For 4 months I didn’t even make $100 profit on eBay. But thanks to a mysterious message from another seller, the “world’s smallest” smartphone, and a few tricks I learned along the way, I created an eBay business generating $5,000+ per month of profit. Here’s my story…
From $0 to $5000 profit on eBay
Have you ever typed “how to make money online” into Google, desperately hoping that somewhere in the 192 million search results, you’ll find a way?
In 2016 my life completely changed when my girlfriend told me she wanted us to move from Israel to Germany to do her master’s degree. And whilst I was super excited to live with her in another country, there was one huge problem I found out soon after we landed… it was IMPOSSIBLE to get a job without speaking German.
So instead of learning German, I did what most people do when they’re stuck, I turned to the internet. I found all kinds of scams, get rich schemes and online courses promising you’ll be a millionaire in 3 days.
Side note: Check out my dropshipping course, that consolidates everything I have learned in the last 4 years.
But amongst them, I saw a YouTube video talking about how to become an eBay dropshipper. I admit, at the time I laughed at it, and wondered how anyone could possibly make money competing with over 168 million eBay sellers.
However, with no luck finding anything else, and my bank balance getting lower by the day, I decided to put my skepticism aside and try to learn how to drop ship on eBay…
My first attempt at eBay dropshipping
I soon found that trying to do it alone was much harder than I first thought…
I couldn’t even answer basic questions like; What products would I sell? How would I find them? How much profit should I make to cover eBay fees? What happens if a customer complains? What’s a “niche”?
So I joined a small online Amazon to eBay dropshipping community. It offered some basic training videos to get me started, and soon after, with some excitement, I started listing my first items.
My #1 challenge was finding profitable items that I could sell
So I tried 2 different methods:
1. I’d go straight to Amazon and search through different category “best sellers”, copying the titles into eBay to see if they could be sold for more. If they could, I’d list them.
2. Alternatively, I’d go to eBay and see what hot selling items my competitors were selling. Then I’d copy the item into Amazon to see if there was a big enough price difference to make a profit.
I struggled to sell just 1 item per day
I was managing to list 180 items/month but only about 20 of these “hot selling” items were actually selling. That was less than 1 per day – and whilst occasionally I’d get lucky and make $5 profit on an item, sometimes I didn’t make any profit at all.
For my first 4 months, I persisted, trying exactly the same thing but still, I was only making between $60 – $100, and my inbox was filling with emails from eBay saying “sorry, your item didn’t sell”.
I became desperate
And as Christmas approached, I began to get frustrated. I was convinced that dropshipping could work. As a business model it was exactly what I’d been looking for, low cost, low risk, very scalable and could be run from anywhere.
What was more frustrating was that I’d managed to sell a few items for a decent profit but the problem was that I didn’t know how to consistently find profitable items. For every great item I found, 20 more in my store weren’t selling.
So one day I reached out for help…
Getting help from a successful eBay seller…
Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I noticed a post similar to this in the dropshipping community I’d joined:
(This one is from the Zik Facebook Group that you can join here)
How was it that this guy was finding all these items that were selling like crazy whilst I was struggling to even make $100 in profit?!
He wasn’t working 10x more than me, so what was I missing?
I fired off a message to him:
“I need your help, I’ve been trying for 4 months now, what’s your secret?”
And to my surprise, he actually replied.
Sadly he didn’t tell me his secret. But instead, he sent me a link to a phone, told me to list it on eBay and then use it to work out what I was doing wrong myself.
Curious by this, I took his advice. When just 4 hours later, I heard the distinctive eBay noise:
$$ KERCHING $$ KERCHING $$
It had sold…for $5 profit.
And 2 hours after that…
$$ KERCHING $$ KERCHING $$
Another sale! I’d struck GOLD!
I felt fantastic, but still, I was confused. Why was it that this phone could be sold for such a $5 profit and how could I find other items just like this?
So I made it my mission to find out.
Getting help from a successful eBay seller…
The first thing I noticed was that Amazon restricted me to only ordering 4 phones.
And then it hit me.
All this time I’d been searching for items by checking the “best sellers” list on Amazon which focuses solely on demand. What I hadn’t been doing, was looking at the supply. Think about it, if a product sells 100 times a day, it might sound great, but how would I know if it really was without looking at the total supply too?
Video: How To Find Profitable Items To Dropship on eBay
My magic eBay Formula
So I created my own formula. I’d find an item, then copy the product title back into eBay to find all the listings. From that, I’d use eBay to tell me the total amount sold and the total amount listed.
Quite quickly a pattern emerged. Every item that was worth dropshipping was selling at least 60% of the total supply.
BINGO
Finally, I had a way to check if an item should sell before I’d even listed it!
And then by sheer luck, I saw a seller with only 96% positive feedback that stocked a tiny phone with the title as “the world’s smallest phone”.
Yet despite his poor feedback rating (for eBay most people are 99%-100% positive), he was still selling hundreds of these phones.
So I found the item on Amazon, and guess what…I started selling the same phone too, with the same keywords.
$$ KERCHING $$ KERCHING $$
Not only did it sell like crazy but I realized why.
People weren’t searching eBay for a specific make and model of the phone because the brand wasn’t important to them when making their buying decision. Instead, they cared about buying a small phone, hence they searched for the “world’s smallest phone”. And because I had a better feedback rating, people were more trusting of me than the other seller.
And when I went back to Amazon, I saw something else…
Ever notice how Amazon suggests similar items?
Well, it turned out there were other phones being sold as “the world’s smallest phone” that I could list too!
I tested it out. I took all kinds of phones and soon I had a niche store of the “world’s smallest” phones.
It paid off. Within 2 months my profit skyrocketed to $2500 with 600/700 of my listings selling each month. I was inundated with notifications of sales and items being paid, and suddenly I was enjoying every second of selling on eBay, the best online marketplace in my opinion
Scaling from $2500 to $5000
My target was $5,000 profit, and with a 30 day month, that meant aiming for $167 profit every day. With an average profit margin of $5, I needed to sell 33 items each day and because I was selling around 80% of my listings, that meant I expected to list 40 items for every 33 I sold.
So I took my listing technique one step further. Instead of just replacing keywords for products, I started looking for other hot selling listings with titles where I could replace the product.
Want to see how to take it to the next level? Check out our Aliexpress to eBay guide.
Example above: Nothing in the listing title is specific to the actual brand, make and model of the night-light. You could easily find a different night-light to dropship with this title.
I filled my store with non-brand items like HDMI cables, security sensors, car radios and household goods that people simply don’t care about the make and brand. And once I found hot selling listings, I sourced cheaper alternatives from Amazon so that I could maintain a high profit margin.
It worked. And combining all these techniques, I finally did it – I’d hit $5000+ profit in 1 month.
Key Takeaways
If I could do this then so can you. But to give you a shortcut, here are some lessons I learned along the way:
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- Setting yourself bold targets like “to make $5,000 profit” is fine, but you need to make them into smaller goals so that you stay on target. If you don’t hit a goal for the day, don’t beat yourself up about it the next day, move on and try again.
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- To win on eBay, you need a winning strategy. You can work as hard as you want but if you don’t understand how eBay works, or know the right approach to dropshipping then you’ll continue to struggle for profits.
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- Market research is essential to finding profitable items to dropship. Use the 60% total sales/ total supply formula! If you don’t spend time researching properly before listing items, then you’ll waste time listing products that will never sell.