If you’re thinking of starting your own business and you already know how to use Ebay, you’re way ahea of the rest of the people who don’t have this knowledge. Many people are using Ebay only to sell their knick-knacks, to de-clutter their homes. But Ebay has another facet as well: Ebay wholesaling.

First think you need to decide on is what products you want to sell on Ebay. The choice is unlimited, you can sell from jewelry, to shoes, to clothing, garden items, health and beauty products, sporting items, vintage collectibles, etc. Of course, you can sell single items, but also wholesale quantities. Your real first step is to make your market research. From the many choices, what does draw you in mostly? Write down a few ideas, and then get researching! How? You can use Ebay’s advanced search tool where you can view already completed listing of items you want to sell. You will see not only the price that these sold, but you will also get a good description of the goods, what product categories they are in, what used return and shipping policies have been used. Basically you will get this way a feel for what is out there, and what your competition is doing. This will allow you to setup your own marketing strategy.

If you want to start selling wholesale on Ebay, you need to find a wholesale supplier that is reputable and reliable. Once you start selling your products, the supplier will need to be able to send you the items in the timeframe agreed, particularly if you are working in a dropshipping arrangement. So it is very important that you find a serious wholesale supplier, because this will allow you, in turn, to become a reliable wholesale distributor, as well as a great seller to your customers as well.

A very important point, often overlooked by Ebay sellers, is the feedback rating on Ebay. This system allows buyers decide between which distributor to give their money to. You might be winning – or losing money based only on your Ebay feedback!
You need to gain positive feedback which means superior customer support, prompt delivery, great after-sales support, make sure that you deliver exactly what you promised, and at least at first, try to actually overdeliver. When a new customer is on Ebay wanting to buy things, one of the first thing he will look at is a seller with positive ratings and one that shows that he has experience in what he is doing.

You can define dropshipping in many different ways, but basically it all boils down to this: if you are a retailer, you will sell the item, but have the manufacturer ship it to your customers directly from their warehouse. This will minimize and even eliminate your risk, because you don’t have to physically be a ‘middle’ man. You don’t have to buy the product and hold it until it has all sold. The supplier is the one who will take care of storing, packaging and shipping the goods. Imagine the money you are saving this way! So you might have the product images up on your website, but the actual products will arrive to the end user from maybe over 3000 miles away, from the supplier or manufacturer’s warehouse.

Here are the main steps on starting a dropshipping business, aka dropshipping 101:

• make your research (niche and then products you want to sell)
• make sure you have a website where you can list the products you have decided on selling
• advertise your website through various SEO promotion techniques, so you get traffic and ultimately sales
• once you sold the products, collect the money from the buyer
• place the order to your supplier – your cost is, of course, much less than what you charged your buyer, since you’re only paying wholesale price
• the supplier will ship the product directly to the end user
• rinse and repeat

Easy enough? Exactly. This is why dropshipping is such a lucrative business, since you ultimately make your profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price.

When you search around for manufacturers, make sure that they allow dropshipping, because  personnel have to be assigned to process and ship these individual orders, which means the main shipping and receiving system may become bottle-necked. This is why not all manufacturers are keen on dropshipping business.