The reason that most people use eBay is that they are looking for a bargain. That really MUST have item which is for sale for a few dollars less than it is in the high street or through mail order suppliers. It could really be any product, such as an i-phone, i-pod, GHD hair straighteners or maybe Mac brushes, we all like a bargain.
As a result of this thinking many sellers attempt to “cash” in on popular items with a high volume of sales per week, BIG mistake! Selling branded goods for most eBayers is not the way to make big profits.
Here’s why, with branded goods there is always stiff competition. There will be major Powersellers who will be moving lots of these products on a weekly basis. High volume Powersellers will have a major advantage over any newcomer into the market. They will be able to buy in large quantities and so obtain cost savings due to economy of scale AND the fact that they will obtain massive Powerseller discounts.
Following the herd is not the way forward, your profit margins will be razor thin and you will not get the exposure on the site you would wish, most of the big Powersellers will be using fixed price listings which will have high exposure in the search results. Therefore they will sell more; therefore their listing will be promoted higher and higher. This is the massive anomaly in the eBay system; some sellers never get their fixed price listing seen.
You can resort to using the auction system in which case you listing will eventually find its way on the first page of eBay search results. However you may be unable to compete on price remember economies of scale and discounts? Game over? I think not.
The way to make profits is to offer Private Label and Non Branded Products for sale. Amongst the many branded items there will be a huge number of non branded products. These sell at much lower prices that the equivalent branded item, but they are very much cheaper to buy in than the branded item.
Ok Rob that sounds great but what are non branded products?
To give an example of hair straighteners there are lots of well known brand names such as GHD, Nicky Clarke, BaByliss etc which command a very high price on eBay and Amazon etc. But there are literally thousands of manufacturers who produce similar products except that they do not have a “brand name”. Obviously these are our non branded products, they will never command the high prices that branded items will sell for on eBay or Amazon but they are very cheap to buy, therefore your selling price will be lower and you can still make a very healthy profit, far more than selling “branded” items.
See you soon……….Rob