What exactly is dropshipping? Well, dropshipping is an act of selling products to your consumer and having it directly delivered to their doorstep from the supplier, meaning that you don’t have to hold any sort of inventory or worry about delivery management, and if you’re a beginner looking to start eBay dropshipping in 2023, now may be one of the best times to do so because over the years, eBay has made it much easier for sellers to build a business on their platform using the dropshipping business model.
eBay is one of the leading companies in e-commerce which started as a C2C auction company where people could list their belongings to sell with a starting bid and then buyers could bid on the listing, having it being sold to the highest bidder. eBay now supports B2C and B2B clients too. With an active user-base of almost 160 million and 1.5 billion active listings and with over 250 million visitors each month on eBay’s platform, it is undoubtedly one of the greatest names when it comes to starting an eBay dropshipping business in 2023.
Here are 5 easy steps you can undertake to start your journey with eBay dropshipping in 2023.
1. Create a Seller Account
In order to start working as a dropshipper, you need to sign up as a Seller on eBay, which would allow you to post listings and view analytics of your orders and ‘assumed’ inventory inflow and outflow. Simply head over to the sign-up page and enter your business details.
Once you have followed the seller guide, you can select the selling plan that suits you the best, a basic, premium/featured or anchor store and they provide you with 1000, 10,000 and 25,000 listings a month respectively with different price bases.
eBay generally charges a selling commission on every product sold through their platform which is around 10 -15% of the final selling value, apart from that eBay gives you 200 free listings each month as an individual seller and after that its 35c per listing.
2. Increase Feedback Score
Feedback score is an important aspect of any online business, the first thing that buyers refer to is the feedback or review rating of the seller, in the case of eBay it is called a feedback score. Here are some dropshipping tips and tricks you can implement to increase your feedback score ethically.
- Selling in Bulk Quantities: In order to increase your feedback score, you can always procure a cheap product and sell it for the same price or even lower. Selling a good number of products that are inexpensive will allow you to accumulate feedback quickly and swiftly. Make sure to include some personalization with each order you dropship.
- Immaculate Descriptions: Make sure that your description is on-point and describe every important detail that a buyer could possibly look for, the good the description, the better chances of the consumer your product and leaving a feedback
- Buy Stuff: This might seem odd, but it is a good practice especially on eBay, you can buy inexpensive items as a dropshipper and the seller you purchased from will most likely leave you positive feedback, and the feedback you get on your buyer profile counts towards the same feedback on your eBay selling profile.
3. Find Winning eBay Dropshipping Products
Once you have set-up your eBay selling account, you can start to look for profitable products but in the starting era of your dropshipping business, you should focus on building your products by finding the ones that have an upward trend, the complete focus should not be on making profits in the start. A winning product can be found using multiple analytic tools such as Zik Analytics and Google Trends, Zik analytics might provide you with insight about the product’s activity specifically on eBay, while Google Trends will give you an insight about the general search data on the product, which will give you an idea of the overall interest with the product through the internet.
You can also use eBay’s own Terapeak Product Research Software to find out about the selling capacities, trends, variety and consolidation of a product in the overall market or your region.
4. Finding a Supplier
Make sure that the supplier you choose for your dropshipping goods is profitable to you and can provide deliveries in the regions you are aiming to target the most. Look for suppliers that can provide personalisation and extra benefits with orders, here are some options:
- Walmart
- AliExpress
- Wayfair
- Sam’s club5
- VidaXL
- Homedepot
- CjDropshipping
- Banggood
- Lowe’s
- Amazon
- Alibaba
It is important to be aware that eBay’s policy states that you should not use a marketplace or retailer as your supplier if you plan to dropship on eBay, and if you caught doing this, you could get your eBay account banned or restricted.
So, we advise you stick with actual dropshipping suppliers, such as CJ Dropshipping and Alibaba.
5. Create a Listing
Once you found the products you want to dropship and your supplier is good to go, you can create your first eBay listing.
- On your seller hub, click on Create Listing
- Search for what you are selling and select the product
- Upload details of your listing such as high-quality images, on-point description and an attractive title.
- Specify your price and set the format to Buy it Now and not to auction.
- Set-up your delivery services or just connect a service of your choosing.
- Specify the discount details and personalisation of your listing.
- Set-up your payment preferences and channels and just hit List it.
Job done! All you now need to do is sit back and wait for orders to start coming in.
Learn more about starting a eBay dropshipping business by clicking this link.