Could This Be Worth My Investment?

[garthor]

Hello Everyone,

I recently signed up to the BHW, although I have been checking it out for quite some time.
I am really happy to see how everyone is helpful and always gives their two cents unlike other places.

Anyways, I'm starting to get into eBay, I purchased a product which is a shame, eBay deleted away
all my listings. I made $200 from that method, but well, my account is already at risk. I was basically
syphoning off big products and sell an ebook for $12. eBay just warned me if I do this again, I will lose my account,
so I would strongly stay away from this.

I'll go straight to the point, after doing some calculations and research on Alibaba, I found a supplier that's willing
to give me a sample. My total investment would be around USD$500. I would get 100 units that I can sell for around $12 on eBay.
There seems to be around 700 sales a month for this particular, although there are over 8k listings for the main keywords.

Is this a wise investment? I will be competiting against many people, and my account barely has 5 positive feedbacks.
Should I focus my time on selling $1 ebooks to build up my feedback ?

Best Regards,
Angel

 

[ytr191]

Lets say your listing and a powersellers listing are side by side.

Who are the buyers going to buy from?

The powerseller.

Sell 1 dollar ebooks to up your feedback.

 

[garthor]

Thanks for your reply,

Becoming a powerseller is a really hard task. You should be selling more than $1k a month, no?
I don't see how it would be possible to sell over 1k ebooks a month?

Is eBay really worth the hassle if you are not a powerseller? I understand your whole point on the feedback
thing, but this still doesn't answer my question on whether or not this is a good investment.

Obviously, I think I should work on my feedback if I want to sell those 100 units and make a good profit.
I see some people with 0 feedback ranking on the first page for this particular product which is a good sign.

The only poblem that's holding me back is the fact that I don't live in the US, and it's rather hard to ship the items.
How do you handle the shipping yourself?

Could we have a chat in skype? I saw your thread on the journey, and it seems very inspiring to me.
I believe we can help each other, as I have experience in other fields but eBay.

 

[ytr191]

Sure add me on skype, Im sure we can help each other out.

 

[ilovestocks]

I would stay away from something with that much competition. You will most likely end up stuck with that merchandise. It's just way too risky. Those big sellers will eat you alive. I use to look on those sites like alibaba and it seemed like everything was so saturated. I just stick with buying stuff locally to resell. I also have bought stuff off eBay to resell on ebay. Google ebay arbitrage and you can get some ideas if you're interested. You use one account to buy and another account to sell. eBay is kind of like IM, you've got to find the right niche. Good luck.

 

[Applesauceee]

Why did ebay delete your listing? What were you selling?

 

[shaneparkins]

I'm a powerseller in the UK and it was not that hard, I made around $7k in 1 month from left over stock (it was coffee) I think I'll loose it this month as I have nothing to sell now LOL

 

[garthor]

I would stay away from something with that much competition. You will most likely end up stuck with that merchandise. It's just way too risky. Those big sellers will eat you alive. I use to look on those sites like alibaba and it seemed like everything was so saturated. I just stick with buying stuff locally to resell. I also have bought stuff off eBay to resell on ebay. Google ebay arbitrage and you can get some ideas if you're interested. You use one account to buy and another account to sell. eBay is kind of like IM, you've got to find the right niche. Good luck.

It would be a great business if you could manage to find stuffs locally cheaper than eBay, but it's way harder on a 3rd world country, where things are more likely imported from the US already, not China directly. This opens a pretty good opportunity for me to sale those stuffs locally. But, I still don't want to end up stuck with merchandise as you said. The demand in my country is by far smaller than in any other developed country.

Craiglist is not even used in my country, so it would be a waste of time.

Thanks for your advise though.

 

[unclemike]

I would definitely focus on feedback for right now.

Cheers,
Unclemike

 

[TheSavior]

They did this to me one time because they thought someone else was on my account.

 

[haoNhack44]

I would definitely focus on feedback for right now.

Cheers,
Unclemike

Agreed. Sell a bit cheaper at first and go for volume. Give amazing customer service, fast turnaround time, good shipping terms, etc. and bring up your feedback. Once you're a little more established and/or a powerseller, then you bank hard.

 

[Paul77]

 

[ff1227]

I don't do a lot with physical products but there's a smaller version of alibaba for small orders. Google the URL and you should be able to test it on a smaller scale without a $500 investment.

 

[ashash7]

This is all good advice. If you do this, I would get the customers from ebay onto my own website so you are not stuck dealing with ebay in the long run and you can eventually get away from their fees. This business has three parts: 1) Build up the feedback for a few months with ebooks like stated above. 2) Start selling your real product on ebay and have a website or blog that you can direct your ebay customers to after they buy. When customers buy something on ebay, send them an email right after the sale telling them to get on your mailing list so they can see what you are selling on ebay BEFORE you post it on ebay. Put a link in the email to your website so they can sign up. When they sign up, start sending them your products before you post them on ebay and try to make the sale without ebay. You can even make the price cheaper since you don't have to pay ebay fees. 3) Once you get enough people buying your products before you post them to ebay, you can leave ebay.

 

[Karuli]

Maybe you could sell in quantity or pair it up with something i.e. a handbag sells well but add the matching wallet, sells better.

 

[Lordstriker]

You need to check how many each listing sells on average out of all the live listings...