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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.