- Hi guys, Neil Waterhouse.
Now, we've been talking a lot about drop shipping but
this weeks video is about finding top selling items on eBay
and then how to source them from the suppliers
and the wholesalers.
Now, this strategy I'm going to share with you now
it's not drop shipping so please don't confuse it
with drop shipping.
Drop shipping is a totally different methodology
or different strategy.
The difference of course between a drop ship business
and an importing wholesale or FBA business
is with drop shipping you get paid first
before you purchase the inventory.
Which makes drop shipping a cash flow positive strategy.
Drop shipping is also known, of course, in the industry
as virtual inventory.
With a wholesale importing or FBA business model
it's the opposite.
You pre-purchase inventory up front
from your suppliers
and then when the items sell you get paid.
Bottom line is, with drop shipping you sell items
and get paid first before pre-purchasing inventory.
With wholesale importing and FBA you pre-purchase
inventory up front.
Then after each item sells you get paid.
Okay, so there's five steps in this strategy which
I'm going to share with you now.
Step one, is to come up with 5 or 10 of your own
unique power keywords.
I'll explain what a power keyword is in a sec.
Now you can use the same, if you've done the drop shipping
stuff before, it's the same thing to find
the power keywords.
For those who haven't done that,
I'll go through it now.
Now, the reason you do this exercise of finding
power keywords, is to make yourself unique
so you don't fall into the trap of focusing
on the same items most beginners focus on
i.e. you know, mobile phone accessories,
USB cables etc and all the other fast selling items
which have got very low profits or very low margins.
I've been importing now for over 30 years
and selling online for over 20 years
and I see this same mistake over and over again.
The problem with these faster selling items
is they normally always have the most competition
and because of this, you normally always need
to purchase a ton of them to get any kind of
decent profit margin.
Now, I'm not talking about making 10 cents here,
20 cents there...
if you live in a first world country
you want to make some decent kind of money
not just little tiny bits of money
where you can basically buy a bowl of rice.
Anyway, very often, you know, you can make much more money
selling items that are not the top sellers
because, there's far less competition.
So, come up with your own power keywords.
Now, a power keyword is simply a keyword
which meets two criteria -
The first criteria is:
It is any item that sells on eBay or Amazon
for between 20 dollars and 2000 dollars.
And the second criteria is that it must have
a history of selling at least 15 times per month
for at least three months.
We do this, of course, because we don't want to purchase
inventory for any item unless it has a good sales history
i.e. at least 15 sales per month
for at least three months.
Someone is snorting behind me.
Lost my train of thought.
Anyway, you can also check Google Trends
to see the trend of the keywords
and I'll put up a link to Google Trends
which is a free app by, a free tool, by Google.
Now, coming up, with your own power keyword is simple,
you find these power keywords by looking around
your own environment, you know,
and your own environment could be your home,
it could be a room in your home,
for instance if you're in your kitchen
which items can you see?
Is it a blender? A toaster? Pots and pans? - whatever.
Do you have a hobby?
Do you like craft, for instance?
If you do, what do you use for craft?
Are there tools that you use for craft?
Another place to get these power keywords
is if you have a job,
look around your office, you might see
a whiteboard, tables, chairs, calculators, whatever.
There are hundreds of thousands of items
that meet the two criteria.
Every time you see one make a note
in your note pad, in your phone
but remember, you only need 10 to 20 power keywords.
Now, where a lot of people go wrong with this
is they make the mistake,
or they mistake a power keyword for a product.
A power keyword is a generic word i.e. "solar panel".
A product is X, Y, Z brand of solar panel.
A power keyword is just "solar panel".
Now, so for this exercise only write down
power keywords i.e. "toaster".
Not Philips X, Y, Z brand of toaster
or X, Y, Z model of toaster...
Just Philips toaster, or just toaster.
Sorry, I got that wrong.
Just toaster.
Philips toaster is a product,
toaster is just a power keyword.
And all you're doing on this exercise is power keywords.
So, for this first exercise, all you're looking for
is power keywords, and only 10 to 20 of them.
This should take you no more than
five to fifteen minutes.
Now, once you have your 10 to 20 power keywords
on your list, go to eBay and do a search
for one of those power keywords.
For this example the power keyword I'm going to use
is solar panel.
So, type in one of your power keywords
into the search box at eBay
and then click the search button.
Now in the search results you can see
a whole lot of sellers selling items
with the keyword solar panel.
Now, click on anyone of the listings...
next click on "visit store"...
Then click on the seller's name.
The seller's name should be blue
to indicate that it's a clickable hyper-link.
Next, click on "items for sale"...
next scroll down the left-hand side
and soon you'll see the check box "sold listings".
Click the "sold listings"...
Now you're only seeing items which have sold
in the last 90 days.
Notice also that all the prices are showing in green,
this means they've sold.
Next step is to click on any of those listings.
When you do, look for how many times the item has sold.
In this example it sold 976 times.
Next step is to click on the red "976"
as this is actually a hyper-link.
When you click that hyper-link
eBay will then show you the dates and times
the item sold,
and also for what price.
Any item that's sold a minimum of 15 times per month
for the last three months gets recorded on a spread sheet.
Now, so now we know how many times the item has sold
and for what price.
The next step is to find out how much the item costs.
To do that, go to Alibaba or whatever favorite
supplier sourcing website you prefer, to find the product.
Personally, we prefer to use Alibaba
as Alibaba is bigger than eBay and Amazon combined.
But there are many others including DHGate,
Global Sources, you know, a multitude of them
but just choose whichever one you prefer.
Now, the first strategy to find items on Alibaba
is to just drill down using the search box
just like you're searching anything on Goggle.
And the second strategy is to click the "request quotation"
button to get suppliers to give you prices.
Now, once you've found the supplier
and you've got your cost price
make sure you also take into account the other costs
when working out profit margins.
Take into account eBay fees, PayPal fees,
shipping from your supplier, shipping to your customer etc.
And when you have all this information
put it into a spread sheet and start building
a list of products.
When you've got 10 to 20 products
sort them all by profitability
and of course, the most profitable ones
are the ones to focus on.
Now, don't expect every product to be profitable
once you add eBay fees, PayPal fees etc.
Like everything, it's a numbers game.
The more items you research,
the more profitable products you'll find.
But if you're new to this
there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Learn the procedure,
then outsource it to low cost overseas virtual assistance
which you can get from one dollar per hour.
Like I've said many times before
always aim to spend 10% of your profits
on low cost overseas virtual assistance.
At the end of the day, it's the best team that wins
and the beauty of living in this day and age
that we all live in now
is we can easily build virtual teams.
That's all for this week
please scroll down and leave me a comment below
until next week, list more, sell more.
This is Neil Waterhouse.