Ebay and Drop Shipping 
by Lisa Page

Ebay and drop shipping go hand in hand. You can make tons of money, if you do it right. Most ebay powersellers make over 25k a month using drop shipping & ebay together. Believe it or not, under ebay rules & regulations; You are not allowed to post an auction for an item not in your possession. This means you are not supposed to drop ship. But, as you well know, about 95% of ebay home businesses drop ship. You must have the right drop shipper connections, to assure a trouble free drop ship delivery. When your on ebay, your feedback means the world. You want a drop shipper that will; Have items in stock, timely & prompt delivery and tracking info, inform you of everything and anything along the way. You must have a drop shipper who cares about your reputation. Tons of drop shippers will just take your money and give you crappy service. Doba for example, will probably ruin your ebay reputation. Make sure your dealing with a real wholesaler that asks for your business license.

Drop shipping is easy with ebay. As long as you have the right drop shipper. All you do is, go to the ebay monthly hot list, see what items are hot. List whatever items are hot, on to a few ebay auctions. When the auction ends, you call your drop shipper and give them your auction winners info (some wholesale distributors have an order form on-line also). Then your drop shipper will send your order/s out. Your drop shipper will give you the tracking info and whatever else is needed. Then you just send your customers the tracking info and your done. All you need is a computer and a telephone with ebay and drop shipping.

Featured auctions in the items category are important to an ebay merchant, the fee to list the auction is a lot( i think $20+). But it puts your auctions on top of other people selling the same thing. So the customer will see your auction first. It is also important to list several items in the same auction if you are using a featured auction. This way you get more for your money. Why sell one item for the high auction listing fee, when you can sell 20 for the same auction listing price?

For instance; If you are selling DVD players, you would post a featured auction in the appropriate DVD name brands category. Make the item quantity 20( or whatever you think you can sell before the auction ends). Now you paid $25.00 to post a 3, 5, 7, or 10 day auction. Let's say you are making $50.00 profit from each DVD player. You just made $1000.00 profit, for putting up an auction that cost you about $25.00. Believe me, the auction traffic you will get from listing a featured auction is incredible. You will see amazing results in sales. Just so I know you are not confused; I am not talking about the ebay featured category listings(that's about $100.00+ to list an auction, don't list there). I am talking about the featured listing inside the appropriate category to match the item you are selling.

There is one down side to selling a really popular item using a featured auction. Lets say you are selling i-pods or cell phones. These are very popular categories. A lot of sellers will post featured auctions here. The problem is, you get 20 pages of just featured auctions if you are looking to buy. So the sellers in this category are almost forced to put a featured auction up, if they want to sell in this category. What's worse is, you probably won't get much business in this category because there are so many others selling the same darn thing.

Try and find a category that has a decent selling product. Try and find a category that has maybe 1-2 featured auctions selling the same item you want to sell. If you can find a category that nobody has featured auctions, and the item sells really well, I call that jackpot. Everyone will see your auction first and you'll see a huge boost in sales. That's one way that drop shipping and ebay can help you.

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