Hi all,
I've been reading the forum for the last year and thinking what should I do to own my business. How to start, what to sell, how to make it happen. And I can tell you that this forum gave me the encouragement and knowledge to leave my inertia and do something.
I have a well paid job, but it's a job. I want more to life than working to someone else like many people in this forum. But at the same time, I need to start something that I can manage in conjunction with my job and family, so I decided to explore high volume, low cost products and sell online.
At the same time, my current objective is to learn the process of finding a product, suppliers, ordering from overseas, dealing with shipment, customs, setting up an online store and selling the first unit and so on...
Through this forum I found out more Alibaba.com and if you spend some time searching you can find great deals on quality products. To find the margin and demand for products I've been doing my howework on eBay, which is a great place to start. It gives you actual selling price, units sold per product, model and colour over time. The product I chose has a lot of competition, that's fine, but it has very high demand and at this point in time I'm not in for the big bucks, but just for the learning experience. And I found a niche where I will learn the process and start with a 50%+ margin.
So I decided to make my first purchase through alibaba.com a couple of weeks ago and it went very smoothly. Through the website ratings and comments you can easily see who are your safest suppliers, how much they've been selling, to whom, where and customer feedback. Also I found my product with a very good price, but quite expensive shipment (I ordered through an express shipment via DHL which costed me more that the 20 units of the product I ordered), however it still allows me to charge a 50% minimum margin when I calculate the unit price with shipment included.
To my pleasant surprise, the product arrived last friday and the quality is excellent. Much better than I anticipated and today I made my first sell, with actually a 120% margin. If I keep selling at the same price, 9 units will pay for my investment so far and the remainder 11 units will be the profit that will finance my next round of ordering. Not bad.
That's only the start. Still a long way to go. If I decide to setup an eBay store I need to think strategically on which products to have, line extensions, etc. because eBay charges a $50 flat monthly fee + commissions. So it starts eating my margins quite agreessively. Also, as I said the category has a lot of competition so I'm thinking of creating a brand for my product so I can start charging a premium instead of commoditising it. My current plan is to pay $300 bucks for a branding job through any of those crowd sourcing websites and see what comes up. And then check with suppliers if they have the ability to add my branding to the product.
That's where I'm at at the moment. Will keep you posted on my further learnings and experiences.
All the best
I've been reading the forum for the last year and thinking what should I do to own my business. How to start, what to sell, how to make it happen. And I can tell you that this forum gave me the encouragement and knowledge to leave my inertia and do something.
I have a well paid job, but it's a job. I want more to life than working to someone else like many people in this forum. But at the same time, I need to start something that I can manage in conjunction with my job and family, so I decided to explore high volume, low cost products and sell online.
At the same time, my current objective is to learn the process of finding a product, suppliers, ordering from overseas, dealing with shipment, customs, setting up an online store and selling the first unit and so on...
Through this forum I found out more Alibaba.com and if you spend some time searching you can find great deals on quality products. To find the margin and demand for products I've been doing my howework on eBay, which is a great place to start. It gives you actual selling price, units sold per product, model and colour over time. The product I chose has a lot of competition, that's fine, but it has very high demand and at this point in time I'm not in for the big bucks, but just for the learning experience. And I found a niche where I will learn the process and start with a 50%+ margin.
So I decided to make my first purchase through alibaba.com a couple of weeks ago and it went very smoothly. Through the website ratings and comments you can easily see who are your safest suppliers, how much they've been selling, to whom, where and customer feedback. Also I found my product with a very good price, but quite expensive shipment (I ordered through an express shipment via DHL which costed me more that the 20 units of the product I ordered), however it still allows me to charge a 50% minimum margin when I calculate the unit price with shipment included.
To my pleasant surprise, the product arrived last friday and the quality is excellent. Much better than I anticipated and today I made my first sell, with actually a 120% margin. If I keep selling at the same price, 9 units will pay for my investment so far and the remainder 11 units will be the profit that will finance my next round of ordering. Not bad.
That's only the start. Still a long way to go. If I decide to setup an eBay store I need to think strategically on which products to have, line extensions, etc. because eBay charges a $50 flat monthly fee + commissions. So it starts eating my margins quite agreessively. Also, as I said the category has a lot of competition so I'm thinking of creating a brand for my product so I can start charging a premium instead of commoditising it. My current plan is to pay $300 bucks for a branding job through any of those crowd sourcing websites and see what comes up. And then check with suppliers if they have the ability to add my branding to the product.
That's where I'm at at the moment. Will keep you posted on my further learnings and experiences.
All the best
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