Ah the good old ebay
Do you remember Dr. Dre headphones such as beats? They were popular back then. Everyone on ebay were selling them. I even bought 1 or 2 for myself. They came in different colours and models. I remember there was one with Lamborghini beats headphones which came in yellow and red colour to choose from.
I think it was around 2011 or 2012 (lost track of the year). One of my old friend said even one of his friend was selling beats for cheap around his neighbourhood in town. Normally, It would cost you around £220-£240 for one beats (can’t think exact price in my head).
Anyhow, I thought I would sell it as well. On hindsight, it was to only make quick money not to get rich (obviously).
Enter dropshipping
I won’t go explaining full details on what dropshipping is. But in essence, you buy the product from a merchant at lower price and sell it to your customer for higher price without you having to touch the product where the merchant does this all on behalf of you and whatever the difference is your profit. AKA you are the middlemen. See below image to understand.
Enter China’s ebay
You probably know or heard of Alibaba and Aliexpress. Well I still have accounts with them but have not ordered anything till now. Although I have had in the past when I did Amazon FBA (not related to this ebay).
But there were other similar site like Alibaba. One is called Dhgate (surprise they are still live as of writing this XD). See below.
Selling beats on ebay
So I already had an account on ebay. Based on the above dropshipping model. I went on ebay and created a listing (put pictures, description, price etc.) for the beats headphones. I just put one Dr. Dre headphone for sale. Since it was selling around £220-£240 at the time, I decided to sell it at £120 about half the price. Within few days of my listing, I sold 2 or 3. I got the money in my paypal account. I then used that money to order from Dhgate.com and forwarding them my customer details (address) so that they ship to customer.
My customers from ebay were not happy (for obvious reason) when they got it. Since they found out it came from China and took more than a week (maybe even 10 or 12 days) to get to them. I paid Dhgate £60 a headphone, leaving me a £60 difference or profit. I managed to sell maybe 8-10 which profited me £480-£600.
Oh well
While I was selling beats, at one time my listing got removed. Ebay was warning me about the listing. I did not know at the time when it happened. I again created a new listing. They removed it because they knew I was not selling the original beats. Yes, aka counterfeit beats. Obviously, the product was from China. After the second removal they banned my account.
I was unable to login to my account. As soon as that happened, I opened my paypal account and withdrew whatever the money was left in Paypal. They did not get the chance to hold the money. If I had been late withdrawing they would have held the amount. At the time ebay owned paypal. Now they are seperated.
And few days after ebay ban, my paypal account got banned too. Although I have new ebay and paypal account now.
And I don’t do dropshipping headphones anymore. Be careful there are people selling course on how to do dropship on ebay. Personally, I would not buy their course. I would stay away.
