First you will need to decide what kind of products you are going to sell. You can supply other sellers with merchandise they are going to resell: Electronics, clothing, accessories, tools, sports equipment etc. Or you can sell business supplies like tape, bubble wrap, labels, pens, paper or even computers.
When you decide what you are going to sell, the next step is finding a supplier. Once again you should look for a supplier in your city, so you can visit them in person and discuss what you are going to do. Once you find a supplier and work out everything that needs to be worked out (prices, delivery time, payment etc.) list the products up for auction.
Most suppliers have a minimum order quantity (20 items, 30 items, 2,000 etc.), so you will need to make sure you sell the minimum amount required in order to get the best discount from your supplier. If the minimum order quantity is 1,000 items.
Make sure you sell at least 1,000 because if you don't the supplier won’t be willing to deal with you and you will get a bunch of negative feedback from your customers (because you will have to cancel their orders). Once the products you have put up for auction sell, collect the money from your customers, go to your supplier and pay him/her for the products your customers just paid you for.
After you pay your supplier simply ship the products to your customers and repeat until you are filthy rich! Basically, what you are doing is getting people to pay YOU for products you don't own. Now let's get to the money part...
Let's say the supplier you have found has a minimum order quantity (MOQ) of 1,000 items, and each item costs $10. That means the supplier has a MINIMUM order of $10,000. What you will need to do is sell at least 1,000 items, this may seem like a lot but its not, because you are going to sell the items in lots of 25, 30, 50, 100 etc.
Since you get each item at $10 you should sell each item for at least $12-$13 in order to make a good profit. Why would people buy from you at $13 an item when they can buy directly from a supplier for $10 an item? Because your MOQ is only 25 items as opposed to 1,000 items from a supplier, you will look after the little guys needs by allowing small orders, the real supplier only deal with the big boys.
Most sellers can't afford to pay $10,000 for a minimum order, and that's why they will come to you. So, how much money will you be able to make? Well, if you sell 1,000 items at $13 each you will make $3,000 in profit. Again, it will take you only a couple of transactions to sell 100 items because you won't be selling each item one by one.
Now another concern may be shipment of the actual lots to their buyers. Won't it cost a lot to ship? Yes and no. Yes because it does cost a lot to ship a big order of just about anything, and NO because the supplier most likely receives large shipping discounts because he/she already sends orders all around the world on a daily basis and because more often that not the shipping cost is already included in the cost of each item.
So when you list wholesale lots up for sale, you can provide free shipping, and that can attract a lot of attention. The great thing about being a supplier is; if you provide good service most of your clients will come back and buy from you again and again. When you are a supplier; you are basically a provider and your clients depend on you in order to make their money.
So when you are a supplier; all you need is a couple of clients and you are set, because these clients will buy from you on a regular basis. Remember, it will only take you a couple of transactions to sell 1000 items because you are selling in bulk. You are not selling something that you own; you do not need to buy anything. All you need is 10 or less sales on eBay to make $3000 and you don't have to invest any money!
Something very important that you should know is that you don't have to sell things that come from an actual wholesale supplier. The stuff you sell can also come from a liquidator. A liquidator is someone that buys overruns from big retailers (Sears, Wal-Mart etc.) at a fraction of the wholesale price for the products.
You see, sometimes big stores can't sell everything they have. The stuff they couldn't sell needs to be gotten rid of as soon as possible to make room for new products. This is where liquidation companies come in and buy the overruns products at a fraction of the wholesale price.
When a liquidation company buys a couple of truckloads full of overruns, the next thing it must do is sell these overruns as soon as possible to make room for more over runs. Since the liquidator must get rid of the products as soon as possible, the products are sold at extremely cheap prices and always in bulk.
Liquidation companies are always looking to get rid of the stuff they have in stock as soon as possible, and that is where you come in by offering to sell their stuff. The great thing about selling things from a liquidator is their prices are usually as low as they get, I mean like $100 products for $10! And since the liquidator sells the products at well below whole sale prices, it gives you a lot of room for profit.
You can use OPP and OPM to sell all kinds of stuff. You can sell peoples’ cars for them. You can even sell houses, boats, or jewelry collections. Just look in the for sale listings of your local newspaper and look at all of the great stuff for sale that would sell on eBay. Call up the owners of the items advertised in the newspaper and offer to sell the stuff for them.
Looking for stuff in newspapers is great because; the people that are using a newspaper to sell something probably know nothing about eBay and are desperate to get rid of the stuff they are advertising. These people are also the ones that are willing to lower the price and haggle, and that is great because the lower the price they are willing to let the item go for; the more profit you can make by selling their stuff.
As you can see, the place you get your products from doesn't need to be a wholesaler and the products don't have to be brand new. The most important thing to remember in order to make this method of making money useful to you; OPP Other Peoples Products and OPM Other People's Money So what are the advantages of selling lots of low priced products?
Here they are: You don't need any money to start. If you use this method, you will not need any money to start because you are selling OPP or products you don't own! Less transactions, even though you will be selling a lot of products, you will be selling them all at the same time, to just a few customers. Don't look at it as 1,000 items sold, look at it as 10 transactions made.
Few competitors, there aren't a lot of people doing this on eBay I have actually spoken to only one. But just because everyone isn't doing doesn't mean it won’t work, it simply means you have the market all to yourself! Access to products you might eventually want to start selling one by one.
You don't have to be a supplier forever, you can start selling like most people do (item by item) after you make some money. But you will have a huge advantage over most people, you will be friends with a supplier and have access to tons of products. Being a supplier is all about the numbers. It's all about bulk sales and price per item.
Let's say you buy 1000 music CD's for $100. That works out to $0.10 per CD. Lets say the retail price per CD is $5. If you sell each CD for $1 you will make a profit of $900 or 1,000%!! But you must buy bulk! You can't get those kinds of deals buying 2 CD's at a time.
One of the first PowerSellers I ever talked to was very nice man named Doug. Doug sells cameras, binoculars and all kinds of other optical products under the eBay ID gr8fuldoug1. But that is not all Doug sells! As I interviewed him, and listened to the great stories he was telling me, I heard him say he also sells CD's.
I quickly interrupted him and asked him to tell me all about his CD selling. As it turned out Doug and a partner had bought 35,000 music CDs from a warehouse and sell them under the user ID Moonskaman. Doug told me he sells the CD's in lots of 50, 75, 100 and so on. I didn't ask Doug to go into detail, but one thing is for sure...when you buy 35,000 CD's you get a HUGE discount!
Now you know that you can be a PowerSeller a bunch of different ways, you can sell high ticket items, medium or low priced items or become a supplier and sell wholesale lots. Now you need to decide what condition the products you are selling going to be in and where are you going to get those products. What I mean by condition is: are the products you sell going to be new, used or refurbished? I will start with new products first…