Confessions Of A Drop-Shipper...
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Jakg
Posts: 2,265 Forumite
Seeing as it looks like my time on eBay is well and truly over (god I hate their customer support!) I can give away all my secrets with impunity.
First of all - i received this PM (name removed) - I prefer to answer PM's in public where-ever possible, though, so here it is...
Well first of all I was using a website (which lots and LOTS of people on eBay use to dropship with, DealExtreme, I actually bought a lot of stuff from there and loved the free shipping idea. I then realised that although a lot of it was fairly low-quality Chinese stuff, it was better and cheaper than the cheap Chinese tat on eBay, and that's where my highly original (:cool:) idea came from - unfortunately I soon realised that lots of people were already doing this. To start off with, I was going to buy stock and then send it out to customers from my house via Royal Mail, but I bought in stock of these torches, and I soon realised that although these torches were good (they were around £1.50 each delivered and they are the best small torches i've used bar mag-lites), it was hard to explain that they were better than the 50-jillion LED torches you can get on eBay and so they just sat around my house (i bought 10 of them and 10 little LED Keyring torches which I ended up giving away to friends / familiy). One thing that I always prided myself on was making all my auctions look smart - they all had a professional looking layout etc and I must say I looked like a top-quality power-seller and I think it really helped me. I then made a few purchases on eBay to get my feedback (including 1p eBooks i'm ashamed to admit) and then started to sell stuff - I started with the torches, but sold about one or two and realised that actually they really weren't "hot stuff". I then decided to look at stuff i thought would sell well, and then see if it was for sale - I then found my first competitor who lived in a town less than an hour away drop-shipping from DX and selling really really well (even with her TERRIBLE listings), and I found her best selling product was a Pig Torch - I could buy them for 62p, but she was selling them for £3! I jumped in at 1.80 and sold lots and lots, and realised there was actually a fair amount of money to be made, so I got "into it".
From then on things got more serious - I designed a proper sales / stock ledger etc (although I must admit I never registered as self employed, but I was about to then I was suspened from eBay...) and made a database full of details about address, order details, pay / dispatch days etc. I also found all my competitors (for me, anything with slow delivery from Hong Kong - i.e. 12 - 17 days - which was for sale on FX probably was from DX) and looked at what sold well and what didn't - I then worked out that all my competitors were over-pricing like mad, and found my ultimate item - a PSP battery. I knew nothing about PSP batteries, nor had I ever had a PSP, but at £3.50 each selling for £6 I made a KILLING. All I did was just click "re-list" (eventually got Selling Manager Pro to do even THAT for me!) and then just order the stuff and fill in my paper-work every time I got an email from PayPal saying i'd been paid - I was actually working for around £8 - £12 an hour, the only problem was I never got over maybe 3 - 4 hours of work a week
By this time I was at almost 100 sales, and I started to get my first problems - A competitor sprung up, and stole my listings and pictures - I emailed eBay (and him) and he changed them slightly (One thing I DEPLORE on eBay is poor listings - It took 5-10 minutes to make mine nice and detailed and paid for itself over and over, and having them stolen really annoyed me!) and got away with it. It happened again with a different seller who stole all my listings, pictures and then undercut all my prices by 5p - but he did the same trick. He then later reported me for every bloody thing he could, and probably led to my suspension...
I'd also racked up lots and LOTS of warnings (I didn't realise that you could set the "Item Location" from TurboLister, so I wrote in the listings they were from Hong Kong - this wasn't good enough for one buyer so he Neutraled me and reported every single one of my listings to eBay as they all had this, and eBays live help wouldn't tell me how to change the listings once they were up, so I got about 10 - 20 "item misreprestation" warnings), and I then found another "top product" - a "Pandora PSP Battery" (used to flash new firmware on PSP's) - these were £5 from DX and sold for over £20 on eBay, however it turns out they are prohibited on eBay (as eBay seem to think they can be used for Piracy somehow) and although they don't look for them, it appears someone reported lots and lots of listings for these (as a LOT of my competitors listings dissapeared) except the one guy who undercut me... Add this VeRO incident to my other incidents and I got suspended - it was only a 7-day suspension, but I don't have the documents to re-instate my account, and no amount of telling eBay that seems to get a non-copy 'n pasted response!.
...anyway! back to your questions...! I made a fair amount of cash for little work (£400 ish in a few months with a few hours work a week), but it helps if you have some basic knowledge of the stuff your selling (i.e. i'm a tech nut - I may not have a PSP for example, but I can Google well enough to be able to answer most questions from buyers).
(sorry this post is so long as so hard to read)
If anyone has any questions to ask a semi-successful drop-shipper then ask away!
First of all - i received this PM (name removed) - I prefer to answer PM's in public where-ever possible, though, so here it is...
Hi
Just wondering if you maybe able to help give me some advice. I am in a similar situation to where you were 7 months ago. I am wanting to start selling things on ebay to try and earn a little extra cash using dropshipping. I am interested to know what sort of things you listed to begin with (was it something you knew a lot about, had an interest in or something you thought you could sell easily for a profit) have you specialised in something since you started and which dropshipping company/wholesaler you use/recommend, there seem to be lots out there some good some bad i would have thought.
Also did you buy some things to begin with to get a bit of a score on the boards regarding your feedback before you started selling
If you could help that would be great
Thanks
Well first of all I was using a website (which lots and LOTS of people on eBay use to dropship with, DealExtreme, I actually bought a lot of stuff from there and loved the free shipping idea. I then realised that although a lot of it was fairly low-quality Chinese stuff, it was better and cheaper than the cheap Chinese tat on eBay, and that's where my highly original (:cool:) idea came from - unfortunately I soon realised that lots of people were already doing this. To start off with, I was going to buy stock and then send it out to customers from my house via Royal Mail, but I bought in stock of these torches, and I soon realised that although these torches were good (they were around £1.50 each delivered and they are the best small torches i've used bar mag-lites), it was hard to explain that they were better than the 50-jillion LED torches you can get on eBay and so they just sat around my house (i bought 10 of them and 10 little LED Keyring torches which I ended up giving away to friends / familiy). One thing that I always prided myself on was making all my auctions look smart - they all had a professional looking layout etc and I must say I looked like a top-quality power-seller and I think it really helped me. I then made a few purchases on eBay to get my feedback (including 1p eBooks i'm ashamed to admit) and then started to sell stuff - I started with the torches, but sold about one or two and realised that actually they really weren't "hot stuff". I then decided to look at stuff i thought would sell well, and then see if it was for sale - I then found my first competitor who lived in a town less than an hour away drop-shipping from DX and selling really really well (even with her TERRIBLE listings), and I found her best selling product was a Pig Torch - I could buy them for 62p, but she was selling them for £3! I jumped in at 1.80 and sold lots and lots, and realised there was actually a fair amount of money to be made, so I got "into it".
From then on things got more serious - I designed a proper sales / stock ledger etc (although I must admit I never registered as self employed, but I was about to then I was suspened from eBay...) and made a database full of details about address, order details, pay / dispatch days etc. I also found all my competitors (for me, anything with slow delivery from Hong Kong - i.e. 12 - 17 days - which was for sale on FX probably was from DX) and looked at what sold well and what didn't - I then worked out that all my competitors were over-pricing like mad, and found my ultimate item - a PSP battery. I knew nothing about PSP batteries, nor had I ever had a PSP, but at £3.50 each selling for £6 I made a KILLING. All I did was just click "re-list" (eventually got Selling Manager Pro to do even THAT for me!) and then just order the stuff and fill in my paper-work every time I got an email from PayPal saying i'd been paid - I was actually working for around £8 - £12 an hour, the only problem was I never got over maybe 3 - 4 hours of work a week
By this time I was at almost 100 sales, and I started to get my first problems - A competitor sprung up, and stole my listings and pictures - I emailed eBay (and him) and he changed them slightly (One thing I DEPLORE on eBay is poor listings - It took 5-10 minutes to make mine nice and detailed and paid for itself over and over, and having them stolen really annoyed me!) and got away with it. It happened again with a different seller who stole all my listings, pictures and then undercut all my prices by 5p - but he did the same trick. He then later reported me for every bloody thing he could, and probably led to my suspension...
I'd also racked up lots and LOTS of warnings (I didn't realise that you could set the "Item Location" from TurboLister, so I wrote in the listings they were from Hong Kong - this wasn't good enough for one buyer so he Neutraled me and reported every single one of my listings to eBay as they all had this, and eBays live help wouldn't tell me how to change the listings once they were up, so I got about 10 - 20 "item misreprestation" warnings), and I then found another "top product" - a "Pandora PSP Battery" (used to flash new firmware on PSP's) - these were £5 from DX and sold for over £20 on eBay, however it turns out they are prohibited on eBay (as eBay seem to think they can be used for Piracy somehow) and although they don't look for them, it appears someone reported lots and lots of listings for these (as a LOT of my competitors listings dissapeared) except the one guy who undercut me... Add this VeRO incident to my other incidents and I got suspended - it was only a 7-day suspension, but I don't have the documents to re-instate my account, and no amount of telling eBay that seems to get a non-copy 'n pasted response!.
...anyway! back to your questions...! I made a fair amount of cash for little work (£400 ish in a few months with a few hours work a week), but it helps if you have some basic knowledge of the stuff your selling (i.e. i'm a tech nut - I may not have a PSP for example, but I can Google well enough to be able to answer most questions from buyers).
(sorry this post is so long as so hard to read)
If anyone has any questions to ask a semi-successful drop-shipper then ask away!
Nothing I say represents any past, present or future employer.
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Comments
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If you offset the hours worked and the hassle involved, was it worth it for £400?0
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I was 16 at the time (yes, I know - i'm not meant to be on eBay etc etc) but I really enjoyed the "hassle" (I spent probably 15+ hours setting everything up on eBay got a i got a weird kick out of it) and after that - yes it was! All i'd do is wait 'till a free (I was doing my AS Levels at the time) and then just send some orders out - and then every now and again i'd have some money in my PayPal account and i'd buy something through the post or buy something for my GF. I don't count this "set-up" time or the time I looked at competitors or MSE in the £8 - £12 figure, though, as I really sort of did that for fun :x
The only bad thing about it was that unlike my current job i never really felt like i'd done any hard work, and the money was just a number on the screen - I only ever held about £20 of what I earned in my hand and I blew every single penny i earned on things like monitors, the girlfriend and phones
It's not the sort of thing you could ever live off, or that could be used to double your income, but for little work you could quite easily use to to pay for that little something like christmas presents or whatever.
Yes i'd say it was worth it, but with the way eBay's going i'm not sure if eBay ITSELF is worth it any more.Nothing I say represents any past, present or future employer.0 -
My son recently cleared out the stuff from his bedroom and decided to list it on ebay (OK, I admit it I threatened to list it and keep the money if he didn't bother). He made almost £300. Unfortunately like you Jakg it was all blown on drink and [STRIKE]women[/STRIKE] his girlfriend an dmore rubbish to replace the stuff he originally cleared out.
He has now found a small niche market though as a result of one of the things he listed and whilst it is nowhere near a 'wage' it does give him beer money for the weekends.I’m a Forum Ambassador and I support the Forum Team on the eBay, Auctions, Car Boot & Jumble Sales, Boost Your Income, Praise, Vents & Warnings, Overseas Holidays & Travel Planning , UK Holidays, Days Out & Entertainments boards. If you need any help on these boards, do let me know.. Please note that Ambassadors are not moderators. Any posts you spot in breach of the Forum Rules should be reported via the report button, or by emailing forumteam@moneysavingexpert.com.All views are my own and not the official line of MoneySavingExpert.0 -
Drop shipping will be the thing to ultimately kill eBay - that and their encouragement of volume sales - one day it will turn into place solely for unregistered, council estate bedroom tycoons running powersales of knockoffs, copies and non-genuine items they have never seen while pretending to be shipping from UK and cuthroating each other in the process leaving buyers to deal with suspended sellers. It's the pages and pages and volumes of fake USB keys with unusable capacities, phone batteries that don't hold charge after 20 times, knock off headphones with terrible sound quality and "replacement" accessories pretending to be real labels. It's the long, long queries of minus signs you have to filter everything with before you find anything in UK, from real manufacturer, without keyword spamming and misleading "genuine Sony copy" hidden somewhere in overly long and detailed description of what the item should be but isn't.
One day ebay will be just that - it will be like typing any electronic goods symbol into google and getting hundreds of pages of spammy dooyoo's, pricerunners, ciaos, dealtimes and other clones pointing you to useless Dixon's shops and Argos tat, just about anything BUT the stuff you were actually looking for.
Ultimately this business model is cheating buyers into thinking items will arive in 2 days, while they ship from far east, the cheaper the sales the less likelyhood of them paying any taxes and customs, in the same time wrecking market for genuine importers or distributors.
I have my own anecdote regarding drop shipping - bought software, from popular UK based seller, all positive feedback etc. Turned out they were using drop shipper and never even seen the merchendise they believed to be genuine Adobe software. Just look at the "quality" of the items from their drop shipper:
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Thanks for that.
I never sold anything knock-off, made delivery times clear, and item location etc.
Were not all bad-boys!Nothing I say represents any past, present or future employer.0 -
Thats very entrepreneurial for a 16 year old, when I was your age I was very much the same ...
Problem with Deal Xtreme is that everyone knows about it now!
I only buy used items on Ebay myself ... if someone is selling something new they are making a profit, and chances are, they bought the item somewhere else on the internet, for a lower price, so it pays to shop around.
I recently bought a bulk lot of dresses from a korean wholesaler to resell on ebay and have had nothing but stress since! - also it's a major risk if you don't sell the items - it's like flushing your money down the loo.0 -
I thought "everyone" bought of DX too, but it seems every single of my 120 customers didn't
Nothing I say represents any past, present or future employer.0 -
Interesting thread. I did quite well in the past breaking up cars and selling the parts. The hourly rate wasn't amazing, but it did turn effort into money.
I'm feeling pretty fed up with Ebay TBH. I've been doing quite well selling off excess DIY parts I had and some bits I bought at a motor factor clear out. Then some divot left me neutral feedback due to a mistake I made with postage charges and my feedback rating has been knocked down to 95%.Happy chappy0 -
When I was 14/15 I was selling on eBay too. I bought some stock from America and sold it. I bought some sunglasses in a £3 and sold them for £12.50 delivered. It was really good money and at the peak of the sales I sold 4 a day. Profit of £7 - £8 This was really good money for someone my age.0
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