Gold Star Recommended Product Sources

Kevin’s Gold Star Recommended Sites for finding Reputable Suppliers of Products to Sell on eBay!

Want a Power Seller’s Insider Secret? Listed below are the sites that I frequent to find the sources of the products I sell. I am a member of each site, trust and believe in them implicitly and enthusiastically recommend them. If you are looking for reputable liquidators, wholesalers, manufacturers, distributors and drop shippers you will find them from these sites. Read on…

The Product Sourcing Problem

If you conduct an Internet search for eBay suppliers you will see tens or even hundreds of thousands of links. Do you think any of these are disreputable suppliers or outright scam artists? Most definitely, yes! Do you see the problem here?

This was probably the toughest problem for me when I first started selling on eBay. I spent about 80 percent of my time sifting through websites and talking with other eBay sellers trying to find legitimate suppliers. Then I discovered Worldwide Brands and What Do I Sell®.

The Solution

These sites were both created to solve the problem of finding reputable product suppliers. All suppliers listed on their sites have gone through a very stringent screening process. In fact, this process will eliminate most suppliers who apply to their sites. You can then quickly find suppliers for the type of products you are interested in selling.

As a member of these two sites, you can eliminate the disreputable product supplier problem. Using their databases, you can find a variety of suppliers for the products you are interested in selling such as liquidators, wholesalers, light bulk wholesalers, large volume wholesalers, importers and drop shippers. Not every product will have a supplier listed on their sites. Maybe none were approved by their screening process. However, I have found that as a member of both sites, I have been able to find at least one type of supplier for most of the items I am interested in selling.

What Do I Sell®

What Do I Sell® was founded and is managed by Lisa Suttora and her site is a certified provider of eBay services. Lisa was a featured speaker at eBay Live 2005, 06, 07 and 08 and as mentioned above, is the co-author of the McGraw Hill published book “What to Sell on eBay and Where to Get It”.

When I first began selling seriously on eBay, product sourcing (finding products to sell from reputable sources) used to take up to 80% of my time.  In short, Lisa now does nearly all my product sourcing work for me. Lisa locates, investigates and interviews possible product sources for eBay sellers and records her findings and recommendations on her site. On average, for every 40 distributors or product sources investigated, only one will meet her rigid approval process.

Lisa not only finds reputable product suppliers, she checks that the majority of the product lines they carry, will sell successfully on eBay. Finally, she will only recommend distributors that enjoy working with eBay sellers (unfortunately, some distributors still do not want to sell to us).

Membership to What Do I Sell® includes not only access to reputable supplier links, but her product trending analysis newsletters.The best part of becoming a member of her site is that, once a month, she hosts a conference call for all of her subscribers. She will mute the phones and for one hour you can listen to her product-sourcing subject of the month. Once her talk has finished, she opens the phone lines and you are free to ask any question you like. Here is your chance to solve your product-sourcing problem with one of the most knowledgeable experts on eBay product sourcing in the world!

Now I will let you in on one of my PowerSeller secrets! I go to Lisa’s site routinely to find links to her approved liquidators. I then click through to the liquidator’s site and scroll through all their products being liquidated. When I find an item of interest, I pull up HammerTap, perform a Quick Search analysis and I can determine in about one minute, whether the item is worth pursuing!

Here’s even more great news. Lisa has agreed to always offer her best rates (sometimes up to 75% off regular prices for even her premium package!) to my eBay students and readers. The link you must use to identify you as an eBay student or reader when you sign-up is: 

q       www.whatdoisell.com/studentrate

If you use that link, you are guaranteed her lowest rates at the time you join!

 

Worldwide Brands

I love these guys. They have made my eBay business so much easier. 

If you are searching for a drop shipper, how do you know if you are getting one that is reputable? Many things can go wrong when drop shipping. When I am looking for a drop shipper, I go to this site first. Worldwide Brands is the only drop ship and wholesale directory publisher that is certified by eBay. They charge a one time, very reasonable fee for a lifetime membership to join their site.

They also offer a “Light Bulk Wholesaler” service where they find low minimum order quantity wholesalers. This is very important to eBay sellers since most of us are “small timers.” When you contact major wholesalers, you may be surprised to find a required minimum order quantity that may total several thousand units or dollars. Worldwide Brand’s new service allows you to find wholesalers/distributors that have low minimum order quantities.

With their combined service package, OneSource, you can type the brand name or type of product you are looking for and they will find either a drop shipper or a distributor that have low minimum order quantities. Using the OneSource tool, you can find reputable suppliers for many of your products. The type of suppliers that WWB maintains databases for include:

•  Drop Ship Wholesalers
•  Liquidation Wholesalers
•  Instant Import Buys (Importers)
•  Light Bulk Wholesalers
•  Large Volume Wholesalers

 But here is the best news, OneSource membership also provides access to the most valuable tools you can use for conducting Internet product marketing analysis. OneSource allows you to discover what the hot products, categories and niches are on the Internet. This is an important step in in determining which products to sell because many buyers on eBay actually started their product search on the Internet.

Using OneSource, you simply type the keyword of the product or category that you are interested in selling. The tool will then provide five reports for that category, niche or product with the detailed Internet marketing information for:

• Demand research
• Competition research
• Advertising research
• Pricing research
• Instant product analysis
• Product Suppliers 

Until recently all of Worldwide Brands’ databases and analysis tools were sold separately. It now offers all of its products in one bundled offering called OneSource for a one-time payment, and lifetime membership. Here is even more good news. Chris Malta, the CEO of Worldwide Brands, has also agreed to give a discount to my eBay students and readers. If you use the link below, it identifies you as an eBay student and you are given an automatic discount off their standard membership rates to their OneSource program. You will see that you have a discount coupon waiting for you when you use this student link to their site:

q       www.worldwidebrands.com/studentrate  

 

Copyright 2008 Kevin W. Boyd at www.trainingu4auctions.com