Let’s suppose you have been searching for a work at home job opportunity for some time. I am betting you have probably heard about selling items on eBay and have toyed with the idea of selling items from your attic, garage and basement. But have you thought of a drop ship business?
To build a drop ship business on eBay, the key is to develop a relationship with one or more drop ship wholesalers. The obvious advantages of drop ship companies are: you don’t handle shipping and, you don’t have to warehouse any inventory. But a drop ship business also has one other advantage: It’s one of the few businesses where you can actually turn a profit before you have to pay for the inventory! Once you sell an item you can pass the customer’s information on to the drop shipper who will fill your order. Some drop shippers will even use your company information on the shipping material so when the product arrives at your customer’s front door, they will have no idea that your company didn’t send it. The drop shipper will package, label, and ship the products that you sell, allowing you more time to work on other aspects of your business.
Drop Shipper Relationship Can Be Hard To Develop
Drop shipping has become one of the most popular ways of trading on eBay in the last few years, but it could be hard for the new eBay seller to find a drop shipping wholesaler who will do business with a newcomer. This can become an obstacle at first. You must work to establish a relationship with one or more wholesale dropshippers in order to become successful. Yet, at the beginning, most companies will require you to create a history with them before they will give you the best prices or allow you to carry a balance on your account. You may be required to pay for the items that your customers order before they are shipped. This can sometimes hamper your ability to ship in a timely manner. If you provide a credit card for purchasing the items from the drop ship business you can insure faster service and eventually, the drop shipper will fill your orders and bill you for them later. It takes a history of successful transactions to build a good working relationship with a drop shipping wholesaler.
Pricing Can Be Difficult for Beginners
Pricing an item for sale can be the number one headache for a new drop ship seller . It’s important to consider ALL the fees when listing items on eBay As an example, you might sell a GPS from one of your drop ship wholesalers for $129 plus $4 shipping for a total of $133. You could list the item on Ebay for $140 for $7 profit, but after subtracting Paypal fees and eBay listing fees, you could actually end up losing money.
To avoid having your profits being eaten by fees, you will need to develop a formula to insure you always make a profit. When you set up your eBay auctions, make sure that your reserve price is set higher than the price that the drop shipper will be charging you for the item. A good rule of thumb is to mark the item up 10-15%. The plan, of course, is to earn more than the item costs you! Always do some research on the item you are selling, to see what the item has sold for in the completed listings and what the item is selling for in another eBay auction.
Watch For Trends On Seller Reports
Drop shipping wholesalers offer thousands of products, but you want to select only a few to sell. To determine what products you should focus on, check the drop shipper’s site for reports and information on current trends. Wholesale dropshippers offer good advice on the products that are selling the best each month. You can also check eBay’s Seller Reports to see what eBay says is selling well. Another way of knowing what people are buying is to use Paypal Shops to see where people are shopping and where they are using their Paypal accounts to buy. This should give you some idea what products you should focus on for the month.
Customer Service Is Key
When building your drop ship business remember to offer your customers reliable customer service. Make sure your contact information is correct so that a customer may contact you if there is a problem with an order. Bridge the gap between the customer and the drop ship company and respond as quickly as you can to both parties to resolve customer issues. Good customer service will get you great feedback on Ebay and keep customers coming back to buy more. But a bad reputation will lose almost all your sales. If someone gives you negative feedback, you will feel the pain almost immediately, as your rating will go right to the top of your user page for every buyer to see. Buyers won’t want to do business with you if you “took a month to deliver the item”, or you had “bad communication and sent an item that was damaged.”
Drop shipping wholesalers are available to fuel your ebay drop ship business. If you are motivated to do the research to find “hot” niche products and manage the relationship between your customers and your drop shipping companies through good customer service, you can build a very profitable online business.
