Got questions about ebay? Ask here

generally I advise against dropshipping, ESPECIALLY for new sellers. It's best to handle every step of your venture yourself at least at first so you know exactly how to handle each aspect. Yes it makes things a little more effort but you'll never get trapped under someone's thumb as your business functions independently from anyone else.

Furthermore chinese "wholesale dropshippers" can be dangerous especially to newbies because you will find many of them do not offer a quality service. lost packages, late shipping, no shipping, damaged product, wrong item, the list goes on. These guys are first and foremost wholesalers to you. Dropshipping to your customers is just a deal closer to make you buy their product. Once they have your money they're not concerned about the logistics. Because of htis I normally suggest you only work with a legitimate logistics company and avoid the wholesale dropshippers at all costs.

I support white hat methods when it comes to ebay, so I also recommend growing a legitimate account naturally vs buying prebuilts and/or stealths, the amount of effort that can unfold for that is just no fun imo. You also cant ever really build a brand or strong following becuase you will always be ready to turn n burn a new account.

Read the info I've already put in this thread, it's got a lot

I currently do a ton of volume on Amazon like 4,000 units/month but I was never able to get any traction on Ebay. I would put up the listings and maybe get a sale every week. Granted I didn't do much beyond that, but my question is how do you get your products visible and what would be the best steps to building up the account and gaining sales? I know it's a rather broad all encompassing question but interested in your take. Thanks.

akara said:

Im just rtarting out on Ebay, I am dealing with a few different suppliers from china about Iphone accesories to resell on ebay.

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okay, just be aware that phone accessories are high risk, especially if you're selling fakes

akara said:

Iis it bad bad to resell items from china?

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There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's just that China is land of fakes and shady producers.

akara said:

also how do you deal with increasing your selling account? can you purchase someone's account?

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Generally there are two schools of thought on increasing sales limits. Call in every month and ask for it and do not call eBay and let it increase organically. I'm of the "don't call eBay" school. You can purchase someone's account, but you must run it right or you will be linked and banned.

td22tmp said:

I currently do a ton of volume on Amazon like 4,000 units/month but I was never able to get any traction on Ebay.

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I honestly believe that some stuff sells on eBay and not Amazon, vice versa.

td22tmp said:

I currently do a ton of volume on Amazon like 4,000 units/month but I was never able to get any traction on Ebay. I would put up the listings and maybe get a sale every week. Granted I didn't do much beyond that, but my question is how do you get your products visible and what would be the best steps to building up the account and gaining sales? I know it's a rather broad all encompassing question but interested in your take. Thanks.

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to answer such a generic question I'll have to give a fairly generic response -

being the cheapest price you possibly can is in my experience one of the most important things. "free shipping" standard 14 day return acceptance, good pictures that clearly show your item and inventory (and NOT just relying on stock photos). Generally speaking I've always noticed unless you're dealign with high dollar items the feedback score isnt all that important, as long as you're at 100% positive still

low feedback score + being under 100% positive seems to hurt sellers more than most any other factor

for gaining traction, i often suggest fighting to be the -lowest price on ebay- for whatever item youre selling, even if it means taking net losses on each sale for a while. Obviously you have to be able to afford this and the trick will only work for items you have repeat qty on. if you are the cheapest price you -will- get the majority of sales, which will increase your rankings and make you appear higher up on best match sorting. As that occurs you can slowly raise the price until it's where you want it to be.

Another huge factor is simply the age and experience of the account. It has a big factor for trying to rank high in search results. My account has been an active seller acc for over 5 years now, it's pretty easy to rank past 90% of sellers without even thinking about it. The only ones that beat me are power sellers and accounts with XX,XXX transactions typically.

just keep going, in time you will develop more and more traffic, it's just how the system works

toml3030 said:

Generally there are two schools of thought on increasing sales limits. Call in every month and ask for it and do not call eBay and let it increase organically. I'm of the "don't call eBay" school. You can purchase someone's account, but you must run it right or you will be linked and banned.

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I didn't know you could even get your limits to raise without calling in ebay? Other than hitting the link under the limits readout which is basically calling ebay but without making a phonecall. They wont raise unless you request action will they? Mine never have

I call in as ncessary, theres no reason not to, as long as your'e a legit seller the amount they increase it is normally more than satisfying. They typically double my limits or give me +25% nowdays.

toml3030 said:

I honestly believe that some stuff sells on eBay and not Amazon, vice versa.

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ohh it absolutely does. i've done research on this over the years. amazon and ebay are two completely different audiences that happen to overlap one another

aff219 said:

low feedback score + being under 100% positive seems to hurt sellers more than most any other factor

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In my experience there is no real difference when it comes to feedback. I've had accounts that has gone as low as 94% on feedback roar back in sales.

aff219 said:

Another huge factor is simply the age and experience of the account.

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This is a factor that isn't talked about enough. You just have to build a sales record on eBay to rank for a lot of the items and there is no way around it, and this is one of the things eBay does right because you can't game it. This is what the "buy my dropship system/software" people don't tell you.

aff219 said:

I didn't know you could even get your limits to raise without calling in ebay? Other than hitting the link under the limits readout which is basically calling ebay but without making a phonecall.

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I've had them raise accounts 10x from 10K-20K area to 100K-200K on multiple accounts after about six months of sales, so it does happen. I think the key is to make it happen organically, not making it seem like you're just trying to list to the max. I sell low sellthrough items so YMMV when it comes to this sort of stuff depending on what you sell.

toml3030 said:

In my experience there is no real difference when it comes to feedback. I've had accounts that has gone as low as 94% on feedback roar back in sales.



This is a factor that isn't talked about enough. You just have to build a sales record on eBay to rank for a lot of the items and there is no way around it, and this is one of the things eBay does right because you can't game it. This is what the "buy my dropship system/software" people don't tell you.



I've had them raise accounts 10x from 10K-20K area to 100K-200K on multiple accounts after about six months of sales, so it does happen. I think the key is to make it happen organically, not making it seem like you're just trying to list to the max. I sell low sellthrough items so YMMV when it comes to this sort of stuff depending on what you sell.

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i should have mentioned the feedback thing only seems to apply to new/smaller accounts. if you reach thousands of feedback, become power seller, etc, feedback scores seem to mean less and less as you do more and more volume.

as for the limits raising - you still have to -request- the limits increase somehow dont you? Click the link on teh website etc? to my understanding theyve explained to me that calling in does the exact same thing as clicking the button, you effectlvey just have them click the button for you

i've literally never seen or even heard of limits magically raising without some form of request action on your part

toml3030 said:

In my experience there is no real difference when it comes to feedback. I've had accounts that has gone as low as 94% on feedback roar back in sales.

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In my experience people don't care too much about your rating unless you're selling one of a kind items that cost a bit. However eBay cares it seems. I started ranking really good after doing everything ebay recommend. 3 day shipping, offer returns, and become a powerseller by having really good feedback(99.5%). This was 2 years go but ranking was really important for making sales.

aff219 said:

as for the limits raising - you still have to -request- the limits increase somehow dont you? Click the link on teh website etc?

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I have about 2 dozen live stealth accounts and I have never requested or called in for a limit increase, not even once.

that's interesting... I wonder why I've never received an automatic increase then

do you normally nearly hit or hit the limit and then they bounce up? I've always requested limits when I hit ~200 listings left so maybe I'm just doing it so early it never has chance to kick in automatically

aff219 said:

do you normally nearly hit or hit the limit and then they bounce up?

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Whenever i hit about 70%+ of my limit listed for a few months with no negs they usually up me. I think how much they up you depend on what you sell.

so it takes a few months to gain the automatic upping with such high raises...that explains the differences then.

with a monthly request you can obviously expect to be 3x less (or more), due to the fact that you're actively reaching near threshhold 3 months in a row. Typically if I get that close once, I request to up

to each his own, I can see why people arent a fan of requesting manually (ESPECIALLY if theyre stealth accounts), I personally hate the questions they ask and find it quite distasteful

for the record, they now like to ask:

-what types of items are you selling?
-where do you get your inventory?
-how much do you have currently?
-how many people are working for you?

Before, for years, they only asked me what kind of stuff I'm selling and that was it. The last 2 years though they've started asking the 4 above questions, and it's mandatory to answer or else they deny the limit increase (or so they say).

Hint: They don't verify anything you claim, they just take note of it. So if one were to make up BS because they consider these questions in poor taste / not worthy of providing answers to...

aff219 said:

to each his own, I can see why people arent a fan of requesting manually (ESPECIALLY if theyre stealth accounts), I personally hate the questions they ask and find it quite distasteful

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I don't mind the questions; I just don't want any eBay employee any reason to peer into my account. Less human eyes going over things, better for stealth accounts. When you get to the point where you get assigned your own account manager, you can pretty much do whatever you want on eBay. Until that happens I'm laying low. It's called STEALTH for a reason.

toml3030 said:

I don't mind the questions; I just don't want any eBay employee any reason to peer into my account. Less human eyes going over things, better for stealth accounts. When you get to the point where you get assigned your own account manager, you can pretty much do whatever you want on eBay. Until that happens I'm laying low. It's called STEALTH for a reason.

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ya I get that. That's the big key difference between us, I don't run stealth. I can totally respect why anyone using a stealth account would avoid any and all attention they can avoid

aff219 said:

ya I get that. That's the big key difference between us, I don't run stealth. I can totally respect why anyone using a stealth account would avoid any and all attention they can avoid

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My biggest accounts are not stealth. I just like to keep everything separate in case some dumbass at eBay decides to ban me because he's having a bad day.

I have a very old ebay account but now want to sell some products i am warehousing. If i all of a sudden have 100 listings can ebay flag me??

hero76 said:

I have a very old ebay account but now want to sell some products i am warehousing. If i all of a sudden have 100 listings can ebay flag me??

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Depends on how risky the itema are.

hero76 said:

I have a very old ebay account but now want to sell some products i am warehousing. If i all of a sudden have 100 listings can ebay flag me??

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you'll probably be fine. I think new accounts start with something like 250 listings dont they?

question: When you say "old account", do you mean an old seller account, or just a generic ebay account you've used to buy stuff but never sell?

Either way you should be fine, assuming whatever the items are aren't high risk

aff219 said:

you'll probably be fine. I think new accounts start with something like 250 listings dont they?

question: When you say "old account", do you mean an old seller account, or just a generic ebay account you've used to buy stuff but never sell?

Either way you should be fine, assuming whatever the items are aren't high risk

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I buy more than i sell. Looking to sell beauty products but used to sell fta equipment ( that scene is dead).