds for handling the listing and sale. A TA will handle much more than simple email communications with prospective buyers – they will deal with third party sellers by email, telephone and frequently, face-to-face as well as managing the sale of a much wider range of items you are unlikely to come across on your own account. Many TAs actually specialize in a niche field and reach a much more targeted audience which also strongly appeals to third parties selling items as they are getting the specialized knowledge not just of eBay but of the market itself and are much more likely going to get a higher price even after paying the commission to the TA.

The pros of operating as a Trading Assistant:

· You benefit by selling items for people who cannot sell them elsewhere or on eBay itself;

· You make money off someone else’s investment – you outlay no capital of your own and assume no financial risk;

· You gain access to free inventory which does need to be handled or stored by you;

· You increase the variety of items for sale on your eBay site which makes you more interesting to prospective buyers and increases cross-selling opportunities.

There are some things you are going to have to deal with which may initially present some challenges. You will need to at least handle the following:

· Establish a scale of charges or determine how much you can charge for your services;

· Draft a contract for handling the sale, what happens when the sale is made such as who is receiving the money (should be you), who pays and arranges for shipping to the customer and when you have to pay the seller you are acting for.

Working as a TA is also not always plain sailing, there are downsides to acting for others and these include:

· It is a TA’s reputation which is affected if something goes wrong, such as the item sold not being up to scratch – if anything goes wrong in the process, the buyer will be leaving negative feedback on YOUR profile;

· You ought to have some experience and knowledge of the item being sold or risk underperforming on the sale which will upset the seller – you are in a typical middle management position and caught between seller and buyer – a true middleman;

· You will have all the paperwork burden as well to deal with;

· This has been said once but it is worth repeating – it is your reputation on the line here and also your eBay account – you must make sure what is being sold is properly described and held out to the buyer, that the seller will sell it once you have found the buyer and the logistics of shipping take place promptly as you state and that you get the money in and disbursed as required – for a small commission is your reputation and peace of mind going to be worth it?

Overall, working as a TA can be a great deal of hard work but it is also a fantastic way to broaden your experience, improve your feedback and make some money at the same time. Although we are still working in the realm of second-hand goods, working as a TA will allow you to learn how to step your business up a notch at lightening speed.

Next we are going to look at how the serious professionals make millions of dollars in sales using wholesalers, dropshippers and other bulk merchants to deliver new products to the mass market.

Please note that more can be said about being a TA which I will cover at great lengths in my upcoming book ‘The Powerseller Freeway’! There I will share more tricks and insights on how you can use this stepping stone successfully while avoiding all the possible missteps.

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do it Solutions!

Hold on a moment – where is all this stuff going to come from?

Before we delve into the serious tools and resources available for product sourcing, let’s deal with some basics first and help you get your ‘feet wet’ in the business.

Initially, you are not going to have hordes of eBay buyers beating a path to your door; this comes in time and after a great deal of hard work. You need to build up some feedback ratings to demonstrate you really are a business that can be trusted to deliver. So, you should be starting off with some items which can be sourced very economically, will still turn you a healthy profit and most of all at this stage, give you some real experience and provide the foundations for your eBay reputation with positive feedback after a sale is completed.

There are plenty of places to start looking for stuff to sell on eBay.

Start with your own home; we all collect clutter and the longer we live the more clutter we accumulate, so it’s time to have a clean out and get rid of the unused or unwanted items such as clothes, toys the children have grown out of, gifts from a few Christmas’ ago which have never been out of the box, all those home improvement tools which never got used beyond a DIY project. Be disciplined and be ruthless; you get two major benefits from doing this – a clean, uncluttered house and money in your account with some positive feedback!

Unless you are going to sell the shirt off your back, this avenue will eventually run dry and you will need to cast your net farther afield. Good sources of items to sell are yard sales; these are great because they are always happening in your neighborhood, especially in the summer months but even in winter you get garage sales too. This gives you the opportunity to always have a stream of items available for sale so your eBay site is never static and potential customers will check back to your auctions frequently to see what you have. Another advantage is that the owners selling the stuff are usually just looking to get it out of their home and frequently are not aware of just how valuable the items are – if they were, they’d be selling it on eBay to begin with!

There are also classified ads in the local newspapers and free press which litter our driveways and mailboxes – these are an excellent resource for locating items, particularly larger value items for listing. You should be able to command a higher price than is being asked for in the ad because you will be offering the item to a much larger audience using eBay than is possible with an ad in a classified section. If you are collecting your paper from the store, check out the cards usually littering notice boards with items for sale too!

Going online, you will find a great website called Craigslist – this is the granddaddy of online classified ad websites and you can browse by area and by category for everything from a house to a trinket. Be careful with Craigslist and indeed any ad which needs you to travel to somewhere else; always exercise caution when meeting someone you don’t know and take someone with you or meet in a public place as well as protect your contact information, especially your address.

By the time you have completed your first sales using these resources you will have learned a great deal about how the eBay selling system is working and more importantly, how you are operating – you will learn very quickly what works for you and where you feel your direction on eBay lies. At this point we are simply learning to swim and gain valuable experience and an online reputation; once you have achieved this you will be ready to move on to the next step up the ladder; operating as a Trading Assistant.

Thank you for stopping by. I am looking forward to your thoughts and questions. Wishing you rippling success!

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions!

By the time you have attracted a potential buyer to your auction site, you have invested a great deal of the time and money required to promote your business. Now you must seek to maximize that investment; if you have a potential customer, soon to become a customer in fact, you should do everything possible to create as much value for them as you possibly can.

How do you do this?

The most effective strategy is to carve out a niche for yourself and not to spread yourself too thin. By concentrating on a narrower range of products, you maximize and focus your concentration upon that product area; your knowledge will be so much better and your marketing efforts can be completely focused on promoting a narrow product range.

What drives these cost savings and increases the opportunity for cross-selling of related but different products is known as synergy. For a small eBay business, you must use synergy within niche marketing to ensure you are absolutely concentrated on a specific target audience with very specific product offerings. Then you also will be able to develop far more effectively the cross-selling and repeat business opportunities which are available as a consequence. This again in return will create a happy customer.

Let’s take a practical example.

Selling DVD’s – the DVD market is huge and though one major product, it is very broad catering to an extremely wide range of tastes with numerous different movie genres, documentaries, travel and education as well as home DVD productions for weddings and special occasions. For a newcomer entering the market, you cannot possibly compete across all forms of the market without an enormous investment of capital to promote yourself and have the buying power with suppliers to offer competitive prices.

Narrow the range you are offering to, say, popular TV series boxed sets; all you offer are boxed sets of current popular TV shows such as House, Stargate SG-1 or Two and Half Men. Now you are not promoting new film releases or need to compile and promote movie marketing information for such a very wide sector – you are focusing your marketing and promotion upon existing TV shows and that you are selling complete seasons as boxed sets. You have dramatically reduced your product offering and now have focused all your marketing on “boxed sets”.

By selling only “boxed sets”, you are able to hold an intelligent negotiation with the suppliers – you will obtain better pricing and terms from them because you have cut out the rest of the lines they offer and can show you are only selling a specialized part of their line. More than this, you only need to track new boxed set releases into the market and maybe current developments with the popular shows you are offering.

By building your business upon a niche you specialize in, you will come to dominate the mindset of your prospects and customers; they think “I want to buy XYZ Season” and automatically they are more likely to think of you and come back for more. They see SG-1 Season 1 on sale, you have the opportunity to cross sell Season 2 or combine them as ‘special offers” and discounts for multi-buys.

Even better, as you grow and you negotiate ever more competitive pricing from your suppliers you gain competitive advantage by being able to undercut the general competition who then find they cannot compete against you at your pricing levels nor on your knowledge of the products and that micro-market. You raise barriers to entry by exploiting and dominating your niche market.

Please check out a very entertaining short video on finding your niche HERE – in this example to follow what  already has been proven to sell (in this example DVD’s) will allow you to find your own niche.

In our next piece, we are going to be looking at how you source your products and the resources and suppliers beyond Craigslist and yard sales who are vital to growing an eBay business including dropshippers, wholesalers and other product sources.

Wishing you rippling success! Your comments and questions are always welcome!

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions!

Why are so many hard-working eBay sellers not making the profits which are there?

The simple, honest answer is because most eBay sellers are not researching their product ranges and when they do, they are not looking at what is selling today and tomorrow – they focus on what was sold yesterday, last week or last month. This is a crucial error I see time and time again. You must make sure you do not fall into the same trap.

I have mentioned two excellent resources which analyze sales listings on eBay and will tell instantly from the millions of transactions which ones are selling high profit products and the relative and actual volumes. If you are serious about identifying which products are selling right now you need to use one or both of them – TERAPEAK and HAMMERTAP.

When you know what products are selling right now on eBay and the prices being achieved, you give yourself a powerful strategic advantage when it comes to placing your own listings. Knowing what customers are buying today is much more useful than what customers bought yesterday or last week. By keeping yourself in the loop with which listings are successful and the volumes which are being moved you are able to plan very effectively.

Many ebayers develop their product lines using what they believe customers will buy because they themselves buy the product or have some emotional affinity for a brand or type of product. Intuition has its place in business, but if you are going to develop a business which will consistently deliver products in demand to thousands of customers, you have to apply more than gut instinct to the situation.

By developing a rigorous approach to which products carry the most margin and will sell, you increase your turnover of initial capital and return greater profits. You must carefully assess what the market is doing before you list your products for sale, and ideally you are looking for what customers will want the moment you list them … and the day after … and the day after that too!

By keeping your pulse on consumer demand, you can plan your listings so you know what time and day it’s best to place the initial listing, how long you want it to run and what quantities you are going to commit to (if this option is available). This is a vital point as well; you discover a great selling product only to list a volume of one – but in fact 10 customers want to buy this product – you may have made some profit but you lost out on 9 more sales!

In our next report we are going to be looking at how you must focus your product range not only on those which are going to sell but also building a related sales range which provides great cross-selling opportunities and allows you to shut out the competition by building your own niche in the market. Hope this post was of help to you.

Wishing You Rippling Success! I am looking forward to your comments

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions!

Hold on a second – shouldn’t you be selling terrific products that your “CUSTOMERS” want to buy!

This is the secret of success on eBay – selling what your customers are looking for – what you like or dislike is not the point – it’s your CUSTOMERS!

The question every successful eBay seller asks is “What’s Hot!” – and more than this – what will sell tomorrow, the day after, next week and next month!

OK, you’re probably asking how you go about finding SUPER HOT products to add to your sales range and I’m going to help you achieve this CONSISTENTLY time after time because THIS is what you REALLY NEED if you are going to make HIGH PROFITS using eBay.

There are two ways you can perform research for sourcing products, the hard way and the RIGHT way!

The hard way is to spend your time looking at as many other websites that are selling such as Amazon or indeed, eBay sellers themselves but the information you are going to be collecting will be OUT OF DATE by the time you collect it.

The RIGHT way to research what is going to sell FAST and MAKE YOU PROFITS is to let the professionals do the searching and analyzing so you only deal with the RESULTS.  There are two major sources of information on which PRODUCTS YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST CHOOSE and they are:

TERAPEAK and  HAMMERTAP

Now I am going to SHOW you HOW to use Terapeak and Hammertap to SOURCE FANTASTIC PRODUCTS which will SELL!

Both of these solutions will show you which products are selling RIGHT NOW – all the hard work has been done for you with tens of thousands of products and millions of eBay sales analyzed so you know EXACTLY which products will sell for the MAXIMUM PROFIT.

Imagine you are able to see what happens with EVERY eBay listing – which listings sell quickly, which products don’t sell and MOST IMPORTANTLY which products are SELLING FAST AND FOR THE MOST MONEY!  Think about how VALUABLE knowing which HIGH MARGIN products are HOT on EBAY!  Look at how much you can save by INCREASING your sales listings of products which are selling and DECREASE COSTS BY BULK BUYING while ignoring the stagnant selling lines.

This is what Terapeak and Hammertap will both give you – INSIDER MARKET KNOWLEDGE.

NO more wasted products tying up your eBay listings; NO MORE $$ WASTED ON LISTINGS!

ALL you SELL is what your customers want to buy and are prepared to PAY YOU for!

LEARN MORE NOW and follow the links through to TERAPEAK and HAMMERTAP and follow the instructions – the FIRST LESSON in running a SUCCESSFUL EBAY BUSINESS IS PRODUCT RESEARCH and this is far too IMPORTANT to leave to chance.

Wishing You Rippling Success!

Check out my newest venture at:

We Can Do It Solutions

http://wecandoitsolutions.com

What drives the wholesalers to the websites such as eBay?
To compete in the market, it is essential to market the complete range of your products to a range of niche markets that could be beyond your immediate reach, be it the physical distance, or the resources required to reach them by advertising, etc. In addition, these suppliers or manufacturers might have products or services that could be just what you were looking for, but not available in the market you frequent. Drop shipping option gives the supplier or manufacturer an opportunity to market their products to a worldwide customer population effectively. Global popularity of certain online auctions websites help to get the best price for the products advertised.

A word of caution!
The trick is to find companies that have a proven track record to conduct business in a reliable and ethical fashion. There is nothing worse than to sell an item on eBay that then is no longer in stock or arrives weeks after the order was originally placed on your site at your customer’s doorsteps. This, for sure, is a recipe for looming negative feedback. Research is the key, and if time is not of the essence you may want to search eBay and the rest of the World Wide Web to find drop shipping friendly companies on your own. However, if time is of essence, I have successfully worked with SaleHoo – a company that specializes in supporting you to find verified, pre-screened drop-shippers, wholesalers, liquidators and manufactures.

Wishing You Rippling Success!

Svenja