Selling Stuff Online, 10 Things To Know: Ebay Business for Beginners
Selling Stuff Online, 10 Things To Know: Ebay Business for Beginners
Hi guys, Neil Waterhouse. In this week’s video, I’llshow you the top 10 things I wish I’d known when I started selling eBay 24 years ago. Anybody new this channel? My name’s Neil Waterhouse. I’ve been selling onlinefull-time for 24 years. I’m the author of Million Dollar eBay business from home and creator of Drop Shoot Formula so let’s launch straight into Work. One of my favorite Warren Buffett is it’s good to learn from your own mistakes.
However, it’s even better to learn from other people’s mistakes after coaching literally thousands of people over the last 20 plus years through my books, seminars,webinars, courses, et cetera you just can’t helpbut notice the patterns of the people with the most successful businesses and the beginners making the same mistakes over and over. My hope for you for this video is to save you from wasting your precious time and their money making the same mistakes.
The first thing that I wish I’d known when I started selling Newba 24years ago was from day one automate the business that itruns completely without you. From day one, build an exitstrategy into the eBay business so it runs by itself without you build the business so you can sell the business down the track if you want to. One day, you know you don’t have to. It doesn’t matter if you don’tsell it or you do sell it but the big advantage of doing this is you build the business from day one so that it runs without you.
The second mistake I seeso many new eBay sellers make is they try to bea jack of all trades. Life does not reward us with being a jack of all trades. Life rewards us for a master. So many times I seenew eBay sellers try to jack all too many things at a time. They want to sell used items drops you on eBay, drops you on Amazon. They want to import and sell products on eBay and Amazon fba. They want to get into private labeling they want to open a Shopify store. They want to learn PBC marketing and this on Instagram, Facebook,marketplaces, et cetera, et cetera. But because life does not reward us for being a jack of alltrades, but instead rewards us for what we master, the easiest way to get really good at something is to do more of less.
That is focused on one strategy at a time and then fully automate it before moving on to the next strategy. If you’re selling new products to generate the most revenue from each new product, each product should be listed on eBay, Amazon, and your own website, like a Shopify store and you, can also import your top-selling drop-ship items but one step at a time. It’s all about small continuous baby steps as well as spending 10% of your profits on low-cost overseas virtual assistance that you can get from $1 per hour to leverage your time automate the business,and grow the business for you even while you’re sleeping. To save me a ton of emails I’ll put a link at the end of this video. We can get virtual assistance from $1 per hour.
The third thing that I wish I’d known is don’t underestimate yourself and your ability over time to build a large business. Most people over estimate whatthey can do in a short term but they way underestimate what they can do in a longer time if they just stayed focused on one strategy and stop chasing the next,next new silver bullet. One of my favorite sayings is success comes from what and who I say no to. The fourth thing I wished I’d known is don’t use overseas drop ship suppliers for your eBay business buyers hate items arriving late. Yes, in a perfect world, you can use companies like FedEx DHL to get items from Chinato first all countries like Australia, et cetera,in three business days.
However, we don’t live in a perfect world and we never have even before Covid there is always an and always has been unforeseen delays with overseas suppliers. These delays can be from customs delays in China customs delays in receiving country or a multitude of other reasons, including volcanic ash bad weather, mis flights,fogden, airports, backlogs random inspections, missing paperwork, et cetera, et cetera.
Bottom line is when items arrive late it is your eBay count that gets defects and negative feedbacks. For that reason we only ever use local suppliers for drop shipping. If you need more local suppliers I’ll put a link at the end of this video to a free list of over 900 drop ship suppliers. The fifth thing that I wish I’d known is most eBay beginners just focus on cheap items to it takes the same amount of time to list a $5 item asit does to list a $200 item. Personally, I prefer to make a $50 profit on a $200 item than a$2 profit on a $5 item.
For this reason, we focus only on items that sell between $50 to 2000. The sixth thing that I wish I’d known is that the vast majority ofeBay beginners all focus on small items as they believe they’re easier to ship. However, the crazy thing is if you drop shipping your supplies do all the hard work of packing, wrapping and shipping the product direct to your customers again and it takes the same amount of time to list a small USB cable for $2 as it does to let’ssay a bar fridge of $500. As a general rule, because most beginners all focus on small, cheap, light weight items there is far less competition and far more profits with more expensive and heavier items.
The seventh thing thatI wish I known is, again the vast majority of eBay beginners all focus on items selling with free shipping. Beginners love free shipping as it’s easier and many eBay sells only ever focus on items that have free shipping. But this is good news though. If you are willing tolearn how to set up a rates table that automatically charges your buyers shipping based on their postcode or zip code it’s really not that hardto set up a rates table. And again, I’ll put a link on the screen and below a previous week’s video that shows you how to set up a postage rates table.
The good news is many ofyour competitors will never ever take the time to do this. The eighth thing that Iwish I’d known is the power of automation to massively leverage your time. Most people, when they build an eBay business they’ll simply just build them selves a job, however they’ll really admit it. The way to automate is first to use software whenever possible and feasible to do a task. And if a task cannotbe done using software then allocate 10% ofyour profits to low cost overseas virtual assistance. Then, as I said before,you can get from $1 an hour and using the 10%rule, you spend 10% of your profits each monthon virtual assistance.
Then as your business grows each month so do your profits, and therefore each month your VAs work morehours than the previous month. They research and find more profitable products each month and they list more products each month and your business grows each month even while you’re sleeping. Leveraging your time is aticket to quickly building a six seven, and eight digit business,and just as importantly building a business that runs without you so you’ve got the time to enjoy the things that you enjoy doing like the most, like whether it’s your hobbies orspending time with a family or building another businessand say, in another country.
I’m not going to go into how and where to get VAs in this video. I’ve done that before in aprevious weeks video, but again if you missed it, I’ll put alink on the screen and below. The next ninth thing that I wish I’d known is to not focus on only one niche. If you’re an expert in a certain niche or you’ve access to a lot of products in a certain niche then specializing in that niche may be a good thing. But if not, then knocking yourself into one niche can be like adding a massive rod to your back. When building an eBay business from scratch, the focus should be on findingen listing profitable products not having a love affairwith a product or a niche.
The problem with locking yourself down to one niche is you have to say no to all theother products that are making good profits when doing product research. You and then your VAs will continuously come across products thatare making good profits and have sold multiple times in the last 30 days but you can’t sell them because they’re not in your niche. This is why I encourage eBay newbies to focus on profit and not niche. The 10th thing that I wishI’d known about is irs. That is item not receive cases open by your customers in the industry.
These are known as INRs,which is sure for item not received. These are cases where customers purchase products from sellers, but they need the customer never receives what they order. Marketplaces like eBay and Amazon keep a very close in IRS to make sure buyers get what they order. They know what the average INR ratio or item not received percentage is for all sellers on their marketplaces. If one seller is continually canceling sales because of stock supply issues, orfor any of the reason that one Seller, their IR ratio, oh it did not receive ratiowill be much higher than that of an average seller.
This is why it’s criticalto have a sound methodology in place to automatically check yours and your supplier’s stock levels. So if your supplier runs out of stock of any item, your eBay, Amazon or Shopify listing goes tozero, so you don’t oversell it. The good news is that these days we can fully automate this supplier inventory checking using software. So if a supplier runs out of stock the software will automatically make your listing go to zero, and also as soon asyour supply gets more stock the software automatically adds more often before your competitors orbefore your competitors realize that the your supplier’s got more stock. The software that we use todo this is Scarcity Manager. I’ll put a link on the screen and below. If you also want to know howto increase eBay sales fast make sure you checkout this video up here. If you have any questions at all please leave them in the comment section below. Until next week, stay safe. Less, more selmore. This is near Waterhouse.
✅Free list of 934 popular dropship suppliers
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ds-suppliers
✅ How and where to get low-cost overseas staff from $1 per hour for your eBay, Amazon or Shopify business https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/va1
✅How to see Dropship Suppliers’ Best Selling Items!
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dss
✅ How to find dropship supplier’s best-selling items
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dss
✅ How To Choose a Username To Increase Sales
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/name
✅ Top 12 ways to get traffic to your Shopify store. Free and paid.
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/shopify-store-traffic
✅ How to increase eBay Sales Fast!
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-opt
✅ How and where to get low-cost overseas staff from $1 per hour for your eBay, Amazon or Shopify business
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/va1
✅ How to quickly find eBay Best-Selling items – To sell yourself
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-best-sell
✅ How to find the hottest keywords. Keyword Research Tools
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/keywords
✅How to AUTOMATICALLY reduce eBay defects
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/defect
✅Here is a free list of 934 popular dropship suppliers
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ds-suppliers
✅ How To Find Profitable Products To Sell on Amazon
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/amazon-products
✅ How to setup Scarcity Manager
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dropshipping-suppliers/
✅ Download – Dropship Suppliers Top Selling Items Spreadsheet
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dss
✅ How To Quickly Find eBay Best Selling Items.
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-best-selling-items-01
✅ How to Increase eBay Sale By 16x. The 16 Times Rule
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-16
✅ Understanding eBay Cassini Search Engine to Increase Sales
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/how-does-ebays-cassini-search-engine-work-01/
✅Automatic Supplier Inventory Management for eBay, Amazon, Shopify
https://www.scarcitymanager.com
✅ How to enable eBay’s out-of-stock function
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/out-stock
✅ How To Make $1,000 Profit Per Week Dropshipping On eBay
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/1000-week/
✅ How to increase eBay Sales Fast
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-opt
🚀 Beginners Guide To Starting an eBay Business.
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/beginners-guide-to-starting-an-ebay-business/
✅ How to find eBay Best Sellers in 5 Steps https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/find-ebay-best-sellers
✅Overseas Virtual Assistants From $1 Per Hour
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/va1
✅Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/start
✅Beginner’s Guide to Starting an Amazon Business
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/amz-start
✅eBay Dropshipping | Top 8 Secrets | 23 Years Selling On eBay https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-sec-1/
🎬 My Free- Step By Step – Dropshipping Course – Dropship Formula™ https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/drop
✅Check the ebay dropshipping secrets. eBay Dropshipping – Secret 1
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-sec-1/
✅How To Build a 7 Digit Dropship Business – Step By Step
✅How and where to find overseas staff from $1 per hour Click here
This might also be interesting for you:
Hi Neil
Thanks for the informative videos.
I am a Furniure Importer and I was wondering how I could become a dropship supplier?
Hi Frederick,
Please see https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/drop
Hi there.
Loving all the info here. Just signed up for the free training course drop ship formula but I am looking for the schedule or dates these videos will be uploaded or when the live trainings will take place? Thank you so much.