Being relatively new to ebay and selling I thought i would pass on my experience of finding wholesalers and dropshippers. Or you could read it as how to get ripped off by wholesalers and dropshipping websites.
A few weeks ago i started looking into finding a wholesale supplier or dropshipper so i could start trading in volume on ebay and also to pick up components for my business at better prices. So i did the first thing everyone would try and i 'googled it'. The results were confusing at first as a lot of the sites appeared to be link sites to other link sites but a few looked promising and after bookmarking several sites i sat down to research exactly what was on offer.
This where many people find it confusing as there does not seem to be a whole lot of actual information, theres lots of 'look how good we are' 'we do this,we do that' 'look how much profit you make' and i was becoming sceptical that i could find anything worthwhile considering how much these sites were charging for membership. The rates varied from 10 upto 500 depending on the type of service you wanted.
I did find one site that seemed to be everything i wanted, it proclaimed in big letters that it 'was the new home for dropshipping in the UK' and 'fast delivery for all your customers, big profits for you, more than 20000 products at upto 85% off retail price' and at a reasonable membership of 9.99 per year and the ease of using paypal for purchases i thought ok this is the one for me.
Today I am bitter as I realise i have been naive and have been ripped off. But i am not the first and no doubt will not be the last.
I eventually recieved my user name and password for my account and quickly logged in to see what was on offer........after 10 minutes of looking for products i found exactly none, nil, zero, nada. I did find however a few pages of links to websites of wholesale companies and dropshippers. Mmmmm google gave me that didnt it . Ok i say lets look at the sites, and lo and behold they were actually good wholesalers and dropshipping companies with good products at great prices, free to open accounts and easy to use listings for selling your products. whats the catch you say? well they would be fantastic if i was austrsalian and only sold to people in austrailia as the shipping charges for international deliveries made the products twice as expensive as retails stores in my high street.
My advice is dont sign up for anything you need to pay a fee for, if they where so confident in the money that you would make with your sales they would give the memberships away and make thier profits on your purchases. And as for the link sites and the pay us and we can help you crowd, well, unless we as a commnunity stand up and make our selves heard by complaining to paypal until they do something about it these sites will continue to rip us off, if you have een ripped off by one of these link sites complain to paypal if thats how you paid.
As for wholesalers and dropshippers a friend of mine gave me the best lead ever which i will pass on to you. Find the product you want to sell, look up the manufacturer and phone them. They will give you numbers of thier distrubters and eventually you will find one who will offer to strike a deal with you. Offer an easy payment on items (cash is king here) or direct bank payments and you will soon be up and running.
Just remember buy cheap sell cheap, 5 profit on each item if you sell fifty is better than 20 profit on each item if you can only sell 2.
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