Thread: Dipping My Toes Into Importing

Great to hear! Looks like we are in exactly the same spot at exactly the same time looking to sell to the same people!

Lets have a friendly competition to keep the fire lit! Seriously, lets put some metrics to this and see if we can't just blow them away.

Just got a call from my wife saying my China samples are in! Woo!



Also found a good deal of other "things" to sell on ebay to start getting my profile going. Mostly old dvd's and vhs and such - we'll see how that goes.

Have to wait until I get home to quality test these things though

Cool, I'm hoping to do the same thing soon!
Subbed to your thread.

Haven't put my imported items on eBay yet but it seems like a solid product.

I'm almost shocked at the quality to be honest - nice box, passable instructions, bubble wrapped product within the box, solid construction.

I don't know what I was expecting but it seems almost too good. I guess I was half expecting something to be wrong - no box (or plain white box), Chinese writing somewhere, poor quality, etc...

I've put up some personal items on eBay though - first time EVER selling anything on here. Got my paypal account verified (took a few days...) and changed my ebay handle to something less personal (although it's still listed as an "individual" account for now, not sure the merits of switching yet).

I don't understand the shipping aspect of eBay at all yet though. I just put $3 standard shipping in and out of Canada on some personal items I'm selling as a total shot in the dark and ignored all the permutations I could select. Guess I'm going to have to start shipping items and selling things to figure this part out.

I also stopped by a few thrift stores in town to see about other items to sell as per Jill's advice (and others). Canada thrift stores suck - dress shirts selling for $12, leather jackets for $50, etc... Honestly anything worth selling seems like sale item prices at retail stores. The only cheap items I see are nick-knacks and I haven't the foggiest idea what any of that stuff would fetch. I saw a Disney print in a shitty frame I got excited about but it was a lame print-out, not a lithograph or cell, sigh...

It's slow going - I really need to pick up my feet. I'm too comfortable in my old ways. Far too comfortable.

Sold my first few products (not my samples - just stuff lying around the house). Payments pending though, which I guess means they haven't cleared the banks? I'll ship when I see them clear and figure out the whole shipping process (can you believe I'm almost 30 and never shipped more than a letter before?)

I don't think I like calculated shipping. We'll see what actual costs are to ship but it seems insane for 1 dvd (again, just lying around, not my product) to the USA to cost over $9 in shipping fees. No idea yet, though. Glad I'm getting started learning this stuff.

Also taking Vig's advice on boosting up my ebay profile by buying small items. Goal is for 50 by Saturday. My wife is being completely AWESOME at home right now at this task and I see "you've just won" pop up every 5 minutes while I'm at work. I swear I'll hit my goal by tomorrow morning if she keeps this pace up.

Which brings me to another point, I need a new goddamn email address for this stuff. I filled up an entire gmail page yesterday night alone with all the damn notifications that come in. Too high of signal to noise ratio - need to play with the settings so I only get notified of ACTUAL important emails.

Once I hit 50 feedback I'll put up my samples and actually test the market.

It's nice running on a full tank of mental gas for a change.

Real updates regarding the actual importing and selling of my sample product coming soon...

I had two experiences with China buying.. one from Taiwan went flawlessly.

One from mainland and they told me they had my specific model for samples, I wired the money (over $500) and then they told me they had no stock of that model, offered me other models (not interested) and finally we set on a different size but I am not really happy.

The minimum order for a production run is like $10k... so it's a no go until I see the products.

It's very hard to deal with them, it takes forever online and they never quite understand. I've been in China in person and it's easier, but for these items there is no point on making a trip over there.

Just be careful that they have stock to send you samples before sending money!

Why wait for the feedback to hit 50? I started selling my stuff on eBay when I had a low(ish) feedback score. But it rose gradually selling my items and the number of sales also grew along the way. And I think you can create a filter in gmail to sort out emails, label them and deal with them accordingly.

Originally Posted by Ikke

Why wait for the feedback to hit 50?

I don't necessarily have to do this but I'm learning a hell of a lot by doing it this way. I've never sold anything on ebay before and purchased only a small handful of items in the past. Just between yesterday night and this morning my wife and I have already troubleshooted 3-4 small issues.

No reason I couldn't just throw everything up right now but at my current pace I'll hit this small goal I set for myself extremely quickly. No harm in looking a bit bigger than I am before getting truly started as well.

As a side note, I'm seriously considering the idea of sourcing some products from a US city I'm visiting for two weeks this fall. If I can get my vacation to be a tax write-off I will be one very happy camper

JAJT, I just posted a progress thread in the Insiders section. There's a short bit on using Ebay. Wrote the Ebay section for you in case it was anything you didn't already know.

http://www.thefastlaneforum.com/insi...tml#post267566

I ran into lots of other things when I started selling. Nothing big though. Best of luck with getting the sales in

Originally Posted by JAJT

As a side note, I'm seriously considering the idea of sourcing some products from a US city I'm visiting for two weeks this fall. If I can get my vacation to be a tax write-off I will be one very happy camper

Now that would be nice

JAJT – As someone who uses eBay regularly for personal use I can’t believe that I did not think to buy tiny things to boost my score. Here I have been sitting with almost no feedback on my business account when it would be so easy to up it!

Be CAREFUL shipping from Canada. I just got murdered by Canada Post on some personal flips. I sold two of the exact same thing, one in Canada and one to USA. I already knew that the US shipping was going to be $7.80 because that is what the smallest packet shipping costs. I went and assumed that shipping the same thing to Canada would be cheaper, so I only charged the buyer $3 shipping and it ended up costing me roughly $12 with my small business discount. Yup you read that correctly, shipping in Canada with a small business discount was MORE money than shipping an identical thing to USA.

So in the end I ended up making pretty much nil on that flip, I rushed to my computer to change my other auctions shipping charges/item details before anyone else bought any more from Canada and I was too late, more had already been bid on so I am stuck with a few more crappy deals to Canada.

I guess the moral of the story is to not assume anything when it comes to shipping from Canada. We get absolutely taken advantage of by our postal system and there is nothing (that I know of) that we can do about it. I am thinking of writing up a description of what happened and the differences and sending it to CBC Marketwatch.

Good luck with your importing! I decided to not order any more of my first product as I am not completely sold on it, I am working on a few others at this point in time so I hope to have something up and running soon.

Subscribed.

After reading Will's guide on how to import products from China, I ordered a sample of 10 products from Aliexpress. After putting them on Ebay, I sold the first unit within 15 minutes. I paid around 6 Dollars and sold it for 20 But unfortunatley four days later, that's still my only sale so far.

Looking forward to your updates. Good luck!

Wow - figured out my stupid pending charges.

Turns out I had an email address set up in ebay not tied to my paypal account. Have no idea how I managed to mess that up. Added the address and payments happened immediately. Feel bad for keeping these guys waiting a day or so for my own mistake. Live and learn.

JAJT, at least it was only a day!

So are you going to try Amazon fulfillment eventually?

Originally Posted by JAJT

It's slow going - I really need to pick up my feet. I'm too comfortable in my old ways. Far too comfortable.

Raise your expectations.

Originally Posted by Vigilante

Raise your expectations.

Couldn't believe the guy outside of the 4th floor bar at b&p comment to Vig after he was telling Randy to do a $1000 test. "Hey man 1 grand is a lot of money" lol

Raise your expectations!

Expectations: Treat it like a hobby and make hobby money. Treat it like a business and make bank...

I understand the testing part too. But raise your expectations so that when that test hits, you make bank from it.