Hi everyone, I hope your doing good. Someone asked me last night if I thought it was a good idea for them to jump right into drop shipping with no prior experience. They implied that they were thinking about listing 30-50 items a night on ebay from their drop shippers catalog. This is a very bad idea. Rule number one: never go all out with anything you are not familiar with yet. Always start off slow.This person also said they are new to ebay. This is another no-no. If you don’t know the ins and outs on ebay, you will never make it by combining drop shipping and ebay. You are building a recipe for disaster. I would recommend doing 10-20 transactions on ebay before you go all out. Some people don’t fully get familiar with the way ebay works until their first 50 transactions or so. You could lose a lot of money in auction fees by inexperienced option choices in your auctions.

Get into drop shipping slowly. The competition is hard enough as it is. Rookies will find no success in drop shipping on ebay. Drop shipping on ebay is very competitive nowadays. You have to find a niche. Even when you find a niche, it could only last a few weeks or months. Make all the money you can from each niche until it’s not in demand anymore. Niches fade as time and fads change. You have to be very experienced in researching what is selling and what is not selling. Ebay is the best place to find out what items are hot. Even if you don’t sell on ebay. You can find lots of ways to find what items are hot on this blog post I made. http://thehomedropshipguide.com/blog/ebay-hot-items/

There is way more than just constant research to know when you start drop shipping. If you have made your mind up about drop shipping, take it in small to moderate steps. The only way to get experience with something is to do it. Hands-on is the best experience. People seem to learn things better when they actually do it. You can learn from your mistakes with hands on experience. You will also be able to understand directions when you have an idea of what is going on. Understanding and learning new skills always take practice. But when you are spending money to make money, you need to make as few mistakes a possible.

After you do your research and find a product with your drop shipper give it a try. But try to sell only one or maybe two items(one to two auctions) at a time. Follow through with the transactions and learn how things go with your drop shipper. Learn the process of drop shipping when someone wins an ebay auction. Once you learn the process of drop shipping you can start to expand to sell more items. But only if you feel comfortable that you know what you are doing and know the process.

When you sell one or two items at a time until you are used to things; you can benefit in many ways. You can test out each drop shipper to see how their service and products are compared to other drop shippers. You will learn the routine of being a retailer through a drop shipper. Experience will make you look more professional because you won’t make as many mistakes as a rookie drop shipper. I recommend signing up with a few drop shippers. Shop around for drop shippers. Every drop shippers prices will be different from another one. Some will have lower prices and other drop shippers prices will be very high. Don’t be afraid to shop around for drop shippers like you would shop around for a car.

Your customers want to deal with a professional, not some kid. They want a smooth transaction and a product that is, what you say it is. Remember, you can’t be professional about something you don’t know about. Do as much research as you can before you jump into drop shipping with both feet. Especially if you are new to ebay. Yes, ebay makes it very easy to make money. But you won’t make money with no experience.

If you already know ebay, I would still throw caution to drop shipping until you get to know the world of drop shipping. Some wholesale/drop shippers don’t care about your ebay customers or your ebay business. They just care about sales. But there are lots of wholesale/drop ship companies that care a lot about you and your customers. You just have to search until you find some that you like. Find a few drop shippers that understand and know that your customers mean more money for their business. They are usually not some fly-by-night companies. Fly-by-night drop shippers are the ones to watch out for. They are just out to make money.

When you are ready for drop shipping you will know it. Search for a few drop shippers to use. Don’t settle for just one drop shipper. What happens if one of your drop shippers is out of stock and you sell something? You need a back-up plan. The best back-up plan you can have with drop shipping; is having a few drop shippers for contacts. Using a few drop shippers that sell the same items can really help you. It will make price shopping a little easier for you also.

Make sure if you try drop shipping, you take it in baby steps. Drop shipping is not cut out for everyone. If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Thanks for reading my blog everyone!

LP@thehomedropshipguide.com