I’m an American that has been living in China for over 2 years. About a year ago I started my own product sourcing company. Basically, a client sends requests for products and I set everything up between my client and a Chinese factory. Through this business I have made some really great contacts with factories here, and can get products “dirt†cheap. I have always known about ebay, but have never really given it any serious thought, because normally I deal in bulk. Recently I have made an account with a new shipping company here in china that allows me to send small shipments to the U.S. and Canada at a very reasonable rate. This has caused me to rethink the whole ebay bit. I always thought of ebay as a cumbersome time consuming thing. (be reminded I have no ebay experience, these are just my own preconceptions) Now that my company has grown a bit and I have staff, I’m thinking of expanding, and offering select products to individuals through ebay. For those of you that are familiar with ebay, do you honestly think this is a venture I should undertake given my brief description of the situation?
Having good connections is very important when doing business. If you have all the connections, why not give it a try? This seems like an opportunity to me and I think you should take advantage of it.
It works best when you have multiple products that are in demand. The time consuming part is making a nice page. Hardly worth the effort for a single item. The fees are a little steeper than they were. By the time you pay ebay and paypal you are pushing 10% of the gross. Any specific questions?
If your products are price agressively then you will probably make quite a bit of money. But competitive pricing will be the key, Ebay is a very competitive market, and like Colby said the fees really eat into a sellers profit margin. If you can, find out what the current average wholesale price is for the products you carry. Cus if you can't beat the current prices, then it will be tough. Also be sure to consider the different Ebay country markets (Europe,Australia, etc), not just US. What may be a really tight product market in the US, may be an emerging market in the Australian market, etc. Also, not sure how much customs stuff would be involved (that always intimiated me), if you handle the customs stuff, then that would increase your value. Ebay has a yearly conference (I think sometime in June), it maybe worth it to check to see if they have one in China. There is also Ebay radio, (I forget the web address, it is also available in a podcast) but if you do decide to do this, try to get on the radio show, it will give you huge exposure to the exact market you want. In fact, people may end up beating down your door. Morty
I'm not a big seller on ebay, but I have bought bulk shipments and resold invidually with little profit. My main concern however, was it took me a long time to list each item, its very time consuming and I wouldn't recommend it unless your selling fewer higher end items.
I agree with some of the post here. Just give it a shot and you may discover a great new source of income. Why not man go for it. Just put a good plan together and go with it.
There is a high demand for Chinese made (quality) products here in the US. Especially clothing and things like that. On eBay, they often go for more than they do in stores in some items so if I were you, I would definitely at least try it out
Thank you everyone for the information. Could someone tell me exactly how the fee structure works? 10% of a sale being paid to ebay and paypal (combined) sounds fairly pricey. I’ve heard of people having ebay stores, is that correct? I know I must sound like a duffus to all this but I really have zero ebay experience. Today I’m going to do some more research. Ideally I would like to devote one member of my Chinese staff to handle the ebay portion of the business. This kind of export business has slow times and really busy times. I’m sure I could manage having one staff member handle this (provided it’s not too complicated) Being here gives me lots of options. I’m going to research what’s hot on ebay now, and see what’s feasible. It would be interesting to also see what you guys think is a hot item there too.
Hey, I've done a lot of work in the past and have even written a report on the exact subject you are talking about. I've made a ton, to say the least. Believe me, if you do your research, you can make a fortune. James
Ebay fees The Ebay fees above are basic fees. BIN and extra picture can add to the cost if you don't self host them. Paypal fees For the PayPal fees you have to look at the premier/Business column. You aren't going to be able to use the free service.
I've spent the last 2 days browsing around ebay, studying prices and what I feel is very important, number of bids on each item. I have to be honest here. I am totally unimpressed! Thousands of items have no bids, and equal number of bids are far too low to be feasible for my situation. Having someone bid 5 cents on an antique is ridiculous to me. Am I missing something here? I have to say, it is not looking good to me.
All bids that happen more than five minutes before the end of bidding are irrelevant. Research bid sniping.
Agreed! You need to be looking at the completed listings in order to gauge what stuff is selling for. You have to be a member to see this. Also store items are a better indication though some of them are priced so high I can't believe they ever sell the stuff.
Yep, make sure you are looking at completed listings. To gage interest, i.e. # of searches, and also items sold history, there are several tools (paid). Ebay even offers a tool, I think you can even subscribe for one day to do the research you need to. I haven't done this in a while so I can't remember the names of the third party tools (look around in the "seller" section, there is a page that lists them all). But try there, as you might be able to download a free trial and get the info you need. This type of research will tell you exactly what is going on (searches, completed sales and pricing). Morty
Instead of selling single items, have you considered selling smaler bulk lots? There are so many people looking to buy in bulk from ebay to resell. I used to sell in clothing, and would sell clothing lots for resale. I would sell a bulk "lot" and then whoever bought the items would split it up and sell individually on ebay or whatever. It was less time consuming for me that way. Plus if you have over 20 items, you can afford to "feature" your lot, and it cost around $20 but you get a lot more exposure, and your auction will end a lot higher.
Again I thank everyone for the information; I’m definitely taking it all in. I do like the bulk lot idea. This is something that I think could work better for me, because it would allow me to still get the best deals from local Chinese factories and pass the savings down the line. Still, here is my major concern. All of the items that have NO bids what so ever. The way I currently operate is that customers contact me with product requests, which of course means I don’t have to have inventory, there’s no need. If I offer bulk lots, I would potentially be stuck with a bulk lot of goods sitting around my office if in fact there are no bids on it. It just seams to me that there are far more “no bids†on items then there are items with any sort of bid on it.
Ive been a powerseller for sometime. It sounds like you may do pretty good selling small bulk lots to power sellers. Id think about the shipping though. That often eats the margin away for overseas products.
This is true, and the reason why I have avoided ebay, but since I have a new contract with a shipping company here, it is now possible for me to send smaller items to North America without costing an arm an leg.
East2west, send me a pm. I'd like to talk with you. I'm an ebay powerseller who imports shipments from hk/china fairly regularly. Adeel Chowdhry