Stealing, well not really: If healthy competition is considered stealing, then there goes capitalism out the door.
Obviously, there are thousands of Ebay sellers making good money selling good products at good margins, so why aren’t you?
Their secret – They Know Where To Get The Products. My secret - find the auction sellers and you’ve found the suppliers.
Most sellers are lazy - I know I was. I copied and pasted descriptions of the products straight from my wholesale suppliers website. Took their pictures too, with their website URL splashed at the bottom.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, within a couple weeks my competition went from 2 to about 8 auction sellers of the same product. The average selling price dropped from $50 to $30 and my margin dropped 50% to 20%.
Most Ebay sellers won’t be so dim as to include a picture with their suppliers website address on it, but many will use their suppliers descriptions. If you take a section of this description and Google it, you may just find your supplier. Remember to try various segments of the description and to use quotes.
Now once you have found your product, your next goal is to force that supplier out of the market. Take a good look at their descriptions; record their keywords, could their images be improved.
Improve the content: Use Overture https://signup.overture.com/signup/ss/ols/signup.do, to improve keywords, and be sure to include them in your title. Also remember to include any popular misspellings of your product.
Improve the picture: Use the Google image search to find alternate pictures of your products (remember to ask permission to use them). If you can’t find any take one yourself with a quality camera. Consider hiring a professional if it’s worth it. Sometimes a quality picture matters more then other times, for instance with jewelry a quality photo is imperative.
Remember not to let anyone steal your supplier from you, don’t use any content or pictures that would guarantee you a similar fate.
Jules Boven is a professional auction seller and CEO of http://www.thewholesale-hub.com, an online resource connecting retailers to wholesalers.
