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How to compete with rock bottom priced Chinese sellers on eBay?

How To Compete With The Low Prices On eBay From Chinese Sellers?

I constantly get people messaging me asking how they can possibly compete with the low priced Chinese sellers? Many of you who purchase inventory from Alibaba, Ali Express, DHGate, etc, are going to find that the same manufactures, traders, and resellers selling products to you wholesale are also selling those products on eBay themselves oftentimes for around the same price as your buying them for, sometimes even less. How is this possible and how can you possibly compete?

My biggest piece of advice is don't get in a race to the bottom with other sellers on price. Not only is it not an effective strategy but it doesn't work as there's always going to be someone willing to work on smaller margins and there's always going to be someone who can source products cheaper than you. 

Instead of trying to compete on price sell your item for more and get buyers to buy it. So how do you do this?

Couple strategies. One is simply you have the benefit of being in the USA. Many buyers don't want to buy from outside of the USA so Chinese sellers aren't even competition. Many buyers don't want to wait 3 weeks for an item to arrive via epacket so they are willing to pay a few bucks more to order from you instead. Another strategy for selling for more money is to optimize your eBay listings well so you rise above others in searches on eBay. Ultimately whoever ranks highest in search will sell the most items. One last strategy is private labeling. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about private labeling but if it's something your interested in learning about watch this video on private labeling. 

What is the biggest challenge to selling on eBay?

What is the biggest challenge to selling on eBay?

So what is the biggest challenge to selling on eBay? Ultimately I would say there are two main challenges. The first has to do with getting started. It's incredibly difficult to first break in with a new account, low selling limts, and low feedback and sales rank. When you start out eBay doesn't show you high in searching ranking which in turn means your items won't sell. This is really a phase all eBay sellers go through and it's something you just have to be patient and get through.

The other biggest challenge to selling on eBay is dealing with customers. I think many eBay sellers would agree eBay buyers are probably some of the dumbest and most difficult buyers on the internet. I'm not sure whether eBay attracts stupid people or whether people are emboldened by the generous buyer protection and refund policies eBay implements to where they can extort money out of sellers but that is honestly one of the biggest problems. eBay sellers are incredibly demaning.

You can put a two day handling time on an item and you'll have buyers messaging you within hours of buying an item asking if it's shipped yet.

One instance which comes to mind is a guy purchased an item from me on a Saturday evening at about 11PM. He got my home phone number from my eBay account and started calling me at 6AM on Sunday morning asking why he didn't receive his package yet. I had to say well sir first of all you opted for the FREE shipping which is USPS 1st Class Mail. Secondly you ordered on Saturday night and items typically aren't delivered within 8 hours, especially on a Sunday when mail nor Fedex nor UPS runs. This is pretty much the norm in terms of the type of stuff you will deal with as a seller.

You also tend to run into problems regarding USPS shipping. USPS is NOT true tracking, it's delivery confirmation. This means it's not up to date and the only scan required is upon delivery. Despite this buyers will insist you didn't ship an item just because you didn't have a scan yet. You'll also get buyers claiming that the package is stuck in your city because it got an initial scan but hasn't gotten anything since.

Things are somewhat combative between buyers and sellers on many platforms with buyers saying sellers are the worst and sellers saying buyers are the worst. The truth is to some extent both are true. 

What Product You Choose To Sell Is The Most Important Element To Your eBay Success

What You Choose To Sell Is The Main Factor In eBay Success

Many people ask me what the most important thing is in determining if you will be a successful seller on eBay. I would have to say it's what item or items you choose to sell. You can be the best marketer in the world, the best sales person in the world, the best at eBay SEO and product promotion but if people don't have a need or want your product nobody will buy it.

Now that's not to say eBay SEO, listing optimization, quality of listings is not important, it's very important. You can pick a top selling product but if you have crappy listings you won't sell it. So how you go about things is important but ultimately the first step to success is making sure you select a good product.

So how do you know what a good product is? You could blindly throw darts at a wall picking and ordering small quantities of products and testing them out, or you could do some research before hand using a program like Terapeak and know with certainty an item is selling say $10,000 worth of product a week with a 100% sell through rating.

Now again just because others are having success with that product doesn't mean you will, but at the very least you know there's a demand for what your selling. From there it's up to you, your sales rank, seller metrics, listing optimiztion and if you go about doing all that correctly your listings will rank high and in turn sell.

For me personally Terapeak is critical to my eBay success both in finding products, sourcing products, and running analytics to make sure the products I find are going to be winners. You can actually get a FREE 7 Day Trial to Terapeak to try it out if you like. 

Make $300 Your First Month On eBay

Make $300 Your First Month On eBay

Are you new to eBay and struggling? Are your items not selling at all? Are your items not selling for as much as you would like them to? This is likely for a couple reasons. 

Though it's possible your listing isn't well optimized, maybe you could use a better title, description, pictures, etc. Likely the main reason your not selling items is that you don't have a high enough feedback and/or sales rank.

People who are established sellers in a specific category, and who have a proven record of happy customers get shown higher in search. As a new seller you don't necessarily have any negative strikes against you, however you also don't have a good track record so eBay buries you in searches and if your items don't show up high in searches people won't see them and in turn people won't buy them.

What if I told you there was a way to build up your feedback, build up your sales rank, and do it while making $300 in your first 30 days on eBay?

Get Free Amazon Products To Resell On eBay

The Method

Okay, so in the past I've actually bought popular items and sold them at a loss. I didn't care because my ultimate goal was not to make money selling these items, it was just to give my eBay account a boost. 

As you know as a new seller it'd difficult to break in. What I did on my last new eBay account was buy 50 iPod remotes. I paid $5 for them. I sold them all at 0.99 cent auctions with free shipping. While some of these wound up selling for $8 or $9, many of them sold for 0.99 cents or maybe $1.99. I was losing money, but like I said I didn't care because the goal wasn't to make a profit on these items, it was just to get some sales under my belt, raise my feedback, raise my seller rank, build up some seller metrics.

Once I did this, future items I listed would sell organically because I had spent the time building up some sales rank.

How You Can Build Up Sales Rank While Making $300+ Your First Month

Okay so not many people want to buy items to sell at a loss. Totally understandable. I have since found an even better method.

Many people don't know that you can get FREE Amazon products just for leaving reviews. For those of you who aren't aware Amazon is a very competitive market. Most items will only sell once they have built up 15 or 20+ reviews. Because of this Amazon sellers give away free or discounted products in return for buyers like you leaving an honest review on Amazon.

Here's how it works. You go to a site like ReviewKick.Com. You shop/browse the various products being given away. Some are FREE, others are heavily discounted at 80% or so off. 

So here's the method. You request a bunch of free products. Within a day or so sellers will approve your request and provide you with a promo code. You go buy their item on Amazon. During the checkout process you enter the promo code they provided you with which will take the total due from say $39.95 to $0. YOu get the free product. Uphold your part of the deal by leaving an honest review on Amazon and then you have completed your obligation to the seller and ReviewKick. 

At this point the item is yours to do with what you want. You list this item on eBay. I wouldn't expect to get the full retail value but on say a $39.95 item I would expect you'll probably sell it for $18 or $20. Regarldless of what it sells for it was free for you so even if it sells for $2, that's 100% profit and money in the bank for you. As an added bonus it also gives you a feedback and builds up your sales rank. 

I regularly get about a dozen packages a week from these review exchange sites and I primarily use only 2 or 3 of them. All in all there's probably well over a 100 different review exchange platforms from sites like ReviewKick and AMZ REview Trader which are more shopping platforms, there's also facebook groups, e-mail lists, and more. Here's a list to over 40 sites where you can get free Amazon products in exchange for your honest review. The more of these sites you signup for the more free stuff you will get. 

For those of you who don't know much about Amazon, the sweet spot for Amazon FBA items, due to the high fees charged for Amazon fulfillment, is anywhere from $15 to $50. This means that the stuff your getting for free is not crappy little items, it's generally stuff which would retail between $20 and $50. I've gotten everything from leather messenger bags, hoverboards, kitchen utensils, bluetooth speakers, and more. Some of the stuff I keep for myself and some of the stuff I resell. 

Now with an average price even on the low end of say $30, if you get a dozen products a month which can easily be done you have $360 in inventory. I typically get about a dozen or more products a week so that's about $1440 a month worth of product. Even if I only get 50% resale value on those products that's still $720 profit, and that's all 100% profit, all while building up my sales rank, seller metrics and feedback.

Get The List - Start Getting Free Amazon Products To Resell For eBay Riches!!!