Internet Secrets

5 Amazing Niche Markets

Posted by casper021 on 6th August 2010

Finding a niche market is one of the key ingredients to really making it in online selling. Did you know that beginner sellers are much more successful when they appeal to a very small market, rather than trying to appeal to everyone?

Finding a niche isn’t always easy – it takes time and persistence to find the right product to sell. To get you thinking, and to give you a few inspiring ideas, we have researched 5 product niche ideas to share with you. While some niche ideas might seem abstract to newbie sellers, that is exactly what a great niche is – very precise and seemingly difficult to source.

Niche Item #1: Heart Rate Monitors

These are used by athletes and gym bunnies or by people who need to keep an eye on their heart rate.

Why they are an exciting niche item:

  • They have a 75% success rate on eBay (75% of all monitors listed on eBay in the last three months sold!)
  • They are lightweight and easy to ship and store
  • One size fits all

Niche Item #2: Plus Size Shoes

Many big-foot’s out there find it very difficult to find shoes that will fit them comfortably from regular retail stores.

Why they are a super niche item:

  • While these are commonly made by popular shoe makers, stores often order only a handful of pairs in larger sizes, which means that more and more, our big-footed friends must turn to buying online to get what they need.
  • They have a high success rate on eBay (women’s size 11 sell at 61.9% and men’s size 14 at 75%
  • Both men and women alike can require plus size shoes (Hot tip: women’s size 11+ high heels could make a great little niche)

Niche Item #3: Plus Size Maternity Wear

Another plus-size item with huge success on eBay

It’s a profitable niche because:

  • Maternity and baby gear always works because people are always going to have babies, so you’ll never run out of customers!
  • Clothing items are easy to ship as they light and not fragile.

Niche Item #4: Military Insignia

Collectibles always make great niches and you can dig really deep to find the best ones. They are also perfect for people who are interested in them – you’ll find it much easier and much more rewarding when you sell something you enjoy. To really niche it up, go for US military insignia from the Vietnam War which is big on eBay.

Why military insignia makes an excellent niche:

  • It rarely dates or goes out of fashion
  • There are so many sub-niches to discover like Russian war medals and World War 2 helmets.

Niche Item #5: Antique Clocks

Another great collectible item

They are a first-rate niche because:

  • You’ll appeal to both collectors and home decorators
  • They have an eBay success rate of over 67%
  • You can often pick these up very cheaply from flea markets and yard sales, then sell them on to make a profit

Niche items really are the way to go for newbie sellers and there are so many out there to keep you interested and best of all, make you money!

Looking to resell some of those products but don’t know where to start? Well here is the answer wholesale database is the largest database of wholesalers worldwide get all those products at wholesale price and start making money by reselling them on trademe, ebay or other auction sites.

Posted in Earning Online, Online Auctions | No Comments »

Why Buy from Online Wholesalers

Posted by casper021 on 27th January 2010

In recent years with evolution of the internet online shopping has become more and more popular. Just doing a quick search on the internet we can see many major retailers offering facilities for purchasing goods online. Shopping online makes our lives easier and saves us a bit of money as usually online prices are slightly cheaper than the ones in the retail stores. But the main questions we need to look at are: are we buying from correct places and are there any way we can save more money without compromising on quality of the product.

Most of us who frequently shop online buy goods from large retailers like major department stores from their online stores or from auctions websites like eBay etc. Well let’s look at the department stores first they generally keep their margins at a certain level as they need to make profit to cover their expenses. If you compare prices in department stores to prices on the same items on eBay or some small websites you will notice that prices for the same items are generally much cheaper on eBay and from smaller online retailers. But in saying that people who selling online still making good margins on products and quite often they make better margins then larger outlets as their overheads are much smaller and they source product for the same price.

Well now why can we an average person buy something at a wholesale price and save ourselves somewhere between 10% and 200% of the retail price. Yes 200% is correct some items especially things like accessories, clothing, cables, etc get margined up by 200% or in some cases even more. I will give one example cat6 network cable I used to pay $17 dollars for a 2 meter cable then I opened up a corporate account with that store and suddenly they were offering me the same cable for $6 and then I found a cable distributer online and now I am paying $2 for cable and the thing is the price was not in any way affected by the quantity as I usually buy 1 or 2 cables.

You probably thinking right now that it would be really nice to get hold of the products at this prices but how do i find this wholesalers and how do I know which once are real and which are scam. Well there are two ways you can go about it.

First you can spend countless hours searching the internet and researching each wholesaler separately to make sure they are the real deal or you can just sign up to the largest wholesale directory and get instant access to over 7000 wholesalers in every imaginable category. I have been a member of that directory for many years now and for the small one time joining fee I have a lifetime access to the biggest wholesale database which saves me tens of thousands of dollars every year just buy buying everyday items like socks t-shirts etc directly from wholesalers.

Bellow I made a few screenshots on products and prices you can get from wholesalers just so you can see and compare the prices for yourself and realise how much money you can save just buy buying directly from wholesalers online.

Free tips for buying and selling online

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

More Examples

So if you what to get this great prices on all your everyday shopping and start saving without compromising on quality join wholesale directory today and start enjoying these great prices. Click here to get discounted membership price.

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Save money on your everyday shopping

Posted by casper021 on 18th November 2009

Have you ever noticed how there are always big sales right before the holiday season with some shops offering up to 80% discounts? Well you probably have and you also probably quite happy to take advantage of those discounts and buy something for let’s say $200 which on any other day would cost you $1000 and after making that purchase you probably will be quite happy thinking that you saved yourself $800. Well let me tell you something I used to work in retail a while ago and I was shocked at the margins on some products and also retail shops never sell anything at a loss they always make money on each sale. Getting back to the margins let’s look at a simple t-shirt example let’s say on average half decent t-shirt will cost about $50 in a shop during the holiday sales the shop will probably offer it at 50% discount so people would look at it and see a good saving of $25 and be quite happy with this savings well now the shocking truth that the shop probably paid about $2.50 for that t-shit and still even after a %50 discount the shop will still make allot of money. Did you know that you could actually buy directly from the same supplier and it will cost you about $5 per t-shit plus few bucks for deliver so now you can actually not only save more on a product but you will save on petrol as well as you do not have to drive to the shop. Also when you buy direct from suppliers you do not have to wait for specials or holidays or anything else you get the same low price every day of the year.  Here are some examples of products and prices I posted earlier :

http://internetsecrets.blogtown.co.nz/2009/07/19/wholesale-products-and-prices-examples/

http://internetsecrets.blogtown.co.nz/2009/05/07/most-asked-questions-about-wholesale/

Now you probably thinking well that’s all good but how do I find those suppliers and how do I contact them? Well there is quite a simple answer to this question there is this website, which offers you an access to over 6000 verified suppliers and wholesalers the admins of the website constantly review and verify all the suppliers they also offer you a support forums and are happy to help you find any product you need. I have joined the website about three years ago and since virtually have not bought anything from the local shops except for groceries and in some cases when I just could not wait for the shipping otherwise all my purchases were made online from the wholesale suppliers. Looking back I probably saved myself over 50000 over the past three years by buying online as everything I have including tvs and all electronics were purchased online.

Posted in Online Auctions | No Comments »

Some changes and announcement.

Posted by casper021 on 27th September 2009

First I have to apologize to our frequent readers about not posting anything for a while. But as some of you may be aware of is that this blog is provided by http://www.wizit.co.nz and in the last 3 weeks we have been quite busy redesigning and improving our main website http://www.wizit.co.nz. Just to let you know we finally finished most of the work and the new and improved website is now online. We have also added a forum section and a reviews section. Please check them out. Shortly we will be releasing a link exchange section as well. Memberships at http://www.wizit.co.nz  are free as we dedicated to provide as much free information as possible. Also to celebrate our new design we giving away a welcome bonus to all new members the bonus consist of 4 really good eBooks.  And just to say we will continue to update this blog on a regular basis but this blog contains only a small fraction of information and resources which are available at our main website.  We wish you all the best and hoping to see you soon at our forums.

http://www.wizit.co.nz

Posted in Earning Online, Online Auctions, Website promotion | No Comments »

The Top 5 Critical Mistakes People Make When Buying Bulk Products to Resell!

Posted by casper021 on 17th August 2009

All too often people want to buy pallets of merchandise
so they can resell for profit. That’s great, there’s nothing
wrong with that but the problem is, without knowing what
they’re doing, many people will rush out to an auction,
find a dealer or even go on eBay to buy a pallet of several
pallets of merchandise. The problem is they have no clue
what they’re doing and end up losing money because they’ve
made at least one of these 5 most common mistakes that will
cost you money if you make them!

1. Not understanding who you’re dealing with.

With the internet today, it is very easy to register a
domain name, put up a website give yourself a company
name and set up shop. Unfortunately there is a lot of this
that goes on in the surplus and liquidation world.

There are too many stories of people handing over their hard
earned money to “companies” who were supposed to deliver the
goods just to wake up one morning and the “company” or
“dealer” no longer exists… and neither does your money!

Your left with nothing and the con-artist sets up another
“office” and does it all again.

There is horror story after horror story of these
situations. I’ve heard to especially beware of companies on
the east coast. There are legitimate ones, but make sure
you know who you’re dealing with.

At least call them and talk to them. How long have they been
buying bulk? How long have they been in business? What kind
of vibes do you get when you’re talking to them?

Ask questions.

2. Not understanding what you’re buying.

I can’t tell you how many times people have ask me something
to this effect…

Hey Chad there’s a guy selling a pallet of stuff do you
think I should buy it?

Huh?…

To start with, if that’s all the information you give me
about buying a “pallet of stuff” and ask me if you should
buy it, well let me ask you this,

Would you buy a car without starting it? Would you buy a
part for your PC without having a clue what it was? Would
you give your hard earned money over to someone for no
reason and not get anything for it?

You would at least research enough to find out what it was
you were purchasing or know why you were giving money!

I don’t understand why it is that just because there’s a
bulk pallet of “stuff” (i.e.- most of the time junk) that
makes a candidate for a good purchase.

Second of all, I don’t mean to be harsh, if that’s the
only common sense you have about buying products, then this
is my answer… NO – NO – NO – in fact you may want to find
another business because if you don’t and this is your
search criteria, you’re going to get burnt! AND BAD!

What are you going to do when all of that “pallet of stuff”
is sitting in your garage that you just found out is
broken, defective and nobody wants. You paid $500 for junk
sitting in your garage just to take up space! I guess it’s
OK if you don’t mind losing $500 but I do!

When I ask the follow up questions, usually the answer I
get back is “well it’s a pallet of blue widgets at $500″.

And I’m going AND…

But that is all the information I’m given!

I’m not going to tell someone what to do but if that’s all
the information you know about what you’re buying, then let
me put it this way, if it’s all I knew about it, then

HELL NO! I DON’T BUY IT!!!!!

Be wise and know the key questions to ask. It takes more
than just knowing what’s on the pallet and how much the
pallet is, though it’s a start, that’s just the beginning.
There are key elements that you MUST learn to help you make
a calculated decision on whether or not if you should buy
that pallet or load of pallets.

I’ll teach you these in my book:

get my ebook here

3. Not understanding your costs associated with the product.

This is more than just knowing how much the pallet is
selling for. Does the product involve putting your time in
it? Are you going to have to make costly repairs or spend
time taking the product somewhere for the repair? Is it
going to take a long time to package and ship? Are you
going to have to invest in expensive packaging materials to
ship it? This all eats into your costs.

4. Not knowing the market value of the product.

All to often, people want to sell the “hot items”
especially on eBay. Or they want to sell the items that
are “their” favorite things but yet nobody else wants to
buy it.

In other words, there’s no market for it. So what if you’re
still into Cabbage Patch Kids. It doesn’t matter if you’ve
got an entire warehouse full of them if noone wants to buy
them! Why invest money in trying to get them if nobody
wants them.

You must know the market value of your product. Is it going
to be profitable for you to even sell it?

5. Not having a plan to move your products after you have
purchased them.

The usual train of thought is this. I’ll find a pallet of
stuff and start off selling it on eBay. Then as I grow,
I’ll get more and keep selling.

OK, fine, sounds good right? What do you do if your eBay
account gets suspended? What do you do if eBay crashes?
Make sure you use alternative outlets of sale with your
products.

Develop relationships with people, develop a web store,
whatever you can do to develop a customer base of people
who buy from you on a repetitive basis is the key.

Final Thoughts
Don’t get sucked up in the hype of instant riches by buying
a pallet and reselling. Don’t let some overnight “slickster”
tell you their products are the only way to make money!

(I let the cat out of the bag about where the products come
from in THE “ULTIMATE” INSIDERS SURPLUS, LIQUIDATION &
WHOLESALE BUYING TO RESELL FOR MEGA PROFITS GUIDE).

Yes, you can make money if you do it right. But often, with
many types of products, the cost of the pallet is more than
it’s worth so you won’t even make your money back. Of
course, it will look like the wholesale value of the product is
$3,000.00 for the pallet, and your paying say
$500 so you think you’re going to quadruple your money, but
do your homework and understand exactly what it is you’re
buying before you buy!

Is there a manifest so you can see what’s on the pallet?
Do all the pieces work? If it’s clothing, do you know that
on the top of the gaylord you could have name brand clothing
and you think you’re getting a killer deal but once you get
it you find foreign knock offs on the bottom that are
soiled, stained and ripped! You wouldn’t even wear them!

It happens more than you would imagine. Be careful of who
you’re dealing with, know the types of products you’re
getting, know your costs, the market value of the products
and have a plan.

This is a good place to begin to help protect you and to
help you profit.

THE “ULTIMATE” INSIDERS SURPLUS, LIQUIDATION & WHOLESALE
BUYING TO RESELL FOR MEGA PROFITS GUIDE will teach you in
detail what you need to know so pick up your copy at:

see our website here

Plus it’s essential that you understand if you’re going
to be buying pallets or loads of bulk pallet merchandise,
there are different product categories. I’ll teach you
how to grow your business from understanding different
product categories.

Here’s to your success!

Chad Maslak
Author: “THE “ULTIMATE” INSIDERS SURPLUS, LIQUIDATION
& WHOLESALE BUYING TO RESELL FOR MEGA PROFITS GUIDE”

check out our website here

Posted in Online Auctions | No Comments »

Wholesale products and prices examples

Posted by casper021 on 19th July 2009

Wholesale products examples
Due to a high number of emails asking me to provide more examples on salehoo wholesale suppliers and products I have decide to publish this post. In this post I will basically provide examples of products and pricing from salehoo suppliers and examples of the same product sold on ebay. There are two main reasons why I am comparing prices to ebay first is that ebay is global website with a very high competition so the prices on ebay are generally slightly lower than on the local websites such as trademe etc. And the second reason is so I do not have to do currency conversions between USD and local currencies. All the examples bellow have prices in USD.
 

Example 1 Nokia N98
Ebay

ebay search

Salehoo

supplier search

Example 2 Clothing 
With this example I have a screenshot of a small subset of different clothing items from one of the supplier with prices. This prices are about 200% -300% cheaper than comparable items in stores or online from general retailers
Clothing

Clothing

 

Example 3 Electronics
Here are some screenshots of electronics products and prices you can get via Salehoo wholesale list.
electronics1

electronics2electronics3

The above is just a small subset of products you can get via salehoo wholesalers. Generally with this wholesalers you can get products anywhere from about 300%  to 20%  cheaper then retail prices. Also as a salehoo member you will receive special deals from wholesalers which are only available through salehoo. Salehoo membership costs about $60 that gives you lifetime access to all the suppliers (verified by salehoo admins) also it gives you the access to support forums and to research lab which is one of the most powerful tools available on the internet for product research. Another cool thing is many salehoo suppliers allow drop shipping which means they will deliver product directly to your customer so you don’t have to hold the stocks. There are more on drop shipping in my earlier posts in this blog.

Salehoo website here
If you need an example of a particular product and the price you can get it for let me know and I will check it out for you.

 

Visit http://www.wizit.co.nz for more helpfull tips
http://www.wizit.co.nz — we help ordinary people to ear extraordinary money…….

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Catching the Crooks: Is Your Wholesaler Dodgy or Legitimate?

Posted by casper021 on 13th July 2009

Fleeced, ripped-off, cheated, conned. We’re all afraid of losing money to wholesalers who turn out not to be the real deal. The horror stories can certainly be very off putting – especially to those just getting started. The trick is to spot it and stop it before it’s too late!

So what are signs that you’re dealing with a crook?

In our experience, there are 6 particular indications that you may not be dealing with a legitimate wholesaler:

  • The wholesaler doesn’t sound business-like or professional when answering the phone. For example, he will answer with a plain ‘Yes?’ or ‘Hello?’, without identifying himself or the business name.
  • The wholesaler doesn’t request your business license or sales tax ID during the initial contacts. Most true wholesalers will require one of these. While this is not a hugely important deal, if you are looking at dealing in large amounts you will need to get registered and should check that the wholesaler is registered as well.
  • The wholesaler gets shifty when you request a product sample. Most wholesaler are only to happy to offer a sample of their product (usually at a higher price) so if they do not offer this be careful and question their reasons for not offering one.
  • The wholesaler’s claims to take a secure form of payment (credit card, Paypal etc…) but later turns around and says they only accept wire transfer or western union. Not all wholesalers that take western union and wire transfer are scammers, but this is the most common way scammers operate and you should always steer on the side of caution if you are asked to pay be these methods when not having dealt with or knowing the person first.
  • Their website offers no physical address or contact phone for you to get hold of them. Be blunt, ask them for a contact address and phone number and if it is ok if you come in and have a look around their offices. If they are serious this will be no problem at all for them.
  • They claim they don’t currently have stock in and still expect you to pay up front. If this has been happening make sure you get some photographic evidence of their stock with the days newspaper or something (while this doesn’t always work, it means some one must have stock that they know

Although these are not hard and fast rules, you should certainly proceed with caution if one or more of the above apply to a new wholesale contact you have made. If you have any tips to add or past experiences then we’d love to hear from you. Your experience is valuable to the SaleHoo community and I’m sure others would appreciate your comments.

 

Visit http://www.wizit.co.nz for more helpfull tips
http://www.wizit.co.nz — we help ordinary people to ear extraordinary money…….

Posted in Earning Online, Online Auctions | 2 Comments »

Most asked questions about wholesale

Posted by casper021 on 7th May 2009

I have just been looking through this blog statistics and found that majority of visitors who visit this blog search for the following keywords in google.
drop shipping
importing from china advice
make cash internet auctions
trademe secrets guide business
most popular items on trademe
importing goods pros and cons
ddp dropshipment
selling on trademe
how to import goods from china
ebay resell
wholesaler
good wholesalers
reliable items to sell
cheap mobile phones to resell
cheap electronics wholesalers
where to buy cheap items to resell
where ebay power sellers buy their product from
how people buy cheap items to resell on trademe
where to buy cheap to resell
So if you one of them and looking for the information on any of the above then you came to the right place. I have been importing items from all over the world myself for about 3 years now and I have to say so far it’s been quite profitable. In this post I will address some of the main questions which are faced by anyone who is importing or planning to start importing to make some money.
Question 1) Where to buy products at wholesale price?
This is probably one of the hardest questions to answer. If you where to go and do a search on google for wholesale products you will get about 18000000 results and if you are doing your initial research that’s 18 million potential websites you have to look it. Lets say if you were to continue doing a good research you would probably narrow it down to about 10 -15 websites which may look more or less reasonable. But now the next question comes up can you trust them?. Well to figure out if you can trust them or not you can do one of the following things you can either do more research on each one of them or can buy something from them and hope it will be delivered to you. Well now if all this goes well you will probably end up with one wholesaler you can trust. But now think how much time and effort you will have to put into the research and how much money you will risk by trying out different wholesalers. To honest that what i did at first and it took me lots of time and effort to do the research and to be honest it did not end up to be profitable at the end of the day. So that got me thinking of how i can improve this process to be faster and less risky and one day i was searching the net for something and came across the website called Salehoo, that day i did some quick research about Salehoo and make a decision to give it a try and to honest I never looked back on that decision. From the moment i joined I suddenly had access to over 5000 wholesalers some of them I never heard of or seen before even after doing all that research manually. One of the best thing i found with Salehoo is their support forum and also the requirements for the wholesaler to get listed with them. Salehoo administrators verify each wholesaler manually they buy products from them before the wholesaler gets listed with them. Also Salehoo members get really good treatment from wholesalers because wholesalers do not want to lose their listing within Salehoo. Also if you have a problem with the wholesaler (never happened to me)  you can get support via forum or even Salehoo administrators will contact the wholesaler on your behalf and resolve any issues. Now I will give you some examples of what you can get via Salehoo.
Example 1 Nokia N96 really hot product this days.
Google search

Well this is 10.4 million results to go through (not practical)
Salehoo Search

Gives you 36 verified suppliers no need to do any research just check the prices to find the cheapest one.
Ok now let’s do a further research on Nokia N96
Trade me Search
I have sorted them by lowest price on top

So we can see that the cheapest Nokia N96 is $900 NZD lets converted to USD = $500
Now let’s check ebay

So we can see from the results its around about $500 USD mark.
Well If they are all selling it at around $500 USD we now ask a question What profit margin are they making and where are they getting it from? Well as to profit margin it depends on the quantity you are buying the more you buy the less you pay for the product the higher margin you get. Well as to where they are buying it from its a different story.
Lets now look at what one of the wholesalers on salehoo is offering Nokia N96 for

Now you can see that the wholesale price is about $190 USD to $240 USD depending on the quantity you buy. At $240 USD you can buy just a single item. So now lets to the math if you were to buy an item at $240 and sell it at $500 you will make $260 instantly. Its normally takes about 5-10 days for a supplier to deliver the item to you. Well that was just one example that sort of sprung to mind just mainly because I recently bought N96 for myself.
Ok this should give you some Idea about where to find suppliers and with salehoo they have suppliers for virtually any product you can imagine.
Question 2) which product to resell and which has the highest margin?
This question is quite an interesting one to answer it you will have to do some research. Here are some things to look for when you doing your research.
Competition – How many other people are selling this product
How popular is the product – do some research on what demand is out there for the product
Based on those 2 criterias you can figure out what is the best product to resell. You need to find the balance between the demand and competition because as competition increase the margins become tighter unless there is a huge demand for the product and as demand decrease it will become harder to sell the item so you may have to drop your margin as well.  With salehoo they recently build a tool called product research into their into their website it’s a great tool to help you with your research and guide you towards a good product to resell.

As you can see from the screenshot of the research tool it gives you the potential opportunity for an item (this research was done for nokia). It also shows you what the item is selling for right now on ebay in the ebay prices tab. It also shows you what other adds are running for that item and what competition is out there and what is the demand for the item.
Its a good tool to get you started but then you may want to do abit more specific research related to your country.

Question 3) What is better to buy product and then resell it or to do dropshiping?
I personally can not recommend, which way you should go I always tend to buy the item and then resell it. But I have heard about some people who are making a fortune using the dropshipping method. I guess what i would recommend is to try both ways and see which one is more suitable for you. If you want you can read about pros and cons of dropshipping here (this is an earlier post I posted here on this blog). But one thing I will say is that most of the suppliers at salehoo do support both methods. So it is really up to you which way you want to go.

I hope this helps someone and if you have any questions you can post a comment here or if you you have a question you do not want to disclose to anyone else you can go to wizit.co.nz and click ask a question in the left hand side menu and put subject “wholesale products” .
Good luck

 

Visit http://www.wizit.co.nz for more helpfull tips
http://www.wizit.co.nz — we help ordinary people to ear extraordinary money…….

Posted in Earning Online, Online Auctions | 3 Comments »

Overcoming Problems When Importing from China

Posted by casper021 on 14th April 2009

The prospect of importing goods from China is both exciting and terrifying for many sellers. On one hand there is huge potential for making money from reselling wholesale goods purchased very cheaply. But on the other hand, language and cultural barriers present a number of difficulties to sellers. The main issue that everyone is worried about is payment: How do I pay? Will my money disappear?, and so on.

The difficulty lies in the fact that most Chinese wholesalers will only accept Western Union and wire transfer payments. These are not secure payment options so they must be treated with caution. However, the main reason why these are the only payments accepted is that they are in fact the only payment methods available to the Chinese. Getting a credit card in China is an extremely difficult task with a lot of government regulations and strict criteria for getting a card.

So then, despite the risks involved with using Western Union and wire transfer, these are the methods you have to use if you want to import from China with most suppliers. To minimize this risk, our advice is to start with a fairly small shipment of goods so you are not standing to lose too much money if everything falls apart. Then, as trust is established, gradually build up your order over time. On the whole, most Chinese suppliers are genuine, hard working people who want to establish a long-term relationship with you. They need your business, so it’s unlikely they’ll try to deliberately screw you over! Another big issue for sellers importing from China is communication. It can be extremely daunting trying to negotiate complex business issues when communication is so difficult.

To get around this problem, we always ask a new contact for their MSN or ICQ email address and chat to them online. They tend to be very friendly and enjoy talking to people who speak English as a first language (this helps them improve their communication too), plus it gives you a direct point of contact instantly.

With communication now established, you can proceed to ask questions and get them to send you pictures of stock and so on. Once we’ve built up a relationship, we then ask them to send me a sample order. For any genuine company, this isn’t a problem and it allows us to see the quality of the product first hand. We can then be fairly certain that the company is trustworthy, and that this is the product we wish to import.

One thing we haven’t talked about so far is quality. This can be another major concern for sellers who often have difficulty telling whether a brand name product is genuine or not.

In our experience, the vast majority of brand-name goods that come from China are either replicas or fakes. We strongly recommend that you assume that this is the case in the first instance. eBay is currently cracking down heavily on people selling fakes and it is not an area of business we suggest you get into!

Generally, we find that Chinese suppliers are best suited for cheap generic goods (they are manufactured there so you won’t find cheaper anywhere else!) that can be sold at higher rates in Western countries. For example, some of the latest trends are pocket bikes, scooters and generic electronic goods. These goods do not have to have a brand name in order to sell well and they can be purchased wholesale at very good prices if you are serious about importing from China.

This should give you a heads up if looking at dealing with wholesale suppliers in China! Remember, always keep an open mind, ask questions and do your research!

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SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!

Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

 

Visit http://www.wizit.co.nz for more helpfull tips
http://www.wizit.co.nz — we help ordinary people to ear extraordinary money…….

Posted in Online Auctions | 1 Comment »

How do I Find Something to Sell?

Posted by casper021 on 29th March 2009

Many people wanting to start an eBay business spend a lot of time fretting over what they will sell. Perhaps these questions are familiar: Where do I find ideas? Should I sell the most popular items? How do I know a good idea? These are important questions everyone faces.

eBay already contains so many items for sale that some sellers feel overwhelmed from the start wondering how they can possibly find a product idea when the market appears to be full anyway.

So where should you start then?

1. Your hobbies

This can be a great way of establishing a niche. Perhaps you love embroidery or making model airplanes? Chances are a lot of other people share this passion and are looking for related supplies. Crafts and hobbies is big market – however, before you jump in headfirst, make sure you do some research to back up the feasibility of your idea. eBay is a numbers game and no matter how great your idea is, it won’t work if not enough people are interested. So be sure to use the completed listings search and test the market with some of your own supplies first.

2. Listen to what your friends and family are talking about

Sometimes the best ideas can arise from your friends and family. One seller says she overheard some women at the table next to her talking about the trouble they were having finding a particular brand of baby slings. This got her thinking, and, after a bit of research, she realized they were a foreign brand and hard to find in the USA. A wee bit of research later and she had found a supplier and was successfully selling online. So keep your eyes and ears open! If people you know are looking for a particular item, chances are others will too.

3. Research newspapers and magazines

Newspapers and magazines can provide a ton of information on trends and styles. Just browsing the headlines can often be enough to spark a new idea. Try sitting down with a pen and notebook and skimming the pages of popular magazines and daily newspapers. You should have a list of at least 10 ideas by the end.

4. eBay Seller Central

eBay itself has a fantastic resource in the Seller Central area ‘What’s Hot’. Every month, a list of super hot, very hot and hot items are published. This is a great way to find ideas but remember that everyone on eBay also has access to this information! The merchandising calendar is also a useful resource.

All successful sellers sell several products, rather than putting all of their eggs into one basket. Not only can trends change with the wind, but some products are only popular during a particular season. For example, dehumidifiers are more popular during winter than summer, while lawnmowers are super hot in spring and have a practically non-existent market in the winter.

5. Find out what your buyers are buying

A good way of expanding your product range is by ‘spying’ on your buyers. After making a sale, check your buyer’s feedback and find out what other items they have been purchasing recently. This will help you get to know what your target market are interested in and expand your range accordingly.

Finding something to sell can seem daunting at first, but I guarantee that once you think of one idea, plenty of others will quickly follow!

 

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SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!

Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

Posted in Online Auctions | No Comments »