How I Made A Fortune On Ebay Using Dropshippers... And Then Lost It All
In April of 2013, everything changed. I had been selling and shipping on Ebay for several years with moderate success, and still living paycheck to paycheck. The economy was starting to turn around after the 2008 recession, but it wasn't until the famous "Ebay Tsunami" in 2013 that I finally found my niche.
Everything went as planned until I reached $20/day with an average sale of just over $200 during November 2013. From then on it was just a few days at a time where I would get between $500-$1000 per day with relatively low volume, but not consistent enough to make my business worthwhile or sustainable long term without staying there. It was my dream come true, but ultimately unattainable.
For the first time in my life I had a substantial amount of money to play with. After taxes and my living expenses I cleared about $1000/day to work with... Problem was, I didn't know what to do with it! By the time I got into selling on Ebay, I spent all of my spare time and energy on building up that business. And when it started to take off, it became a full-time job! Not only did I spend more than 18 hours a day operating that business, but I also didn't have anything else going on in my personal life either. I was literally living and breathing Ebay.
It was during this time that I saw my own opportunity to make some quick easy money back in the day, but just didn't know how to go about it. I had a couple of dropshippers who were making decent money for themselves, but they weren't promoting their dropshipping business on Ebay. I remember seeing them dropping their prices and selling for way below market value... And with good reason: there wasn't a whole lot of buyers on Ebay at the time. Remember when it was really just hobbyists trading cards? And what about those who really couldn't do Ebay themselves... They were still buying from them anyway!
I was in disbelief. What the hell was going on? Why aren't the sellers helping themselves with this market? It was no secret that dropshippers were making good money for themselves, and I could sell a ton of items at a discount to make my own living without having to deal with Ebay fees and paypal fees... But I didn't do it. I was an Ebay seller, not a dropshipper.
Before long, my personal life started to be affected by my massive income discrepancy. I had never been broke in my life, even as a kid. All of the sudden I had some nice things that revolved around Ebay... A few nice bikes, an expensive PC upgrade, a watch and other things. I was living the life! And there was no way in hell that I would want to go back to my old life of struggling to just make ends meet.
I had a newfound lust for money.
Then after reaching $1000/day the ebbs and flows of the market put me down below $500/day again... This worried me a lot! I knew that Ebay wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, but what if there were better opportunities out there? What if I could switch to Amazon FBA or try wholesaling on amazon? Or what if I tried something else entirely?
So I took stock of my life. It really wasn't all that bad compared to lots of other people. I had a nice home, a nice car, and I was making a decent living. But there was one thing that I didn't have, and it was the most important thing of all: stability.
I wanted to build up my financial security for the rest of my life in order to enjoy the time that's left, and not be unable to take care of my family when they need help. I had an opportunity right in front of me... And I blew it!
But this time there would be no mistakes made... I was going to succeed!
$10,000/Month Ebay Dropshipping Business
I went back to basics, and by basic, I meant just that: straight up selling on Ebay. No dropshipping involved. Just some of the best items at the lowest prices, and you guessed it... It started the same way as when I learned how to sell on Ebay in the first place: a few small orders here and there with a moderate volume. And then there was that one day that changed my life and essentially my business for good.
You see, I had just gotten back from a week-long vacation with my girlfriend and we took a road trip down to Miami. Needless to say, I was exhausted from the long drive down there, so we decided to stay there for a few days. I remember checking Ebay before bed and saw an order that came in overnight... One of my items sold for over $10,000! My jaw dropped!
I couldn't wait until morning when the buzzer would sound off every hour on the hour that we were on Eastern Standard Time. I wanted to know how much more money I could make on Ebay.
When it was noon on the hour, I immediately ran right over to check my sales for the day. All of the sudden, there were 10 orders in total that had sold for $500-$1000 each... In just a few hours! It wasn't enough, but it was a start. It wasn't long before I was averaging over $1000/day selling on Ebay... But it wasn't sustainable. Every time sales started to pick up, Ebay pulled my items from their system and made me wait until they were back up before they would let me ship again. It was brutal!
After a couple weeks once I got back from Miami, I took a step back and realized that it simply wasn't worth the hassle. It became clear that Ebay dropshipping is not the best way to make money on Ebay. That's when I had the epiphany...
I figured, "Hey! Why not do something different with my dropshipping business?" In my mind, I didn't really want to quit; I just wanted to make it work better than it was working now. So what did I do?
I left everything as is and went into research mode. There were plenty of sellers selling similar items as me on Ebay on all different categories... But when I reviewed how their business was set up, it was all different than mine. They had large sell orders with a lot of items that they were selling themselves, or they just had a ton of dropshippers working for them. Then there were others where the sellers were taking advantage of every single niche on Ebay to make money on each and every category... They had a ton of items that they were dealing in with no real knowledge about the product or service itself. They just knew how to work the system!
But many of these businesses weren't so good at what they did.
Conclusion
I quickly realized that to be a successful entrepreneur, you had to know how to make money. And if you don't know how to do something, it's probably not going to work out in the long run. Just because someone can't do something themselves doesn't mean that they are fit for it... That's what I figured out for myself when I started my Ebay dropshipping business on Ebay, and most salespeople run into the same problems. Most salespeople will always need factories and customers and people working for them at all times, but this is NOT how an entrepreneur operates! An entrepreneur runs his or her own business with hard work and effort. They don't need people...