[AMA] Importing & wholesaling for resale on eBay.

[Wisith]

I just spent 4 days talking to wholesalers in just about any niche you can think of and the average minimum order... under $500. All these products were located in the US and you get your order in a really short period of time. You could even mix and match their products to get to that amount. Minimum orders is just another excuse that people use to excuse away why they don't take action.

Hi,

How much did you pay to attend ASD? I see there's another one in the summer time, and prices aren't up yet. I signed up to be notified when registration opens.

I've always wanted to attend, but hearing your post made me really want to go for it.

 

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[Ecom man]

Hi,

How much did you pay to attend ASD? I see there's another one in the summer time, and prices aren't up yet. I signed up to be notified when registration opens.

I've always wanted to attend, but hearing your post made me really want to go for it.

It's free when you register online. At the door I think they charged something.

 

[amp0193]

Hey @Ecom man

Where do you send your adwords traffic to on your site?

Do you set up custom landing pages for this traffic, or do you just dump them on the product page?

Any tips as far as types of keywords that do well, or improving CTR?


I'm doing great with Google Shopping, and am working on adding Adwords in the next week or two.

 

[Ecom man]

Hey @Ecom man

Where do you send your adwords traffic to on your site?

Do you set up custom landing pages for this traffic, or do you just dump them on the product page?

Any tips as far as types of keywords that do well, or improving CTR?


I'm doing great with Google Shopping, and am working on adding Adwords in the next week or two.

I build an different ad for each product and direct the ad to the specific product pages. I would not use broadmatch at all. Use phrase, exact, or broad match modifier. Broad match just brings in way too much oddball stuff. Broad match on bing ads is even worse.

 

[Aston_M]

I build an different ad for each product and direct the ad to the specific product pages. I would not use broadmatch at all. Use phrase, exact, or broad match modifier. Broad match just brings in way too much oddball stuff. Broad match on bing ads is even worse.

Hey Ecom man, I was selling on eBay and using Amazon Prime as fulfilment and offering next day delivery to my customers. I was selling all sorts above retail price from rowing machines to diy equipment. I had a few too many black marks on my eBay account due to out of stock items on Amazon, no bad feedback by the way. I want to do my own website, how should I choose a niche? Any advice is appreciated

 

[Ecom man]

Hey Ecom man, I was selling on eBay and using Amazon Prime as fulfilment and offering next day delivery to my customers. I was selling all sorts above retail price from rowing machines to diy equipment. I had a few too many black marks on my eBay account due to out of stock items on Amazon, no bad feedback by the way. I want to do my own website, how should I choose a niche? Any advice is appreciated

I choose niches based on how big the market is and how many sales I can get per item. I don't want a super popular niche that is going to crash and burn in the next few months. I want something that people will be purchasing for a few years at minimum.

 

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[SJMM]

You can really do it either way. My personal opinion is to do a niche per site. Say for example I want to sell pool toys on a website. I wouldn't also sell women's clothing on that site but I might sell beach toys as well or other pool/beach related items.

Thank you so much!

 

[NiteRider]

I just spent 4 days talking to wholesalers in just about any niche you can think of and the average minimum order... under $500. All these products were located in the US and you get your order in a really short period of time. You could even mix and match their products to get to that amount. Minimum orders is just another excuse that people use to excuse away why they don't take action.

How has your experience been, in price or in general, with US wholesalers vs Chinese?

I recently stumbled across a solid, quality US supplier and would like to do more business with US wholesalers. The problem is finding them doesn't seem to be that easy, at least not quality ones. Google searches seem to always turn up junk wholesalers/distributors selling garbage products etc. Most of the wholesaler "network" sites seem to have the same crappy products.

Any tips on finding quality US wholesalers? Trade shows seem to be one of the best opportunities as you've mentioned.

 

[Ecom man]

How has your experience been, in price or in general, with US wholesalers vs Chinese?

I recently stumbled across a solid, quality US supplier and would like to do more business with US wholesalers. The problem is finding them doesn't seem to be that easy, at least not quality ones. Google searches seem to always turn up junk wholesalers/distributors selling garbage products etc. Most of the wholesaler "network" sites seem to have the same crappy products.

Any tips on finding quality US wholesalers? Trade shows seem to be one of the best opportunities as you've mentioned.

Every wholesale list or wholesaler I found online by googling was either way overpriced, scammy, or wasn't in the US. I got more wholesalers info in 4 days at the trade show than I would have got in 20 years trying to google it.

 

[Ecom man]

Just a quick update/ word of advice from my personal experience.

Don't wait to hire!

I waited to hire my first employee as long as possible until I literally couldn't handle the work anymore. Things were going undone and it was costing me money (wasted 45k in ad spend on Bing because their broad match was showing my ads for crap search terms and I didn't catch it fast enough). Had I hired someone earlier I would have saved that ad spend and would be way farther ahead of where I am now in regards to building the business.

In the couple weeks since hiring someone he has done 2 huge projects that I have been working on for months! Besides that having someone take care of the day to day operations (packages and customer service) has absolutely changed my life! I now actually have time to get things accomplished that have needed done for a while and work more on my business. (Plus a little extra free time with the family) I read and implemented one small conversion optimization tip on this last Monday that has increased my sales by close to 40%! Man I wish I had hired someone earlier!

 

[Sfbloo]

Ecom man you've inspired me to stop lurking and first post. I've sold on eBay previously but with the completely wrong approach (pallet over stock with random lines and no repeat orders). It was tedious for small profit.

You've inspired me to revisit. Looking at the start of this post and the end you've come a long way.

I may be misunderstanding but i think you now say......you would go straight to a website. You can charge higher prices than eBay. You recommend niche category sites rather than multi category sites. Early on you would find product against low competition and good profit margin and test.

If you are charging more now and also using multiple products in a category then....

1. Does eBay competition matter any more or do you just pick big selling items? The more sellers the better? Unlike your early days on ebay I'm assuming the number of sellers doesn't matter as you are relying on traffic to your site anyway?

2. It sounds like a lot hinges on that traffic drive? You mentioned you knew zero about seo, shopify etc. What and where is the key thing to learn in your opinion? I know nothing about AdWords so it's top of my list to research. I've always been scared of putting my details on and running up high bills with no conversions. A lot to learn!

Apologies if I'm misreading, I got the impression that you now have a process where there is less reliance on the competition and profit margin (although still needs to be good!). I'm just wondering what the most important skills in that process are.

This thread and your story is inspirational. Kudos too you sir.

 

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[ddzc]

Just a quick update/ word of advice from my personal experience.

Don't wait to hire!

I waited to hire my first employee as long as possible until I literally couldn't handle the work anymore. Things were going undone and it was costing me money (wasted 45k in ad spend on Bing because their broad match was showing my ads for crap search terms and I didn't catch it fast enough). Had I hired someone earlier I would have saved that ad spend and would be way farther ahead of where I am now in regards to building the business.

In the couple weeks since hiring someone he has done 2 huge projects that I have been working on for months! Besides that having someone take care of the day to day operations (packages and customer service) has absolutely changed my life! I now actually have time to get things accomplished that have needed done for a while and work more on my business. (Plus a little extra free time with the family) I read and implemented one small conversion optimization tip on this last Monday that has increased my sales by close to 40%! Man I wish I had hired someone earlier!

Love this thread, on fire since day 1! Do you customize your own products or relabel/brand existing designs from manufacturers?

How is your logistics? Do you use a fulfillment center, amazon fba, your own warehouse? This is my biggest problem nowadays...logistics and shipping costs in North America. I'm using a fulfillment center and they're eating away at literally 100% of the profits...my products are fairly large and heavy (30-35lbs) so I can't self ship. I compared fulfillment centers in Canada and the US and it's the same story, they tack on an increase of a good 20-25% for domestic shipments, plus pick/pack, plus monthly storage fees, it eats away at the margin to 0 or -. I think to use a fulfillment center or fba and turn a profit, you need a relatively small and lightweight branded item with a massive margin. When you source, do you typically look for small and lightweight items? Thanks!

 

[Dicky Dee]

Just a quick update/ word of advice from my personal experience.

Don't wait to hire!

I waited to hire my first employee as long as possible until I literally couldn't handle the work anymore. Things were going undone and it was costing me money (wasted 45k in ad spend on Bing because their broad match was showing my ads for crap search terms and I didn't catch it fast enough). Had I hired someone earlier I would have saved that ad spend and would be way farther ahead of where I am now in regards to building the business.

In the couple weeks since hiring someone he has done 2 huge projects that I have been working on for months! Besides that having someone take care of the day to day operations (packages and customer service) has absolutely changed my life! I now actually have time to get things accomplished that have needed done for a while and work more on my business. (Plus a little extra free time with the family) I read and implemented one small conversion optimization tip on this last Monday that has increased my sales by close to 40%! Man I wish I had hired someone earlier!

I agree, your first hire must be done as soon as your financially able to in the business cycle. I hired someone for graphic designs, customer service and the day to day maintenance of things a year ago and it has freed up my time to do more important things in the business. Another thing that I outsource is packing, prep and shipping of orders to a 3rd party warehouse. Would you care to share how much the advertiser charges to handle your ppc campaigns and if they are an agency looking for more work?

 

[Ecom man]

Ecom man you've inspired me to stop lurking and first post. I've sold on eBay previously but with the completely wrong approach (pallet over stock with random lines and no repeat orders). It was tedious for small profit.

You've inspired me to revisit. Looking at the start of this post and the end you've come a long way.

I may be misunderstanding but i think you now say......you would go straight to a website. You can charge higher prices than eBay. You recommend niche category sites rather than multi category sites. Early on you would find product against low competition and good profit margin and test.

If you are charging more now and also using multiple products in a category then....

1. Does eBay competition matter any more or do you just pick big selling items? The more sellers the better? Unlike your early days on ebay I'm assuming the number of sellers doesn't matter as you are relying on traffic to your site anyway?

2. It sounds like a lot hinges on that traffic drive? You mentioned you knew zero about seo, shopify etc. What and where is the key thing to learn in your opinion? I know nothing about AdWords so it's top of my list to research. I've always been scared of putting my details on and running up high bills with no conversions. A lot to learn!

Apologies if I'm misreading, I got the impression that you now have a process where there is less reliance on the competition and profit margin (although still needs to be good!). I'm just wondering what the most important skills in that process are.

This thread and your story is inspirational. Kudos too you sir.

As of what I would personally do now I'm just starting up websites. I have a few years of marketing/PPC experience under my belt so if you know nothing of that selling on eBay certainly isn't a bad place to start since they bring all the customers to you.

1. eBay competition doesn't matter to me now since I'm not mainly selling on eBay.

2. Key thing with Adwords would be start small. Set your daily budget low and start with a low cpc. Be sure to set up conversion tracking so you know what keywords are bringing in the conversions and at what cost per conversion. As you get the hand of ad writing and see which of your keywords are converting at great prices you can up the bids and budgets. Don't use broad match! I always use 3 match types for each keyword Broad Match Modifier, Phrase match, and exact match. Surprisingly some match types do better than others even though the keywords are the same. I had a keyword on a new site and the exact match was costing me $50 per conversion but the phrase match was costing me $3 per conversion.

 

[Ecom man]

Love this thread, on fire since day 1! Do you customize your own products or relabel/brand existing designs from manufacturers?

How is your logistics? Do you use a fulfillment center, amazon fba, your own warehouse? This is my biggest problem nowadays...logistics and shipping costs in North America. I'm using a fulfillment center and they're eating away at literally 100% of the profits...my products are fairly large and heavy (30-35lbs) so I can't self ship. I compared fulfillment centers in Canada and the US and it's the same story, they tack on an increase of a good 20-25% for domestic shipments, plus pick/pack, plus monthly storage fees, it eats away at the margin to 0 or -. I think to use a fulfillment center or fba and turn a profit, you need a relatively small and lightweight branded item with a massive margin. When you source, do you typically look for small and lightweight items? Thanks!

Self fulfill from my own warehouse. I started out of my house/garage and went to a warehouse as needed. I did all the fulfillment myself up until a month ago when I hired an employee to do it.

I have products that range in size from fitting into a usps cardboard envelope and boxes 16x12x12.

 

[Ecom man]

I agree, your first hire must be done as soon as your financially able to in the business cycle. I hired someone for graphic designs, customer service and the day to day maintenance of things a year ago and it has freed up my time to do more important things in the business. Another thing that I outsource is packing, prep and shipping of orders to a 3rd party warehouse. Would you care to share how much the advertiser charges to handle your ppc campaigns and if they are an agency looking for more work?

I handle my own PPC. I do minor tweaking once a week and on a larger scale once a month. I also use a program called ad hawk that does some of the more tedious optimization. It costs $400 a month and they send you optimization tips via their app. You either accept or reject the tip and it automatically implements the tip.

 

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[JTR]

If I started selling from scratch I would begin on Amazon and then transition to eBay.

Would you still recommend starting on Amazon before selling on eBay?

I handle my own PPC. I do minor tweaking once a week and on a larger scale once a month. I also use a program called ad hawk that does some of the more tedious optimization. It costs $400 a month and they send you optimization tips via their app. You either accept or reject the tip and it automatically implements the tip.

Do you sell your products internationally? If so, are you advertising w/ Google International & Bing International or only domestic?

 

[Sfbloo]

As of what I would personally do now I'm just starting up websites. I have a few years of marketing/PPC experience under my belt so if you know nothing of that selling on eBay certainly isn't a bad place to start since they bring all the customers to you.

1. eBay competition doesn't matter to me now since I'm not mainly selling on eBay.

2. Key thing with Adwords would be start small. Set your daily budget low and start with a low cpc. Be sure to set up conversion tracking so you know what keywords are bringing in the conversions and at what cost per conversion. As you get the hand of ad writing and see which of your keywords are converting at great prices you can up the bids and budgets. Don't use broad match! I always use 3 match types for each keyword Broad Match Modifier, Phrase match, and exact match. Surprisingly some match types do better than others even though the keywords are the same. I had a keyword on a new site and the exact match was costing me $50 per conversion but the phrase match was costing me $3 per conversion.

That's great thanks for the advice. Are there any sources/sites you recommend for learning ppc AdWords? I started yesterday flicking through some great threads on here - Andy black I think.

 

[Ecom man]

Would you still recommend starting on Amazon before selling on eBay?

Do you sell your products internationally? If so, are you advertising w/ Google International & Bing International or only domestic?

If you have sold online before or are willing to learn while providing good customer service than yes Amazon is king right now and you can totally kill it just selling on there. If you are just going to dabble in selling online then learning the ropes is better on eBay IMO.

I don't sell internationally outside of Canada and don't even advertise to Canada. I advertise just in the US.

 

[Ecom man]

That's great thanks for the advice. Are there any sources/sites you recommend for learning ppc AdWords? I started yesterday flicking through some great threads on here - Andy black I think.

I basically just googled best way to set up Adwords. Read some articles from different places. As I came across something I didn't know how to do (remarketing for search campaigns for example) I would just google how to set it up. I would google conversion optimization tips for my site. I would google best ad practices for Adwords. Basically just spend some serious time going down the rabbit hole of blogs and reading similar articles etc. Neil Patel has quite a few helpful articles on his blog that had some good tips in them.

 

[Denim Chicken]

I basically just googled best way to set up Adwords. Read some articles from different places. As I came across something I didn't know how to do (remarketing for search campaigns for example) I would just google how to set it up. I would google conversion optimization tips for my site. I would google best ad practices for Adwords. Basically just spend some serious time going down the rabbit hole of blogs and reading similar articles etc. Neil Patel has quite a few helpful articles on his blog that had some good tips in them.

Simply put, it basically just comes down to finding product that have enough margin after ad costs to make it worthwhile. Meaning it's highly dependent on the CPC and adwords competition. Trying to rank for fidget spinners now would be a poor choice of product because of the ad spend related to it.

What I did in the past was set up 1 website for 1 product as a test. It actually is fine if you have enough information about the product so I didn't have to fill up the site with other products just to make it look fuller. But, I never got to the stage where 10+ products (each with their own website) were successful.
Trying to figure out how I would systemize it and combine them into 1. Otherwise as you scale to 80-100 products, having 80-100 websites and logins and order fulfillment systems and/or shopify would be way too much to handle.

If you attain scale and want to combine websites, could you move your product from the 1 product website to a multi product website and re-do all the campaigns and bid exactly and get reasonably similar results?
On facebook you really can't. FB is fickle in that sometimes if you change 1 thing or even if it's the same product and website, it will stop performing.

 

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[Ecom man]

Simply put, it basically just comes down to finding product that have enough margin after ad costs to make it worthwhile. Meaning it's highly dependent on the CPC and adwords competition. Trying to rank for fidget spinners now would be a poor choice of product because of the ad spend related to it.

What I did in the past was set up 1 website for 1 product as a test. It actually is fine if you have enough information about the product so I didn't have to fill up the site with other products just to make it look fuller. But, I never got to the stage where 10+ products (each with their own website) were successful.
Trying to figure out how I would systemize it and combine them into 1. Otherwise as you scale to 80-100 products, having 80-100 websites and logins and order fulfillment systems and/or shopify would be way too much to handle.

If you attain scale and want to combine websites, could you move your product from the 1 product website to a multi product website and re-do all the campaigns and bid exactly and get reasonably similar results?
On facebook you really can't. FB is fickle in that sometimes if you change 1 thing or even if it's the same product and website, it will stop performing.

In regards to selling fidget spinners yes it's a bad idea but not because the cpc is way up but because I don't do fad products. If you want to ride fad waves then you can certainly do so but the money you make will be entirely dependent on how close the fad is to the end when you get off. Walmart is selling spinners for $5 right now the gravy train is coming to an end.

In regards to combining sites into one I really don't have any idea how it would affect the Adwords metrics. If that is your plan then why not have a site with a couple products and just keep adding products to that same site? I'm sure you can set it up where it looks like just a single page site and the ads for a specific product point directly to the sales page. Why would you set up hundreds of different domains instead of one domain with many single page products listed?

 

[Chazmania]

Self fulfill from my own warehouse.

Sorry if I missed it this but did you work out a way to get a reduced shipping rate while selling on your own sites? I know ebay and amazon offer sellers a discount but wonder about selling on your own platform.

 

[Bstpwnll]

I have read almost all the pages.
Good job man , you inspire me.
I sell actually on Amazon and I'm doing really good , now I'm making my own website via shopify and I wanna drive traffic with Adwords creating , as you do, different ads for every products I have.
I have almost all my stuff from big brand such as Lego, Playmobil , Philips etc. etc.
Do you think is going to be difficult to drive traffic to my ecommerce for that kind of Keywords?

 

[Ecom man]

Sorry if I missed it this but did you work out a way to get a reduced shipping rate while selling on your own sites? I know ebay and amazon offer sellers a discount but wonder about selling on your own platform.

I use a shipping platform called shipping easy. I can ship at the same cost as buying labels from eBay/Amazon.

 

[Ecom man]

I have read almost all the pages.
Good job man , you inspire me.
I sell actually on Amazon and I'm doing really good , now I'm making my own website via shopify and I wanna drive traffic with Adwords creating , as you do, different ads for every products I have.
I have almost all my stuff from big brand such as Lego, Playmobil , Philips etc. etc.
Do you think is going to be difficult to drive traffic to my ecommerce for that kind of Keywords?

Only way to know is test. Start your bids at .05-.10 a click and see what happens. Be sure to set up Google Shopping as well since your cost per conversions will normally be lower on shopping.

 

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[Sfbloo]

Ok I've just finished every page of this thread. What a journey! Nothing but respect for your progress and for taking the time too share your experience. Thank you.

If you have the time can I indulge in a couple of questions…

I touched on this previously. Most of the history of this thread is finding a good product with good margins. They didn't have to be massive sellers as long as they were regular.

1.Now it's all done through your site what is your product criteria?

Is each product chosen from your tried and tested process or because your range has expanded are you now choosing a few key sellers and making up the numbers with similar products to fill a category/ niche site? I think that is what I would need to do.

Its hard to find products never mind a full category of them. As your selling above eBay prices I guess there are a lot of products that now give you the right margin so you don't have to be as choosy?

2. Adwords. I've taken the plunge and started learning. I've been using test products as an example to search terms and generally find most are high competitions and low recommended bid. Or high bid low competition. I'm yet to find low and low. Do you evaluate new products based on adwords search results and if so what indicators are you using?

Low competition sounds great but the cost seems very prohibitive.

Additionally. Is there a very rough guide to predicting costs of adwords in relation to profit margin. Ie to assess feasibility? So a product with £5 profit wouldn't be worth bidding £1 cpc as I would need to sell 1 in 5 clicks to break even? I appreciate there are so many factors involved. Just curious whether there is an average guide?

3. You mentioned you plan to separate sites and sell. Out of curiosity do you keep a theme across each site? So say you currently use ecomdepot.comz do you intend to keep any branding ie ecomdepot-pets.comz or just have random/ unique sites. Just curious whether you go for independent sites or some crossover and link between them.

Again. Thank you and well done!

 

[Bstpwnll]

When you find a new products, do u check keywords planner to have an estimate of avg monthly searches ?

 

[Dicky Dee]

I have read almost all the pages.
Good job man , you inspire me.
I sell actually on Amazon and I'm doing really good , now I'm making my own website via shopify and I wanna drive traffic with Adwords creating , as you do, different ads for every products I have.
I have almost all my stuff from big brand such as Lego, Playmobil , Philips etc. etc.
Do you think is going to be difficult to drive traffic to my ecommerce for that kind of Keywords?

how were you able to get accounts for those brands? I find it harder the bigger the brand is.

 

[Bstpwnll]

how were you able to get accounts for those brands? I find it harder the bigger the brand is.

I have of friend of mine that work for Playmobil in Italy so i get list and price directly from him !
Other brands are almost flips from retailer !
If you got a chance to attend some fair, do it!
I got much of my contacts there.