Over Look Today: How to Make Money on eBay With Drop Shipping Wholesalers

Selling your used items on eBay is one thing, but using drop shippers to sell new items can take your business to a whole new level. Drop shipping involves a merchant using another company to fulfill and ship the order. Many of the new items, including electronics, children's toys, and health and beauty products, are sold through drop shippers. There are several suppliers who are large drop shipping services with access to hundreds of wholesalers, as well as specialty businesses that drop shop niche items like gift baskets. It's also possible to use the principles of drop shipping when buying from online retailers. The large drop shippers have a membership agreement and fee, while the niche products may have an application you have to submit.

Advantages of Drop Shipping

An eBay seller's business model fits well with using a drop shipping service. When you, the merchant sells an item, the buyer must send you the money via PayPal before the order is fulfilled. Using a drop shipper, you take the payment and order the item from the supplier at a reduced rate, keeping the profits for yourself. You can sell $300 items or $30 with equal effort. You can also offer a large number of items and test which ones sell the best for a nominal listing fee. The large drop shipping services like Doba.com have a user interface that lists your products on your eBay account in a matter of minutes. You simply have to link your eBay account to the Doba account and choose the items you want to list.

Disadvantages of Drop Shipping

Drop shipping, despite its ease, can have a few pitfalls:

Drop shipping services commonly charge a membership fee. Doba.com charges upwards of $50 as a monthly subscription fee. If you sell 10 items a month, that's $5 added to the cost of each item.

When you delegate the fulfillment and shipping to someone else, you give all control to the drop shipping service. If the order is late, not of high quality or not fulfilled, your customers will blame you, not the drop shipper. To avoid this problem, place a personal order with the company and see firsthand how smooth the transaction goes.

While drop shipping saves you from having to store the inventory, you still have to keep tabs on how much inventory is available. When you use a drop shipping service, you have access to see how many units are available from various wholesalers. If the item is popular, supplies may sell quickly, and an item that you advertise could be sold out before the company fulfills an order, in which case you will have to refund purchases and could receive bad feedback even after the matter is resolved. In a worst case scenario, the customer may open a file a complaint against you, which could result in your eBay account privileges being suspended. To minimize these problems, deal only with reputable vendors.

Making Money

There are millions of products to choose from, but not all of them will make you money. Research is essential. To determine how well and for how much your item can sell, look at eBay's completed items. If the item you are researching sold many times and at a price that meets your margins, then it's a keeper. If the product is not listed, that's even better. You can dominate the market until other sellers catch on. Rather than concentrate on a percentage for your profit margin, look at the dollars that item will generate. If you can make either 12 dollars selling a 4-dollar item for 16 dollars or 50 dollars from selling a 100-dollar item for 150 dollars, which would you choose? Think about it.

Strategies for Success.

Some of the greatest success from drop shipping on eBay comes from using other retailers, not wholesalers. Items selling on clearance at retailer websites can be used to fulfill orders. Many times these items are even cheaper than wholesale, because the store wants to get rid of it. When someone buys the item from your eBay listing, you go to the retailer's website, place an order with your payment information and the eBay buyer's shipping address. You don't need to tell the retailer you are reselling the item. This strategy works well because the retailer has reliable shipping times and quality items. It takes research to find that hot item, but the profit margin can be anywhere from 100 to 400 percent. Sometimes retailers limit the number of items a customer can purchase, so check the store's policy before you list a bunch of them. You can also pretend to purchase the item, type in a large quantity and see if it is placed into your online shopping cart. Monitor quantities every few days to make sure the item is still available from the retailer.