Auction eZine - Issue 2
________________________________________________ AuctionInsights Newsletter ________________________________________________ November 20, 2004 Edited by Doug Feiring http://www.AuctionInsights.info Hi, PowerSellers understand they make their money WHEN THEY BUY, not when they sell... Sourcing products is key to any successful eBay business. Here are some ideas for finding profitable products to sell on eBay. ________________________________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS o FEATURED ARTICLE... 1) Five Tips to Help You Successfully Find Products at Below Wholesale Prices o NEWS FROM AUCTION INSIGHTS... o FEATURED ARTICLE... 2) Ordinary product + Added value = Increased Profits! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- ------- ---1--- ------- Five Tips to Help You Successfully Find Products at Below Wholesale Prices by Janiece V. Smith © Janiece V Smith - All Rights Reserved Most people think a wholesaler is "the" place to get all of the good deals and the cheapest products. This is not always true. Many times, products are not even sold through a wholesaler. Some manufacturers sell their overstock, closeout, and liquidation items through wholesalers. Some wholesalers sell their items through outlets; others sell them on their own. Some wholesalers have exclusive divisions that deal only with a handful of people who prove themselves as reliable sources who can move inventory fast. You should always try to first get your products from the top source. Don't waste your time dealing with others who have marked up the product many times before it ever gets to you. Many companies have a set way to move their unsold inventory, so, sometimes, going to the top might not work as smoothly as you want.
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Don't get discouraged if these companies already have clients they sell it to. You can still get the product; it will just be a littler further down the line.
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Here are five ways to help you find products for which you are looking: 1. Ask the manufacturers who you should speak with to purchase unsold inventory. They will normally guide you in the right direction. Be aware that sometimes finding the right contact can take a little arm twisting. 2. Find out what manufacturers currently do with their unsold inventory. Who do they sell it to if they don't sell it themselves? If they won't disclose this information or act like they don't want to deal with you, find a different approach. 3. Find out whether they sell to the general public and what is required of you and your company to be able to buy their products. Some companies will sell only to established businesses with a credit rating. If that's the case, don't worry. It's not terribly difficult to obtain a rating. If, however, you're not currently set up as a business, you should complete the legal process and get credit by securing a charge card from a store, such as Office Depot. You can also get a business card from a number of credit card companies. American Express is fairly easy to deal with. 4. Next, find out which products they sell to the public. Most companies have some products they will not release as unsold inventory. They would rather try to resale it on their own. 5. Make sure you have all of your ducks in a row. Most, if not all, of the manufacturers I deal with don't want to play games. They want to move their products and they want to move them fast. If you expect that they will drop ship to your customers and allow you to buy as you sell, don't even bother calling. Everybody wants that, so why would they need you? They could move it that way through 4,000 drop shippers online. Just make sure you know what you want, be confident when you make that call, and have a goal that you want to accomplish. If you call and sound like you don't know what you are doing, they will quickly shut you out. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Resource Box: Janiece Smith is the author of Internet's top-selling eBook teaching everyday people how to make their own small fortune selling on eBay®. Discover The Secrets Janiece Smith Used To Earn Up To $11,212 Per Month Selling On eBay. Her new eBook "How An Overworked, Traveling, Soggy Sandwich Eating Dental Hygienist Made up to $11,212.00 a Month--100% Online" allows you to easily and quickly apply the author's secrets of finding and selling products on eBay® to create huge amounts of instant profits! Click here for more details: http://hop.clickbank.net/?auction223/expresspro ------- ---2--- ------- Ordinary product + Added value = Increased Profits! Ok, here's the thing.... Everyone that wants to get started buying and selling (either online or offline) is trying to find that 'bargain buy' - something whose wholesale price is 50% less than the standard retail price. It is possible to find such products but they are rare and as soon as one person starts selling the item, others will jump on the bandwagon and force the price down. The fact is that there are few items nowadays with a huge retail markup and worldwide markets such as eBay do nothing to help this situation as there are so many sellers that there is only one way for prices to go and that is down. So instead of taking the easy option and trying to simply purchase an item at one price and sell it on to someone else for double (which involves little skill, thus anyone can do it meaning the end result is that after a very short time you won't be able to double your money because of competition), you need to try and find a way to ADD VALUE. In other words, buy a standard product and then modify/ change it in some way to make it more attractive to buyers. This will enable you to make a larger profit margin and depending upon what you are doing to the product, may help reduce the level of competition you have to face. Let me give you a couple of examples: How about buying an ordinary, plain t-shirt (wholesale cost for t-shirts is as little as $1.80/£1.00 each) and then print something on it. If you are imaginative with what you print, you may well be able to sell the 'new improved' t-shirt for $25/£15. In fact, I have a friend that is doing this exact thing! He came up with a unique and original idea to print on t-shirts and now prints his own t-shirts using a home- made screen printing press (seriously, he got the instructions off the Internet and actually built a cheap press himself!) All of the t-shirts he sells are either black or blue and he only prints in white - a surprisingly simple idea but one that is proving to be fairly lucrative. Of course, it would be unfair to divulge exactly what he is printing on the t-shirts but there must be thousands of possibilities that haven't yet been thought of. There are many other 'arty' type things that you may be able to do if you have the necessary ability but even if you are not artistic, you shouldn't let that hold you back.... I often get emails from people asking where they can buy blank CD-Rs to resell. Fact is that the profit margin on blank CD-Rs is tiny (in fact, unless you can sell thousands and thousands every week, I wouldn't waste your time even looking at this market). HOWEVER, take a blank CD-R and put something of value on it and suddenly that disc is worth a whole lot more than it was blank. Of course, I am not talking about putting pirated material on the discs but how about digital products that you have either produced yourself or that you have purchased resale rights to? To give you some idea of how far you can go with this idea, I recently purchased a training course that was supplied on five CDs. The value of the CDs and cases was less than $2.00 but I paid over $800 for the course! Why? Because I wanted the content. I knew that the content was far more valuable than the CDs themselves and I knew that they were going to help me increase my own businesses profits (which they did and I recouped my investment within a week of studying and acting on the course material). Once you have identified an opportunity such as those outlined above (and there must be thousands and thousands of them), start thinking about how you can get someone else to do the work for you. The goal of a true entrepreneur should be to free up his/her time and use it to come up with new ideas or to promote existing ones - he/she shouldn't be sitting in the garage printing t-shirts! Copyright 2004 Richard Grady -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Grady has been helping people earn online since 1998. Find out more about Richard and his new video explaining how to find and approach wholesale distributors: www.internet-auction-wholesale-secrets.com/
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