With my brain highly focused on outsourcing these last couple of months, I’ve been revisiting my old experiments with a new strategy.
I’ve dabbled with eBay here and there but never really gave it my full attention.
This time I decided to get my VA to list 100 products for me. I paid him $100, ($1 per listing), and he’s currently listing away.
So far he has listed 30 products and we’ve already made 4 sales! Each sale gets me $20-$40 in profit so things are looking pretty promising.
The Methodology to Build this to $10k+ per Month
My method of doing things has always been different to others.
I like validating my ideas before I go full scale so before I make an elaborate plan to take over the world with my business idea, I’ll set a small test just to see if sales can be made using this idea.
So this is the method I used.
The Steps
- Get my VA to list as many products from Aliexpress as he can, (I’ve increased me eBay listing limit to 400 items).
- See which ones get the most traffic and sales.
- Focus on these niches and list more of these products.
- If any sales are made, tell customers I’m out of stock, products will take 4 weeks. If they’re ok with this buy the product, if not cancel.
- Overtime, I’ll have a handful of products making me consistent money. These are the ones I buy in bulk and keep in my warehouse.
The Math
Just like anything in ecommerce, this seems to also be a numbers game. The more you list, the more you sell. Cool thing about eBay is it’s all buyer traffic!
eBay also gives you a summary of which products are getting the most traffic, see below.
So if we have 400 products listed with each product getting an average of 2-5 clicks per day, that’s over 1,000 buyer traffic to our products!
If conversion rates are even just 1%, we’ll be getting 10 sales per day. Each product at $20-$50 profit margin – Let’s say $35 profit average.
10 x $35 = $350 per day
30 x $350 = $10,500 per month!
Now, this is all very hopeful and ofcourse I need to follow through but that’s going to be a lot easier than before as my VA should handle most of the listing and customer service.
This is from just 400 products listed. Imagine if I’m listing 1000’s?
Outsourcing – Automating the Process
There’s a lot of money to be made here. Potentially millions if I can get the system right. The coolest thing about it is that it can all be outsourced!
How?
The tasks I need done are,
- Listing products/Managing listings
- Customer Support
- Ordering products/Stock Control
- Packing and Delivery
That’s a team of 2 people. One to do the first 3 tasks and another to do the deliveries.
Other than that, I just need to make sure the accounts in good standing, we’re profiting and….not much else hey?
Cool thing about Amazon or eBay businesses is that they’re sellable.
So, if I could get this to where I want to be, there are a tonne of people here in Australia that would love to own an eBay business! Especially those reaching retirement and are looking for some form of income that doesn’t require work.
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Hey Manteen, been following you since your first post! Great to see you still doing well.
I’m surprised you haven’t gotten more flack from eBay customers. In my eBay years I would get negative feedback for any little thing, especially if I told them I was out of stock. “Why did you last it then?!?” Etc. Entitled consumers with no mercy. Maybe the products you are listing tend to cater to a more chill crowd.
Maybe set the price very high. You won’t get as much views, but it should still show where the niches are. This is a genius way to research niches though, more than anything else. Very nice idea.
Once you find a niche, how much percentage do you recommend raising the price?
Thank you as always.
Hey Mike,
Wow, that’s a long time mate! Thanks for following along.
Customers can be pretty brutal but hey, it’s the annoying part of business.
yeh man, it’s a great way to do some research! I’m even thinking doing the whole Amazon FBA model once I know which are generating a good amount of views/sales.
I like working on high margins so for small items like watches, pendants, wrist bands etc, that you can get for $2-$4, I’ll raise it to $14 + $3.95 shipping. So a healthy $10+
If I’m selling something for $20, then I’d go to about $50. But it also depends on what your competitors are selling it for. Experiment, you just never know. I started off with really high pricing but reduced it when I wasn’t getting the sales volume I wanted.
Hello Mateen,
First of all I would like to Thank you for all the knowledge you share with your subscribers, I really appreciate it.
I have a few questions if you can answer as I’m looking into this eBay business model in 2017 along side with my other ventures.
1. How did you increase your eBay selling/listing email? What are the requirements to increase these limits if you are starting from scratch with new account.
2. Are you selling on eBay.com OR eBay.com.au ?I’m in Australia so I would like to know if I should start with eBay Australia or start with eBay USA as I would be following the dropshipping model using Aliexpress
3. How did you out source? How do you find VAs so cheap? What’s your hiring process?
4. Any tips on ranking in eBay search engines?
Looking forward to yout detailed reply
God bless you.
Kind regards,
Muhammad
Hey Muhammad,
1. You need to max them out. So for example, I initially had it locked to 10, When I listed 10 products, I called them up to increase it, they increased it to 100.
Then, I sold well for a while, my account is 100% positive feedback so increasing it to 400 was not an issue. Just call them up, they will increase it for you as long as you don’t sound like a scammer.
2. ebay.com.au. I’m testing it here, if it works well, I’ll move to America. But I’m not 100% drop shipping as I’m posting to me, then to my customer. To my customer it seems like it’s coming directly from me since I’ll eventually have most of these in stock. I don’t think eBay like drop shippers.
3. Hiring process = List job on upwork, interview a few people, select some to do sample tasks, choose the best. you will be surprised who you find. And once you find one person, he can do a variety of tasks, just need to train them at the start with a video or something. Real easy.
4. No idea on ranking, I’m an SEO newbie :(. I think there might be a way to pay your way to the top, just gotta check it out. Also should split test categories you list your item in, this will help for sure!
Thanks for your detailed comment Mateen 🙂
Actually I want to start on eBay.com.au as well but as you said eBay doesn’t like dropshippers that will be a bit though to bulk order products which I don’t even know will sell in good numbers. So first I need to sell like 5-10 and maintain it for a while so I can bulk order from alibaba and ship them from AU. I also need to sell more to increase selling limits as this is crucial for selling more on eBay.
Yes I have post a job on upwork and interviewing few candidates let’s see if I can find the good ones lol I’m not good at hiring.
Will be waiting for more updates from your side on your eBay journey because never done eBay before.
P.S. If you need any help I. Shopify let me know I’m a 6 figure seller and scaling to 7 figures hopefully next year 🙂
Have a great day Mateen
Best,
Muhammad
Hey Muhammed, I’m not good at hiring too but you get better as you hire more so don’t worry! I’ve made $1k now with eBay and am trying even more products. Will update soon.
Nice work with shopify bro!
Hey Mateen,
Thank you for the content. Can you share some insight into how you go about finding products that will sell on ebay? How did you gauge on your first try which products had a better chance of being sold? I currently have a 100 product limit and I’m paralyzed because I do not know what to list.
Hi Isaac,
Honestly, it’s better to just pick a category and start listing. You just don’t know what will sell!
I’ve picked one of the biggest local retailers in Australia and told my VA to just pick a category and list. You’ll be surprised what gets you traffic and what doesn’t. What sells and what doesn’t.
Better to let eBays data guide you.
So yeh, pick a category and start listing.