Whether you’re just getting started or have been on eBay for a while, a common question that comes up is where to find more products. If you were a regular “brick and mortar” retailer, then you’d have to develop relationships with local wholesalers and distributors for the products that you carry. The same applies for eBay businesses.

Online sellers always wonder if the distributors and wholesalers will sell to them. The answer to that question is… it depends. Some wholesalers will sell to eBayers, some won’t. Every wholesaler is different.

So how do you start finding wholesalers? Well let me tell you where not to look. Don’t do a regular internet search for them, because most of the websites that you’ll find are false. Don’t believe the hype, no matter how appealing they look to eBay sellers. You might think you won the lottery if you believed all their promises. Sorry, but it’s not true.

Why is that? Well the fact is that most websites you’ll find online aren’t wholesaler approved. That’s because wholesalers and distributors usually don’t need to advertise or go looking for retailers, because the retailers come to them. These websites are instead made by “evil” middlemen who buy the products cheap and then resell them to you at high prices. Usually the mark-up is much too great to be useful to you.

So what do we do now? Well first you need to realize that the web isn’t the best source for you to Wholesalers aren’t on the edge of internet technology. They do business mainly by telephone because it’s worked for them for decades. In my experience, the best wholesalers that we’ve found don’t have websites, or they have websites that are difficult to use or find. So how do you find wholesalers if you can’t search on the web? The best way is to go to the top. In this case, it’s the manufacturer. Call the manufacturer by looking through the product documentation or warranty card.

Keep in mind that the wholesaler is designed to help the manufacturer. The manufacturer can focus on making the product, the wholesaler can work on getting the product to retailers. All you need to do as a retailer is to ask the manufacturer who their wholesalers are.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Back when I was in high school, I had a summer job corn detasseling. (In case you didn’t know, detasseling is going out into the fields and taking the tassel out of a corn stock to create seed corn.) I would wake up at the crack of dawn, eat something for breakfast, and then head out to the pick-up stop, where a bus would take me, a buddy of mine, and a few other workers out to the corn field. Now if you’ve never been in a corn field early in the morning, let me tell you, it’s not the best place to be. The corn is wet from the morning dew, and of course, there are plenty of insects hopping from corn stalk to corn stalk. Grasshoppers were the most common. Getting into the field was always the hardest, because I’d go from being somewhat warm and dry to being cold and wet and covered with bugs.

After working for up to 10 hours in the fields, I would get home and basically collapse exhausted until we started it all over again.

Maybe you’re asking, “what does this have to do with selling on eBay?” Well the answer is that many people who want to start selling online expect everything to be easy. While I do believe that eBay is the quickest and easiest way to make money online, that doesn’t mean that you won’t be challenged by it. That’s why I started off by telling my story about corn detasseling. Yes it was hard work, and the first time I did it, I didn’t know what was happening. It was a slow process to learn. It was hard. Even when I did know what to do, it wasn’t easy to get going in the morning.

Yet as I continued to work in the fields, the hard work began to be a little bit easier. In fact, I started to enjoy it. Yes the fields were still wet and full of bugs in the morning, but that was all part of it. I knew that I was doing a better job, and making more money as a result. I kept going even though it was hard to start. I stepped outside my comfort zone and found that it got easier.

Remember what it was like to pushed or worked harder than you’ve ever had before. Maybe you tried something new for the first time. Maybe you competed in a sporting event. Remember what that feels like. Now, take that same feeling of being “in the zone” and apply that to opening up an eBay business. Of course you’ll have challenges along the way, as with any business. But in the long run, with the right attitude, starting an eBay business is one of the easier ways to get started.

You won’t have to go corn detassling like I did, fighting cold and wet fields. You won’t have to fight the heat of the day on a hot summer afternoon. All you’ll have to do is take the few steps that are necessary. Maybe the hardest thing you’ll have to to is to package something up and take it to the post office.

The bottom line? Stop making excuses. Don’t let anything hold you back. Work hard, and you’ll see almost instant success with eBay.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

When you are just getting started on your online business, you will need to set some short, intermediate, and long-term goals. A well thought-out properly organized set of goals is your road map to success. If you are going to try to make it big online, not having clear written goals will be the biggest mistake you will EVER make.

Here are some tips for setting goals. First, your goals should be challenging. They should stretch you and take you just outside your comfort zone. At the same time, they should be realistic. Your goals should inspire you and give you the drive to achieve what you can’t see right now. People with clear written goals in front of them at all times accomplish many times more than someone without any goals. One way to remember the proper characteristics of goals is by using the acronym SMART. Goals should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Having specific goals means defining them exactly and clearly. An example of a vague goal would be, I want to get rich selling on eBay. An example of a specific goal would be, I want to make an extra $3000 passive income a month by selling on eBay. In the specifying of the goal you are giving it clear characteristics allowing it to be better understood in your mind.

Measurable. Having measurements on your goals give them a real numerical value. In the previous example, what made the goal more specific was the measurable dollar figure. Checking your goals, updating them, and measuring where you are in your journey in achieving them will help you keep going in your online business.

Attainable. While your goals should be attainable, they should also not be too easy. Your goals should be inspiring and push you out of your comfort zone. Goals must be possible, but inspire you and give you a drive and purpose.

Timely. Your goals must have a time limit to them. Set a date and time to your goals. A goal without a date is just a wish. And if you forget when you want to achieve your goal, then you’re going to miss the goal. However, once you have developed thoughtful short, intermediate, and long-term goals, set deadlines on your short-term goals. Create action steps from your goals. Prioritize the details of your short-term goals, but do not begin working on them until you are fully committed!

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

By far the most popular question I hear from entrepreneurs stating to sell on eBay is “what do I sell?” That is a question that if you can properly answer, you’ll have success on eBay. What’s my answer? I’ll tell you in a minute. First, I need to explain why it’s so easy to get stuck here. (Don’t worry, I’ve been there too.)

The main reason why this is such a roadblock is because eBay is a product-centered business. You need to have something to sell or you won’t be in business. You need to buy product at low cost and sell higher. It’s a simple model, and you’re probably saying “yeah, I know that.” Listen for just a minute.

The same type of people who get stuck figuring out which product to buy are the same type of people who would get stuck figuring out which stock to buy in the stock market. It’s basically the same model, right? Buy a stock low, sell it higher than what you bought it for. Buy inventory low, sell it higher than what you bought it for.

Let’s think about what makes a really successful stock trader. Successful stock traders know which stocks are going to go up. They look at what the market is doing right now. They’ll look at the current stock price and then make the decision.

A good stock trader will be someone who doesn’t just focus on one stock. Instead, they focus on the principles of how to buy a good stock. They look for the winning qualities. They then filter through the many options to find those winners. Well it works the same way with finding products to sell on eBay. You need to educate yourself. You need to figure out what the market is doing. Then you need to be able to make the call when the situation demands it.

What’s the key ingredient to find products? By far, it’s having the mindset. You need the training to see the opportunities. Once you can recognize opportunities, you’ll be prepared for them when they arrive. There are literally countless products all around you that you can sell. You just can’t see them yet. The main thing you need to do is to get yourself in that “seller’s mindset” so you can.

Maybe you still don’t know what to sell on eBay yet.

If you’re brand new to eBay, my recommendation is that you begin to sell stuff that you don’t need. There’s probably an area of your house that is too cluttered, whether it’s the attic, a closet, or the basement. Instead of having a yard sale, see if you can sell it on eBay. You’ll build your feedback ratings and be well on your way to becoming a better eBay entrepreneur.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, make sure you check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

So you’ve sold a few items on eBay. Congratulations! That alone sets you apart from the rest of the crowd. There are many people who “wish” to sell on eBay full-time but never even get their first listing up.

Maybe you’re starting to wonder, what should I do now? After you’ve sold the extra stuff around your house for a few bucks, where does the real money on eBay come from?

Well, let’s talk business. What makes a successful business? What turns a single small hamburger stand into the multi-million dollar McDonald’s chain? Answer: the money is always in the system. It’s the streamlined and repeatable process that works, every time, all the time. And the best systems work without you having to even be there. Having inventory that automatically lists and gets sold while you sleep is just one great example.

There are some amazing tools to help you create systems, and they free you from sitting in front of the computer all the time. It’s an awesome feeling waking up the next morning and seeing how much more money you got in your account. It’s almost like you get paid to sleep.

Here’s a couple more tips: Buy products that sell. Of course not everyone has the money to buy a truckload of products, but you need to get started and you can get started small. The key here is to do your research beforehand. What is already selling on eBay? Where could I buy it less than the current eBay price? What products are hot? How do I find them? Well…

Keep Your Finger On The Pulse. You can get a snapshot about what’s happening on eBay by visiting http://pulse.ebay.com. This page shows what eBay buyers are looking for in each category, with the top 10 most searched for items, the most watched items and the largest eBay stores in each category. All of this information together helps you spot the latest trends. For example, right now the largest eBay stores are selling books or music. That suggests that these categories have high demand.

The eBay Pulse is a great tool to help you start identifying what is most often searched for on eBay, and what the buyer is looking for. Type those highly searched items in to the search bar and see how much competition there is. Once you find an item that is highly searched for but has a low number of competitors, you know what you should be trying to find to sell.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for over 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “the devil is in the details” and that’s also true for your eBay business. Whether you’re just getting started in your eBay business or not, there are many details to take care of and many things to worry about. Some beginners worry that one of them might fall through the cracks. There’s researching, buying products, listing items, answering questions, shipping… and the list goes on.

Stressed? Instead of worrying about all of the things that could go wrong, let me tell you exactly how to kill your eBay business. That should make your life easier, right?

1. Don’t Care About Your Titles. Take some random words and put them in your title. Whatever you do, don’t include the brand name. Make it impossible for people to find your product. Better yet, don’t even bother with using up all 55 characters. Forget about spell check. Oh, and make sure you use words that people never type in like “L@@K” and “WOW”

2. Take Really Blurry Pictures, Or None At All. Don’t worry if you can’t tell what it is. Make it a mystery so your customers work to figure out what your item is. And make sure the really important details are obscured or not even in the picture. Or just don’t bother taking a picture at all.

3. Sell Junk. Have no problem listing absolute garbage. Put worthless items up on eBay and hope they sell. Put that flea market special up for $100. Oh and make sure you lie about your item. Put the broken items up on eBay claiming they are top quality. Get some knock-offs and sell them as the real thing. Don’t worry about what your customers think. Let the buyer beware, right?

4. Don’t Care About Your Description. Just say whatever you want. Make up a story. Lie about the item if you feel like it. Say it works when it doesn’t. Say it’s in perfect condition. Don’t tell give any measurements or facts about your item. Use lots of mysterious abbreviations that makes you look like you know what you’re talking about. Give them useless information, talk about your problems. Yell about Nigerian scammers.

5. Don’t Talk To Your Buyers. So you’re getting emails from people who might buy. Big deal. Talking to your customers is a huge waste of time. If your customers are asking questions, they’re probably too dumb to buy the item anyways. Don’t bother with talking to them. Let them figure it out.

6. Make Your Listings Ugly. Make your font bright yellow on white. Use 6-point font. Who cares if you can read the text, anyway? It’s not that important. Add little animations and flashing lights. Give your customer a headache. USE CAPITALS! Add some really obnoxious music that automatically plays.

7. Have Your Auctions End At Strange Hours. Why not have your item end 4am? You’re sure that everyone will stay up all night until the auction ends. They have nothing better to do anyways. Why bother figuring out the best time to end your auction?

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

So you want to sell on eBay? You want to take advantage of the $60 billion dollar marketplace, grab your piece of the pie? That’s great, but where can you find product to sell?

That’s likely the most common question that comes up for new eBay sellers. You’ve gotta have something to sell. No products, no sales. No sales, no business, right?

This is where many people get stuck, but it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Once you have an idea in mind of what you want to sell on eBay, you need to realize that there are one or more manufacturers looking to sell those products. Let’s say it’s WidgetX.

Perhaps you can find WidgetX in online stores, retail stores, or catalogs. No matter where you can buy it today, you don’t want to start at the retail end of the supply chain. The higher up you are on the supply chain, the better prices you are going to get. If the top of the supply chain is the manufacturer, that is where the best prices are going to be.

That’s why you need to get in touch with the manufacturer, and then find their authorized wholesalers. One of the best ways to get in touch with the manufacturer (aside from calling them directly on the phone) is to go to a trade show. Trade shows are designed to get retailers and manufacturers together. Trade shows have been where business deals have been made for years, and for you and your eBay business, this is no exception.

What you will want to do first is find out which trade show is involved for your industry. Selling garden supplies? Look online for a gardening trade show in your area. Selling consumer electronics? Check out the Consumer Electronics Show.

Getting into a trade show is a bit trickier. Make sure you have your eBay business registered and the appropriate paperwork filled out with your government. You must be able to prove that you’re a real business. If you can’t prove you’re a real business at the door, they might not let you in.

However, once you’re inside, you have access to plenty of suppliers. All around you there will be new product ideas. Network with people, get contact information and plenty of business cards. In order to have an endless supply of products to sell on eBay, all you need to do is develop some good supplier relationships.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start selling on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Many people have been pronouncing doom and gloom for the worldwide economy in recent months. With unemployment numbers as low as they have been in years, people wonder if eBay and other online venues are struggling as well. Perhaps you wonder if you can create an online business from your home.

The answer is yes. Even when times don’t look good, there are opportunities everywhere. Some say that more wealth was created during the great depression than any other time in history. That doesn’t mean that it will be easy to create wealth… but there’s no excuse why you can’t.

People ask if eBay is still a good platform to sell on. eBay has come a long way in the past 10 years and its greatest strength has always been the millions of customers that are coming to eBay – with over 2 million people visiting every day!

Most people shop on eBay because they are looking for a great deal. When the economy is down, it seems more and more people are looking for bargains than ever before. Having such a large customer base allows people like you and me the opportunity for our products to be seen and purchased extremely quickly and easily.

Another great advantage to selling on eBay in tough economic times is how flexible the platform is. For example, if you had a brick and mortar retail store, you’d have to pay rent and many other overhead costs to stay in business. Not so with eBay. With eBay, your overhead is low and the majority of your fees only occur after you sell an item.

Also, you can change your inventory selection at any time, without having to change your marketing. You can sell t-shirts the one day and golf clubs the next without hassle. This flexibility allows you to move faster and take advantage of opportunities before others even know about them.

Also when selling on eBay, you can research what things are selling well, and know what the marketplace is doing before you enter it. This gives anyone the opportunity to know their profit margins before even purchasing inventory!

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, don’t miss his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.

Dropshipping is like any business and the most important thing when starting out on any venture is to do your market research FIRST…

When you open a store in your town, you wouldn’t open it without doing your market research first. The same thing applies if you are going to sell something on the internet as a dropshipper. Not only are there billions of web pages out there that could be selling competitive products, the net changes so fast that you are obsolete as soon as you have gotten started.

If you are going to set up a dropshipping business you want make sure that the product that you choose can be easily sold. And you want to know how many competitors you have. And you want to stay as up to date as possible. Selling products on the Internet is easy. Hundreds of thousands of people do it every day online on auction sites such as eBay. The most difficult part of internet sales is getting the products delivered to the customer, otherwise known as order fulfillment.

You must have an efficient fulfillment system. One of the reasons that brick-and-mortar stores are so slow on the uptake when it comes to online business, is that supplying retail stores is done with pallet-sized orders usually. But internet sales requires an entirely different kind of fulfillment system. Selling on the internet is essentially mail order, with shipments going out in small parcels to end users.

Few brick-and-mortar retailers have a thriving mail order business to draw from. An inefficient fulfillment system can lose for you the advantages in good customer service that holding the inventory gained for you. And running a fulfillment system is a full time and trying job.

One of the simplest order fulfillment models to use is the drop ship model. Drop shipping does have its advantages and disadvantages. The most important being you don’t have to pay for anything until after you sell it.

You also don’t have inventory costs. Having to purchase inventory to ship to your customers can be expensive not to mention risky. In addition to the out-of-pocket costs, you need a place to store the inventory.

Finally you have to pick, pull, pack, and ship the products once the order is placed. Having the distributor or manufacturer take all these costs and responsibilities lifts a real burden off your shoulders.

Ideally a drop-shipper should be transparent. With most of your drop shippers, especially those with whom you do a regular business, you can send them labels and forms so their package looks like it is from you. Your customer probably won’t know that your hands never touched the product. The customer will think that you have a warehouse.

You can sell many more products than you could if you had to buy and store them yourself. Drop shippers give you a wide choice of products so you can sell a lot more.On the Internet some categories of products are very price-sensitive. If you are selling computer hardware, for example, and using the drop shipping model, you may find it hard to be competitive price-wise and still make a profit. The difference between making money and losing it may be only a few percent. So be sure to pick a product that makes sense to drop ship.

You will be using third party customer service so you will not have full control. Drop shipping is really outsourcing your order fulfillment services to a third party. You will be dependent on your drop shipper to have the products in stock, to deliver on time, and to properly pack and ship your products. So pick your drop shipper carefully.

At the end of the day, however, drop shipping exists because it works. And the largest catalog companies and web sites use it. And savvy small web sites and auction site sellers use it. Drop shipping is simply an arrangement between you and the manufacturer or distributor of the product you sell whereby the manufacturer or distributor — NOT YOU — ships the product to your customers.

There are a few huge advantages to this model. First, it SAVES YOU THE COST of building your own inventory. If you’re like most people starting a small business, you don’t have much capital with which to play with. The last thing you want to do is tie up your cash in inventory that you may or may not be able to sell.

Not having inventory also means no leftovers. If the product you sell suddenly becomes outdated, obsolete, or just plain un-trendy, you aren’t the one with a house full of stock that nobody will buy. Many online retailers find themselves having to offer deep discounts — and taking huge losses — on old products just to get them out of their homes to make room for more inventory!

You’ll also don’t have to deal with shipping your products. Unless you’ve already set up a shipping account with someone like FedEx or UPS, you’ll be heading down to the post office every day to buy stamps and mail out your products. And you’ll be able to ADD NEW PRODUCTS ALMOST INSTANTLY. Since you don’t have to worry about ordering inventory, you can add products to your web site within a few hours.

If you find that your customers are eager to buy a certain product, you can have that item up on your site in almost no time. Finally spend time researching different kinds of products that you might want to sell. The products you choose should be in demand but not widely available online. As usual, I highly recommend targeting a niche market rather than trying to find a product that EVERYONE wants to buy.

Once you’ve found a product that you think may be the right one for your business, you’ll need to do a little “competitive analysis.” This simply means finding out what potential competitors are charging for the products you want to sell and calculating how much of a profit you’ll be able to make. When it comes down to it…its all about ‘Testing, Testing, Testing!’

Good luck!

Thomas Griffin is the founder of Urbanload – The #1 eBay Dropshipper. Over 2000 eBay resellers can’t be wrong. Make money with our eBay Dropshipping Reseller Program. Don’t fall for scams and overpriced dropshippers. Choose only eBay certified Wholesale Dropshippers.

If you are looking for a way of making money with the help of the internet, you must have heard about drop ship businesses. Well, drop shipping can be profitable, and it is really popular among today’s entrepreneurs.

However, before you get involved into drop ship business, you should know that there is a lot of misunderstanding about this industry. At the first sight, it does seem alluring, but it’s important to set realistic goals and know what to expect to avoid frustration.

We’ve tried to list the most common conjectures related to dropshipping, for you to view things in a clearer light.

Drop Ship Business Is The Easiest Business Out There

In fact, it’s hard to think of an easy business at all. Every business requires certain amount of effort, knowledge, and patience. While dropshipping definitely provides a number of advantages, including removing the need for stocking goods, no shipping expenses, etc, it can’t be defined as simple business. You should always keep on making marketing efforts to promote your business and attract new buyers, keep pace with the changes in the wholesaler’s inventory, and follow up with the delivery of goods to keep buyers satisfied.

You Can’t Ever Make Money with Drop Shipping

Of course nobody will promise you the moon and the stars if you decide to start drop ship business. However, your success to the great extent depends on your expertise and effort, as well as on your approach to the business. It’s important that you don’t get obsessed with the amount of your profits and pay equal attention to other aspects of your business as well. As long as you keep in mind that earnings will be coming gradually, you should be able to fairly distribute your attention among all the aspects of your business development.

Dropshippers Are Willing To Work With Anyone

In fact, there are dropshippers that really will agree to work with anybody. Most often, these are companies that will charge a membership fee, or sell products at higher prices.

DropShipping Is Great For Everyone

If you think so, you probably won’t avoid frustration. Every business has its pros and cons, and what is right for one person can be a terrible undertaking for another. So, be sure to learn those pros and cons beforehand and access your business plans to make a informed decision.

Thomas Griffin is the founder of Urbanload.com – The #1 eBay Dropshipper. Over 2000 eBay resellers can’t be wrong. Make money with our eBay Dropshipping Reseller Program. Don’t fall for scams and overpriced dropshippers. Choose only eBay certified Wholesale Dropshippers.