Hey I have many products including men's clothing and women's shoes in wholesale amounts, I am pretty much helping companies get rid of their excess inventory. I wanted to know where I can start. What is the best way to sell my products? I am looking to sell more locally but I wouldn't mind selling internationally either. Should I open an ebay store? How about a ProStore? What is the diffrence between the two? Should I build my own e-commerce site? What is the best way to get started? Thanks alot for your help it is greatly appreciated!
Well, you could do all of those things you mentioned. Or you could sell to existing website operators or ebay store owners who are clamoring for products to sell. Selling online is a ton of work...why not have them do it for you? You supply the inventory, they supply the customers. You just dropship whatever it is they sell to the customers you tell them to. Easy as pie. I operate nearly 30 websites now and I'm always looking for products to sell that: 1. I don't have to inventory. 2. I don't have to pay for until it is sold. 3. I never have to see. 4. Turns quickly and offers a decent pricepoint. I know I'm not the only web operator constantly seeking such suppliers.
What my boss always told me to do is if someone is going to buy something they might as well buy it from you. Start an e-commerce store, and a ebay store. Hell, dropship to other stores as well if you have enough inventory. Every thing you have set up will increase your odds that the customer will buy the product from you. If that means setting up twin companies and competing with yourself then that what I would do, but they wouldn't be exactly the same. For example on your online store you could offer other services as well while on your ebay store you could simply sell the product. Post in the buy/trade/sell forum that you have a quantity of product that you would be willing to drop ship or set up an affiliate program where others build a website selling your product send the order to you. You ship it out to the customer and cut your affiliate a check at the end of the month.
If you aren't currently running any online store, I'd suggest you try out edzachary's suggestion. For a newbie, getting the sales process going and repeat / multiple customers is going to take a while. You'd get it done faster going through other players who're looking for stock to sell.
It can be a chore to get started in this area initially. You might be better off finding someone established to sell your things for you. However, if you're looking to sell it yourself here's some things I might do in your situation: Setup a an online store. Whether you have to pay a monthly fee or if you outright buy the software (or use free software) & just pay for credit card processing. Setup with Google Base (Froogle). If you have a lot of products you can bulk upload your product line with images/prices/etc linking back to your site. This is free & I get about 1,000 targeted visitors a month from this method to my small store that offers not as desirable merchandise (discontinued, etc). Some people don't like it, I love it & it's free. Setup with Pricegrabber.com. You'll have to have a bulk upload file, but it's a pretty popular comparison shopping site & you pay nothing up front (if I remember correctly) & you pay once a month for transaction. I think the poercentage is somewhere around 5% + $1 that they take. A little steep, but I've used that as well & it's worked well for me, too. Setup on eBay. In the past when I sold merchandise with a different supplier, I would sell lower on ebay - then refer the customers to my website for future purchases for higher priced items. This worked pretty well when I offered name brand merchandies. Last I remember I thought the only way to drive traffic to an eBay store was to promote it through an active auction. I could be wrong, but I think that's the way it used to be. I've also toyed with the idea of using livedeal.com as they have an option of listing nationally for a small monthly fee - I just havent gotten to it yet to see how it works. Anyway, these are the steps I might take if I were in your situation. . . maybe it'll give you some insight or ideas that you didn't otherwise have.
Can you pls let us know you are from which country ? you can start your own online ecommerce website, or you can intially start selling products on eBay, froogle. you can also sign up with other online stores as supplier.
I am from Montreal, Canada Thanks for the help so far! Does anyone use Pro Stores Business? $29.99 a month looks pretty good to me!
One big consideration is how much time you have. If you have hours and hours everyday, you can try all of the channels mentioned. If you do NOT have much time, you will need to narrow your focus. FYI, Ebay takes the most time from the options mentioned. Ex? auction listing/re-listing, listing fee credits...
Im interested in your solution. I am very familiar with ebay and content management systems and addons such as virtuemart. I think the big problem is finding a whloesale source. I am wondering if someone set up a nice looking reputable storefront and tied it to ebay why they could not sell both on the site and ebay. Is this what you do. I am not talking about using ebay stores. Please PM me if this is the case.