Maximizing Your Profits for EBay Business and Ecommerce Shopping
If you think finding products to sell on eBay and finding products to sell online through your home business ecommerce site are the same, you may want to think again. That isn’t to say that eBay and ecommerce might not share some of the same sources, but as eBay becomes oriented more and more towards power sellers and other big sellers, such as buy.com, you may need to start paying close attention to the differences in selling environments in order to come out ahead. By the way, when I say selling environment, I simply mean a place where you sell stuff. Here’s what I mean.
What Does This Mean? Let Me Explain
eBay is a distinctly different kind of selling environment than that of an ecommerce website that you run from your own domain name on your own hosting.
This means that:
- eBay is a wholesale selling environment.
and that:
- An ecommerce site (discovery.com or barnesnoble.com)is a retail selling environment.
This can make all the difference in terms of how and where you get your products. This is a point that many people overlook and it can kill an eBay business.
Because eBay is essentially a wholesale selling venue, the prices for most goods are already at or below wholesale cost. This means that if you are buying items singly or in small quantities from a wholesale distributor that you probably won’t be able to make a profit. This is particularly true for most popular, mass market consumer goods such as electronics. Products such as laptops, iPhones, portable DVD players, TVs, are exceptionally hard to profit with on eBay even in the best of times and with the lowest prices due to competition among sellers. If you purchase these items at a standard wholesale price and try to sell them on eBay, I can almost guarantee you a loss.
However, popular consumer items that may be too expensive when purchased through wholesale distributors may work very well in a retail environment, such as on your independantly hosted ecommerce site. When you purchase a laptop or an iPhone at wholesale price for resale, you are retailing that item. If you try to retail an item on eBay, where most popular consumer goods are selling at or below wholesale prices, it will be very difficult to make a profit. For a suggestion on how to get around this, skip to the resource box.
What I am explaining may fly in the face of all the promotion you see on the Internet, but the fact is, if you sign up for doba.com or shopster.com and expect to make a killing on eBay selling consumer electronics or brand name perfumes, you are in for a shock. Dropshipping on eBay through sites such as the two examples just mentioned is especially hard because dropship prices are typically higher than mere wholesale because of the added expense.
Moreover, sites like doba.com, dropshipdesign.com and so forth, are not true wholesale sites. These are essentially retail sites offering steeply discounted goods. They are legitimate and make it easy to start selling online, but are they best for eBay? In my opinion, your chances for success with this particular model will generally be greater if you pursue an independent ecommerce option.
Understanding the difference between wholesaling and retailing will clear the way for you to make the most of your business strategy.
Aid and Trade International Directory of Wholesale Product Suppliers
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[tags]finding products to sell on ebay,wholesale distributors,wholesale prices,dropshipping on ebay[/tags]
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