eBay is one of the largest places to buy and sell things online. It is right next to Amazon and Walmart, and it began as a place to buy used things. People liked it because eBay let them get rid of things they no longer wanted or needed.
Today, more than 171 million people use the platform. Some of them sell things using a business model called “dropshipping.” If you are a dropshipper, you should know that you need to use big online markets like eBay to show your products to the millions of people who visit the site every month and make money with eBay.
How then? We’ll look at the right way to dropship on eBay and give you a step-by-step guide to make it happen. This will help you increase your conversion rate on this sales channel.
Why Should You Use eBay Dropshipping?
eBay is one of the largest places to buy and sell things online. Before you start, you should know that eBay has different websites for each country.
You can use the same account or login information on all eBay websites, but the product you are selling will only show up on the website for the country where it was uploaded or where it can be shipped.
Since eBay is an auction site, you can actually get more money than you asked for. The good thing is that you can choose how many days the auction will last.
If you want to sell the item quickly, you can add a “Buy Now” button with a different price than the minimum auction amount.
About 31% of the people in the US use eBay. This means that out of all the people who shop online, 31% of them look for products on eBay. 31% isn’t a small number. One million people shop online, and 300,000 of them are on eBay. This is a big enough number of people to sell to.
The Best Kinds of People to Sell on eBay
It’s important to know this so that you know who you’re up against. As a large market, there are many sellers who can steal a customer from you.
Newbie Sellers
These are the people who have never posted anything before. This could also be you. First-time sellers don’t post many items because they are still trying to figure out if eBay is a good place for their business. People who sell things in this category can be businesspeople or people who just want to sell used things.
Hobby Sellers
These sellers have been around for a while, but they don’t use eBay to make money online. They only use the site to get rid of things they don’t want anymore. Most of the things they sell are used, but some will sell brand-new things they don’t like. Most of the time, these are things they don’t need.
Dropshipping Sellers
This is your kind of person. These people are serious about selling, and they want to use eBay because they know there are millions of people who might be interested in what they have to offer. These dropshippers have stores and are willing to spend money to advertise. They will keep renewing their listings because they don’t have to put up a lot of capital.
This tutorial will show you how to start your own dropshipping store.
Big Sellers
These are big businesses that have a storefront. These people can also be manufacturers, and you should look up to them. In fact, you should take ideas from these sellers. They have been selling on eBay for a long time, and they may even have full-time employees who are in charge of their eBay stores.
How to Earn Money on eBay
There are a few things you need to know before you start selling so that you don’t make the same mistakes that most dropshippers do on the platform.
Here are some tips to get you started with eBay dropshipping:
Find the best things to sell.
People sometimes sell things they like just because they like them. Even though it’s true that if you do what you love, you’ll be successful, you also need to know if there’s a market for your products or not.
Some people will insist on selling trends, and you can do well by doing the same. But you need a specialization. You can’t just sell whatever is popular.
Quality is the most important thing here. You can’t sell bad products to people who buy from eBay. The eBay platform has a feedback system, and you can’t file a dispute to get rid of it. Almost all of the time, a bad review will stay there forever.
When you’re looking for things to sell, the first thing you should do is compare your ideas to what’s already for sale on eBay.
If you want to sell things for aquariums, look for things that are unique and actually help aquariums. In any business, the best thing to sell is something that solves a problem.
People don’t just shop at eBay for no reason. They go to the site to look for specific products they can use, and the price of the product must be reasonable.
Choose the Best Suppliers
When you’re a dropshipper, you don’t keep your own stock. In this business model, you find a supplier or manufacturer who will ship the item directly to your customer. You are just a salesperson, and the difference between your price and the price set by the manufacturer is your profit.
If you want to find suppliers, you must get a sample of the product. So, you can check the speed and quality of shipping, as well as the real cost of shipping. You can step back and think about how your customers would feel if they were in the same situation.
The back-end software is the second most important thing. It will be a hassle to go to a supplier’s website, copy and paste the pictures and descriptions on eBay, and then check every now and then to see if the product is still available.
What happens if someone wins the bid on your eBay store, but then you find out that the supplier is out of stock?
Look for a supplier with automated software that will give you access to your dashboard. So, you’ll know if the product you’re selling through dropshipping is still in stock.
You will be notified when your stock is getting low, so you can change your eBay listing. There are also suppliers whose platforms can be connected to eBay. This is a must before you start dropshipping on the platform.
Learn about the eBay setting
eBay is a place where you can buy and sell things and also build a store. It has a system for giving feedback, listing fees, auction fees, and a lot more. It has rules to protect buyers and sellers and other rules that make it a great place to buy and sell things.
Don’t break any of these rules, and know how the fees work. You can’t put all of your product photos on one listing just because you have a lot of them.
eBay doesn’t let you do that. It costs money to add more pictures. There are also ways to make your product listing stand out when it is shown to a potential customer alongside other search results. This also costs something.
How to Get Started Dropshipping on eBay Step by Step
Now that you know how to get ready, you can start selling on eBay and wait for people to buy. You must carefully follow these steps so you don’t have to waste time going back to steps you missed.
Sign up for a PayPal account.
This is not a must, but it is strongly suggested. PayPal is the best way to pay on eBay. If you accept PayPal, you will be protected as a seller. This is also a much easier way to give money back to customers, and PayPal won’t charge you a fee for the money you give back.
Both PayPal and eBay have policies to protect buyers, which is why a lot of people on eBay use this payment method. Many people who shop on eBay filter their searches so that they only see items from sellers who accept PayPal.
If they do this and you don’t accept PayPal on eBay, your listing won’t show up, and you just lost a customer. There are other payment methods besides PayPal, but they won’t work on eBay.
Find the right way to market your products
This is probably the hardest step to take if you want to do well on eBay. Marketing includes a lot of different things, and you need to do all of them well. Pricing has little to do with marketing, which is more about how you show off your goods.
Here are some marketing tips to get you started:
Photos
Photos are the best way to market something online in the modern world. Videos are hard to make and cost a lot of money, so photos are a better choice. Make sure you take pictures of things under a bright white light. When photos have the right lighting, they look better.
To do this, you don’t have to be a good photographer. You just need a good smartphone, some white-light LEDs, and a room with a lot of light.
Follow these steps if you don’t know how to make a small photo studio:
- Put a plain-colored or white blanket on your kitchen table.
- Give the product some context. Buy posters or use white cardboard.
- LED lights should be put on top of the product.
- Take photos
Make sure the pictures can be seen. If your hands shake, you should buy a small tripod. Look at your product from different points of view. Take pictures of the front, sides, back, and close-ups of the whole product.
People on eBay don’t like stock photos. They always want to see what the product really looks like. If you use stock photos and send a different product, you can expect to get bad feedback. Find a supplier and work out a solution so you don’t have to order all the items you need to dropship.
Describe the product
Descriptions of products that only list their features and specs are not good. Customers do want to know this, for sure. They HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW. Telling a customer that an electronic device uses 220 volts doesn’t mean anything. He only knows that it works with that plug, but that won’t make him buy.
The best way to describe a product is in a way that makes a customer feel something. This is something that salespeople know, which is why there is a thing called “sales talk.” You have to make the customer think he needs what you’re selling, and only then will he buy it.
For example, you can say that your electronic device, like a charger, can fully charge a phone in 30 minutes. This gives the customer back some of the time they would have spent waiting for their devices to charge before leaving the house or office. This is a better way to say it than by saying it has 5 amperes of power.
SEO
If you just call your product “Phone Charger,” no one will be able to find it. Your listing will get lost in all the other phone chargers that are for sale on eBay.
SEO stands for “optimization for search engines.” It just means that you need to use the right words so that any search engine can find your product.
It works in the areas below:
- a product’s name
- meta tags
- product content
If someone is looking for something on eBay, he will probably type “iPhone charger.”
Since the name of your product doesn’t include the word “iPhone,” eBay won’t show it. But if you call your product “Fast Charger for iPhone S, iPhone X, and iPad,” anyone who searches for any of those words will see your product in the search results.
Expectations
You need to include important information about your product in your listing. If a customer knows what he’s getting into, he won’t feel like he’s being taken advantage of.
Here are some examples:
- Shipping cost
- Shipping time
- Country where it was made
- The country where it comes from
- Taxes
- Handling fees
- Different ways to pay
When a customer wins an auction and then finds out they have to jump through all these hoops before they can get the product, they get frustrated. Most of the time, they end up canceling or making the purchase, but leaving bad feedback.
Use the right price and shipping fees to compete.
Before you start selling, go to eBay and type in the keywords for the product you want to sell. Then look at the first four pages to see what other people are selling that is similar to yours. Write down their prices, shipping costs, and any other important details.
Find out how you can compete once you have all of these things. People love free shipping, but if you’re dropshipping and your products come from another country, you might not be able to offer it.
You can make a better offer, like “buy one, get one free” deals or cheaper shipping if someone buys a lot of things from your store. You shouldn’t miss this important thing because you’re not the only one selling the same product. You don’t know how many of you there are, so you need to offer something that customers can’t refuse.
Be a champion for the customer.
What’s the meaning? Customers really like it when you take care of them and answer their questions correctly and quickly. They hate it when you don’t understand them when they ask a question.
If a customer asks you a question, you should also learn to guess what they will ask next. This takes time, but your customer will be happy with the result.
As a dropshipper, you don’t have to put up a lot of money to start your business. But keep in mind that there are a lot of people like you on eBay. What will make you stand out is how you treat your customers or how well you know your customers.
Usually, the Customer Champion is a person who works full-time for a big company. Since you are dropshipping, your business is probably run by just you or you and a few friends. Still, one of you must be a champion for the customer.
Pay attention to your comments.
Feedback is important on eBay. Many sellers forget that they should leave feedback for their buyers first, not the other way around. As a seller, you have to leave positive feedback right away for buyers who finish their purchases on time.
If they don’t leave feedback for you, they won’t see this feedback.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
You must respond to what your buyers have to say. You can’t just read people’s comments and leave them alone. Thank them, tell them to buy more, tell them how glad you are to have them as a customer, and so much more.
- Be responsive
- Listen to both good and bad feedback.
- It only takes one bad review out of ten to bring your rating down to 90%, which is low.
If someone said the packaging isn’t good, you should say sorry and fix it. Change the way you package your products so that no customer ever gives you bad feedback for the same reason.
Mistakes to Avoid When Dropshipping on eBay
Now you know how to do the right things to get ready and how to sell on eBay the right way. The last thing you should know is how to avoid making the most common mistakes.
No longer available
When a customer bids, he expects to win, and if he does, he expects that the item will be available. Nothing bothers a customer more than when he wants to buy something and you can’t give it to him.
How do you feel if you:
- When you go to a restaurant, a menu item is not available.
- You find a pair of shoes at the mall that you like, but they don’t have your size.
- When you went to a website, the browser told you, “Error 404: Not Found.”
The same goes for your customer. To avoid this, use software that can give you a full report of what dropshipping products are available and what aren’t. For dropshipping, there is even software that you can use with eBay.
Here are some things a supplier needs:
- Software for integrating
- You can download a CSV file that lets you add items to your eBay store.
- Reports and a dashboard
- Alerts for low stock
If you can find a dropshipping supplier with all of these, you should be fine.
There are too many things to buy.
If at all possible, the customer should only have to pay for one thing: the item’s price. If your description says that the customer has to pay for a lot of things, he probably won’t bid or buy. Why? No one wants to spend that much money on something that doesn’t make sense.
Here are some things that eBay sellers often charge that don’t make sense:
- Handling fee
- Boxes and bubble wraps cost money to ship.
- Insurance for shipping
No one is willing to pay for these things. If they use the “Buy It Now” button or bid in an auction, they expect to pay only the shipping fee and tax. If you charge your customer for too many things, they will feel like they were tricked because they thought the price was too low and then found out they had to pay for more.
Bad photos and a bad description of the product
It takes skill to sell. If you dropship, you shouldn’t just copy and paste your supplier’s product description. Your supplier sells to people like you who are in business. This means that they are doing business with other businesses, also known as B2B.
In B2B, you don’t have to persuade someone to buy out of need or emotion. Because of this, all the items they list have are photos and product details like size and color. But since you sell things, you can’t just leave the product description like that.
Here are some tips for making a great picture and description of a product on eBay:
- Use photos with lots of light.
- Look at the product from all sides.
- Make a problem and carefully explain that problem.
- Why does your product solve this issue?
- Show why your product is better than the ones you’re competing with.
Don’t use stock photos, like pictures of products in boxes. If you ask your supplier to send you photos of the real thing, your buyers will give you better feedback.
Bad customer service
Customers don’t always want to read long descriptions of goods. Since the product is only available online, they’d rather ask you questions.
Some customers have been taken advantage of by sellers in the past, so you can’t blame them if they ask for too much. Be patient, because these are the kinds of customers who are most likely to stick with you.
Here are some ways to make your customer happy:
- Know what the question is and give a straight answer that is still polite.
- Try to imagine if they have questions they didn’t ask; if you can answer them, they’ll be happy.
- Ask them what they want or if they need extra bubble wrap or something else.
- Don’t break your promise.
Customers are what keep you alive. If you think it’s okay to upset one customer because there are millions of other people on the internet, you’re wrong. People who are happy with your store will come back and buy more.
And if they’re not happy, they’ll leave you bad feedback on eBay for everyone to see.
How to Make Money on eBay Last Thoughts
Dropshipping on eBay is a bit harder than building a website, which is the usual way to do it. If you have your own website, people can’t tell you anything bad unless you make it possible for them to do so.
On eBay, feedback is something that will always happen. The people who buy here come from all over the world and can kill you if you don’t give them what they want.
If you get too much bad feedback, eBay can punish you, and there are also a lot of fees you need to think about.
In the end, here are some last tips to help you do well as a dropshipper on eBay:
- Before you start your business, don’t be in a hurry. Instead, study it carefully.
- Make sure your photos, product descriptions, customer service, and the product itself are all of high quality.
- Treat your customers well and serve them the way you want to be served.
If you do these simple things, eBay could be the goldmine you’ve been looking for on the Internet. Want to learn more about how dropshipping can help you make money on eBay? Check out our free course on dropshipping!
