Generally, for almost any physical product, there are about 3 good ways to get product to sell online:
- Salvage / Surplus / Overstock / Returns
- Import
- Buy on eBay, then Sell on eBay.
Dropshipping:
- I don't recommend dropshipping, as I have done a bit of both and found them not profitable.. Simply put, everyone wants to do this when they first get into selling. I say this broad statement, because so far, out of those who have signed up for my coaching, 75% of them said they wanted to "dropship".
- The problem is dropshipping is more of a trick than a profitmaker. Basically, the companies who offer this type of selling are not interested in real sellers looking for real profit. Rather, they are looking for inexperienced sellers who will be duped into selling their products. I say this, because when I did a lot of research in the area of dropshipping and tried it myself, I found that their claims of "low prices" were false. I also found that the one I did use was only reliable about 50% of the time. I would sell a product and half the time, they would say it was not in stock.
- So, though it appears to be easy, dropshipping ends up being a difficult way to make money.
Buy Then Sell on eBay:
Wholesale Lots~
Simply go to any main category on www.ebay.com, such as "DVDs" and then find the subcategory "Wholesale Lots". In there, you will find product in lots of 50, 100, you name it..
The trick is to not bid on the glamorous auctions at the top of the page, but the auction on the bottom that no one clicks on. Often, those are the real deals, where you can turn around and make a real profit selling each item individually..
Believe it or not, there are items ending all the time that are low priced.. This works well and can be a very profitable way to do business on eBay.
Salvage / Overstock / Returns:
This is probably the best way to make REAL money on eBay. From what I have done with this and from what I can tell, most of those making solid income on eBay are buying their product in this manner..
Basically, you can buy returns, overstocks, etc from chain stores like Sears, Walmart, Best Buy, etc.
http://www.surplus.net is a pretty good source for companies that offer such product..
For instance, this is a solid company that offers such product: http://www.amlinc.com/
Just look at the above links and do some searching and I think you will see what I mean..
You basically buy it for about 30 to 50 % of wholesale and can turn around and sell it for double on eBay.. The best is to buy "manifested" pallets of such product.. Manifested means it tells you what is actually on the pallet.. You can take that and do searches on eBay to see what it sells for..
Importing:
I have done this several times.. Generally, you spend about $5000 or so at a time and you can buy product from China.. This is also a very large way to make REAL profit on eBay and many of the larger companies end up going this route.. So, a lot of the bigger companies on eBay do this, but it does have more risk and requires more preparation than the Salvage method..
Here is a great website for finding companies that sell this product: http://www.alibaba.com
Affiliate Marketing/Subscriptions:
Both of these methods can be very profitable if done correctly. With affiliate marketing, more money can be made on the side of the vendor who has affiliates marketing for them, but there are a good percentage of affiliate marketers of those products who can make a sizable amount of money. I would recommend Clickbank.com or, of course, my own affiliate program.
Subscriptions can be very rewarding as well, but most people are simply not willing to do some of the work up front to make the website to even offer subscriptions. Well, if you are good at making websites, you should definitely consider subscriptions for your quality content and perhaps hosting ads on the free side (Google Adsense, etc). I would say subscriptions are BY FAR more valuable than hosting ads on your website, because you have to have millions of pageviews a month if you are wanting to make hundreds a day through Adsense. I know, as I have about 8000 pageviews a day on one of my websites and I only make about $30 a day off of it. But, with subscriptions, you could make hundreds a day with those same pages.
If you would like to know how to do create a subscription website, simply write me and I will help you get started.
