Many dropshippers face a lot of struggles before succeeding. Problems like delayed shipments, pricing mistakes, lousy customer support, and a flat website design are a major issue in this line of work. If you are a beginner, you are likely to face some hard times, just like in any job. Different tools are readily available online and can help you manage some of these problems. In this article, I will discuss some tools that can make eBay dropshipping a bit easier and your success a bit faster.

Tools for eBay dropshipping

Auto DS

Auto DS is a tool that assists you to import product listings to your eBay store. It is capable of automatically connecting with your supplier when a customer makes an order of your product on eBay and goes further to monitor the entire process. This tool helps you prevent many losses by reducing the cancellation of orders. A premium Auto DS plan can scan well over 40,000 dropshippers in 24 hours. You can try out any of their plans for only $1 before paying for a monthly subscription.

ZIK Analytics

ZIK Analytics is a tool suitable for eBay dropshipping that helps sellers find profitable products using real marketplace data. You do not even have to spend hours scrolling through eBay listings to figure out what might sell. This tool focuses on product research, keyword tracking, and competitor analysis, making ZIK’s eBay product research tool a helpful option for spotting winning products faster. It is especially useful for beginners who want a clearer way to validate products before adding them to their store.

Pricefox

Pricefox is a tool suitable for eBay dropshipping that helps you monitor price changes on eBay. You do not even have to visit the eBay website. This tool previously focused on pricing, but it now offers more features like a competitor research tool and duplicate listing checker. You also get access to over 500 suppliers and a 3-day free trial for starters.

DSM

DSM tool is a very powerful tool that gives you access to over 50 suppliers. It helps you source for products to sell and list them on eBay. This tool provides support through Facebook for international languages and monitors price changes on eBay every hour. You can have a maximum of 25 item listings for a free monthly plan with this tool.

Salefreaks

Salefreaks offers you 50% off for your first monthly subscription. This tool may not offer any free trial, but its services will give you nothing else but success in your business. This tool enables Amazon to eBay dropshipping and only takes three minutes to set up. It is capable of finding highly discounted products to sell using coupons. Salefreaks is an auto pricer and generals search engine optimized listings for your business to thrive.

EASYNC

EASYNC is a tool that can be integrated with Amazon, Walmart, AliExpress, and eBay. It helps you dropship products from those sites to eBay. It has a very successful Google Chrome extension that has been highly rated by users. It helps you track the prices of products regularly and automatically make orders from your suppliers. You can get a free forever plan with at most 100 listings with this tool.

You can check out dropshipping tools – review on auto DS and Easync, each do a good job with Ebay dropshipping, but there are differences.”

ZIK Analytics

ZIK Analytics is a tool suitable for eBay dropshipping that helps sellers find profitable products using real marketplace data. You do not even have to spend hours scrolling through eBay listings to figure out what might sell. This tool focuses on product research, keyword tracking, and competitor analysis, making ZIK Analytics eBay product research tool a helpful option for spotting winning products faster. It is especially useful for beginners who want a clearer way to validate products before adding them to their store.

Conclusion

All the tools I have discussed above serve you in different ways. eBay dropshipping is a profitable business with many success stories available online as evidence. It requires strategy, and these tools can be a huge boost towards success. It is up to you to list down the needs for your business to be able to select the best tool.

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If you own an online store, expanding onto an e-commerce marketplace like eBay is an excellent opportunity to reach more customers. However, like all small businesses with multiple conflicting priorities, it is easily put into the too-hard-basket.

Before you put off the idea of selling on eBay completely, keep in mind that certain eBay listing software can assist with the endeavor. Here is a simple step-by-step walk-through on how to research, quantify and determine whether selling on eBay could be the right expansion model for your business.

Get a solid sales estimate of the opportunity

Having realistic expectations of sales will help you determine whether selling on eBay is an endeavour worth pursuing. To create a solid sales estimate, we must first identify the segment of the marketplace you are selling in.

eBay has tens of thousands of categories and over a billion of product listings. Although it seems daunting, your competitive space will never directly involve millions or even thousands of listings.

Define your segment of the eBay marketplace

A rule of thumb to consider is that the average eBay buyer will likely make their purchase within the first ten pages of their eBay search, if not from the first page or even the top 3 listings within search results! As such, being within the top 500 product listings (the first 10 pages) of eBay’s Best Match search ranking is absolutely critical if you’re going to make sales.

Selling on eBay, like your online store, is search driven. As you’ve probably done in the past, you will need to do your keyword research to understand how buyers are finding your products. Although it is a different platform, Google Analytics is not a bad way of obtaining a first cut of product keywords to test on eBay, especially as many eBay purchases start with a Google search.

Research keywords driving buyers to the products in your online store. Then test those keywords on eBay. Take notice of any recommended search terms from eBay or related keywords.

When you’ve confidently identified the best keywords on eBay to find products such as yours, you’ve also isolated a section of eBay’s marketplace where you will be selling. This is your market, your competitive space.

Size the sales potential

Next, plug those keywords into a tool like ShelfTrend‘s Supply Demand Report. This free tool and report will give you the average weekly sales of the highest ranked listings for those keywords. You can dig deeper into each product listing and seller to understand how much of the market they represent.

Having an estimate of weekly sales will help you determine whether the marketplace opportunity is worth further investigation. You may need to sharpen your keyword research a bit and run the report a few times to get the right perspective, but at least you have a benchmark to compare against.

Assess how your product could fare against the competition on eBay

Now that you’ve isolated your market segment and have established a realistic estimate of sales potential, you need to assess the competition.

Do some competitive analysis

Using the same keywords for researching weekly sales, run ShelfTrend’s Live Listings – Top 500 report. This report summarizes the top 500 product listings (the first 10 pages) of eBay’s Best Match search rank.

From a complex algorithm in the backend, eBay has determined that these listings are the most likely to make a sale from a historical sales and buyer data point of view. It is also precisely these 500 listings that the buyer will be comparing your product against as they make their purchase decision.

ShelfTrend’s Live Listings – Top 500 report summarizes your competitive space. Get to know:

• the price range the buyer is considering,
• the number of sellers selling similar products,
• the popular brands and product features.

For example, a search for planners using ShelfTrend’s Live Listings report (chart view) provides a quick snapshot of the competitive space.

eBay is constantly ranking and re-sorting listings as data on buyer demand and sales is processed. In high velocity categories and keywords, product features can rise and fall in rank in response to what has been selling. Run the report regularly to see how your competitive environment has changed from the last time you checked.

Is eBay saturated by identical or similar products? How are they priced? Explore the data. Build some hypotheses and investigate your hunches. By understanding the competition well, you’ll be able to better position and price your products to be competitive.

Learn from the best

Part of the process of studying the marketplace is to identify who is also playing on the same field selling the same or similar products.

Will you be competing against one or two large eBay sellers, or many smaller sellers? The same ShelfTrend tools can be used to research leading competitors, their sales metrics and best performing listings.

Another benefit of watching bigger successful sellers is to learn how they have optimized their listings and product offerings. Although eBay is an easy place to start selling, mastering its idiosyncrasies, especially for a large number of products across multiple categories, can be very challenging.

Here are some areas where seasoned professional eBay sellers have spent years perfecting throughout their careers and is worth considering when analyzing their listings:

• Title optimization – listing titles determine what is, and is not, included in search results. This makes it important to include as many relevant keywords as possible in your title.

• Format types – only the very experienced seller is able to best utilize the different types of eBay selling formats to their advantage as part of their sales strategy.

• Business policies – determines their level of customer service. If they are a dominant and large seller, they could be setting what a buyer considers the minimum standard for sale.

• Structured data – eBay indexes listings with the clearest and best structured product information, at the minimum through item specifics but preferably through catalogues. It is now expected that most products listed on eBay are provided with a product identifier. The more information you provide about your listing, the better eBay is able to index it and the easier a buyer will find your product.

• Photos – You might think that the photos you use on your online store can be easily transferred over, and although it could be the case, remember that your photos in a completely different buying environment could also confuse your buyer. Research the type of photos that other sellers are presenting to buyers and emulate the style.

Selling on eBay can seem daunting, but millions of sellers are doing it, so why couldn’t you? Gain some confidence by putting a little bit of time into researching the market’s potential. Have a look through the product range and assess the price points, the product features and what is selling. Learn from your competitors and benchmark their products and sales. With hundreds of millions of global buyers, there is definitely a sale to be had if you’re ready to make that plunge.

The post Is Selling on eBay Worth It? appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

The New Year is already underway but it’s not too late to get a jump start on your 2016 goals. Remember, “This is Your Year!” That said, as an entrepreneur, or a ‘wantrepreneur’ you may be interested in starting your business and want to do that from the comfort of your own dwellings – like many of us.

The New Year is already underway but it’s not too late to get a jump start on your 2016 goals. Remember, “This is Your Year!” That said, as an entrepreneur, or a ‘wantrepreneur’ you may be interested in starting your business and want to do that from the comfort of your own dwellings – like many of us.

We sat down with Jenny Q. Ta, better known as Wall Street Cinderella and CEO of Sqeeqee, Inc., to find out what tools she recommends for people to use in order to make money from the comfort of their home office. She pinpointed five great resources to help making at-home income a bit easier.

Why did we interview Jenny? Jenny went from Vietnam War refugee to Wall Street millionaire by the age of 27. She founded and managed her first startup, Vantage Investments, as a broker-dealer managing more than $250 million in assets and later founded Titan Securities, a full-service investment firm.  She now has more that 20 years of experience on Wall Street and is currently the CEO of the first global “social networthing” platform, Sqeeqee. In addition, Jenny is launching a virtual ‘Shark Tank’ for startups in late January 2016 – we wish her luck in that new venture.

In the meantime, here are the tools she thinks will help you take your first steps toward the same success, from home!

Sqeeqee

Of course! Sqeeqee is the very first Social Networthing® platform/site. It enables users do everything they normally do on other social media platforms, but they literally get paid in Sqeeqee Bucks for every click they do. Yes. Those Sqeeqee bucks do translate in the cash, as they add up. For example, there is an up and down button (similar to a ‘Like’) and when you click a reply or you add a photo or video you earn Sqeeqee bucks. There is also a shop that’s embedded into user profiles so you can add stuff and sell it to a network of other users on the platform. There are more than a dozen other features from crowdfunding to selling your own photography, funding-raising, live streaming, and more. Sqeeqee combines the best features from all these other social platforms so they’re built under one platform with one login. There are a number of power users on the platform making real bucks with their fun social networthing!

eBay

eBay has become such a global phenomenon, so much so it’s now part of our lingo – “Just eBay it.” In 2015 they celebrated 20 years in business and is the world’s largest garage sale, online shopping center, car dealer and auction site with more than 159 million registered users in 208 countries. The website if free for buyers. However, sellers are charged a small fee for listings and when they make a sale. EBay has become an important destination for small businesses because it gives users the opportunity to find more buyers who will pay more for their items. Heard of Nasty Gal? Yeah, that Sophia Amoruso figured out how to turn her online eBay store, which sold vintage clothes, into a multi-million-dollar business, all from starting it at home.

Craigslist 

Craigslist is one of the most visited websites worldwide with more than 450 cities. The site hosts classified ads that cover practically every category you can think of from items for sale to housing, job hunting, personal services and more. It’s a great place to advertise your company or service to targeted areas nearest you. If you have a knack for finding valuable items in your neighborhood and either fixing them or simply re-selling them with more attractive ads, you can buy and sell to your heart’s content, all from your couch or mobile phone.

SwagBucks

SwagBucks is an online rewards and cash back program. It allows users to earn virtual currency called Swag Bucks for taking surveys, watching TV, and a variety of other online activities. You earn points for doing what you would normally do online and these points convert to Swag Bucks which can then be redeemed for gift cards, Paypal Cash, or pre-paid Visa Cards. This isn’t a bad way to kill time at home and earn money while doing it!

GoDaddy or SquareSpace – Translation: Start a Blog!

Starting a blog is a lot of fun and can certainly be done from home but in order to make it a success, you must have a plan for monetizing your platform. The first step to starting a blog is identifying what topic you wish to share information about and how your content fills a niche market. From there you must select a domain name that is on brand, set up web hosting, and select a to host your blog – GoDaddy and SquareSpace make it pretty easy. Online, content is king, so it’s important to create content that is unique and engaging to your target audience. The final steps include setting up Google Analytics to track viewership data and implementing best practices for search engine optimization and Google keyword tools. Finally you must market the blog through digital advertising, pay per click, email marketing and other opportunities. For a full step-by-step guide, I recommend checking out Tips & Tricks HQ.

Jenny Q. Ta is the founder and CEO of Sqeeqee, the first-of-its-kind social networthing® site. Launched in 2015, the site gives individuals, businesses, celebrities, politicians, and non-profit organizations the ability to monetize their profiles in unprecedented ways. Sqeeqee is the first integrated ecommerce and social media platform offering live streamingcapabilities built from within. Sqeeqee’s intent is to provide our global users an unprecedented platform to share compelling stories in real-time, empowering them to broadcast and receive live video footage anytime, anywhere on any device.

Ms. Ta is also the mastermind behind an interactive multi-player game Squiggy Piggy that can be played online, or downloaded on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.

Ms. Ta is a seasoned entrepreneur with two successful ventures to her credit. She was the Founder and CEO of Titan Securities, a full service investment firm that was acquired in 2005. Prior to founding Titan Securities she was the driving force behind Vantage Investments, a full-service broker-dealer start-up she founded in 1999 at the age of 27 and grew to a quarter of a billion dollars in assets. Overall, she has more than 20 years of experience as a senior executive in sales, marketing and finance.

Jenny is an author whose book, Wall Street Cinderella (which is currently in production talks to become a movie), detailing her escape from Vietnam during the war and her path to success from welfare to Wall Street. As a self-made millionaire by the time she was 27, the book will serve as a roadmap for women looking at a business career. 

She earned a Master of Business Administration degree in Financial Management and a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from California State University, Fresno.

Connect with Jenny Q. Ta via LinkedIn

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