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Dropshipping from eBay to Amazon and FBA

Hey guys, I'm excited to bring you guys in early on what new venture I'm getting into.  I've always heard of drop shipping from eBay to Amazon or vice versa but the reason why I've never done it is because it's time consuming, the margins are low and it's kind of a shortcut win/waste of time in the long run. But things have changed and I'm excited to start!

So why am I looking into eBay/Amazon Arbitrage now?

Because it has become a clear path to importing your own products from China and building a brand. Even though I'm doing quite well with my dropshipping stores, I don't own the brands, I'm still just a middleman.  I've made over $80k in profit from my traditional dropshipping stores, but now I'm thinking long run and in the long run, I want to create my own brand.

In this post I'm going to share with you my: 5 Step Guide to dropshipping from eBay to Amazon.


dropshipping ebay amazon


Why I don't Private Label Now?


In Anton's dropshipping course, he recommends selling high priced items, which range from $200-$2,000.  Often these items are large, bulky, and even with good margins, the capital to get started is still really high.

If I were to start importing and private labeling the types of products that I currently sell in my dropshipping stores, my cost price per item would be $100 - $500 and since the minimum order quantity (MOQ) and minimum stock levels you would want to have on hand if you were to start launching a brand would be 500 units, that would be an initial investment of $50,000+ which I wouldn't be comfortable risking.  If I were to only order 50 units to get started, my prices would be much higher and if it went went well I would run out of stock and have to wait 6-8 weeks to get more from China.


minimum order quantity



How does eBay to Amazon FBA Arbitrage Work?


Its actually pretty basic and is something you can start right if you follow my steps below.  If you follow them you can start making sales within a few days, turn a small profit and most importantly, test to see if the item is worth importing from China in mass quantities or not.



Step 1: Find a underpriced item on eBay



The reason why this product is under priced at only $1 with free international shipping. is because it only has one product image, which is ugly  and has no description, brand or backstory.






Step 2: Jazz it and add perceived value



Find better quality photos, make up a brand for it, and write out a nice product description.

A man is only as useful as the tools he carries.  Keep this Knifecard in your wallet at all times, just in case.  Don't be caught in a situation wishing you had it.  You never know when you'll need it.


ORDER TODAY!



Step 3: List it for sale



If you found the item on Amazon, create a nice listing for it on eBay.  If you found the item on eBay, create a nice listing for it on Amazon.





You'll be surprised how little Amazon customers shop on eBay and vice versa.  People become loyal and stop price shopping once they have found a website where they get comfortable ordering from. Here is an example of a similar item on Amazon selling for 8x the price on Amazon, but this one has higher perceived value.  

If you really want your item to have even higher perceived value, buy the domain KnifeCards.com (which is actually avaliable), set up a simple one page website for it using Shopify and start selling on your own store off both eBay and Amazon. 



Step 4: Drive traffic and Start Selling


Start with posting in existing facebook groups that are related to your niche product niche.  Or use paid ads to target people in that group or like those types of pages.

Facebook allows you to only show ads to people who like pages such as PreppersWorld.com which is a survivalist website.  These people are your exact target audience to buy your new Knifecard.








Step 5: Fulfill your orders with Arbitrage




Whenever someone orders your product, simply collect the money through paypal or shopify payments, and then go to eBay.com and order the product for $1 + freeshipping, and have it sent to that persons address.  Make sure you tell the eBay seller that it is a "GIFT" so they don't send the invoice saying how much you paid for the item.

That's it.  If you sell the item for $9.99 and bought it for .99 cents, you just made $9 profit without ever having to touch the product. Take into account the eBay fees and facebook ad cost, and you still pocket $6.




If you haven't already, make sure you like my page to keep in touch, and share it with your friends!


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Downsides to eBay Arbitrage:


If the above 5 Step system sounds too good to be true, well, unfortunately as with everything in life there are pros and cons.  The good news is that it works.  The bad news is that it is unsustainable, time consuming and it makes you rely on an eBay shipper who can run out of inventory, decide to raise their price or drop off the face of the earth.  

But what is AWESOME about eBay arbitrage is that it is a quick, easy way to test if your product sells and if it does, it gives you both capital and confidence to start importing and private labeling your own products from China right away.



How did I learn all of this and what next?



I recently joined a course called  The Arbitrage Magician (ArbitrageMagic.com)  I have a few friends in it that do quite well and even though I know 90% of what to do, I'd rather just follow along on a course that I know works instead of potentially doing it wrong and wasting valuable time and money.

As a lot of you know, I learned how to build my first Dropshipping Store using AntonMethod.com and even though it was pretty expensive to join, it has paid me back 120x the investment the first year and is still my primary source of income today.  I have literally made over $60,000 in profit from following the steps in the course over the last year which is why I am a huge fan of paying for courses that I know actually work.



So why the heck join another course?


As a lot of you know my dream is to start importing and private labeling my own products from China.  I was tempted to put an order in for $7,500 worth of products as I'm pretty confident the niche I chose will sell well on Amazon FBA.  But honestly, its not worth trying to figure out on your own especially if there is a step by step video course out there already.

I can't personally endorse Arbitrage Magician yet because even though I have friends who have been successful with it and liked it enough to join myself, I'm still just starting out with it.  But keep in touch on this blog and I promise I'll let you guys know once I make back my initial investment from the course and give you guys the green light to start yourself.  



But in the meantime here's a sneak peek of what is inside the course:




Arbitrage Magician 1.0 vs. 2.0

I honestly wasn't that interested in the 1.0 version even though it is great for testing and getting started with no capital.  The entire reason why I am interested in the course now is because in the new version, Dr. Ben teaches you how to build your own brand and start importing and private labeling products from China and how to setup FBA.

The best part is all members of the first course also get access to the second course and vice versa which is super cool because if he ever comes out with a 3.0 version you'll get that as well.





What is Amazon FBA?


It stands for Fulfilled by Amazon and it is the most exciting thing for location independent entrepreneurs since free wifi.  Basically, instead of dealing with inventory.  You have your manufacture in China send your products directly to Amazon and they will warehouse it, pack it, and ship it out to your customers for you.  They will even handle all of the customer service, returns and exchanges, meaning you can travel around Thailand or wherever else in the world you want to be while your business runs.

The best part of it is that it is 100% scalable, which means it takes the same amount of effort on your part to sell 2 items a day or 200.  This is why I am excited for FBA.   I personally know four people in SE Asia that have products on FBA that sell between 3 - 25 products a day and they never touch it. My goal is to go through the course with my girlfriend Larissa, test our products and make the first 20 sales manually using Arbitrage 1.0 then follow Ben's steps in 2.0 to start importing products from China and sell it through FBA.





Keep in touch on the blog and I'll let you guys know when we start crushing FBA, which I have a feeling will be very very soon.  Best wishes to everyone in your own journeys, my goal is for all of my friends family and blog readers to stay up to date on what I'm currently working on and what has been proven to work so too can enjoy all of the success that I've stumbled onto this past year.


Resources mentioned in this post:



LifeChangesQuick.com

2016 Update:



I never ended up going through with Amazon FBA or Arbitrage Magician so I can't recommend them. The course itself seemed pretty good but it just wasn't for me and wasn't the best use of my time especially since I already have dropshipping stores that are profitable.

FBA is still a great way to get into ecommerce for people starting out, but during the few weeks we spent in niche research and talking with suppliers in China, I didn't find a product that I was excited about and didn't want to just do arbitrage as that's not building a real brand. If you're just looking for a way to sell from Amazon to Ebay, it's a lot simpler, you can check out my review of David Vu's Ebay course here.




Warm Regards,

Johnny

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Post a Comment

  1. Cool article! Gave me lots to think about!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Although more sustainable than drop shipping or arbitrage, building a brand and importing from China is a LOT of hard work!

    There's a lot of hard work and sleepless nights in sourcing and bargaining down a price of a product with a Chinese manufacturer over Skype for weeks, getting it imported and all of the waiting, costs and stress involved in that process, listing it on your website/amazon/ebay and then marketing.

    And then you suddenly get undercut by a seller that you can't compete with. And you've got money tied up in inventory.

    What I've found is a lot of the Chinese manufacturers import products themselves into western countries, use fulfilment similar to FBA and sell on eBay. They sell at super cheap prices as they have no marketing finesse and compete with each other. You can not compete with them. I repeat, you can not compete with them. If you can't beat em. join em.

    They import into western countries and use fulfilment similar to FBA so that they can offer 'Fast Shipping' and say they're product is 'Located in the US' as western customers are put off buying from China. These Chinese manufacturers are easy to weed out on eBay by clicking on their user ID and on their eBay my world profile page it will say 'Joined in China XX/XX/XXXX' or something similar.

    Send them a message saying you want to drop-ship! They're usually more than happy to give you discounted prices. Another bonus is they don't go to the trouble of customising their packaging with promo flyers, invoices or company names. Ask them for white background photos, product descriptions etc. and list on Amazon or your own website.

    Voila. You've just gained awesome prices that you could never get yourself by importing, saved a ton of time and have access to a huge range of products to market any way you want.

    Tyler
    me@tylerblake.com.au

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow this is so amazing, I'm 18 and I always had excuses like i don't have money, I couldn't get a business license etc. but this method eBay/Amazon Arbitrage is spot on for me.. gonna try it out in the next month!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, great comment, really informational but I got a question. Why would they(Chinese manufacturers) wanted you to drop ship for them on amazon or your site if they can do it themselves and put the product on amazon or make their own site and get 100% profit without having to give you like 20% cut.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Percieved value. You can talk to the manufacturers about putting your logo on it, or use different packaging to make it look more valuable. This with great images a good title and some good copywriting you can build a business with fba. To rank higher you need to focus on sales and reviews. A good way to do this starting out is with a product launch. Give away your product for cheap in return for reviews. Use fb ppc for that. Also you can use a company that helps with 5 star reviews and removing bad reviews. Is it risky? It can be if you don't know what your doing. But like robert kiyosaki says, even driving is risky if you don't know what your doing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great to see you branching out and continuing to push yourself, Johnny. Let me know if you need any help importing from China or creating your own product/brand. We've made every mistake possible but eventually figured out a system that works for us.

    I wrote a post on our misadventures working in China here: http://blog.tortugabackpacks.com/made-in-china

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Maks and anyone else reading,

    Yes, they (the Chinese manufacturer) are going to lose 20% profit by introducing you as a drop shipper. However, they're potentially increasing their turn over massively if you bring in sales. As with any business that owns physical inventory sitting in a warehouse or store somewhere, it's all about turn over. If you can lose 20% profit but turn over an extra 50 units a month for example, it's a no brainer.

    The Chinese are all about inventory turn over. Hence their crappy eBay listings with broken English, low prices but high sale volumes. If they were focused on high profits and lower sale volumes, they would be spending their money on graphic designers, SEO and paid marketing campaigns outside of Amazon/eBay on their own custom website and so on.

    Example:

    What's stopping you from selling the knife Johnny mentioned in the above post and marketing it as a $39 'Pro Gear' concealable personal defence weapon for single women?

    Perceived value!

    There's a gap in the market currently where you can come in and as Johhny said, market the Chinese manufacturer's product as your own brand, add sales copy, high res pictures/logos and so on. It's all about perceived value as Aaron (above comment) mentioned.

    It's just extremely hard to import from China into the US/UK/Europe/Australia due to customs, freight, financial investment and time involved. And then at the end of the day, as I mentioned, the Chinese manufacturers will see how well you're doing and just import the product themselves into your country, fulfil it similar to FBA and regardless of what you do, you won't be able to compete with them on price. This has happened to me on multiple occasions and I has produced many sleepless nights

    I'm 20 now and I've been importing since I was 17. I've spent over $20,000 on single products importing them into Australia only to be price cut by competing Chinese based manufacturers using fulfilment warehouses in my own country. You can't compete with the Chinese on price, so use their faults against them (their crappy/non existent marketing) and use their positives (fulfilment warehousing and buying power) to your advantage.

    Ironically, there's a Chinese proverb some where along the lines of 'use the enemy's own strenghts against him'.

    I could talk about this stuff for hours, even days. If you have any questions, reply to this post or email me at me@tylerblake.com.au. I'm more than happy to help!

    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well said Aaron. Business is all about emotion, which in turn creates perceived value. If you can market your brand as an authority leader in your market, tell a story about your product (fictional or true), and tell people how much your product is going to change their life, they'll want it.


    Customers are going to spend the extra money and buy from you instead of "the crappy Chinese stuff on eBay" (literally one of my customers words). Even though it is the exact same product just with your logo on it.


    Why do people buy a $1000 Samsung TV and not a $400 no name TV with the exact same specifications and build quality from the same manufacturer?


    Perceived value.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Keep us posted. Is that course really $999?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey Tyler great tips, I'll look into that as well! =)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Aaron, great advice buddy! And Tyler, EXACTLY! People don't want to buy "crappy Chinese stuff on eBay" even if it ends up being the exact same product. What we're doing for them is screening it out to make sure it's not actually crappy, taking the gamble away from the buyer. (as I really will buy test products and make sure they are good quality) and i'll make it look nicer with logos and packaging and a story.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hey Tyler, wow great backstory! Thanks for sharing so much in the comments, it's going to help a ton of people. Spot on about the dropshipping.

    Maks - Chinese importers will HAPPILY give you 20% for doing the marketing for them as they know they suck at it and don't have the time, energy or english comprehension to market properly to western customers.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hey Joe I'll keep you posted. And yup, good courses don't come cheap, but if I can make back the investment in 3 months and learn build another $60k a year business from it, then its worth it in my book.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hey Fred, thanks for the advice! Wow that V1 Tortuga looked like a joke! I'm glad the final version looks AWESOME!

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hey Maks, before you start listing your item for sale, make sure they have 10 or more available and isn't an auction. Sort by "Buy it now" and make a list of eBay sellers that have your product on hand. You can even message them and ask how many they have.

    For an example. this guy has More than 10 available / 1,884 sold



    Which means he probably has hundreds in stock.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I agree! There are lots of Amazon courses springing up at the moment (Proven Amazon Course, Amazing Selling Machine, etc) being promoted pretty hard by affiliates, so its hard to know how good they really are (not saying you are just promoting this for the affiliate income).


    Cheers,
    Joe

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hey Johnny, love the podcast and the blog. Keep up the good work! I have thought about something similar regarding your own brand from China and going down the Amazon FBA route. I do listen to other podcasts, including Tropical MBA. I'm pretty sure one of their very recent podcasts was an interview with a young bloke that has lived in China a few years now and he goes through some of the problems associated with doing business with Chinese manufacturers. Some good stuff there, if you haven't listened to it already. I've also heard about others being duped by Amazon where there are reports of people doing well with this method, where Amazon have taken notice and then basically cut out the middle man (you) by going directly to the manufacturer in China. Not sure how often this happens but I did read about it from a few different sources.
    But i like your thinking Johnny and sorry to be the devils advocate, but you seem to be going about it the right way by first testing the waters. Good luck with it and I look forward to hearing or reading about it.
    On a side note, I would hate to feed you mate! Every podcast I wait for you to mention what you have eaten, and it is normally twice as much as your guests. Cracks me up and you are so predictable :) Cheers. Jim

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hey James, glad you've been enjoying the podcast! If you haven't I'd love a review on the iTunes store from you, it would help the podcast a TON.

    We've got a list of 5 test products that we found on Ebay and we are currently setting up the first one for to test out. My plan is to relax this weekend, and to watch the next video in Arbitrage Magic with Larissa on Monday and start testing right away. Hopefully by the end of next week we'll know if it's a viable product to start sourcing! Then we can really start crushing the food =)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Drop shipping from Amazon, Walmart and other retail outlets to Ebay has been going on for a long time.. Dr Ben has many products Most product developers will do a pre-launch with select affiliates, who have a large following to boost sales and capture leads for the up-sale, As stated before some will promote anything for affiliate money,then move on to the next big thing and promote that as well.. not knocking any program or affiliate you just have to do your own research,

    ReplyDelete
  20. Hi Johnny,
    Are you still doing the ebay/amazon arbitrage?
    How did it work out for you?
    Best,

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Buddy, I never personally did it myself, but I've listed some of my items that I'm approved with as an authorized dealer using Anton's course (www.AntonMethod.com) on eBay and sold it for more than it's selling for on Amazon or even my own stores so I know it works.

      I just interviewed a guy named Mark Rubi who followed it and is successful and I've gotten a few messages from guys in the UK who have done the same that are in David's course so I know it works: http://www.travellikeabosspodcast.com/episodes/ep-91-ebay-dropshipping-success

      Delete
    2. Johnny, is there an automation to buy from eBay and ship to amazon's order? I have so much orders and get tire of buying from ebay to ship to amazon's buyer. Thank you

      Delete
  21. I just called amazon and they said that the only way i can sell on amazon is to send it to their fulfilment center. I was interested in doing what you said by listing on amazon and then using the customers payment to purchase item on ebay. Do you know if this is still allowed or did the rep i talked to give me wrong info? Help! Please :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amazon is really focused on using their own fulfillment service now. It'll be easier for you to start doing it the other way from Amazon to Ebay. Check my 2016 update above for details.

      Delete
  22. Hey Johnny,
    I currently buying from eBay and selling them on amazon. Things works great for me. Do you have a software recommendation that will buy on eBay and ship directly to amazon's order? I have so much orders and i'm getting busy!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Wow this is so amazing, I'm 18 and I always had excuses like i don't have money, I couldn't get a business license etc. but this method eBay/Amazon Arbitrage is spot on for me.. gonna try it out in the next month!

    ReplyDelete
  24. eBay's adjustments in their selling strategies and expenses has made numerous sellers anxious to investigate other online commercial centers to sell their items. Ecom Income Blueprint

    ReplyDelete

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