Ask me anything about dropshipping on ebay

Hey,

Im based in India and have only mildly flirted with ebay many years ago. I'm wondering the feasibility of dropshipping generic OTC drugs since I see sellers on ebay selling them. Do you have any experience/insight/advice regarding this?

I'd recommend against it, only because they're much more profitable things to sell

I had read your open post on that thread before I asked. It's a long post, so I didn't take time to read
everything there. With all the money I have spent for World Wide Brands and all the methods I have
tried (well one showed me how to get the 100+ positive feedbacks I have now), I have yet been able
to make real money on ebay with them.

What kind of guarantees can you offer from the sales thread? I am willing to chat on Skype if you are able.

Let's link up on Skype
 
i am a spammer, i can shop t you 2 thing os the item you will send me one to my country MOROCCO and you will take 1 ok?
 
I have a question,
Im from Poland, but I ship items to USA using amazon prime.
On the description of my item its written, product in poland.
Do you think that this might influence people decison to buy or not to buy my product?
Can I put a fake adress?
 
As a brand new Ebay seller with a new account and no money to invest up-front will I be able to get into this method? I know there is an immediate payment option to where the buyer has to pay for your product on ebay upfront and I'm assuming that's what is being used, but won't the funds still be held even with this option for new accounts? Especially for accounts that have tried this and been suspended then reinstated?

As a continuation of the last question... Would you consider it more worthwhile to buy an aged ebay account with good feedback vs trying to start a new account with no feedback. Buyers are typically hesitant to buy from somebody that just started out.
 
It is something to take into account but cant you claim the VAT back from the Amazon purchases you made as you paid VAT on them and then you just pay the difference. Need to look into it more.

Ye, the emails amazon send aren't VAT invoices and buying as gift makes it harder to get I would think. But ye I'd have to look into it more.
 
Ye, the emails amazon send aren't VAT invoices and buying as gift makes it harder to get I would think. But ye I'd have to look into it more.

My solution would be move out of the country and do what the eBay chinese sellers do. Not pay VAT even though they are "legally" obliged too. Not sure how they're legally obliged as HMRC wouldn't have any jurisdiction over them anyway.

Now things are picking up I'm looking into the digital nomad (hate that term) lifestyle by going to Thailand Chiang Mai and moving around.

The advantage of being from the UK (or nearly any country except USA), is you can't be taxed on your income if you're a non resident (unlike a US citizen). Though the general guideline was you had to be 180 days outside the country, HMRC make up the rules as they go along and now consider you a resident for various things, such as if you have interests here. My goal isn't to argue with them or make it easy for them, so I'm just going to ignore them, pack up, and leave. There is no law to say you have to inform them you're leaving the country. Also if you are no longer a resident, then you are not legally obliged to fill in a self assessment form either. Basically your doing it all legally, well I am in my plan.

The only problem is getting money out of your bank, hmrc have been granted new powers literally this past few months, to take money straight from a bank account if they think you owe them something. Before, as it's been since the Magna Carta, they couldn't just go in and take money, unless they went to court first to argue why, and you had a chance to defend yourself. So you better be withdrawing your money, because you could be doing everything legally and can prove it, but on a mere allegation that you owe tax, they can now dip into your bank account before even taking you to court.

And if you know anything about HMRC, they are run by idiots, understaffed, and one of the worst tax authorities in the world when it comes to charging and threatening people with fines and legal action, all due to errors they make. I read somewhere (can't find it at the moment), that an independent tax review authority downgraded it to a class C, meaning it's very inefficient for the purpose it's setup for, when it should be class A like other western countries.

Also you could do everything by the books, fully legit, and HMRC will still hound you because they think you aren't declaring enough.

Honestly if you want to save yourself hassle on tax, and you currently live in the UK. Get the dropshipping going, then move out of the country, go to thailand. If you read up, thailand don't actually care if you run a business online, as long as you're not running a business in thailand taking away jobs from other Thai's. And since you can't stay in thailand for long on tourist visas, you move around, and are essentially a tax nomad, as you're not on business visas.

In the end, people can do whatever the fuck they want to do. I don't see paying tax as a moral duty, and if I can get away with it legally and have the balls to try, I'm gonna do it. Hell if people want to get away with it illegally, more power to them, it doesn't bother me. Because in the end, fuck if I want to do accounting. Having to keep a record of everything I sold on eBay and bought on Amazon (will take weeks), and then submitting it to an accountant (cost money), then HMRC take away 20-70% of you earnings through income tax (or corporate and dividend tax if you're running as a company), national insurance, and VAT. What a waste of time and money, I cannot be assed with that. Let me sell something, know my profit, and that be the end of it.

My current plan is spend another 4 months here establishing the business, get and setup a laptop, plan my trip and leave, and hope for the best. lol
 
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@muffslayer; I hear you, but won't the Thai authorities try to extract bribes, etc, if they know you're a baller? But yeah, the UK is covered in red tape (and the country is turning into a crap hole).
 
My solution would be move out of the country and do what the eBay chinese sellers do. Not pay VAT even though they are "legally" obliged too. Not sure how they're legally obliged as HMRC wouldn't have any jurisdiction over them anyway.

Now things are picking up I'm looking into the digital nomad (hate that term) lifestyle by going to Thailand Chiang Mai and moving around.

The advantage of being from the UK (or nearly any country except USA), is you can't be taxed on your income if you're a non resident (unlike a US citizen). Though the general guideline was you had to be 180 days outside the country, HMRC make up the rules as they go along and now consider you a resident for various things, such as if you have interests here. My goal isn't to argue with them or make it easy for them, so I'm just going to ignore them, pack up, and leave. There is no law to say you have to inform them you're leaving the country. Also if you are no longer a resident, then you are not legally obliged to fill in a self assessment form either. Basically your doing it all legally, well I am in my plan.

The only problem is getting money out of your bank, hmrc have been granted new powers literally this past few months, to take money straight from a bank account if they think you owe them something. Before, as it's been since the Magna Carta, they couldn't just go in and take money, unless they went to court first to argue why, and you had a chance to defend yourself. So you better be withdrawing your money, because you could be doing everything legally and can prove it, but on a mere allegation that you owe tax, they can now dip into your bank account before even taking you to court.

And if you know anything about HMRC, they are run by idiots, understaffed, and one of the worst tax authorities in the world when it comes to charging and threatening people with fines and legal action, all due to errors they make. I read somewhere (can't find it at the moment), that an independent tax review authority downgraded it to a class C, meaning it's very inefficient for the purpose it's setup for, when it should be class A like other western countries.

Also you could do everything by the books, fully legit, and HMRC will still hound you because they think you aren't declaring enough.

Honestly if you want to save yourself hassle on tax, and you currently live in the UK. Get the dropshipping going, then move out of the country, go to thailand. If you read up, thailand don't actually care if you run a business online, as long as you're not running a business in thailand taking away jobs from other Thai's. And since you can't stay in thailand for long on tourist visas, you move around, and are essentially a tax nomad, as you're not on business visas.

In the end, people can do whatever the fuck they want to do. I don't see paying tax as a moral duty, and if I can get away with it legally and have the balls to try, I'm gonna do it. Hell if people want to get away with it illegally, more power to them, it doesn't bother me. Because in the end, fuck if I want to do accounting. Having to keep a record of everything I sold on eBay and bought on Amazon (will take weeks), and then submitting it to an accountant (cost money), then HMRC take away 20-70% of you earnings through income tax (or corporate and dividend tax if you're running as a company), national insurance, and VAT. What a waste of time and money, I cannot be assed with that. Let me sell something, know my profit, and that be the end of it.

My current plan is spend another 4 months here establishing the business, get and setup a laptop, plan my trip and leave, and hope for the best. lol

Completely agree with this post, hmrc are a bunch of school children, literally nobody declares the correct value when importing items.
However your last and first paragraph contradict eachother, selling over 82k you need a VAT number, if you're not a UK resident then you need one no matter what you turn over so your idea would be very illegal. Unlikely they'd catch you but if they did catch you at any point you were in the UK turning over 500k or more (which wouldn't even be a huge amount of profit with dropshipping) then you'd be looking at 2-3 years in jail and bankruptcy
 
I have a question,
Im from Poland, but I ship items to USA using amazon prime.
On the description of my item its written, product in poland.
Do you think that this might influence people decison to buy or not to buy my product?
Can I put a fake adress?

It's not accurate. Your products are in the United States- Change it

You can buy a US address online
 
If I create a new account in the same or different country and link it to my paypal that has no holds will I still have to go through the 90 day hold or whatever it is?
 
If I create a new account in the same or different country and link it to my paypal that has no holds will I still have to go through the 90 day hold or whatever it is?

You can have up to eight eBay accounts attached to your PayPal account. PayPal determines holds, not eBay

So no, if your PayPal holds are off and you create/attach a new eBay account to it you will not have a 90 day hold
 
Completely agree with this post, hmrc are a bunch of school children, literally nobody declares the correct value when importing items.
However your last and first paragraph contradict eachother, selling over 82k you need a VAT number, if you're not a UK resident then you need one no matter what you turn over so your idea would be very illegal. Unlikely they'd catch you but if they did catch you at any point you were in the UK turning over 500k or more (which wouldn't even be a huge amount of profit with dropshipping) then you'd be looking at 2-3 years in jail and bankruptcy


Yo Password01, just finished the whole 11 page threads and I really appreciate your input on various topics. It helped me a lot. I am going to implement my software according to what I have learned. If possible, we can share to each other the algorithms and so on when I have my prototype built. How does this sound to you?

Regards,
Kevin
 
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