Make Money From An Ebay Dropshop

Thankfully when a site or marketplace is as big as one such as the Ebay website various different ways of making money from the popularity and reputation of the online auctionplace. We've already talked about many of the ways of earning money through using the Ebay site, but when it comes to making money from an Ebay dropshop you have to take advantage of the ebay brand offline as well as online.

What Is An Ebay Drop Shop

An Ebay drop shop is simply a physical shop or service whereby you offer to sell someones possessions on the Ebay website, taking a percentage of the final sale price as a form of payment. You may be wondering why someone would be willing to give you their items to sell on Ebay, and why not just sell it themselves? Well, there is actually a couple of reasons as to why someone may not be happy to do this. Firstly, not everyone has a computer with access to the internet. This rules them out from being able to make the auction themselves. Secondly, not everyone has the right sort of equipment - its likely that you will want to take a photo of the item that you are selling, as auctions with pictures sell for a lot more money then auctions without one. If they don't have a camera then they may prefer to let you sell the item on their behalf. Thirdly, someone may have computer and internet access but they may not be very savvy when it comes to listing an item for sale on Ebay. In this instance they are unable to list the item for sale, and so would happily let someone do it for them on their behalf. Finally, and probably the most likely reason for someone to use an ebay drop shopping service is that they simply cannot be bothered or do not have the time to put the item for sale on Ebay themselves.

Selling Items On Ebay

If you've ever listed an item for sale on Ebay you will probably understand the last point above in quite a bit of detail and will hopefully relate to some of the points below. Many people use Ebay but a lot are only ever buyers, and they don't sell their belongings much and if they do its simply just once or twice. To sell an item you will need to take a photograph of the product you are selling and will need to upload it onto your computer. You then need to set up an Ebay account if you don't already have one. You need to write a description of your item, and set a postage cost and upload the picture. You need to list the auction correctly or you risk it being sold and way below the value of the product. Then you need to respond to any questions from Ebay members regarding the item you are selling. Next, when the auction is complete, you need to wait for the winning bidder to send their payment. You'll need to make sure that you have a Paypal account set up ready for the payment. Some buyers take forever to pay, or simply don't bother paying, so you need to spend time rushing up slow payments or re-listing auctions. Next you will need to parcel up your sold possessions and label them up before making a trip to your local post offiice to send the item out. Finally, you need to keep a record of posting the item out and deal with any unhappy customers who may leave negative feedback if they fail to receive the item or aren't happy in some way. Most Ebayers are fine, but many of them will kick up a fuss over the slightest thing. And remember that as the Ebay seller you cannot leave negative feedback for a buyer, another smart move recently implemented by Ebay...
As you can probably tell, there is a fair bit of work involved in selling your items on Ebay, and this is why so many people are simply willing to pay someone to sell the posessions on your behalf.

How To Set Up An Ebay Dropshop

If we haven't put you off setting up an Ebay dropshop by explaining the selling process above, then you will surely be interested in setting up your own Ebay dropshop in your local area. Selling on Ebay isn't exactly hard, but for the average seller who only gets rid of 1 or 2 items a year it can be a bit of a nuisance. As a seller you will pick up a lot of experience and will get into a good routine when it comes to selling items, meaning you will be able to take out much of the stress and effort involved in selling.

To set up an Ebay dropshop you will either need to have a location for people to drop their Ebay items off to you, which is a great idea, or you can go round to peoples houses asking if they have any items that they would like sold. You can easily find customers using the second method, but in our opinion it is best if you do both - offer a physical presence (which gives customers more faith in your service) so that people can drop items off to you whenever they want and also go round to peoples houses trying to generate interest in your service.

Making Money From A Dropshop

Most dropshops charge the customers a certain percentage of the final sale price of the auction, usually around 10% but this probably depends on the item being sold. For example, you might go to a dropshop and give them a DVD to sell. They sell the DVD for £6. After the Ebay fees have been removed, the dropshop gets £5 profit from the sale. But they don't keep the full profit - only 10% in this instance. This means that they keep £0.50p from selling the item, and you get £4.50 back. You may decide that you want to charge a set fee per item as well as a percentage, so that you get a decent return even for the items which don't sell for very much money. So you could charge £2 per item sold, as well as asking for a 10% cut of every sold item. So for the DVD that sold for £6 in the example above, you would get £2 from the customer and £0.50, so a profit of £2.50.

Ebay Dropshop Research To Do Before Setting Up Shop

Before going ahead and setting up your own Ebay dropshop you will need to do a little research. Are there any other dropshops already set up in your local area? If so, you might find it too hard competing for business, and so not worth setting up. You may discover that you live in an area which population mainly consists of people aged 60 and above - and although they have the nickname of the silver surfers and a reputation for being very internet savvy, you may get a lot of success setting up an Ebay dropshop in this kind of area as many of the people would probably be excited at the thought of selling items on a trendy site like Ebay despite not having any knowledge of how to do it themselves.

As you can probably imagine, a lot of your business will be found offline as most people that use the Internet will be able to list items on Ebay themselves and so won't be willing to pay you to do it on their behalf. By advertising in local shop windows not only will you keep costs down but you will appeal to the right sort of market. Word of mouth will be one of the best aspects of your dropshop, and soon you will have hundreds of people queing up to dump their old posessions on you to sell on Ebay! You are likely to discover a couple of gems amongst the hordes of unsellable tat, which is when that 10% final selling fee charge comes in very handy...

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