Join over 90,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.
Free registration at the forum removes this block.
Dude, there are 33 pages of how to research products.I am a total noob i never used ebay nor amazon, can you tell me how you research products without terapeak?
Thank you bro
I think there are getting more and more traders on Alibaba all the time. I've been able to find products way cheaper on aliexpress and even dhgate sometimes. You just have to keep messaging them until you find the manufacture or manufactures. It's basically just sifting through the crap to find the gold. There is getting to be more and more crap all the time too.So I've had a good response from my quotation requests on Alibaba. It's hard work sifting through them. Out of about 15, ONLY 1 gave me all the information I requested!
Sounds like I got the regular replies most people have been getting. MOQ's of 2000, super high sample prices, huge freight costs etc.
It seems near impossible to find a product that's profitable! Am I missing something? I've been searching for weeks, and the products I thought looked good don't stack up!
The supplier offered me this particular product for $5.50, but freight of $137. I have replied offering a lower price and asking for a better shipping cost.
The item is selling around the £12-£15 mark on ebay. Interestingly though, I noticed one that sold today for £39.99 with an extra £2.50 for shipping. Looking at the sellers history, at the start of July they sold for £11.99, and kept putting the price up every few days. Quantities sold is less now though per day.
After ebay and paypal fees, duties, freight, absorbing the shipping to my buyer on the 'free postage', I'd stand to make a loss of around £4.50 according to my calculations on an average sale price of about £13.
Back to the drawing board........
Is it fair to assume that around 80-90% of suppliers on Alibaba are all traders? Seems like few are manufacturers, and how can we really tell? So many suppliers post the exact same pictures.
Can the 'onsite check' be trusted when it states manufacturer, or trader?
I'll look forward to any feedback or comments. Over and out
If I understand you correctly, you are going to sell items that you don't have on hand. That is not a good business model for someone starting out. You can make money through drop shipping without a doubt but there are many possible issues as well that will be very difficult.
Ideally I'll be executing this and reinvesting in both area's in the future, and then expanding into other ideas as well. Obviously no service we rely on is 100% reliable and I've seen some amazon and ebay horror stories that match mine on twitter/facebook. But those are part of the risks of doing business when you're not the man in charge.
Yep without the controlling the website you are certainly at their mercy to some extent. Definitely a good idea to not put all your eggs in one basket. The good thing about retail on eBay or Amazon is you can funnel your customers to your own personal website and then you have far more control.Yeah pretty much but I'm not using a company just my own ordering process if I was to go with a couple of items I've seen, I get a decent profit margin + some other bonuses when doing the purchase that give me more earnings/profit on certain items. But yeah ultimately it's the same thing. The only middle man I want to deal with though is myself at the moment except the chain of delivery, which I hope a service I found is as reliable as it looks.
You're 100% right as I've ran into such issues before, unfortunately I'm not in a position to get a high limit credit card to get orders through the second they sell through. So I'll probably have to wait until I am so I can pull off that first genuine sale. I'll still test an alternate account though with decent feedback just to see what I could potentially sell items for looking into the future. Ultimately though the products I would be ordering are highly reliable, sought after and the market leader in more ways than one.
For now though I guess I need to find products in the $500 and under region which I can order with instant effect and get it to the buyer within 4-5 days, still not ideal perhaps but I don't want to take the gamble that my idea is a dud and have to shift these products for a loss even if it may be minimal. Once such an idea has proven itself I'd be much more willing to part with bigger sums of money beforehand. So both points duly noted however and I'll keep that in mind. I've seen the feedback my would be rivals have gotten and most people are happy to get the item within a week to 10 days because of the value of the item is fantastic, but most shouldn't be what we strive for, it should be all, and I'm aware of that need to deliver on every order.
I've seen some great advice handed out in this thread and I'd like to think I'm following a similar path except for not having the inventory with me at the point of sale (at least to begin with) ultimately it means I'm reliant on the services I'm ordering from and shipping companies to do their job in a timely manner, but I don't know how else to play it at this moment in time. I may need to look for products in a lower price range to test the waters I suppose that I don't mind necessarily making a loss on to build up my brand new profiles (which I'd need)
Sorry for the rambling but it's funny how an idea can turn into a business plan in a few days, my plan of action literally popped up out of my head as I've been searching for new ideas to work on after my twitter empire crumbled
I don't give my pics a white background. I use a tan blanket on the floor, put my item on top, and take the pics with my iPhone. Personally I think doing it that way helps to show people that you have the actual item and didn't just pull the pic off google.
200 views with only 2 sales probably means you are either priced too high, your description doesn't give them the info they need to purchase the item, or your item just naturally draws a lot of lookers.
Read this entire thread, then if you haven't figured out how to research products... Well you were asleep while reading.
Most of the times the minimums are quite flexible if you sound like you are a business. Explain to them that you are adding this product line to your store and want to purchase 50 of them at this time. You will of course be coming back to them for more on a regular basis and with increasing order size. That will normally work.
I normally look at the buy it now listings for that item. eBay only allows 1 buy it now per seller on a specific item. So if I'm selling a 50 foot hose I can only list one buy it now listing with multiple quantity for that hose. So if there are 10 buy it now listings than I have 10 competitors (unless someone is violating eBay rules)
Hate being a whiny girl but reading has me lost. What type of shipping did you use for these products?
Join Fastlane Insiders.