Simply buying low from Alibaba and selling higher on ebay. Why wouldn't this work? If it does, why don't more people practice it?
Simply buying low from Alibaba and selling higher on ebay. Why wouldn't this work? If it does...
Alexander Wood
Other urls found in this thread:
alibaba.com
alibaba.com
wholesaler.alibaba.com
border.gov.au
twitter.com
Colton Long
Why don't you try it yourself and see?
Carson Jackson
...
Liam Richardson
Sounds like a great way to simultaneously have a job and be poor as shit
Leo White
Because I want to make a calculated decision, not simply want to figure it out. Just curious as to why simply researching what's in demand, buying it at a low price from China, then supplying that demand won't work. I know I will have to take into account shipping costs and other factors such as time and labor, but I'm trying to see if there is a factor I'm not seeing.
Isaac Torres
It does actually work.
Listen, contact wholesale stores by phone. Buy 5k, 10k, 15k worth of things. You'll get deals on Micheal Kors you wouldnt dream of.
It's that simple.
Dylan Gonzalez
The majority of products on Alibaba are trash, and people don't want to buy them. People care about established brands, not some weird shit they've never heard of. Also, you need products that are relatively expensive to make a profit off due to shipping and possibly advertising cutting into your revenue. Finally, you're one of 3 fucking trillion people doing this so enjoy competing with chinks who do the same thing you do but with 100 times the volume and feedback you do.
Good luck, my friend!
Joshua Johnson
disclaimer
>spend all of your time killing yourself about your 1% profit margin.
Enjoy paying your loans with other loans.
Anthony Young
I'm just looking for a part time job for myself. I still have 3 years of college and need to move out soon. I'd like to make only enough to live in an apartment comfortably.
Aiden Thomas
my only success with this was getting fake brand name items and selling them as the real thing..although that only works for so long before your account gets burned by the VERO program.
Picking up generic items to flip for a profit is pretty damn hard though. Let me know if you find some!
Luke Gray
I would think shipping costs and finding a wholesale seller would be the largest obstacles.
Owen Fisher
Too much work. It is more common to buy in bulk and sell through amazon associates. You let amazon warehouse it and ship it, for a cut of course. The tough part is finding products with a niche and decent margin and even in that case you aren't replacing a job just getting a few hundred extra a month.
Camden Sullivan
Give up on this idea. Those Chinese factories on Alibaba are already selling their products directly on eBay and Amazon. And don't fall for the private label or drop shipping memes.
Easton Thompson
this.
Colton Williams
Because of American based fulfillment centers, Chinese factories and traders are now able to stock and ship their bullshit domestically. These guys have access to far better pricing than us stupid laowais and are also more motivated to not only turn a profit but turn a less worthwhile profit. You and all the other idiot liberals on this board are too lazy t oactually get anything done so there is zero chance you can compete with them. It's safe to conclude that Amazon and eBay have been both completely annihilated by the Chinese (when it comes to re-selling generic Alibaba goods) and there is no going back unless you plan on moving to Shenzhen yourself and doing the same. It can still be done for some side change but it's hard and it will not scale.
The only practical alternative is to take a generic Chinese product and invent a pseudo-brand associated with it. At least then you can retain some control over the presentation of your product and separate yourself with some decent English descriptions. It works and people do it. I am sure osmeone will chime in saying I am wrong and it's saturated but in reality they are just stupid or aren't trying hard enough. There are people making MILLIONS selling the dumbest shit.
Some examples I know for a fact people are making millions with or have made millions with:
alibaba.com
alibaba.com
wholesaler.alibaba.com
Jonathan Clark
I would advise you to buy from taobao instead of alibaba to save money to offset some of the costs.
You also need to be an Amazon FBA seller, not just a basic seller. Ship your items to a fulfillment center.
If you can't drop a lot of cash on 1 or 2 items you plan to corner with your deep discount from buying these 1 or 2 items in high quantity, then you need to save as much money as possible by buying low quantities of a diverse amount of inventory. By low, I mean, low enough where you can process a lot of the same inventory quickly instead of sending in a bunch of tiny quantities of 10 or so. By low, I mean 100 or 200 of something.
eBay and Amazon provide sellers with a large amounts of data, so don't buy shit that will never sell just because it is cheap.
Gavin Jones
>why wouldn't this work?
this is pretty much how every single merchant on planet fucking earth operates
Wyatt Gutierrez
professional ebayer reporting in
people do the china wholesale thing all the time, it -is- profitable, but you need to understand various points:
-Many, if not most people doing it struggle making any real profits. That's why people say things like whats been said in this thread. Yes there are lots of people barely making anything, and yes most of the stuff available via Chinese wholesaler is being sold by the same guy/company on eBay and other markets, effectively being your competition and beating you in prices.
-Many people also make the mistake of trusting the same Chinese wholesalers to also be their drop shipping service. This is a huge mistake that will 99% of the time end with your account getting banned due to shitty shipping times, damaged goods, customs holdings, messed up orders, or even just flat out not shipping stuff out. They have little to no incentive to keep you and your customers happy, as they're also selling on the same market you are, and getting new Chinese accounts is easy due to how that country works (slave wages and 18hr shifts for any and everything means account farming on the cheap)
-Another common mistake people make is buying illegal counterfit/bootleg/knockoff/whatever goods which inevitably either gets you sued for thousands, put in jail, or at minimum your ebay/paypal accounts banned
With that said, there's plenty of profitable items you can buy from china, even unbranded stuff. Yes, having a recognized brand name brings more traffic, but it's not an end of the world necessity, you just have to figure out what kind of stuff people need/want/use/buy.
it's not an instant rich easy money scheme, it takes effort and dedication to figure it out, but is absolutely doable.
Before you ask, no I do not buy too much of my stuff from china these days as I prefer avoiding the hassles when I can, but I have and still do, just not as much
and no, I wont divulge my products or niches
Hudson Wright
so you sell products on ebay but you dont source them from china?
Easton Murphy
Ill divulge my niches.
I sell sex toys exported out of China as Medical Devices, I sell home healthcare items (urinals, pads, diapers), toys (knockoff lego, dollhouse items such as toy furniture, and more expensive higher quality items such as glass eyes and doll wigs), unique chess sets with low compitition, plush toys, bicycle parts, and aftermarket scooter parts.
I made 52k last year as my side business after fees, other overhead, and taxes.
I used to resell shit from retail stores and 2nd hand stores. That shit sucked even with 2 employees.
Jaxon Nguyen
>I used to resell shit from retail stores and 2nd hand stores. That shit sucked even with 2 employees.
Were the margins low on your 2nd hand goods? That's unusual, margins on used goods are usually high
Brayden Baker
>I sell sex toys exported out of China as Medical Devices
Wat?
Hudson Myers
typically, yes. Like I said though, I don't discriminate where my profits come from, if I see something with a margin from china I'll buy it in a heartbeat, but I don't actively look there much anymore. Once in a while I run across or get wind of something.
heh, you actually named a couple markets I've been in, good shit
Mason Rogers
Why do ebay though when can have your own store and possibly sell it later if things get going¿
Connor Baker
ive considered doing that multiple times. I am not only an ebayer but consider myself a general "online marketer" as well. I've been in the online game since I was around 18, tinkering with it as a hobby and making spare cash trying and learning different things. I've done everything from article writing for others to affiliate sales and content flipping. I also know quite a bit about SEO (Search engine optimization) and what it takes to get traffic to your site
The efforts required in order to build up a brand with a decent customer base and steady traffic would be hard, if not impossible, for the type of things I sell. personal webstores are good if you are narrowed down into one (or a few) niches that you specialize in, or have a unique product that only you supply.
as stated before I do not discriminate where my profits come from, if I could buy a dragon dildo cheap enough to turn a profit on ebay, I'd buy 100 of them. I typically stick to categories (such as "small electronics") but within that category is a vast array of sub niches, it'd be massively difficult to rank a store that doesnt have a fixed target audience
beyond that, theres really no competing with ebay. If you sell stuff that is regularly found/sold/bought on ebay you will do nothing but hurt yourself by ignoring it. The amount of traffic they have is second to none.
With that said, I may one day decide to create a personal webstore that functions in parallel to my ebay account to try and further draw repeat business in and expand past ebay as much as I can, but as of now I'm content with where I'm at as far as that goes.
Adrian Cruz
Have your own and post them to ebay too. Each item sold could come along woth catalog and your website.
David Turner
I sell things sourced from taobao. It's not worth it. I've bought small lots from many different sources, there's ALWAYS a high defect rate in everything, even shit that shouldn't be possible to fuck up so badly. Buy 5, they're all good. Buy 60 a month later, half are fucked up, and the entire profit margin is obliterated.
Aaron Clark
like I said, I've considered it and may do that at some point, but as of now I'm not interested in the efforts involved
this is one of the reasons I quit trying to source product from other countries
Owen Foster
You can make money doing this, but only if you buy and sell only small amounts, like less than 20 per month from any one supplier. If you can get away with finding little stupid shit here and there, you can make like 20K per year doing this without doing much at all. you just buy it and send it directly to amazons FBA or use ebay. you don't even have to check the packaging.
Do you have like $200 and a printer? You can do this, then.
Jordan Lopez
where do you generally look for products now?
Jeremiah Walker
as stated before, i do not discriminate on my inventory
I'll buy anything from anywhere as long as there is a profit margin.
local/online wholesalers/distributors, flea markets and thrift stores, closing/liquidation sales for retailers/wholesalers/warehouses, garage sales, clearance items in retail establishments, retail arbitrage, etc.
i even buy off ebay just to turn around and flip it back on ebay for a considerable profit in some niches (though I haven't done this in years as I've found easier profits elsewhere)
tons of stuff can be found with profit margin if you just get past the learning phase and develop the 6th sense I talk about. A close friend of mine has recently decided after 5 years to start doing what I do, hes in the very beginning of the learning phase at this point and has a hard time accepting how easy it is to find stuff thats profitable.
A good example - when a popular movie comes out often times various consumable products (cookies, sodas, lunch kits, etc) will run a promotional advertisement on their packaging for said movie. sometimes those special "collectors editions" will fetch 5-10 dollars for just the packaging. You could essentially buy a soda for 75 cents, drink it, then sell the can for 6 bucks. It's retarded how easy it can be.
or when a big movie hits theaters theyll sometimes give out a piece of swag to the first wave of ticket buyers. I remember when spiderman 3 came out they handed me and my gf at the time a little spiderman badge. I sold it for 10 bucks or so the next day on ebay.
I'm also not shy to try and network with people if I find out they have access to a profitable product that I can turn a profit on. typically people are more than eager to work with you if theyre a product mover, as letting me sell what they have access to for a cut of the profits allows them to take a profit cut and in return do little to no work for it. It just makes their numbers higher and puts a bit more cash in their pocket
Henry Torres
If you buy a bulk amount of sex toys and try to send them out, you can have them confiscated by China customs. Exporting them with medical documentation avoids that. This is mostly for items like dildos shaped like a dick. Or a big silicone shaped like a big silicone ass and puss.
John Bennett
About 80% of my sales price was profit. I bought the items by the truckload too from a company called Continental Wholesale in Iowa (U.S.) and the profit was nice on a per item basis but that shit would take forever to process. I had 4 employees at one point just to process pallets of store returns (throw out the trash, send the good stuff to Amazon for multichannel fulfillment). It was really hard to scale. If I were to do it again that way I would bypass the liquidator and set up an agreement with the retailers myself but that required things like a $50k holding for truckloads and for all you know, you were going to receive a truckload of cheap ass $1 items that were half broken, or a truckload of broken tv's.
I could run consistently just buying from places like Goodwill, Salvation Army, Stuff Etc, and other 2nd hand stores.. if it was my last option or I was unemployed or something. Ill try to find pics of my (small) warehouse from 2 years ago where I was selling shit like this. If I were to this again, I would set up a couple pawn shops to have some inventory brought to me and lessen my dependance on having to go out looking for shit to resell every day.
Asher Kelly
do you have anything online to prove that? it seems a little odd considering a good chunk of sales are in this category alone.
Or is it limited to exporting from CN to wherever you are?
Isaiah Baker
Im located in the u.s., at the time I started I lived in China which is how I learned about TaoBao. At the time, 2008ish, I could buy something for $12 and sell it for $75-$100 so I bought in bulk and sent it to someone in the U.S. and my first couple of shipments were seized. Some places wouldnt send them out too because they knew the would be seized. You could google the topic if you want specifics, but getting them shipped as medical items is what helped me ship them out of the country.
One or two fake dicks in a package might get through customs, but I doubt a large box full of fake dicks would. Even today.
Carson Phillips
>so enjoy competing with chinks who do the same thing you do but with 100 times the volume.
Kek'd
Connor Miller
I'm in Australia, I've purchased medical supplies in the past via TaoBoa and Alibaba, had them opened and inspected before delivery under the knives and blade import restriction - no real issue - just that annoying assed tape they stick on everything to say they opened your parcel.
I've also had just about everything that is organic seized and issued a warning with a threat of a fine if its on the do not import list.
The way i see it, you violate the import rules once or twice they check your imports randomly and start to esculate it from that point..
Site makes no mention of restriction for us, so i was thinking it might be on the CN side.
I was looking at importing high end toys some time ago, the fact that you mentioned an issue with it made me think i dodged a bullet.
For now, i'm importing low value kitchen utensils - whisks and gimmicy stuff that seems to work. Get people to flog them at weekend markets and online.
Still keep coming back to the dildo thing though.... might just throw a few grand in and see what happens.
Jayden Clark
I looked into expanding my business to do exactly what you described but turned away from it for the exact same reasons you mention
and as you said, it would be easy to make daily runs to various 2nd hand shops and earn enough for a modest living. I could probably churn out a minimum 100 in profit on a bad day of running around if necessary.
When I was still fairly new to the game (still favoring only my personal interest niches, but have become proficient in the various steps of the process) I actually managed to get way ahead of myself. I became very efficient and sourcing inventory and finding as much as I wanted with seemingly no upper limit, and for pennies on the dollar. literally 1000%+ profit margins everywhere, and I wound up learning a very valuable lesson. Selling 100 things for 10 dollars profit each is -much harder- than selling 10 things for 100 each. I was up to my ears in highly profitable merch, but in order to make good money the volume I had to move was huge. Too much for a single person really.
I quickly became demotivated and frankly was intimidated by the amount of product I now had looking me in the face. I eventually started lotting things up and selling SUPER cheap just to get it down to a manageable level, before eventually getting out of that niche (for the most part, still in it but not at all focused like before) and moving on to higher value stuff.
I've also thought if I expand to the point of wanting a brick and mortar location again I will probably start a pawn shop, for exactly the same reasons as you.
why do they get siezed? Dodging the customs fees i assume?
Mason Wood
Those quints.
Alexander Sanchez
The items were seized due to the items being considered pornography which is illegal in China. The issue was inconsistent. All of the items were censored or the packaging was removed. Some of the items were made for western distribution so they openly showed stuff like a womans vagina on the packaging so I had this type of packaging removed but China still seized a couple. A shipping agent started sending my packages and pallets out with medical documentation and that got rid of the problem.
Charles Long
how is still being asked like 20 times a day?
honestly wtf Veeky Forums
Zachary Cox
It can work, very well. The only real downsides are
A) You're dealing with sellers and products from Alibaba/Aliexpress, so you might be sent a box of rats instead of the 300 headphones you ordered. Or you get headphones but not the actual ones you ordered. Or they look like the ones you ordered but the specs are totally different. Or they're what you ordered, only the padding is stuffed with asbestos and the metal fittings are just lead. Or everything is fine, but arrived 3 months late because your order fell right in the middle of Chinese new year and the festival of the golden mackerel or something.
B) Every other fucker does the same thing, so you need to search long and hard for a uniqueish product without massive competition from people with more money and experience.
C) Ebay inexplicably let's the Chinese factories sell the same shit directly themselves, for exactly the same price they're selling wholesale on Alibaba, so you are often directly competing with your own suppliers.
Jordan Davis
Where do you buy from taobao in english?
Do you use taobao focus?
I don't see a translate button on the screen.
Adam Reyes
i think the same thing every time I come in to answer. Literally the same 1-5 questions over and over again, daily. lol