Dropshipping is proven to be a great way to earn money online, and for most sellers/merchants, eBay is the ideal point to get started. This tutorial analyzes the common issues found with drop shipping, how to resolve issues, and how to get started with a dropshipping business on the eBay platform.
What Is Dropshipping?
Typically, online retailers hold a stock of the products they offer, regularly buying those products at a wholesale price in bulk from manufacturers. Dropshipping helps to remove the process of holding inventory, giving sellers the enablement to buy products individually at a wholesale price and then resell online at a profit.
E-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay enable sellers to have their listings placed in front of a large audience of people with little processing charges.
How Dropshipping Works on eBay
There are hundreds of thousands of products on eBay, but did you ever notice that the several sellers who are on the platform don’t keep inventory of the items they sell on the web?
Instead, they source products from a different seller, regularly at a wholesale price, and get those sourced products listed on their eBay store. Numerous sellers make use of the same product titles, images, and descriptions chosen by their manufacturers or suppliers.
Once a product has been sold, the drop shipper will execute the order through their company, through which the products will be supplied and shipped to the customer.
In as much as the items are directly shipped to customers, the drop shipper acts as an intermediary between the customer and the supplier, sourcing items in bulk and having them sold at a cheap, retail price on the eBay platform.
Dropshipping is practiced on eBay, provided delivery is guaranteed by sellers within a month after the end of the listing. Though the product quality and shipping time aren’t in the control of the sellers directly, eBay takes the whole responsibility on their own necks.
If you have an eBay seller account, you can start a dropshipping business. The first emphasis is on which products to sell, and then finding the right wholesaler or suppliers that can ensure reliable and quick shipping to source items from.
You will not get a large return with only a few sales; volume is the instrument to successful dropshipping. Most drop shippers would only net a little amount on every sale.
Several factors such as timing, marketing efforts, and pricing can break or make a dropshipping tactic.
The greatest advantage of having a store is that you do not have to be the owner of the items you are selling before you have them listed.
Once you’re able to source a consistent and trustworthy supplier to use for fulfilling orders, create an eBay listing and fix the time to post, how to advertise, and selling price you believe will bring you a high sales volume and optimal profit.
Once your items are listed on eBay and you start making sales, your priority is building and maintaining a phenomenal reputation with your clients by getting their orders fulfilled and promptly addressing any issue that may come up.
Pros and Cons of Dropshipping
Besides setting up an e-commerce store, there are pros and cons of dropshipping.
Pros of Dropshipping
- It’s Uncomplicated: Dropping on eBay is as straightforward as creating an account and setting up your maiden listing. You don’t have to incur extra costs on having your own e-commerce blog or online store set up.
- Less Effort for Marketing: You will have your eBay listings placed in front of hundreds of thousands of online buyers, saving you a lot of money, energy, and time on SEO, marketing, and paid advertising.
- More Customers for Less Marketing Effort: The large audience of customers ensures that you make more sales easily and come up with the best selling prices for your items.
Cons of Dropshipping
- Listing Costs: A small amount is charged per listing by eBay, though up to 10% of your total selling price is free as well as the first 50 listings. With the dropshipping profit margin, fees can add up quickly. Have it in mind that the instrument to earning money through dropshipping is volume.
- Regular Tracking Needed: You will have to get found on top of your listings if you truly want to maintain the required volume to earn money via eBay sales. There are several web-based tools accessible that can really help in streamlining the process of re-listing.
- Fewer Customization options: Listing products on eBay is a prominent way to get started with an online business, but less customization for your listings and store can make it somehow hard to stand out from your rivals.
- Above all, it’s strictly up to you deciding where you would love to invest your effort and time when dealing in wholesale items on the web, but for several sellers out there, dropshipping on eBay is a straightforward and proficient way to earn money online.Here are 7 tips for setting up a dropshipping business on eBay:
1. Reduce Your Workload
Large volume is the instrument to acquiring a competitive benefit and earning money online with dropshipping on eBay, as dropshipping profit margins seem to be very little, regularly just a few dollars on every sale. Sellers sell items as much as they can within a considerable period of time. Large volume implies more effort as you would need to process and execute every listing one-on-one.
To have this process streamlined and workload minimized, look for items that may be posted as multiple-product listings. With this, you can only make the listing just once, giving you much more time to handle the returns and fulfillment when necessary. To avoid re-listing of items, ensure to set a good duration for those eBay listings.
2. Control Pricing
The reason hundreds of thousands of buyers troop in to eBay on an everyday basis is that they’re promised to get items on eBay at the best rate. This may be quite challenging for drop shippers, because suppliers charge a fixed price despite whatever comes up, while the final price may change.
In addition, a listing charge is required by eBay listings plus a certain percentage of the final price (usually up to 10%), which may be divided into restricted profit margins.
Fortunately, there are good ways to have your profits maintained. When dropshipping on eBay, you will have the choice to set a “Purchase it Now” listing, thus offering your products fixed prices – which helps you maximize your intended profit.
Another benefit of leveraging the “Purchase it Now” listing is that fees for insertion are fixed, regularly for a lower amount, even if you set up a multiple- or individual-product listing.
If you would want a buyer on eBay bidding your items, coming up with the potential for a larger profit, you can set a reserve price. This is a least price that sellers are ready to accept for an item listed for auction.
With pricing reserved, final value and insertion fees will vary, so ensure to manage your reserve price properly. This particular feature guarantees higher profits, but may be frustrating to buyers, as customers won’t be able to see the reserve price.
The greatest way to manage your profit margins is to set a very high bid which ensures your fixed costs will be covered. Ensure to itemize costs from your supplier (including taxes, shipping, and more) as well as eBay’s final value fees and listing. You can use the fee calculator to calculate the potential charges for your listing
3. Ensure Items are Always Available
Millions of people are earning money via dropshipping on the eBay network because it removes the need to keep a stock, though drawbacks may set in. One of the most serious errors drop shippers commit is not making frantic effort to make items listed on eBay available at all times.
This error has been so frustrating for most buyers, driving a lot of prospective returning customers away and setting up monetary hardships for you.
Flee from the barricades of selling obsolete or outdated products by examining your suppliers’ stocks regularly to find out what is right in stock and what will be vacating their stores soonest due to low volume.
Gathering everyday reports from suppliers will ensure you can maintain an online reputation of reliable and quick fulfillment with your clients.
4. Ensure Quick and Reliable Fulfillment
You’ve got good reasons to make items listed available; it’s now time to make your clients happy by fulfilling orders efficiently, reliably, and quickly. Building reputation is all about selling on eBay, where hundreds of thousands of sellers are vying for sales daily. So, ensure you keep on track with quick fulfillment.
The greatest challenge with fulfilling orders is that, optimally, it isn’t within your hands. You may have sent clients’ orders to the suppliers for days or weeks, yet suppliers may have cogent reasons to delay.
If you are using an untrustworthy supplier, it’s high time you left that for a trustworthy one.
A trustworthy supplier won’t let the items get shipped quickly alone, but will also keep you updated on the order status, making you aware of the issues or potential delays, so you can keep your customers aware as well.
Issues may come up inevitably anytime, but getting in touch with both your customers and suppliers will reduce the potential negative feedback at a considerable rate.
5. Watch Out for Untrustworthy Suppliers
There are numerous suppliers you can find on the web, but certain drop shippers wouldn’t evaluate or properly select the ones chosen before trying to sell on eBay. This category of error can potentially backfire in the form of having low-quality items drop shipped or delivered late.
Note that the client is not going to have contact with your supplier for whatever they want – they are going to look up to you to send them the products they paid for in the exact quality they want and in a timely manner.
In the event that the supplier defaults in delivering, the client could only get back to you and show negative reactions in a review or complaint lodged to eBay directly. Web directories can save you a lot of energy and time by offering a series of suppliers pre-screened for reliability and quality.
6. Build Strong Bonds
Getting returning customers is an excellent way to guarantee ideal profit margins for dropshipping. The instrument to making your buyers return to your store for future transactions is building and maintaining strong bonds with customers.
Building an online reputation starts with the already-mentioned steps which include: working with honest and reliable suppliers, ensuring items listed are always available and orders fulfilled.
If certain issues arise, get back to your customers and respond professionally and promptly. Flee from emotional or harsh responses, even if a customer is making a noise.
Odd feelings will not last, but those bad reviews will remain for some time. Always make concerted effort to provide your customers with the most awesome experience possible and you will build a loyal audience of returning customers quickly.
7. Time your eBay Listings
Like in most other things in life, timing is essential. When an auction is being set, the time of the day and day of the week can have an important influence on sales.
Timing your listing on eBay when traffic reaches the peak level would be the most conspicuous way-out. More traffic means more prospective viewers, which will likely result in a sale more quickly and a more cool profit margin.
However, getting items listed in peak times attracts more competition, coupled with the possibility that your prospective buyers may not have the opportunity to bid on your eBay listing due to low site speed.
This is harmful when an auction is almost out of stock. It’s difficult to earn money when your clients cannot reach out to your eBay listing on time.
Conclusion
The key to timing your auctions is balance. Take note of the optimum times to have your items listed and for auctions to close.
Your specific demographic is another crucial factor to consider. Who would have interest in your items? When is it likely for those customers to be out for online shopping?
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Hello Sierra, thanks for sharing your tips on how to go about dropshipping and it’s one of the nicest ways of making money and people have been really troping into it to make money and I like it. Seeing these tips would save us all some errors and with all these you have said here, we all would be able to apply these things and get better.
Appreciate your presence and comment on my eBay dropshipping tutorial, Justin! Much appreciated! As it is currently, dropshipping is one of the most rocking online business models and eBay would ever be considered as a dropshipping platform to explore by 3 out of every 10 people venturing into it. Stop by anytime Justin!