How many times have you wondered where to find products to sell on eBay, products that always attract high profits and which few other people are also selling?
Better still, how would you like to be sole seller of those products on eBay, so you never have to face rivalry or fight price wars and end up lowering your prices just to break even?
Sounds perfect, doesn’t it, and possibly too good to be true?
But finding those products for which you are sole supplier and earning fabulous profits on every sale is actually very easy and it can be done close to home in just a few hours, so leaving you the rest of the day to list and sell your acquisitions and watch money pour constantly into your bank account.
You do it by locating products from places few or no other people know about and may never know about, but which will always be available to you.
Here are just a few of those secrets you’ll learn about in myreport:
* Two problems that turn other eBay sellers against a particularly productive and profitable product source and why those problems will be a very great benefit to you.
* Where to find brand new products minus their original packaging and priced less than twenty-five percent their retail price. And why you can resell those items for one hundred percent pure profit per sale.
* Visit just one website to find all the goods you’ll ever need to earn a great living on eBay and how to know how much money you’ll make from those products before you even have to pay for them.
* eBay bans this type of product and frequently expels sellers breaking the rules. Unless you follow this simple tip to turning a banned item into something eBay will willingly help you to sell.
* You can pick up hundreds of these best selling items every weekend, completely free of charge, and sell them for double figure prices on eBay. But only if you know where and how to obtain stock before other sellers get to hear about these hugely popular products.
* Where to buy four or five items for next to nothing, then bundle and list them on eBay for 1000% quick and easy profit per sale.
* Three ways eBay will help you find products set to attract record breaking prices at their site.
By now I bet you can’t wait to learn about those 51 quick and easy ways to source products exclusively for your business, so let’s get the show going without further delay.
1. Small Town Auction Salerooms. Especially in rural areas away from main road networks and without their own nearby railway stations. Few major dealers and collectors travel to these auctions, mainly because time spent travelling and the cost of overnight accommodation eat too heavily into their prospective profits.
Add to this the fact that some such auction salerooms have no web site of their own, so there’s no chance for long distance dealers and collectors to view goods and place bids online and you’ll find competition against you at these events is low or non-existent.
Then all you do is travel there and back on sale day, start viewing as soon as the doors open to the public or sooner if you ask auction room staff to let you in early. Have a good look round, make notes, decide what to bid on and how much to pay, then have a quick meal before the sale starts. When the sale ends you pick up your purchases and travel home the same day.
2. Library Clearances. All public libraries withdraw books from the shelves when they date or develop the odd crack or crease that’s likely to worsen with heavy use in the next few weeks.
Some of these books are ideal for selling on eBay, not usually to collectors, but to readers willing to pay a small price for a copy all of their own and to avoid a trip to town to choose books from the library and another to return them.
Opt for popular non-fiction subjects over fiction which can usually be bought inexpensively in paperback format. Popular non-fiction subjects include fishing, travel, arts and crafts.
Telephone public libraries and ask to be placed on their mailing list and informed when a sale is imminent.
Note: mention in your eBay listings that books are ex-library because some people despise library labels and stamps and other people’s fingerprints on every page.
3. Jumble Sales. ‘Jumble’ typically suggests rubbish but in the right places jumble sales can be a constant source of high quality clothing and accessories. The ‘right’ places, of course, being affluent areas or major towns and cities with a high percentage of wealthy residents and retirees.
Sales in rural areas are also likely to yield more attractive and potentially more profitable items than jumble sales in heavily populated areas of mass unemployment. In the former case people are more likely to cast off clothing and accessories in good and sometimes new condition as well as presenting fewer people buying second hand at jumble sales, than items discarded by poorer people who only discard items that are no longer fit to wear.
4. School Fetes. Most schools raise funds for play equipment and days out by inviting parents and nearby residents to donate goods to resell to pretty much the same people. Parents don’t like to be seen donating rubbish at these events and some good bargains are possible on clothing the children have outworn or which have gone out of fashion.
Iconic and collectable items can be found here, too, the likes of school lunch boxes and annuals featuring popular cartoon and television characters.
Most schools advertise on boards and telephone poles outside the school and sometimes in the local papers and from cards in neighbourhood shop and post office windows.
Write to school heads in your locality; ask to be informed when a sale is imminent.
5. Church Fetes. Similar to the last entry where churches hold fetes to raise money to make repairs to the church, much of the time by asking parishioners to donate unwanted items. Promotions tend to operate much the same as for school fetes, this time from signs outside the church. Larger events in major towns and cities are advertised in local and regional newspapers, usually the weekend preceding the event.
6. Wholesalers. Wholesalers operate between manufacturers and retailers, providing millions of very different product types, with some very low prices possible from manufacturers mainly in China who can be sourced via portals like:
Alibaba
www.alibaba.com
China Wholesale Online
www.dhgate.com
AliExpress
www.aliexpress.com
But wholesale companies close to home represent a potentially much richer source of goods to resell on eBay, especially smaller companies in rural areas who don’t sell online and only trade with retailers visiting the premises.
Because they’re based in low pedestrian areas or with poor road networks, they attract fewer retail buyers than their counterparts in major towns and cities.
And that is why such places give you more chance of being sole supplier of some items, compared to millions of eBay sellers dealing with major online companies like Alibaba.
Find smaller wholesalers by keying something like this into Google’s search box:
‘wholesaler + product type + durham’
‘wholesaler + sussex’
7. Catalogue Returns. Catalogue companies sell to customers who don’t get to see or try on goods before buying. And that means returns are high for some companies, many of them reselling returned goods at high discounts rather than returning them to stock.
Much of that stock is new but no longer has its product packaging and sometimes brand labels have been removed before being sold off to the public.
You must inform potential buyers if labels are missing or goods are in any way defective.
Find catalogue return sellers by keying something like this into any major search engine:
‘suppliers catalogue returns’
‘catalogue returns’
8. Internet Price Comparison Sites. As it says on the tin, these sites exist to highlight price differences for the same type of goods and services between different suppliers and very often it’s possible to find goods selling way below their price potential on eBay. Go check this idea for yourself by keying this sort of thing into any major search engine:
‘price comparison sites’
‘compare prices’
9. Government Auctions. ‘Government auction’ is a misnomer because governments rarely sell direct to the public and ‘Government auction’ mainly describes independent auction salerooms representing government departments offloading items confiscated by Customs & Excise or seized by bailiffs for unpaid taxes, also items sold to recoup the debts of liquidated firms and others going out of business and wanting to repay creditors fast.
The term usually includes ‘Police Auctions’ where unclaimed stolen property and items lost and not reclaimed by their original owners are put up for sale to make space in police stations for later acquisitions.
Most such sales are to raise money quickly to make room for newer items and to pay off creditors. So very low prices are possible at auction sales you can learn about at:
Yell
www.yell.com
Key ‘auction rooms’ into the first search box and ‘United Kingdom’ or other country in the second.
For police auction salerooms in the UK visit:
Bumblebee Auctions
www.bumblebeeauctions.co.uk
In other countries find police auctions by searching any major search engine for ‘police auctions (country/county)’.
10. Charity Shops. Volunteers are becoming more experienced in high street charity shops where goods are donated by the public to raise funds for charities like Oxfam and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals.
Today, more than ever before volunteers are researching and valuing and pricing goods close to their true market value. Some charity shops sell their goods online, notably on eBay or from their own online shops. And that usually means fewer ‘sleepers’ for people like you and me, sleepers being valuable items selling way below their true price by sellers who don’t recognise their true value.
But some very good bargains can be found in small town and village charity shops lacking professional valuers and sellers and without knowledge and funds to market their wares online.
As for jumble sales the best goods are likely to be found in affluent areas with a heavy retirement community.
11. Affiliate Products. You are not officially allowed to sell affiliate products on eBay, namely where you take orders and the affiliate product owners take payment and sends commission back to you.
On eBay sellers must take payment direct from buyers and it’s eBay sellers who must refund buyers if anything goes wrong.
So eBay won’t risk non-members taking payment that can’t be clawed back through intervention and sanctions place on site members.
That’s the official stance, but in reality I have sold hundreds of affiliate products on eBay with just a tweak made to how payment is taken from buyers. In every case I contacted affiliate product owners and asked if I could take payment from my buyers on eBay and send the appropriate portion of money and customer details to the product owner to fulfil orders. I have never been refused and in the majority of cases the process went like the proverbial dream.
My only problems centred on:
- Delivery times and customers sometimes cancelling orders for slow delivery.
- The same buyers leaving negative feedback for late delivery and other problems emanating from product suppliers.
Both problems can be nipped in the bud by vetting affiliate partners before promoting their goods.
Meet your prospective partner in person or at least have a chat by telephone. Emphasise your needs and promise to honour the supplier’s requirements.
Place orders and send payment to clear within a few hours and ask for products to be delivered within twenty four hours of payment clearing.
If your partner doesn’t use PayPal, one of the quickest ways to clear payment, then either turn up with cash and pick up your goods to deliver direct to buyers or send a money order or banker’s cheque, neither of which can bounce, and use first class delivery for funds to arrive the next day.
12. Free Company Gifts and Giveaways. We’re talking the likes of DVDs given free by national newspapers, money off vouchers in magazines and newspapers, free gifts with McDonald’s meals, giveaway software on computer users’ journals, and more besides.
Some such items can fetch ten pounds (or other currency) or more and cause a stampede of buyers, as happened, for example, when a newly released song by Prince was given on a free DVD by a British newspaper. Within hours of the paper hitting the newsagent’s shelves people were paying upwards of thirty pounds for those free DVDs and savvy sellers were travelling miles to stock up on newspapers and their freebies.
Tips
Most free gifts in newspapers and magazines are given at the weekend, usually on Sundays, and that’s when you should pay a visit to your local newsagent to study the shelves and stock up on potentially valuable items currently offered free of charge. Arrive early before someone else selling on eBay beats you to it.
Additionally, most mainstream magazines and newspapers include money-off vouchers for certain products or for buying in specific commercial outlets. Such items sometimes resell just below their redemption value on eBay and can generate quick and easy profits for sellers.
Last, but not least, many firms offer discount and gift vouchers to encourage sales and as bonus items to people who have already made a purchase, or as gift vouchers that recipients chose not to redeem.
Vouchers are sometimes available on supermarket shelves or forecourts or in magazines provided for customers. Most such items go fast, not just to people wanting to save money on their own purchases but also to people wanting to resell vouchers and discount coupons. The same happens for competition entry forms which also disappear fast from the shelves and are frequently sold in mixed bundles through publications targeting competitions enthusiasts. I haven’t spotted much in the way of competition entry forms selling on eBay yet but I can see no reason that should not happen.
13. Flea Markets. I will never tire of telling you these are my main source of quality products, notably collectibles to resell at high prices on eBay. But the big money-maker isn’t always the low price tag you’ll find on thousands of items at these events as much as further discounts you can ask from sellers.
Here are four ways to cut the cost of your acquisitions:
- Arrive early, tell the organisers you are ‘trade’ which as an eBay seller you are, and you probably won’t have to pay an entrance fee and you’ll also get in before the visiting public arrives on the day.
- Ask sellers at the event ‘How much for trade’ and expect at least ten percent off the price of your chosen items.
- Buy in bulk where possible. While you are still interested in buying more stuff from the same sellers ask ‘If there a discount if I buy more?’ Most will offer a discount and offer even bigger reductions the more items you have in your pile of items to buy.
- Pick up a few items and put them to one side. This is your ‘buying’ pile. Probably! Tell the seller you have seen a lot of items you’d like to buy on his stall and then inspect more of his stock.
A few minutes later make it look as if you are losing interest, do a bit of imaginary whispering to a friend, make it appear you are reconsidering buying those items.
Then look around at other sellers, look again at your pile, then gaze around the room again. The idea is make it look as if you are about to move from this stall to spend your money elsewhere.
At this point most sellers will offer a really big discount if you buy the items you already have in your hand and an even bigger discount if you buy more.
Find flea markets advertising in local and regional newspapers a few weeks before the event and on the weekend preceding it.
14. Car Boot Sales. The goings-on at car boot sales are similar to what happens at flea markets, with the exception that one usually takes place out of doors and the other is normally held under cover.
So everything that was said about buying from flea markets and learning about forthcoming events applies equally to car boot sales.
But by far the biggest benefit of buying from car boot sales is that a good many sellers are families offloading unwanted household items, also children’s cast off toys and clothing.
Most such sellers want a quick sale and have limited knowledge of how to price and display their stock. So you can haggle for even bigger discounts at car boot sales than at flea markets and you’re more likely to find sleepers at these events.
15. Pound Shops (or other currency names: dollar, euro, for example). These are a source of inexpensive goods offering decent resale prices on eBay, especially from local only retailers with their own exclusive suppliers and not selling online or in other geographical areas.
Note: This idea works just as well for similar shops operating in the United States and most other countries.
Such firms buy in massive quantities at huge discounts which are passed to customers in the form of low prices.
Some bundle similar or related items together for even bigger price discounts.
Many items, single or bundled, can be resold on eBay for a few pounds profit per sale, with even bigger profits possible for sellers who:
- Bundle items bought separately. So where you buy, say, one tube of skin cream for one pound, and one bottle of astringent for one pound, you put cream and astringent together and charge a fiver per sale. Bundle four or more related items and grow your profits exponentially.
- Add new and high perceived value packaging such as soap in a box or with ribbon or wrapper made from antique maps or sheet music or in small baskets of two or three soaps with cellophane and a ribbon added. You’ll see soaps packaged this way on Etsy fetching really high profits per sale and attracting plenty of buyers.
- Use these low price goods as incentives to buy other items on eBay, such as prettily dressed bars of soap to accompany silk pillowcases, or a children’s comic book with school clothing and accessories.
Aim to match your prices to other people on eBay selling similar main products without the add on. That way you’ll make your listings very different to others at the site and generate more sales and reduce rivalry.
16. Find dropshippers who don’t dropship. Yet! Get some business cards printed with your own name and trading name, also your address and phone number. Add ‘eBay Trading Assistant’ and something like ‘Expert eBay seller will sell your goods on commission’.
Now go to the nearest main high street, one with at least a few hundred shops. Pick shops selling items you can resell on eBay, obviously ignoring purveyors of items that can’t be sold on eBay or which deteriorate quickly, such as foodstuff and alcohol, live animals and flowers.
If you’re shy leave your card next to the till; if you’re not shy hand it to the shop owner as you tell him about your offer.
Take your cards and make a similar offer to traders at flea markets, in antiques malls, market halls, collectors’ events, trade and gift shows, county shows, and so on.
Very important: Try to get product owners to deliver goods direct to your buyers. Get the seller to pay delivery costs from his share of the product’s finishing price. Then you get to keep whatever buyers pay for delivery.
Some people you approach will also be selling on eBay, so some of your cards will hit stoney ground, but a fair percentage of those people won’t also be selling online and many will take up your offer.
17. Look in the For Sale columns of local and regional newspapers, especially at the weekend. Don’t forget to scour freesheet newspapers as well. Many allow readers to place free advertisements for stuff the family no longer requires. Because private sellers generally have little idea about resale values and most can’t be bothered to find out, you’ll find readers’ advertisements a source of low price, generally high profit goods for you to resell on eBay. I’ve found such publications a prolific and very profitable source of toys and bicycles, furniture, collections of all types, clothing, and more.
Idea: Look for bridal wear selling in the For Sale columns, the likes of brides’ and bridesmaid’s dresses, and place your own advertisements for similar products in the ‘Items Wanted’ section usually sitting alongside items for sale.
Wedding clothing is incredibly expensive purchased new and is frequently discarded after one wear. But people on a budget can’t always afford to buy brand new and will welcome the chance to purchase at around half the normal retail price for items in good condition. All you have to do is have small faults repaired, have the clothing cleaned, and sell it on eBay. Aim to pay less than one-quarter the item’s retail price when new.
18. eBay is an incredibly rich source of goods for you to buy to resell at sometimes staggeringly high profit margins. You’re looking mainly for sellers making mistakes in their listings and so being overlooked by potential buyers or asking a low price because they don’t realise the value of what they are selling.
Especially look for job lots placed by lazy sellers or people who don’t have time to list items individually. eBay’s ‘Wholesale and Job Lots’ section is the place to find some amazing job lot bargains placed by private individuals, sometimes for same kind items and frequently for bundles of very different goods.
When you find a job lot you like on eBay, check out the individual components, then research prices fetched for similar items recently sold separately on eBay. Consider buying where money from past sales amounts to at least three times the asking price for the job lot.
19. On eBay look for listings with important keywords misspelled in their titles and subsequently failing to respond to searches for the correct terms on eBay.
Visit Fat Fingers at www.fatfingers.com and key in the correct spelling of best-selling products on eBay, such as computer, suffragette, sovereign, and so on. Click to search and Fat Fingers will sometimes return dozens of items currently listed with spelling mistakes in their titles on eBay and with little chance of attracting other bidders and buyers.
Now you buy those items inexpensively and relist them with important words spelled correctly in their eBay titles. You should profit every time.
Tip: Sometimes you’ll find the same sellers making the same mistakes over several listings, sometimes hundreds of listings, all likely to mean low buying prices for observant people like you. When you find those sellers you add them to your list of favourite sellers and study them daily for new opportunities.
Do not buy from the same eBay account used to resell your acquisitions or you’ll give the game away and could upset your selling partner. Use a different account until you’ve bought, say, ten or twenty items from one person, then open another account for subsequent buys from the same seller.
The idea is to stay low profile and you can open as many eBay accounts as you like as long as each has its own separate email address.
20. Here’s an idea that works on eBay and other marketing portals. All you do is put a note or compliments slip inside all outgoing packages to your buyers. Tell them you are grateful for their business and that you can also help buyers sell some of their own unwanted goods on eBay. Say you are a trading assistant and that you collect and list and sell goods on behalf of clients in return for fees incurred and a fixed percentage of the selling price.
21. Arrange exclusive deals with exhibitors at art and craft fairs. You’ll find nearby fairs advertised in local and regional newspapers, usually at the weekend. That’s where you will find people selling items they have created themselves or acting on behalf of artists and craftworkers.
I’ve learned that few traders at these events are also selling their goods online, on eBay, for example, or Amazon, Etsy and numerous other such sites. That’s because most artists and craftworkers, also their selling agents, are good at creating and displaying their wares, but lousy at marketing outside of fairs.
Offer to take pictures of goods at the event to subsequently sell those items online and a good many exhibitors will accept right away. Only work with products your prospective partner can recreate unlimited times for future buyers.
Have a business card printed to hand out at these events and expect some people who seemed reluctant to talk on the day are very keen to contact you later, especially if bad weather restricted visitors to the event.
Another reason is usually that traders will take a look online to see what other artists and craftworkers are selling at sites such as those just mentioned and when they find products similar to their own fetching high prices they’ll either become personally involved or get you to do all of the selling for them.
All your business card needs is your name and telephone number, email address and something like ‘Let Us Sell Your Art and Craftwork Online. Low Commission Charges for Volume Sellers’.
22. Visit high street retailers just after a major national spending season ends, such as Christmas, Easter, children returning to school, Valentine’s Day, and so on. That’s where you’ll find many larger retailers offloading stock that failed to sell prior to demand falling over the last few days. Most will be selling stock off for pennies on the pound to make way for next season’s stock.
23. Art colleges are an incredible source of people with great creative skills and lacking time or ability to make money from their skills while they are still at college. So you can start a great business on eBay selling paintings, photographs and other creative designs on behalf of some of the world’s most talented individuals. Agree a commission for yourself on all sales after deducting eBay and PayPal fees from an item’s finishing price. Send a letter to college heads asking for students to be told about your offer and including a selection of business cards for college officials to place on notice boards or give direct to promising clientele.
24. Literally thousands of local and non-local firms, not all of them specialist printers but some creating promotional products for other companies, can create and supply low volume printed items at low prices. Such items include reproduction prints, postcards and posters.
Some will also create the following in small volumes with your images incorporated: handbags, purses, photograph frames, puzzle, diaries, and countless other products alongside. Make your add-on print unique and your products will also be unique to your business. Key something like this into the search box at Google.com:
‘printed postcards’
‘greetings cards printers’
‘handbags printed with photographs’
Offer to personalise iitems with names of recipients and you’ll attract plenty of customers as well as being able to add an easy twenty-five per cent to your prices.
25 Do a door to door leaflet drop or have a leaflet inserted in local newspapers, telling people what kind of products you are interested in buying, or selling on commission, and how to contact you for more information. You’ll find leaflet dropping firms advertising in local telephone directories.
26. Visit trade fairs where manufacturers and resellers take stalls to exhibit their goods and talk to potential retailers direct. You’ll find trade fairs operating all year round in major towns and cities all over the world, with activity increasing in early summer for Christmas goods and in the spring for goods to be sold during the summer months. Key ‘trade fairs’ into any major search engine, with or without a topographical mention, to find major events with more suppliers and goods than you’ll ever need.
27. Visit any major business park and you’ll find a good many resident firms are manufacturers or importers who typically trade direct with the visiting public. Take business cards promoting your reseller service on eBay and ask to speak with the manager or business owner. Hand over your card if the person isn’t available. If the person agrees to meet you, tell that person all about your offer and try to have a contract signed right away, allowing you to become the firm’s sole representative on eBay. Leave a business card if the person doesn’t agree right away and you can bet some will call you back when business falls a little flat.
28. Make your own goods, either from scratch or by combining and adding to ready made items. So you might make your own greetings cards and fridge magnets in their entirety, for example, or buy similar items as job lot and clearance bargains. In all cases try to include something unique with your product to ensure you face no competition on eBay and other marketplaces. Something like three fridge magnets where most people offer just one, or three cufflinks instead of the traditional two, a bundle of gift tags with each order for greetings cards, and so on.
29. Buy Other People’s Products at Café Press (www.cafepress.com) and Zazzle (www.zazzle.com) and similar produce on demand sites. Key ‘sites like café press’ into any major search box for similar made to order sites. When I searched for items similar to those fetching high prices on eBay, in my case fridge magnets and cushions featuring specific dog breeds, I discovered countless products selling at Café Press and Zazzle with potential to attract decent profits when resold on eBay.
Idea: Upload your own images for production on hundreds of different items for you to sell direct to buyers on eBay and for affiliates to make sales for you. Upload your own Café Press and Zazzle or other site product images to eBay to test selling potential. Then get a big discount for ordering your own products in bulk from produce on demand sites to resell on eBay.
30. Fashion Designer End of Season Sales. Fashions are short lived and many designers abandon existing designs at the end of each fashion season, such as spring, summer, or every year. Then new designs are introduced and old one design items sold off cheap. Those out-of-season designs, notably clothing and accessories, jewellery and sunglasses, are still very fashionable to most people and can fetch close to their peak retail prices on eBay. Key ‘designer sales’ into any major search engine to locate sellers and sales timetables.
31. Manufacturers advertising in print publications will usually highlight their internet address. And that means those people are usually au fait with marketing online and probably don’t need your help. But not all manufacturers have an online presence and would jump at the chance of having someone sell their goods online. Spot those people by the absence of a website address in their advertisements.
But check before contacting those people to see if they do have an internet presence which they chose not to reflect in the printed media. Key manufacturers’ names into any main search engine, along with product type and physical address. If nothing appears in search returns the manufacturer almost certainly does not already market online. When that happens you contact representatives in the same manner mentioned in tip number 27.
32. Take a stall at flea markets, trade fairs, car boot sales, indoor markets, and so on. Place a ‘goods wanted’ sign somewhere prominent on your stall. Mention the type of goods you are looking for and place a pile of leaflets close by asking possible vendors to contact you with details of their goods. You must have goods of your own to sell at these events not just to qualify as an exhibitor but primarily to cover your travelling, selling and subsistence fees for the day. I’ve seen this idea work so well for people selling dog prints and canine memorabilia at dog shows, agents selling other people’s goods on commission at art and craft fairs, as well as people selling almost any kind of products at antiques and collectors’ fairs.
33. Visit classified web sites like Craigslist (www.craigslist.com) and countless similar sites populated mainly by private sellers wanting to sell goods fast for cash to finance other purchases or pay urgent bills. You can normally search by distance you live away from the seller, meaning travelling costs will be minimised and you’ll find most private sellers lack marketing and pricing skills and can generate lots of low cost goods for you to resell at high profit margins.
34. Buy from sites that are less well known than eBay but serve the same purpose of allowing individuals to sell their own goods at the site. Because they are small, those sites consequently attract fewer buyers and comparatively lower selling prices.
Calculate your product acquisition costs, namely buying fees, travelling expenses, listing and final selling fees, then add a suitable profit margin on top. This is your lowest acceptable selling price. Add twenty per cent to your lowest acceptable selling price and make that your fixed price for the product. Add a Best Offer button and take all offers over your lowest acceptable selling price and you’ll find roughly half of buyers will pay the full price rather than making a best offer and risk the item selling elsewhere while their offer is under review.
Find those sites by keying something like this into search engines:
‘alternatives to ebay’
‘alternatives to craigslist’
‘classified advertising sites’
35. Read product reviews in newspapers and on television, study product review web sites. Look for products receiving glowing reviews and likely to sell out fast from their current suppliers. Buy whatever stock you can to resell elsewhere before the shelves go bare.
By way of explanation, when Boots the chemist introduced a new skin cream which was reviewed by several daily newspapers whose editors dubbed it the best solution ever to prevent wrinkles forming and remove whatever wrinkles already existed. Within hours the product disappeared from Boots’ shelves, with the company admitting it would take weeks and possibly months to obtain new stock.
But it wasn’t just people reading those newspaper reviews who emptied the shelves, as much as people wanting to resell the product on eBay, Amazon and in other online marketplaces where prices had risen manyfold over the regular retail price.
So once you see a product review promising the earth to people buying the product, that’s when you should jump in fast to sell the item yourself on eBay and elsewhere.
36. Study the Bargain Shelves in Most Supermarkets and Retail Outlets. Many supermarkets have bargain aisles where products are sold below their normal price. This doesn’t always mean the products are out of date or no longer attracting sales, it simply means the retailer in question has too little stock to warrant a special place on their shelves. But on eBay, with a much larger audience than most regional supermarkets, you’re likely to attract fabulous markups from those items.
37. Be a home agent. A home agent is someone who acts as exclusive seller for a manufacturer within the same country, as compared to import/export agents who market goods internationally. The usual method is to find makers selling their goods within a few miles of base or purely countywide. The agent then sells items outside the maker’s own marketing area. The person may or may not also market those items overseas. Suitable vendors may be found by paying visits to the high street, especially in smaller towns and cities, not forgetting via local shows and business parks.
38. From regular market stalls in major towns and cities. Some exhibitors market goods they have made themselves, such as art and craft creations, while others sell antiques and collectibles, and yet others trade in bric-a-brac, used records and CDs, DVDs, and hundred more items alongside. Because they trade infrequently, some just one or two days each month, and because their overheads are usually low, you will find many goods selling below their typical values on eBay and providing good profits for you.
This is especially so for exhibitors selling exclusively in one marketplace and having to pack up and transport goods back to base at end of day. Many traders will give really high discounts when markets are about to close and weather has been bad or trade slack on the day. The end of day is always the best time to get bargains at these events, even though arriving as the market opens is the only way to grab sleepers and other products selling significantly below their true market value.
39. Study research sites like Terapeak (www.terapeak.com) and Goofbid (www.goofbid.com), most of which reveal products selling in high quantities and attracting good profit margins on eBay. Those sites don’t actually tell where to get the products, however, but you can find them by keying the product type into any major search engine. Key in something like this for fictitious product called XYZ currently attracting lots of orders on eBay:
‘XYZ wholesaler’
‘XYZ dropship’
‘XYZ manufacturer’
40. Study newspapers, usually weekend editions, many of which have special product review pages focussing on really unusual products that probably haven’t yet appeared on eBay. Most reviews give price and retailer and that’s where most readers will go to place their orders. But a good many people will key the product name into eBay’s search engine.
Don’t worry that people searching the same day the product is reviewed won’t actually find the product on eBay.
What usually happens is that other publications will copy the same reviews and copycat reviews will probably continue for several weeks or months. As soon as early reviews appear you should contact retailers and makers and offer to sell their products as sole agent on eBay. Some will agree and you can be listing and selling their products on e Bay, and elsewhere, long before reviews die down in the press.
For obvious reasons, monthly magazines have a longer shelf life than daily newspapers, and their reviews can attract visitors to retailers’ sites for months to come. And that’s why it’s a good idea to make monthly magazines, with unusual product type review sections an essential part of your product sourcing strategy.
41. At flea markets and collectors’ fairs, also at book sales and ephemera fairs, look out for product catalogues from the early 1900s, or even further back in time. The vast majority contain advertisements for products that once proved very popular but have long since disappeared from sale. But that doesn’t mean those products can’t be resurrected and made extremely popular and profitable for you.
You may have to have the products created for you or make them yourself. Sometimes you’ll find similar items available from ‘white label/unbranded goods’ suppliers. These are products to which resellers add their own labels and packaging materials and they can be very inexpensive indeed and provide high profits. Key your product type plus ‘unbranded supplier’ into any major search engine to locate sources.
Old publications are also a source of powerful advertisements for you to copy - if they are in the public domain - or edit to suit your product listings.
42. Let’s stay with the public domain, being creative works that are no longer copyright protected or perhaps were never eligible for copyright. The public domain contains millions of books, photographs, artwork, films, music and other creative works for anyone to copy and make money from without paying royalties or licensing fess of any kind to their original creators.
Here are just a few of countless ideas for making money from the public domain:
- Locate patterns and instructions for products similar to those attracting regular orders and profits for other people selling on eBay and elsewhere, such as toys, magic tricks, sheds and literally thousands of items with potential to attract a good following today. Then either recreate the patterns to sell in downloadable format on Kindle and other publishing platforms, or have products themselves created for you to sell in various markets.
- Recreate articles and books from earlier times, sell them individually on sites allowing digital downloads or on CD and DVD on eBay. Current top selling subjects on eBay today include the Titanic tragedy, dog art and cartoons, genealogy reports, and more.
43. Visit antiques and collectibles malls in out of the way areas, the kind of where individual sellers have their own booth or selling space which is watched over by two or three officials who sell goods and return payment minus their own fees back to sellers.
The fact most sellers are absent from the premises for long periods or never turn up to sell personally suggests many are operating part time and possibly earning pin money to supplement a current job or business or just to add to their pension pot.
And that is why sellers are often willing to accept high discount offers on their goods to get rid of long standing stock and make way for new acquisitions. This is especially so in villages and small towns away from main road and rail networks which tend to attract fewer buyers than their counterparts in major towns and cities.
44. Study advertisements placed by collectors in antiques and collectables magazines on newsagents shelves and on web sites like Preloved (www.preloved.com), Craigslist (www.craigslist.com), and similar. Many ads. are placed by collectors who don’t want to sell surplus collectibles themselves on eBay and prefer to sell from low cost advertisements in high profile antique and collectibles journals and web sites.
Those people also want to sell items fast and in bulk rather than have to wait for items to sell individually on or off the Internet. Many such advertisements are classified by location, allowing you to contact sellers close to home and so keep your product acquisition costs low. Also try bonanza.com and ebid.com where listing fees are low or items can be listed free of charge and fees paid only when items sell. Search for similar sites by keying something like this into any major search engine:
‘free classified advertising’
‘auctions sites free listing’
45. Most factories and manufacturing outlets have departments where seconds and damaged goods are sold off at deep discounts. Many defects can be unnoticeable to all but eagle eyed quality control staff and will sell at decent profits on eBay and elsewhere. Key ‘factory shops’ plus your target buying area into any major search engine to locate suitable sources.
46. Contact local transport offices, police stations, leisure centres, golf clubs, gyms, and so on. Ask what happens to items that have been lost and not reclaimed by their original owners. Most will be offered for sale a specified period after parting company with their original owners.
47. Place your own products wanted advertisements on postcards in shop and post office windows and on notice boards in libraries and supermarkets, especially in high predestrian areas. You’ll pay very little to advertise this way and product offers can be as high or even higher than from costly advertisements in high circulation local and regional newspapers.
48. Contact house clearance specialists in your area; you’ll find them advertising in local newspapers usually at the weekend. Most firms like fast turnover typical on larger items like furniture and toys, bicycles and cars, which generally require just a clean up to sell from advertisements in newspapers or from shops selling second hand household items. Most clearance specialists dislike selling small products, of which most house clearances contain hundreds such items and prefer to dispose of smaller goods in bulk to people selling outside their own main marketplace.
49. Study image rich sites like Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) and Google Images, looking for products that jump out and grab your attention, in the same way they are likely to attract buyers on eBay and Amazon.
Images that make you sit up and take notice are far more likely to make decent profits for you than products potential buyers only read about or have to travel some distance to view at wholesalers’ premises or through auction salerooms and flea makrets.
Hover over those images and you’ll usually see who the supplier is and be able to travel direct to their website. Using image sites like this not only helps identify products likely to grab eyeballs on eBay but also allows you to source hundreds of products in the time it takes to find one or two suitable items from visits to offline suppliers.
50. Derive ideas to emulate (not to copy, but to use as inspiration for your own unique products) at sites working direct with artists and craftworkers, or selling their own manufactures on Amazon (www.amazon.com), eBay (www.ebay.com), Etsy (www.etsy.com), and so on.
Use other people’s best-selling products as the source of your own unique designs.
Alternatively, contact sellers and offer to sell their goods on commission in markets they don’t already target themselves.
51. My personal favourite product sourcing tips are these:
- Simply buy any small and attractive item with a low price tag, such as costume jewellery at flea markets, pens decorated with iconic images and quotes and created in bulk by most high street printers, small handmade gift items from sellers on Etsy and Amazon, and hundreds more. Then all you do is add an attractive box and a personalised gift tag and sell the ensemble on eBay. That box and gift tag, personalised to suit the recipient, adds an easy three or four pounds to items costing literally pennies.
- Buy three or four similar theme product job lots on eBay, such as pens, pencils, notepads; soap, flannel, body lotion; baby’s bib, pacifier, small toy; dog lead, collar, squeaky toy, and so on. Add one of each job lot item to a small basket, add a bow and sell as a ready made gift item.
And that is it, more than fifty ideas for sourcing high profit products for you to resell on eBay without having to remortgage your home or take out a bank loan to do so.
Thank you for reading.
Sounds perfect, doesn’t it, and possibly too good to be true?
But finding those products for which you are sole supplier and earning fabulous profits on every sale is actually very easy and it can be done close to home in just a few hours, so leaving you the rest of the day to list and sell your acquisitions and watch money pour constantly into your bank account.
You do it by locating products from places few or no other people know about and may never know about, but which will always be available to you.
Here are just a few of those secrets you’ll learn about in myreport:
* Two problems that turn other eBay sellers against a particularly productive and profitable product source and why those problems will be a very great benefit to you.
* Where to find brand new products minus their original packaging and priced less than twenty-five percent their retail price. And why you can resell those items for one hundred percent pure profit per sale.
* Visit just one website to find all the goods you’ll ever need to earn a great living on eBay and how to know how much money you’ll make from those products before you even have to pay for them.
* eBay bans this type of product and frequently expels sellers breaking the rules. Unless you follow this simple tip to turning a banned item into something eBay will willingly help you to sell.
* You can pick up hundreds of these best selling items every weekend, completely free of charge, and sell them for double figure prices on eBay. But only if you know where and how to obtain stock before other sellers get to hear about these hugely popular products.
* Where to buy four or five items for next to nothing, then bundle and list them on eBay for 1000% quick and easy profit per sale.
* Three ways eBay will help you find products set to attract record breaking prices at their site.
By now I bet you can’t wait to learn about those 51 quick and easy ways to source products exclusively for your business, so let’s get the show going without further delay.
1. Small Town Auction Salerooms. Especially in rural areas away from main road networks and without their own nearby railway stations. Few major dealers and collectors travel to these auctions, mainly because time spent travelling and the cost of overnight accommodation eat too heavily into their prospective profits.
Add to this the fact that some such auction salerooms have no web site of their own, so there’s no chance for long distance dealers and collectors to view goods and place bids online and you’ll find competition against you at these events is low or non-existent.
Then all you do is travel there and back on sale day, start viewing as soon as the doors open to the public or sooner if you ask auction room staff to let you in early. Have a good look round, make notes, decide what to bid on and how much to pay, then have a quick meal before the sale starts. When the sale ends you pick up your purchases and travel home the same day.
2. Library Clearances. All public libraries withdraw books from the shelves when they date or develop the odd crack or crease that’s likely to worsen with heavy use in the next few weeks.
Some of these books are ideal for selling on eBay, not usually to collectors, but to readers willing to pay a small price for a copy all of their own and to avoid a trip to town to choose books from the library and another to return them.
Opt for popular non-fiction subjects over fiction which can usually be bought inexpensively in paperback format. Popular non-fiction subjects include fishing, travel, arts and crafts.
Telephone public libraries and ask to be placed on their mailing list and informed when a sale is imminent.
Note: mention in your eBay listings that books are ex-library because some people despise library labels and stamps and other people’s fingerprints on every page.
3. Jumble Sales. ‘Jumble’ typically suggests rubbish but in the right places jumble sales can be a constant source of high quality clothing and accessories. The ‘right’ places, of course, being affluent areas or major towns and cities with a high percentage of wealthy residents and retirees.
Sales in rural areas are also likely to yield more attractive and potentially more profitable items than jumble sales in heavily populated areas of mass unemployment. In the former case people are more likely to cast off clothing and accessories in good and sometimes new condition as well as presenting fewer people buying second hand at jumble sales, than items discarded by poorer people who only discard items that are no longer fit to wear.
4. School Fetes. Most schools raise funds for play equipment and days out by inviting parents and nearby residents to donate goods to resell to pretty much the same people. Parents don’t like to be seen donating rubbish at these events and some good bargains are possible on clothing the children have outworn or which have gone out of fashion.
Iconic and collectable items can be found here, too, the likes of school lunch boxes and annuals featuring popular cartoon and television characters.
Most schools advertise on boards and telephone poles outside the school and sometimes in the local papers and from cards in neighbourhood shop and post office windows.
Write to school heads in your locality; ask to be informed when a sale is imminent.
5. Church Fetes. Similar to the last entry where churches hold fetes to raise money to make repairs to the church, much of the time by asking parishioners to donate unwanted items. Promotions tend to operate much the same as for school fetes, this time from signs outside the church. Larger events in major towns and cities are advertised in local and regional newspapers, usually the weekend preceding the event.
6. Wholesalers. Wholesalers operate between manufacturers and retailers, providing millions of very different product types, with some very low prices possible from manufacturers mainly in China who can be sourced via portals like:
Alibaba
www.alibaba.com
China Wholesale Online
www.dhgate.com
AliExpress
www.aliexpress.com
But wholesale companies close to home represent a potentially much richer source of goods to resell on eBay, especially smaller companies in rural areas who don’t sell online and only trade with retailers visiting the premises.
Because they’re based in low pedestrian areas or with poor road networks, they attract fewer retail buyers than their counterparts in major towns and cities.
And that is why such places give you more chance of being sole supplier of some items, compared to millions of eBay sellers dealing with major online companies like Alibaba.
Find smaller wholesalers by keying something like this into Google’s search box:
‘wholesaler + product type + durham’
‘wholesaler + sussex’
7. Catalogue Returns. Catalogue companies sell to customers who don’t get to see or try on goods before buying. And that means returns are high for some companies, many of them reselling returned goods at high discounts rather than returning them to stock.
Much of that stock is new but no longer has its product packaging and sometimes brand labels have been removed before being sold off to the public.
You must inform potential buyers if labels are missing or goods are in any way defective.
Find catalogue return sellers by keying something like this into any major search engine:
‘suppliers catalogue returns’
‘catalogue returns’
8. Internet Price Comparison Sites. As it says on the tin, these sites exist to highlight price differences for the same type of goods and services between different suppliers and very often it’s possible to find goods selling way below their price potential on eBay. Go check this idea for yourself by keying this sort of thing into any major search engine:
‘price comparison sites’
‘compare prices’
9. Government Auctions. ‘Government auction’ is a misnomer because governments rarely sell direct to the public and ‘Government auction’ mainly describes independent auction salerooms representing government departments offloading items confiscated by Customs & Excise or seized by bailiffs for unpaid taxes, also items sold to recoup the debts of liquidated firms and others going out of business and wanting to repay creditors fast.
The term usually includes ‘Police Auctions’ where unclaimed stolen property and items lost and not reclaimed by their original owners are put up for sale to make space in police stations for later acquisitions.
Most such sales are to raise money quickly to make room for newer items and to pay off creditors. So very low prices are possible at auction sales you can learn about at:
Yell
www.yell.com
Key ‘auction rooms’ into the first search box and ‘United Kingdom’ or other country in the second.
For police auction salerooms in the UK visit:
Bumblebee Auctions
www.bumblebeeauctions.co.uk
In other countries find police auctions by searching any major search engine for ‘police auctions (country/county)’.
10. Charity Shops. Volunteers are becoming more experienced in high street charity shops where goods are donated by the public to raise funds for charities like Oxfam and the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals.
Today, more than ever before volunteers are researching and valuing and pricing goods close to their true market value. Some charity shops sell their goods online, notably on eBay or from their own online shops. And that usually means fewer ‘sleepers’ for people like you and me, sleepers being valuable items selling way below their true price by sellers who don’t recognise their true value.
But some very good bargains can be found in small town and village charity shops lacking professional valuers and sellers and without knowledge and funds to market their wares online.
As for jumble sales the best goods are likely to be found in affluent areas with a heavy retirement community.
11. Affiliate Products. You are not officially allowed to sell affiliate products on eBay, namely where you take orders and the affiliate product owners take payment and sends commission back to you.
On eBay sellers must take payment direct from buyers and it’s eBay sellers who must refund buyers if anything goes wrong.
So eBay won’t risk non-members taking payment that can’t be clawed back through intervention and sanctions place on site members.
That’s the official stance, but in reality I have sold hundreds of affiliate products on eBay with just a tweak made to how payment is taken from buyers. In every case I contacted affiliate product owners and asked if I could take payment from my buyers on eBay and send the appropriate portion of money and customer details to the product owner to fulfil orders. I have never been refused and in the majority of cases the process went like the proverbial dream.
My only problems centred on:
- Delivery times and customers sometimes cancelling orders for slow delivery.
- The same buyers leaving negative feedback for late delivery and other problems emanating from product suppliers.
Both problems can be nipped in the bud by vetting affiliate partners before promoting their goods.
Meet your prospective partner in person or at least have a chat by telephone. Emphasise your needs and promise to honour the supplier’s requirements.
Place orders and send payment to clear within a few hours and ask for products to be delivered within twenty four hours of payment clearing.
If your partner doesn’t use PayPal, one of the quickest ways to clear payment, then either turn up with cash and pick up your goods to deliver direct to buyers or send a money order or banker’s cheque, neither of which can bounce, and use first class delivery for funds to arrive the next day.
12. Free Company Gifts and Giveaways. We’re talking the likes of DVDs given free by national newspapers, money off vouchers in magazines and newspapers, free gifts with McDonald’s meals, giveaway software on computer users’ journals, and more besides.
Some such items can fetch ten pounds (or other currency) or more and cause a stampede of buyers, as happened, for example, when a newly released song by Prince was given on a free DVD by a British newspaper. Within hours of the paper hitting the newsagent’s shelves people were paying upwards of thirty pounds for those free DVDs and savvy sellers were travelling miles to stock up on newspapers and their freebies.
Tips
Most free gifts in newspapers and magazines are given at the weekend, usually on Sundays, and that’s when you should pay a visit to your local newsagent to study the shelves and stock up on potentially valuable items currently offered free of charge. Arrive early before someone else selling on eBay beats you to it.
Additionally, most mainstream magazines and newspapers include money-off vouchers for certain products or for buying in specific commercial outlets. Such items sometimes resell just below their redemption value on eBay and can generate quick and easy profits for sellers.
Last, but not least, many firms offer discount and gift vouchers to encourage sales and as bonus items to people who have already made a purchase, or as gift vouchers that recipients chose not to redeem.
Vouchers are sometimes available on supermarket shelves or forecourts or in magazines provided for customers. Most such items go fast, not just to people wanting to save money on their own purchases but also to people wanting to resell vouchers and discount coupons. The same happens for competition entry forms which also disappear fast from the shelves and are frequently sold in mixed bundles through publications targeting competitions enthusiasts. I haven’t spotted much in the way of competition entry forms selling on eBay yet but I can see no reason that should not happen.
13. Flea Markets. I will never tire of telling you these are my main source of quality products, notably collectibles to resell at high prices on eBay. But the big money-maker isn’t always the low price tag you’ll find on thousands of items at these events as much as further discounts you can ask from sellers.
Here are four ways to cut the cost of your acquisitions:
- Arrive early, tell the organisers you are ‘trade’ which as an eBay seller you are, and you probably won’t have to pay an entrance fee and you’ll also get in before the visiting public arrives on the day.
- Ask sellers at the event ‘How much for trade’ and expect at least ten percent off the price of your chosen items.
- Buy in bulk where possible. While you are still interested in buying more stuff from the same sellers ask ‘If there a discount if I buy more?’ Most will offer a discount and offer even bigger reductions the more items you have in your pile of items to buy.
- Pick up a few items and put them to one side. This is your ‘buying’ pile. Probably! Tell the seller you have seen a lot of items you’d like to buy on his stall and then inspect more of his stock.
A few minutes later make it look as if you are losing interest, do a bit of imaginary whispering to a friend, make it appear you are reconsidering buying those items.
Then look around at other sellers, look again at your pile, then gaze around the room again. The idea is make it look as if you are about to move from this stall to spend your money elsewhere.
At this point most sellers will offer a really big discount if you buy the items you already have in your hand and an even bigger discount if you buy more.
Find flea markets advertising in local and regional newspapers a few weeks before the event and on the weekend preceding it.
14. Car Boot Sales. The goings-on at car boot sales are similar to what happens at flea markets, with the exception that one usually takes place out of doors and the other is normally held under cover.
So everything that was said about buying from flea markets and learning about forthcoming events applies equally to car boot sales.
But by far the biggest benefit of buying from car boot sales is that a good many sellers are families offloading unwanted household items, also children’s cast off toys and clothing.
Most such sellers want a quick sale and have limited knowledge of how to price and display their stock. So you can haggle for even bigger discounts at car boot sales than at flea markets and you’re more likely to find sleepers at these events.
15. Pound Shops (or other currency names: dollar, euro, for example). These are a source of inexpensive goods offering decent resale prices on eBay, especially from local only retailers with their own exclusive suppliers and not selling online or in other geographical areas.
Note: This idea works just as well for similar shops operating in the United States and most other countries.
Such firms buy in massive quantities at huge discounts which are passed to customers in the form of low prices.
Some bundle similar or related items together for even bigger price discounts.
Many items, single or bundled, can be resold on eBay for a few pounds profit per sale, with even bigger profits possible for sellers who:
- Bundle items bought separately. So where you buy, say, one tube of skin cream for one pound, and one bottle of astringent for one pound, you put cream and astringent together and charge a fiver per sale. Bundle four or more related items and grow your profits exponentially.
- Add new and high perceived value packaging such as soap in a box or with ribbon or wrapper made from antique maps or sheet music or in small baskets of two or three soaps with cellophane and a ribbon added. You’ll see soaps packaged this way on Etsy fetching really high profits per sale and attracting plenty of buyers.
- Use these low price goods as incentives to buy other items on eBay, such as prettily dressed bars of soap to accompany silk pillowcases, or a children’s comic book with school clothing and accessories.
Aim to match your prices to other people on eBay selling similar main products without the add on. That way you’ll make your listings very different to others at the site and generate more sales and reduce rivalry.
16. Find dropshippers who don’t dropship. Yet! Get some business cards printed with your own name and trading name, also your address and phone number. Add ‘eBay Trading Assistant’ and something like ‘Expert eBay seller will sell your goods on commission’.
Now go to the nearest main high street, one with at least a few hundred shops. Pick shops selling items you can resell on eBay, obviously ignoring purveyors of items that can’t be sold on eBay or which deteriorate quickly, such as foodstuff and alcohol, live animals and flowers.
If you’re shy leave your card next to the till; if you’re not shy hand it to the shop owner as you tell him about your offer.
Take your cards and make a similar offer to traders at flea markets, in antiques malls, market halls, collectors’ events, trade and gift shows, county shows, and so on.
Very important: Try to get product owners to deliver goods direct to your buyers. Get the seller to pay delivery costs from his share of the product’s finishing price. Then you get to keep whatever buyers pay for delivery.
Some people you approach will also be selling on eBay, so some of your cards will hit stoney ground, but a fair percentage of those people won’t also be selling online and many will take up your offer.
17. Look in the For Sale columns of local and regional newspapers, especially at the weekend. Don’t forget to scour freesheet newspapers as well. Many allow readers to place free advertisements for stuff the family no longer requires. Because private sellers generally have little idea about resale values and most can’t be bothered to find out, you’ll find readers’ advertisements a source of low price, generally high profit goods for you to resell on eBay. I’ve found such publications a prolific and very profitable source of toys and bicycles, furniture, collections of all types, clothing, and more.
Idea: Look for bridal wear selling in the For Sale columns, the likes of brides’ and bridesmaid’s dresses, and place your own advertisements for similar products in the ‘Items Wanted’ section usually sitting alongside items for sale.
Wedding clothing is incredibly expensive purchased new and is frequently discarded after one wear. But people on a budget can’t always afford to buy brand new and will welcome the chance to purchase at around half the normal retail price for items in good condition. All you have to do is have small faults repaired, have the clothing cleaned, and sell it on eBay. Aim to pay less than one-quarter the item’s retail price when new.
18. eBay is an incredibly rich source of goods for you to buy to resell at sometimes staggeringly high profit margins. You’re looking mainly for sellers making mistakes in their listings and so being overlooked by potential buyers or asking a low price because they don’t realise the value of what they are selling.
Especially look for job lots placed by lazy sellers or people who don’t have time to list items individually. eBay’s ‘Wholesale and Job Lots’ section is the place to find some amazing job lot bargains placed by private individuals, sometimes for same kind items and frequently for bundles of very different goods.
When you find a job lot you like on eBay, check out the individual components, then research prices fetched for similar items recently sold separately on eBay. Consider buying where money from past sales amounts to at least three times the asking price for the job lot.
19. On eBay look for listings with important keywords misspelled in their titles and subsequently failing to respond to searches for the correct terms on eBay.
Visit Fat Fingers at www.fatfingers.com and key in the correct spelling of best-selling products on eBay, such as computer, suffragette, sovereign, and so on. Click to search and Fat Fingers will sometimes return dozens of items currently listed with spelling mistakes in their titles on eBay and with little chance of attracting other bidders and buyers.
Now you buy those items inexpensively and relist them with important words spelled correctly in their eBay titles. You should profit every time.
Tip: Sometimes you’ll find the same sellers making the same mistakes over several listings, sometimes hundreds of listings, all likely to mean low buying prices for observant people like you. When you find those sellers you add them to your list of favourite sellers and study them daily for new opportunities.
Do not buy from the same eBay account used to resell your acquisitions or you’ll give the game away and could upset your selling partner. Use a different account until you’ve bought, say, ten or twenty items from one person, then open another account for subsequent buys from the same seller.
The idea is to stay low profile and you can open as many eBay accounts as you like as long as each has its own separate email address.
20. Here’s an idea that works on eBay and other marketing portals. All you do is put a note or compliments slip inside all outgoing packages to your buyers. Tell them you are grateful for their business and that you can also help buyers sell some of their own unwanted goods on eBay. Say you are a trading assistant and that you collect and list and sell goods on behalf of clients in return for fees incurred and a fixed percentage of the selling price.
21. Arrange exclusive deals with exhibitors at art and craft fairs. You’ll find nearby fairs advertised in local and regional newspapers, usually at the weekend. That’s where you will find people selling items they have created themselves or acting on behalf of artists and craftworkers.
I’ve learned that few traders at these events are also selling their goods online, on eBay, for example, or Amazon, Etsy and numerous other such sites. That’s because most artists and craftworkers, also their selling agents, are good at creating and displaying their wares, but lousy at marketing outside of fairs.
Offer to take pictures of goods at the event to subsequently sell those items online and a good many exhibitors will accept right away. Only work with products your prospective partner can recreate unlimited times for future buyers.
Have a business card printed to hand out at these events and expect some people who seemed reluctant to talk on the day are very keen to contact you later, especially if bad weather restricted visitors to the event.
Another reason is usually that traders will take a look online to see what other artists and craftworkers are selling at sites such as those just mentioned and when they find products similar to their own fetching high prices they’ll either become personally involved or get you to do all of the selling for them.
All your business card needs is your name and telephone number, email address and something like ‘Let Us Sell Your Art and Craftwork Online. Low Commission Charges for Volume Sellers’.
22. Visit high street retailers just after a major national spending season ends, such as Christmas, Easter, children returning to school, Valentine’s Day, and so on. That’s where you’ll find many larger retailers offloading stock that failed to sell prior to demand falling over the last few days. Most will be selling stock off for pennies on the pound to make way for next season’s stock.
23. Art colleges are an incredible source of people with great creative skills and lacking time or ability to make money from their skills while they are still at college. So you can start a great business on eBay selling paintings, photographs and other creative designs on behalf of some of the world’s most talented individuals. Agree a commission for yourself on all sales after deducting eBay and PayPal fees from an item’s finishing price. Send a letter to college heads asking for students to be told about your offer and including a selection of business cards for college officials to place on notice boards or give direct to promising clientele.
24. Literally thousands of local and non-local firms, not all of them specialist printers but some creating promotional products for other companies, can create and supply low volume printed items at low prices. Such items include reproduction prints, postcards and posters.
Some will also create the following in small volumes with your images incorporated: handbags, purses, photograph frames, puzzle, diaries, and countless other products alongside. Make your add-on print unique and your products will also be unique to your business. Key something like this into the search box at Google.com:
‘printed postcards’
‘greetings cards printers’
‘handbags printed with photographs’
Offer to personalise iitems with names of recipients and you’ll attract plenty of customers as well as being able to add an easy twenty-five per cent to your prices.
25 Do a door to door leaflet drop or have a leaflet inserted in local newspapers, telling people what kind of products you are interested in buying, or selling on commission, and how to contact you for more information. You’ll find leaflet dropping firms advertising in local telephone directories.
26. Visit trade fairs where manufacturers and resellers take stalls to exhibit their goods and talk to potential retailers direct. You’ll find trade fairs operating all year round in major towns and cities all over the world, with activity increasing in early summer for Christmas goods and in the spring for goods to be sold during the summer months. Key ‘trade fairs’ into any major search engine, with or without a topographical mention, to find major events with more suppliers and goods than you’ll ever need.
27. Visit any major business park and you’ll find a good many resident firms are manufacturers or importers who typically trade direct with the visiting public. Take business cards promoting your reseller service on eBay and ask to speak with the manager or business owner. Hand over your card if the person isn’t available. If the person agrees to meet you, tell that person all about your offer and try to have a contract signed right away, allowing you to become the firm’s sole representative on eBay. Leave a business card if the person doesn’t agree right away and you can bet some will call you back when business falls a little flat.
28. Make your own goods, either from scratch or by combining and adding to ready made items. So you might make your own greetings cards and fridge magnets in their entirety, for example, or buy similar items as job lot and clearance bargains. In all cases try to include something unique with your product to ensure you face no competition on eBay and other marketplaces. Something like three fridge magnets where most people offer just one, or three cufflinks instead of the traditional two, a bundle of gift tags with each order for greetings cards, and so on.
29. Buy Other People’s Products at Café Press (www.cafepress.com) and Zazzle (www.zazzle.com) and similar produce on demand sites. Key ‘sites like café press’ into any major search box for similar made to order sites. When I searched for items similar to those fetching high prices on eBay, in my case fridge magnets and cushions featuring specific dog breeds, I discovered countless products selling at Café Press and Zazzle with potential to attract decent profits when resold on eBay.
Idea: Upload your own images for production on hundreds of different items for you to sell direct to buyers on eBay and for affiliates to make sales for you. Upload your own Café Press and Zazzle or other site product images to eBay to test selling potential. Then get a big discount for ordering your own products in bulk from produce on demand sites to resell on eBay.
30. Fashion Designer End of Season Sales. Fashions are short lived and many designers abandon existing designs at the end of each fashion season, such as spring, summer, or every year. Then new designs are introduced and old one design items sold off cheap. Those out-of-season designs, notably clothing and accessories, jewellery and sunglasses, are still very fashionable to most people and can fetch close to their peak retail prices on eBay. Key ‘designer sales’ into any major search engine to locate sellers and sales timetables.
31. Manufacturers advertising in print publications will usually highlight their internet address. And that means those people are usually au fait with marketing online and probably don’t need your help. But not all manufacturers have an online presence and would jump at the chance of having someone sell their goods online. Spot those people by the absence of a website address in their advertisements.
But check before contacting those people to see if they do have an internet presence which they chose not to reflect in the printed media. Key manufacturers’ names into any main search engine, along with product type and physical address. If nothing appears in search returns the manufacturer almost certainly does not already market online. When that happens you contact representatives in the same manner mentioned in tip number 27.
32. Take a stall at flea markets, trade fairs, car boot sales, indoor markets, and so on. Place a ‘goods wanted’ sign somewhere prominent on your stall. Mention the type of goods you are looking for and place a pile of leaflets close by asking possible vendors to contact you with details of their goods. You must have goods of your own to sell at these events not just to qualify as an exhibitor but primarily to cover your travelling, selling and subsistence fees for the day. I’ve seen this idea work so well for people selling dog prints and canine memorabilia at dog shows, agents selling other people’s goods on commission at art and craft fairs, as well as people selling almost any kind of products at antiques and collectors’ fairs.
33. Visit classified web sites like Craigslist (www.craigslist.com) and countless similar sites populated mainly by private sellers wanting to sell goods fast for cash to finance other purchases or pay urgent bills. You can normally search by distance you live away from the seller, meaning travelling costs will be minimised and you’ll find most private sellers lack marketing and pricing skills and can generate lots of low cost goods for you to resell at high profit margins.
34. Buy from sites that are less well known than eBay but serve the same purpose of allowing individuals to sell their own goods at the site. Because they are small, those sites consequently attract fewer buyers and comparatively lower selling prices.
Calculate your product acquisition costs, namely buying fees, travelling expenses, listing and final selling fees, then add a suitable profit margin on top. This is your lowest acceptable selling price. Add twenty per cent to your lowest acceptable selling price and make that your fixed price for the product. Add a Best Offer button and take all offers over your lowest acceptable selling price and you’ll find roughly half of buyers will pay the full price rather than making a best offer and risk the item selling elsewhere while their offer is under review.
Find those sites by keying something like this into search engines:
‘alternatives to ebay’
‘alternatives to craigslist’
‘classified advertising sites’
35. Read product reviews in newspapers and on television, study product review web sites. Look for products receiving glowing reviews and likely to sell out fast from their current suppliers. Buy whatever stock you can to resell elsewhere before the shelves go bare.
By way of explanation, when Boots the chemist introduced a new skin cream which was reviewed by several daily newspapers whose editors dubbed it the best solution ever to prevent wrinkles forming and remove whatever wrinkles already existed. Within hours the product disappeared from Boots’ shelves, with the company admitting it would take weeks and possibly months to obtain new stock.
But it wasn’t just people reading those newspaper reviews who emptied the shelves, as much as people wanting to resell the product on eBay, Amazon and in other online marketplaces where prices had risen manyfold over the regular retail price.
So once you see a product review promising the earth to people buying the product, that’s when you should jump in fast to sell the item yourself on eBay and elsewhere.
36. Study the Bargain Shelves in Most Supermarkets and Retail Outlets. Many supermarkets have bargain aisles where products are sold below their normal price. This doesn’t always mean the products are out of date or no longer attracting sales, it simply means the retailer in question has too little stock to warrant a special place on their shelves. But on eBay, with a much larger audience than most regional supermarkets, you’re likely to attract fabulous markups from those items.
37. Be a home agent. A home agent is someone who acts as exclusive seller for a manufacturer within the same country, as compared to import/export agents who market goods internationally. The usual method is to find makers selling their goods within a few miles of base or purely countywide. The agent then sells items outside the maker’s own marketing area. The person may or may not also market those items overseas. Suitable vendors may be found by paying visits to the high street, especially in smaller towns and cities, not forgetting via local shows and business parks.
38. From regular market stalls in major towns and cities. Some exhibitors market goods they have made themselves, such as art and craft creations, while others sell antiques and collectibles, and yet others trade in bric-a-brac, used records and CDs, DVDs, and hundred more items alongside. Because they trade infrequently, some just one or two days each month, and because their overheads are usually low, you will find many goods selling below their typical values on eBay and providing good profits for you.
This is especially so for exhibitors selling exclusively in one marketplace and having to pack up and transport goods back to base at end of day. Many traders will give really high discounts when markets are about to close and weather has been bad or trade slack on the day. The end of day is always the best time to get bargains at these events, even though arriving as the market opens is the only way to grab sleepers and other products selling significantly below their true market value.
39. Study research sites like Terapeak (www.terapeak.com) and Goofbid (www.goofbid.com), most of which reveal products selling in high quantities and attracting good profit margins on eBay. Those sites don’t actually tell where to get the products, however, but you can find them by keying the product type into any major search engine. Key in something like this for fictitious product called XYZ currently attracting lots of orders on eBay:
‘XYZ wholesaler’
‘XYZ dropship’
‘XYZ manufacturer’
40. Study newspapers, usually weekend editions, many of which have special product review pages focussing on really unusual products that probably haven’t yet appeared on eBay. Most reviews give price and retailer and that’s where most readers will go to place their orders. But a good many people will key the product name into eBay’s search engine.
Don’t worry that people searching the same day the product is reviewed won’t actually find the product on eBay.
What usually happens is that other publications will copy the same reviews and copycat reviews will probably continue for several weeks or months. As soon as early reviews appear you should contact retailers and makers and offer to sell their products as sole agent on eBay. Some will agree and you can be listing and selling their products on e Bay, and elsewhere, long before reviews die down in the press.
For obvious reasons, monthly magazines have a longer shelf life than daily newspapers, and their reviews can attract visitors to retailers’ sites for months to come. And that’s why it’s a good idea to make monthly magazines, with unusual product type review sections an essential part of your product sourcing strategy.
41. At flea markets and collectors’ fairs, also at book sales and ephemera fairs, look out for product catalogues from the early 1900s, or even further back in time. The vast majority contain advertisements for products that once proved very popular but have long since disappeared from sale. But that doesn’t mean those products can’t be resurrected and made extremely popular and profitable for you.
You may have to have the products created for you or make them yourself. Sometimes you’ll find similar items available from ‘white label/unbranded goods’ suppliers. These are products to which resellers add their own labels and packaging materials and they can be very inexpensive indeed and provide high profits. Key your product type plus ‘unbranded supplier’ into any major search engine to locate sources.
Old publications are also a source of powerful advertisements for you to copy - if they are in the public domain - or edit to suit your product listings.
42. Let’s stay with the public domain, being creative works that are no longer copyright protected or perhaps were never eligible for copyright. The public domain contains millions of books, photographs, artwork, films, music and other creative works for anyone to copy and make money from without paying royalties or licensing fess of any kind to their original creators.
Here are just a few of countless ideas for making money from the public domain:
- Locate patterns and instructions for products similar to those attracting regular orders and profits for other people selling on eBay and elsewhere, such as toys, magic tricks, sheds and literally thousands of items with potential to attract a good following today. Then either recreate the patterns to sell in downloadable format on Kindle and other publishing platforms, or have products themselves created for you to sell in various markets.
- Recreate articles and books from earlier times, sell them individually on sites allowing digital downloads or on CD and DVD on eBay. Current top selling subjects on eBay today include the Titanic tragedy, dog art and cartoons, genealogy reports, and more.
43. Visit antiques and collectibles malls in out of the way areas, the kind of where individual sellers have their own booth or selling space which is watched over by two or three officials who sell goods and return payment minus their own fees back to sellers.
The fact most sellers are absent from the premises for long periods or never turn up to sell personally suggests many are operating part time and possibly earning pin money to supplement a current job or business or just to add to their pension pot.
And that is why sellers are often willing to accept high discount offers on their goods to get rid of long standing stock and make way for new acquisitions. This is especially so in villages and small towns away from main road and rail networks which tend to attract fewer buyers than their counterparts in major towns and cities.
44. Study advertisements placed by collectors in antiques and collectables magazines on newsagents shelves and on web sites like Preloved (www.preloved.com), Craigslist (www.craigslist.com), and similar. Many ads. are placed by collectors who don’t want to sell surplus collectibles themselves on eBay and prefer to sell from low cost advertisements in high profile antique and collectibles journals and web sites.
Those people also want to sell items fast and in bulk rather than have to wait for items to sell individually on or off the Internet. Many such advertisements are classified by location, allowing you to contact sellers close to home and so keep your product acquisition costs low. Also try bonanza.com and ebid.com where listing fees are low or items can be listed free of charge and fees paid only when items sell. Search for similar sites by keying something like this into any major search engine:
‘free classified advertising’
‘auctions sites free listing’
45. Most factories and manufacturing outlets have departments where seconds and damaged goods are sold off at deep discounts. Many defects can be unnoticeable to all but eagle eyed quality control staff and will sell at decent profits on eBay and elsewhere. Key ‘factory shops’ plus your target buying area into any major search engine to locate suitable sources.
46. Contact local transport offices, police stations, leisure centres, golf clubs, gyms, and so on. Ask what happens to items that have been lost and not reclaimed by their original owners. Most will be offered for sale a specified period after parting company with their original owners.
47. Place your own products wanted advertisements on postcards in shop and post office windows and on notice boards in libraries and supermarkets, especially in high predestrian areas. You’ll pay very little to advertise this way and product offers can be as high or even higher than from costly advertisements in high circulation local and regional newspapers.
48. Contact house clearance specialists in your area; you’ll find them advertising in local newspapers usually at the weekend. Most firms like fast turnover typical on larger items like furniture and toys, bicycles and cars, which generally require just a clean up to sell from advertisements in newspapers or from shops selling second hand household items. Most clearance specialists dislike selling small products, of which most house clearances contain hundreds such items and prefer to dispose of smaller goods in bulk to people selling outside their own main marketplace.
49. Study image rich sites like Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) and Google Images, looking for products that jump out and grab your attention, in the same way they are likely to attract buyers on eBay and Amazon.
Images that make you sit up and take notice are far more likely to make decent profits for you than products potential buyers only read about or have to travel some distance to view at wholesalers’ premises or through auction salerooms and flea makrets.
Hover over those images and you’ll usually see who the supplier is and be able to travel direct to their website. Using image sites like this not only helps identify products likely to grab eyeballs on eBay but also allows you to source hundreds of products in the time it takes to find one or two suitable items from visits to offline suppliers.
50. Derive ideas to emulate (not to copy, but to use as inspiration for your own unique products) at sites working direct with artists and craftworkers, or selling their own manufactures on Amazon (www.amazon.com), eBay (www.ebay.com), Etsy (www.etsy.com), and so on.
Use other people’s best-selling products as the source of your own unique designs.
Alternatively, contact sellers and offer to sell their goods on commission in markets they don’t already target themselves.
51. My personal favourite product sourcing tips are these:
- Simply buy any small and attractive item with a low price tag, such as costume jewellery at flea markets, pens decorated with iconic images and quotes and created in bulk by most high street printers, small handmade gift items from sellers on Etsy and Amazon, and hundreds more. Then all you do is add an attractive box and a personalised gift tag and sell the ensemble on eBay. That box and gift tag, personalised to suit the recipient, adds an easy three or four pounds to items costing literally pennies.
- Buy three or four similar theme product job lots on eBay, such as pens, pencils, notepads; soap, flannel, body lotion; baby’s bib, pacifier, small toy; dog lead, collar, squeaky toy, and so on. Add one of each job lot item to a small basket, add a bow and sell as a ready made gift item.
And that is it, more than fifty ideas for sourcing high profit products for you to resell on eBay without having to remortgage your home or take out a bank loan to do so.
Thank you for reading.
