New eBay Sales Opportunities with Your Existing Resources

In this week I would like to share some regular strategies which keep my product sources growing all the time in a reliable and trustable manner.

You may remember that few weeks ago we talked about approaching some local shop owners and suggesting a solution to sell their items as an additional revenue stream. Also, we mentioned that you could offer the same solution to some online sellers who didn't know how to get into the eBay marketplace.

However, some of you may be a bit skeptical to work with people you don't know at all, right? How can you ensure that they are 100% trustable?

Have you ever thought about that there are actually a lot of people you can trust? They are your friends, people you may have known for years. You can always start a business partnership with your friends without the need to build up a trust from zero.

But this is something you may have not thought of, isn't it? You probably meet with your good friends once a week, having dinners or drinks, chatting for fun or nothing. How can you possibly think of business opportunities good for both sides?

This is kind of my habit now. You may see if it applies to you, too. I am not talking about that you have to talk about business and money as the only discussion topic with your friends. But you can always think of benefits that you may bring to your friends if you can do some sales for them with the existing resources they have.

Some time ago I talked to Stephy who liked to do some handmade jewelries for herself and for freinds as gifts of different occasions. Then an idea came up to my mind: why not selling these special things in eBay? As these are all her own handmade items, she doesn't need to keep a big stock. What I need to do is to make pictures of all styles she can do, then I can start selling any time. She doesn't need to create new stock until I get sales for her. The mode of business is actually build to order. She does not have much cost to spend. But it could be a new stream of revenue to her. Both of us are happy.

Another day when I chat with another friend, Paula, who moved to Japan some time ago, we noticed that there were a lot of funny or innovative items which the trends always started from Japan, e.g. Hello Kitty gifts with can be found in local Japanese stores only. Hello Kitty fans from around the world always love to collect them even it may cost a lot. Then Paula may simply get some pictures of those items and I can then start selling in eBay. She only gets down to the store and buy the items back and send to the customer for me when I get her an order. This is also a simple and low-cost opportunity to both of us.

Opportunities are around your life all the time. Can you think of something else?

What Are the Benefits by Getting Local Shops as Your Drop Shoppers?

Think of a situation: you're shopping for ladies' apparels in a shopping mall. Then you stop by 2 boutiques. One is a small shop with less than 100 items. Another is a huge shop with more than 5,000 items. If they're selling similar things, which one will more likely get your sales?

You will probably hang around the 5,000-item shop and spend your money there, right?

It's a very simple retail strategy. The more choices you can offer to your customers, the more likely they'll spend more time in your shop. The more time they stay in your shop, the more likely they'll spend their money on. You don't have to be an expert to understand this truth, do you?

In fact, it's just the same in the online world. The more good items you can offer in your online shop, the more interests your customers will have. This is one of the benefits you can get when working with a local shop. If you try to set up an online business by ordering in bulk or wholesale for certain items, how many can you order? Just a few t-shirts can cost you a hundred bucks or more. How much money do you need to invest before you can start selling in a resonable scale?

Besides, don't expect all your items can be sold. It'll never happen. Otherwise, you'll never see those season-end sales in all the shops around every year. Then how much profit do you think you can earn at the end if you try to order from wholesale yourself?

However, if you can get a local shop as your drop shipper, it's no more your concern. You have the product variety for your sales without any investment on stock required. Whatever the local shop has, you can just post in eBay and sell. The shop owner will never mind you advertising too much for him. If you can work with a few different types of local shops and make your eBay shop like a department store, your customers may be trapped and never go for other sellers, just like what you do when you go to a real department store.

Isn't it good?

Additional Strategy to Find Good Items to Sell in eBay

Last time we talked about approaching local shop owners in your area and you should be able to look for a lot of partnership opportunities which can help you setting up your eBay business without the need to worry about the stock. However, some of you may have experienced difficulties with certain hesitation from the shop owners. The most common concerns they have are probably:

- No idea how to determine the shipping cost as they sell face to face all the time
- No experience how to manage the shipping process
- Not frequent internet surfer and may have difficulties to manage everything thru email
- No printer to print out the invoice or delivery order
- No time to stop by the post office while they have to stay in shops most of the time

For a person who is not used to PC and internet world, it may not be easy to persuade them to start a new online distribution channel though they know it could bring them additional revenue. Man are natural born to resist change.

However, the same concept can be applied to people who don't own local shops, but are familiar with the online sales, i.e. people who have their own shopping sites or sell in online markeplaces other than eBay.

There are tons of auction or C2C marketplaces in the world. None of them is as popular as eBay, but there're still lots of traffic. A lot of them may focus in the market in particular region or country. These sellers decide not to sell in eBay because of a lot of reasons. The most common concerns are the price structure and strict policies by eBay. Language barrier is a common factor, too. If you come from a non-English-speaking country and you're good in English, you can act as a bridge between the global market and a lot of sellers in your local marketplaces.

So once you've identified potential suppliers in different online marketplaces, you can send them emails and tell them what solutions you can offer to bring them additional revenue. Most of the time you can get a response within a day or 2 as these people are from the online world.

How to Make Money from Items Owned by Other Local Shops?

Last time we talked about that you could possibly offer a solution of additional revenue to owners of local shops in your area, and at the same time help yourself setting up your eBay business. Some of you may have already got the answer and started working. For other who are still confused what it's about, don't worry. Let's go it over in more detail below.

The solution you can offer to the local shop owners is: selling online on behalf of them. You're not going to buy in bulk or wholesale from them, or you'll just spend too much cost before selling anything. It's not what we want when setting up a small business.

What you should offer them is: while they have been investing a lot in their shops, they should make use of their existing resources (stock, product variety, etc) to make some additional income on top of their core sales. During this vulnerable economy, it's always no harm to set up as many sales channels as possible in order to sustain.

So this is the plan: if your targeted shop owner has the pictures and product details in hand already, ask him to send you. If he doesn't, get your own digital camera and do it yourself. Then you can post the items in eBay and promote for him as if you are his sales representitive. Whenever you've sold an item, inform the shop owner and ask him to send to your customer directly. There shouldn't be any detail of his shop in the package and therefore, the final customer only knows it's a package from you. If you can prepare a simple invoice or delivery order for putting in the package, it'll definitely make your service more professional.

Of course, you should get to an agreement with the shop owner how much discount off the retail price he can offer you, or in other words, how much commission he's willing to pay for your sales effort. Besides, an agreement about how to settle the payment with the shop owner is also needed for a smooth operations in future.

E.g. an item with a retail price $100, the discounted price in your agreement could be $65, shipping & handling costs $10. Then your cost is $75 for this item. If you sell at $100 in eBay, after deducting your Paypal and eBay cost, probably you can still make $10 net profit. So can you see? Without investing in any stock, you've started your business in eBay.

And for the shop owner, he may have earned less based on the discount he's offered. But don't forget it's just an additional revenue for him. He has nothing to lose. If you don't make any sales, he doesn't need to worry anything as there's no cost for him. Can you think of any reason that he should reject this solution you offer?

To keep your business running, you never need to touch the real items. It's the job of the shop owner. All you need to do is to keep a closed communication (probably thru email) on every single order. So in this way, you can work with a lot of shop owners at the same time by staying closed with your PC. You can keep expanding the scale until you think you've earned enough and you can't manage more.

What do you think?

How Can I Find a Drop Shipper for (PARTICULAR) Items?

When going thru different forums, very often I can see people ask:

Where can I find a drop shipper for toy items? Where can I find a drop shipper for lingerie, Where can I find a drop shipper for DVD? Where and I find......

I think these people are putting their focus in a wrong place. Why in the first place you have determine what you should sell before you have started your drop shipper search? This is a common mistake that most people tend to sell something they WANT or LIKE themselves.

It's TOTALLY wrong. If you like something, go buy it. You don't have to work on it. You may not have the advantage to sell it.

Take the branded digital products in our previous discussion as an example. You can never beat the big retail store while they can get good price in wholesale based on their scale. It's just a waste of time to try selling these items as an individual.

You should first look for a list of drop shippers and a list of items offered (by whatever means). Then do a research in the market (probably eBay) and see what price most people are selling at. Calculate and see what profit margin you can make. Start selling if you find it's possible to develop a profitable business.

That's it. This is the way you should do. Even if you don't like the items you sell, what a big deal? You won't necessarily touch the items yourself. You should sell what your customers like, not what you want.