eCommerce

[Anonymous No.57203099]

Anybody else run a small ecommerce biz?

I've been doing it for close to a decade, and have always made some extra $. This summer I put my ass into gear, and was able to make $4,000 net profit every month while I was finishing up at uni. Now I've got triple the time, so in theory I should be able to do 3x the money.


Anybody have any tips on finding suppliers? I live in a decent sized city and found a new pallet auction which has been very good.


>Pick up $5,000 worth of Bulgarian car parts for $125
>Sell
>???
>Profit!

[Anonymous No.57203232]

>>57203099
I'll start one too this or next month. Always did it a little bit on the side as a hobby, but I want to dive in completely. Any tips what you would do differently if you started out again?

[Anonymous No.57203459]

I run one. Have your expenses and deductions at the ready come tax time. Shipping, mileage, supplies, inventory, fees

[Anonymous No.57203532]

Mid 20’s making $155k a year across multiple pages and platforms. About 4 hours of work a day and it’s all WFH. Depending on where I live that 155k can feel like 350k (Most of the EU has insanely low COL compared to Cuckada and major US cities even if you pick a tourist trap like Barcelona.) God bless becoming obsessed with trying to escape the wage cage at age 19 cuz if I was starting today it would be 10x harder. Covid made everyone want to do some kind of WFH business shit and a lot of it is a race to the bottom now

[Anonymous No.57204101]

>>57203532

What kind of products or services do you sell

[Anonymous No.57204146]

I want to do this but I am too low IQ.
Even making a couple hundred a month would be great.

[Anonymous No.57204218]

I think I'll get in to drop shipping, that's easy money right? Right?

[Anonymous No.57204239]

>>57204146
>Too low IQ
Jfc why is this board so hard on itself? It's ecommerce, not fucking rocket science. Sure, you might fail, but starting an ecommerce business and running one is not insanely hard to start. Just make sure whatever capital you use, you are 100% ready for lose. That's just business, IQ helps a tiny bit, but if that was true, there wouldn't be rich morons.

[Anonymous No.57204286]

>>57204239
Any product I can think to sell someone (or multiple) is already selling for dirt cheap with free postage.
I don't have a talent, skill or service to sell.

[Anonymous No.57204297]

>>57204146
Also, always remember the bell curve meme. It's literally the key to success. Either be so brilliant that you can comprehend and execute even the most abstract ideas, or so simple that you distill things to very digestible and actionable steps. Don't be one of this middle of the bell curve types that get trapped in decision paralysis.
Story time: a total moron from my high school is a millionaire. Literally your typical low wage, low IQ laborer. Not even a licensed craftsmen. Wasn't a bad guy, just obviously didn't have the brain and temperament to learn any high skill trade. Anyway, he was a friendly guy and had a pick up, so he'd always help people move shit. One day, someone suggests ye out up a Facebook post offering to move people's shit for some cash. And he does it. He's nice, polite, and does his job well, so people keep paying him and recommending him. Even other businesses start to subcontract shit to him. Why pay your landscapers $15-$20/hr to clean up leaves and grass ,when you can just give this guy $100 a week to swing by their routes and pick up the bags and dump them?
So he keeps doing this, slowly getting more work, hires a few guys, etc, and the rest is history. He has a fleet of vehicles that do commercial and residential moving, hauling, and junk disposal. He's doing extremely well for himself and even got into real estate.
I wish I could lie and say there's some part of his life where his lack of intelligence but him n the ass, but it didn't. He knew to stay in his lane but did so at full capacity, and it paid off.

[Anonymous No.57204324]

>>57204286
Have you even tried? Even just buying plastic soap dispenser and trying to sell them is a good proof of concept, just to validate the process. Wouldn't cost you more than $1000 and worst case scenario it fails and you write it off.
First step is trying anon, don't give up before you even try.

[Anonymous No.57204640]

>>57204297
thanks for the story, i was reading about some rich guys from my country and their stories are very similiar, i guess its a mix of good work ethic, likeability, perseverance and luck.

[Anonymous No.57205368]

Get the fuck off my board you stupid fucking ebay shills. Buy an ad ffs.

[Anonymous No.57205463]

>>57204218
Nope. You gotta have it on hand.

If you don't have it, you can't really make money at it.

[Anonymous No.57205509]

>>57204297
you're alright

[Anonymous No.57205537]

In first world countries, you just have to literally want to work. I live in small town rural Australia, and there is nobody to do basic shit. Guy I work with wanted someone to clean his house windows pre Christmas, there is nobody. He was willing to spend 1500for what was probably 12 hours work. Deal in reality, find a niche and work it. You cannot compete with 6 million chinks living in shoebox trying to make a few percent selling the same shit. Same as you go to 3rd world, there is a million street sellers, all selling the same shit on every shop.

[Anonymous No.57205543]

>>57204218
I've run multiple in the past. I've never been able to scale any of them beyond more than $1k/mo, but each one only required one hour of maintenance each week. So I would run 10+ at a time. The set up is a pain in the ass though because a lot of products will just lose money but once you find winners they tend to be consistent.

[Anonymous No.57205570]

There is this product I want to sell on ebay. It is on alibaba and they want $4 to $5 a pop depending on how much you order. Minimum 200 items. These are small. You can probably fit 200 in a medium size box. They want $1200 to ship it to the US. They are insane!

[Anonymous No.57206059]

I started doing this before everyone else, and was just thinking about getting back into it. If anything I'd focus on strictly FBA clearance flips and use ebay only for high ROI flips. Ebay isn't worth how much time and effort you have to put in in order to scale. Maybe less so if you niche yourself. Don't even bother trying to go full time with this unless you're willing to dedicate a lot of time, legwork, and effort to source, list, package, ship, and do customer service and inventory.

Sourcing is key and is a lot of time and often disparaging. You're never going to compete in the Chinese trinket market, don't try. Also don't be the guy that drives the price down for everyone else just to sell through. I was also way ahead on this print on demand shit, just never pulled the trigger. It seems like it's beyond saturated at this point and not worth it.

[Anonymous No.57206078]

>>57203099
congrats on making less than min wage

[Anonymous No.57206319]

Ok you find a niche with little to no competition
How do you know there is demand? Is it just trial and error to see what actually sells?

[Anonymous No.57206343]

>>57206078
I made $60 an hour this summer lmao

[Anonymous No.57207014]

>>57203099
this nigga is still using ebay LMAOOO

[Anonymous No.57207140]

>>57207014
What else do you suggest?

Mercari sucks cock. Facebook marketplace is full of scammers. Craigslist is full of boomers. Nobody uses Toucandeal. Poshmark, and mercari restrict things?

[Anonymous No.57207160]

>>57206319
The easiest method seems to be looking for something and you can't find it. You look more and no one is selling it. You get confused thinking no I must be wrong. But you aren't wrong and should sell it yourself.

[Anonymous No.57207266]

>>57204101
none, it was a fake story

[Anonymous No.57207282]

>>57207140

Ebay is fine. Amazon if possible and Etsy as well. Have you tried FB market place already and had bad experience or is that sentiment from others?

[Anonymous No.57207392]

>>57207282
None of the stuff I have really "fits" on Amazon, and I don't want to deal with them.

Etsy is too unique, but I do have an account. FB Marketplace works occasionally for large items, but usually I just sell personal stuff. The endless hoard of hacked accounts, nigs and spics makes it every tiresome.

[Anonymous No.57207635]

>>57205537
Epic video. Also great advice. The thing is no one wants to work, they just want to collect money and work 4 hours a week. Online sales is one of the few businesses that let you do this but the learning curve is very high and cutthroat if you want to net anything over 6 figures.

[Anonymous No.57207670]

>>57203099
You've had a decade of experience. 4k net is impressive for any e-bayer so you definitely have some good sources. I do this full time and support my family. 4k-6k net is average for me so you're doing better than me by hours put in so just keep doing what you're doing. Eventually you come to a point where you'll need employees to get past some major profit hurdles. I could double my income with an employee because i'm labor short not supply short. But I don't want to train my competition and mostly I just don't want anyone coming to my home to work.

[Anonymous No.57207715]

>>57207670
>and mostly I just don't want anyone coming to my home to work.

This right here. I have too much heat at my house right now, I need some warehouse space to store inventory, and work without neighbors snooping.

My goal is to get some space within 6 months.

[Anonymous No.57207724]

>>57206319
just sell what you know about, that way you can buy cheap broken stuff and fix it yourself. what types of things are you passionate about?

[Anonymous No.57207822]

>>57207715
At what price per square foot? I really enjoy working from home. I don't like to have to leave to go work. So looking for a house with 1000+ sq ft shop or large yard to build

[Anonymous No.57207970]

>>57207724
Ive flipped pc parts on ebay before for black friday/cyber monday but i dont see that as a stable source of income unless i bought enough to last a year. Who knows how much the prices of a part could shift over a year. Things could become obsolete and tank in value. It seems risky. So that i guess. Where are ebay/newegg/amazon sellers sourcing their products?

[Anonymous No.57208034]

>>57207822
No idea. My problem is I bring in several pallets worth of shit every week, and people come over and start asking me what I'm doing, and everyone driving by can see it.

>>57207970
>Where are ebay/newegg/amazon sellers sourcing their products?

Pallet auctions, government auctions, liquidations. I started sourcing out of dumpsters and made thousands unironically.

[Anonymous No.57208162]

>>57204101
Expensive stuff
>>57207266
Thanks for the compliment retard

[Anonymous No.57208371]

>>57207160

My sister said that Organic Cream of Celery soup doesn't exist anywhere. She is a vegetarian and asked me to pick some up for a recipe during the holidays.

I'm like 2 hours away and I couldn't find any in about 4 different stores in my area. She also looked online and nothing.

It just doesn't exist which leads me to believe the market is so low though that you won't make money. However you could corner the market maybe its just not worth it for large corporations or something but as a small private label it might be not sure.

I just checked to see if she is retarded and I thought I found it after like a 30 second search and then clicked the link and it said this product doesn't exist. Lmao

Maybe there is an option if I did some more research but if there are options for specifically an organic version its difficult to find.