Since the late 90’s, eBay has evolved into the world’s largest market place. Billions of dollars change hands every year. People who once slaved away 50-60 hours per week, with a take home pay not much over the poverty line have made fortunes almost over night.
While the vast majority of sellers on eBay are simply having what amounts to an online garage sale, there is a small but growing segment who make a living selling full time. While the theory is quite simple, offer people something at a better price than retail, figuring out just how to obtain items cheap has always been the real hurdle.
As online selling has grown, wholesalers have rushed to fill the demand. The problem with many wholesalers is the limited goods they can provide. Many of these companies specialize in only one area, such as electronics. While building a business around one product area is certainly viable, diversity is of course the most assured way to turn a profit. Take Starbucks for example. In recent years they have expanded from just selling coffee, to offering CDs, advertising movies, and dozens of other revenue streams. Never place all your eggs in one basket.
The easiest way to offer a diverse array of goods, without having to pony up $10-$20k in inventory costs is to use a drop shipper. Drop shipping is the quintessential small business success story. Prior to the advent of online selling, mail order catalogs were the exclusive users. They would work deals with various distributors, send out their catalog to obtain orders, and then have the distributor deliver the product. A very simple, low risk business.
When eBay came along, the whole industry changed. No longer did a seller have to purchase mailing lists and carpet bomb mailboxes looking for customers. A seller need only place adds on eBay, and let customers come to them. For the cost of a single mailed catalog, an eBayer could reach thousands of interested buyers.
Again however, the problem with selling goods is not finding them, that’s easy, it finding a company that can offer a large diversity of goods, ranging from household to high end electronics, or simply put, kitchen mitts to flat panel TVs. Toss in order fulfillment, which is basically what drop shipping is, and you have dramatically limited what you can sell, and who you can do business with.
There are companies out there who do offer 10,s of thousands of products, and are willing to drop ship, but man of these companies only deal with the largest and most established sellers. In the last few years however, one company has not only decided to let the small and first time sellers into the market, it has built its business model around it; World Wide Brands subsidiary Doba.
What sets Doba apart from any other drop shippers is their willingness to work with first time sellers. They don’t require a powerseller rating, nor do they require hundreds in membership fees. Their business model is built around turning small sellers into large ones. The easier they make it for a seller to actually sell, the more money both they, and the seller can make.
To make the process as easy as possible, Doba has developed software in conjunction with eBay. Basically, they have automated the entire process. All that is left to the seller is to choose which products to sell. Not that this is easy, but it is light years ahead of where the process was just a few years ago.
Sound too good to be true? Often these kinds of companies are. While Doba is certainly not the only company who can provide product diversity and drop shipping, they are the only one who has been chosen by eBay to integrate software directly into eBay’s platform. If you want to sell on eBay, it makes sense to partner up with the same people eBay has. In this case that’s Doba.
Sound good? Ready to jump in? Hold on. The best way to make money is to limit risk, and try before you buy. The link below will provide anyone coming from this website a free one week trial membership. Basically, a potential customer has seven days to look over the software, the massive inventory, and learn how things work. Jumping in feet first is never a good idea, and I highly recommend the try it before you buy it method. Doba may well be eBay’s preferred partner, but that does not mean they are right for everyone. Use the free offer, and make sure they can take you where you want to go before you plunk down a dime.
There is no doubt that eBay is the future of online trading. They’ve become the world’s largest bizarre for a reason; people can find almost anything they are looking for, and have it arrive at their door step.
If you’ve decided it’s time to take your slice of the pie, I recommend taking advantage of offers like Doba’s, setting up an eBay store, and establishing a paypal account for taking online payments. Guides and links to doing all three of these can be found on this website.