tomlikesbeetroot
Newbie
- Aug 5, 2020
- 6
- 4
Some of you may have seen my post on this thread where another user is selling his guide on ebay dropshipping, this post is meant to detail my success with ebay dropshipping. https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/we-make-2k-daily-on-ebay-what-about-u.1193760/page-62#post-14033927
Firstly I am not in anyway promoting the guide, its just how I got started with ebay dropshipping. There are many free resources available on youtube etc, even some paid guides available. Personally I purchased the guide because of the telegram bot, however the products suggested by the bot haven't generated any sales for me. I'm also not selling in the US, so the tools in the guide don't work on my country variant of ebay so I had to find my own alternatives.
Most people know the basic premise of ebay dropshipping by now, find an item on amazon or aliexpress etc that is selling at a higher price on ebay and list it.
So how did I go after my first month? Well as per the screenshot attached I've done $2928 in sales. My average profit margin on this was just under 10%, somewhere around $250-300 in profit after ebay/paypal fees. I've had an account with ebay for years but never done much selling so was able to list up to 200 products or value of $12,000.
A couple of newbie mistakes caused me to make a loss on a couple of sales. I had 2 products listed that were clearance items from suppliers, I didn't realize until I'd made a sale on these that they were offered as 'in store' purchase only. As I am trying to buildup my positive feedback I didn't want to refund the buyers, so on one item I purcahsed from another supplier at a higher cost so lost about $5 on the sale, another I paid someone on airtasker to go into the store and purcahse for me and send to the seller, lost about $15. Now I've pretty much cancelled all my listings from these retail suppliers to avoid such issues and sticking with amazon/aliexpress.
A couple of big profits came from 3 items.
Limited time Cashback offer of up to 25% on a certain amazon item with value around $90, sold 2 of these on ebay for $115, so pocketed an extra $40 in cashback on top of the profit margin.
Another item had a $50 discount with coupon code, I sold it on ebay for $165 and only paid $99 for the item after using the code.
These kinds of deals are probably hard to track for established sellers with many listings, but a great way for those of us starting out to target some higher profit margins.
What's my plan from here?
My sales have dropped to almost nothing over the past few days at the end of month. I need to try and find out why, and resolve this. My suspicion is that it is due to the products I was listing being considered high risk, I started to list a few bigger ticket items around the $100 mark, electronics and such, then my sales dropped off.
I'm unsure if I should cancel these listings and then find some more cheap stuff to replace it or not, open to advice here. My next seller level evaluation date is in 3 weeks time, and projected level is 'above standard', so hopefully this helps.
Secondly is keyword/listing optimization. I've got some products listed where I am cheapest but not getting any sales, where I see competitors making sales of the same product at higher prices. I plan to study the heck out of their listings to figure out why customers are choosing to pay more just to buy from them (this may be linked to my first point and cassini is sticking all my listings to the bottom of the list).
My side plan is to branch out into my own shopify store using the sales from ebay to point me in the right direction for products. Most of my sales have been random kitchen gadgets and such which I'm not really sure would work well on a shopify store, stuff like a garlic press I think the customers already have a need so they jump on ebay/amazon to find a cheap one, I don't think this is the kind of stuff they would buy based on social media marketing.
What I have identified is one product that is fairly viral in the US on youtube/reddit etc, but noone is selling it locally in my country. I think there is an opportunity to piggy back off their marketing and target my sales locally, lots of people here are willing to pay extra for products in country for faster shipping times.
They don't offer dropshipping, but sell in bulk at approximately 50% of the price the product sells for. I plan to import a small quantity to test out the local market. Another seller is making about 30 sales per month on ebay for this product and selling at 4x what my wholesale price will be. If the shopify store doesn't take off I will undercut him to clear out my stock.
Firstly I am not in anyway promoting the guide, its just how I got started with ebay dropshipping. There are many free resources available on youtube etc, even some paid guides available. Personally I purchased the guide because of the telegram bot, however the products suggested by the bot haven't generated any sales for me. I'm also not selling in the US, so the tools in the guide don't work on my country variant of ebay so I had to find my own alternatives.
Most people know the basic premise of ebay dropshipping by now, find an item on amazon or aliexpress etc that is selling at a higher price on ebay and list it.
So how did I go after my first month? Well as per the screenshot attached I've done $2928 in sales. My average profit margin on this was just under 10%, somewhere around $250-300 in profit after ebay/paypal fees. I've had an account with ebay for years but never done much selling so was able to list up to 200 products or value of $12,000.
A couple of newbie mistakes caused me to make a loss on a couple of sales. I had 2 products listed that were clearance items from suppliers, I didn't realize until I'd made a sale on these that they were offered as 'in store' purchase only. As I am trying to buildup my positive feedback I didn't want to refund the buyers, so on one item I purcahsed from another supplier at a higher cost so lost about $5 on the sale, another I paid someone on airtasker to go into the store and purcahse for me and send to the seller, lost about $15. Now I've pretty much cancelled all my listings from these retail suppliers to avoid such issues and sticking with amazon/aliexpress.
A couple of big profits came from 3 items.
Limited time Cashback offer of up to 25% on a certain amazon item with value around $90, sold 2 of these on ebay for $115, so pocketed an extra $40 in cashback on top of the profit margin.
Another item had a $50 discount with coupon code, I sold it on ebay for $165 and only paid $99 for the item after using the code.
These kinds of deals are probably hard to track for established sellers with many listings, but a great way for those of us starting out to target some higher profit margins.
What's my plan from here?
My sales have dropped to almost nothing over the past few days at the end of month. I need to try and find out why, and resolve this. My suspicion is that it is due to the products I was listing being considered high risk, I started to list a few bigger ticket items around the $100 mark, electronics and such, then my sales dropped off.
I'm unsure if I should cancel these listings and then find some more cheap stuff to replace it or not, open to advice here. My next seller level evaluation date is in 3 weeks time, and projected level is 'above standard', so hopefully this helps.
Secondly is keyword/listing optimization. I've got some products listed where I am cheapest but not getting any sales, where I see competitors making sales of the same product at higher prices. I plan to study the heck out of their listings to figure out why customers are choosing to pay more just to buy from them (this may be linked to my first point and cassini is sticking all my listings to the bottom of the list).
My side plan is to branch out into my own shopify store using the sales from ebay to point me in the right direction for products. Most of my sales have been random kitchen gadgets and such which I'm not really sure would work well on a shopify store, stuff like a garlic press I think the customers already have a need so they jump on ebay/amazon to find a cheap one, I don't think this is the kind of stuff they would buy based on social media marketing.
What I have identified is one product that is fairly viral in the US on youtube/reddit etc, but noone is selling it locally in my country. I think there is an opportunity to piggy back off their marketing and target my sales locally, lots of people here are willing to pay extra for products in country for faster shipping times.
They don't offer dropshipping, but sell in bulk at approximately 50% of the price the product sells for. I plan to import a small quantity to test out the local market. Another seller is making about 30 sales per month on ebay for this product and selling at 4x what my wholesale price will be. If the shopify store doesn't take off I will undercut him to clear out my stock.
