Okay, sometimes I feel too stupid to live, but luckily I have a good brother watching my back.
As you may or may not know, whoever you may be, I have recently opened up an eBay storefront, NextDoor WebStore. As the hundreds of thousands before me have also done, I went into the business with high hopes thinking all I had to do was work real hard at it and I couldn’t help but succeed. With millions of people visiting eBay every single day, all I would have to do is find a few things that sell and then sell the shit out of them. Even if all I make is a buck or two per sale, you can’t go wrong if you work hard enough to put out a couple hundred auctions a day and half or even a third of them produce sales. The numbers very quickly add up to no more delivering newspapers.
Well it’s only been a month now, but I can already see that it just doesn’t work that way. After hundreds of hours of searching for the right drop shipping wholesaler, and even finding a couple that are actually legitimate, I find myself in the same boat as the other hundreds of thousands that put pen to paper and produced the same optimistic figures that I did; unable to move my products because there’s a hundred thousand others out there trying to move the same stuff from the same drop shippers. It comes down to who’s willing to take a loss.
I sold a briefcase and after eBay listing fees and sales fees, and after PayPal took their cut and the wholesaler added $2.00 for processing and shipping for me, I made a grand total of 25 cents. So I raised my price by a dollar and the next order I made $1.25. Okay, so now if I can figure out how to sell 10 of those a day and find 10 more products I can sell 10 a day of, presto, I’m making $100 per day.
Well, not only had I only sold 8 briefcases after the first three weeks, the last one went to some remote town in northern Maine and cost $3.00 more to ship. I lost a couple bucks on that sale. So to try to cover myself from that happening again, I raised the price two more dollars. Of course by now, there are plenty of others selling the same briefcase for the amount that I had run from and I haven’t sold another since.
So, maybe buying a little in bulk, getting combined shipping on said bulk, would translate into lower selling prices and enable me to sell for less, shipping myself for less than those doing the drop shipping, as well.
Again, on paper, it looks great. Reality is another story altogether.
So now I have about 8 different kinds of chess boards (several of each), and several exotic looking dragon thingies (several of each), and (a bunch of) super cool Reapers vs Skeletons Tic-Tac-Toe games. Like I said, sometimes I am so stupid I even amaze myself.
Yes, you guessed it, haven’t sold a one.
So, what am I doing wrong? That was the million dollar question. I see there are indeed people on eBay selling 50-100 items a day, they’re called PowerSellers. All I wanted to do was figure out how to become a PowerSeller.
Now please don’t misunderstand my motivation here. Many, if not most, go into this venture thinking they’ll only have to work a couple hours a day and eBay will do all the work and they will just sit back and reap the rewards. 100% of those folks fail.
I went into this KNOWING I would have to work very hard, PLANNING on working very hard, and so far I have been putting in about 15 hours a day for the past month trying to figure out how to get this to work, how to become a PowerSeller. But, so far, I’m still clueless.
I have generated over $1100 in sales over the past month, however, mostly from books and DVDs and CDs from my own collection. Now if that had been ALL I had been selling, I’d probably have most of that money in my pocket, but of course, I’m trying to build a business. I have bought bulk shipping supplies, a scale to weigh shipments for postage, a digital camera for images in my listings, business cards, and let’s not forget $1300 of inventory hanging around in my basement. I’ve listed close to 100 auctions for drop shipping products and have sold the 8 briefcases and one Global GPS unit (made $21.00 on that sale, but one a month ain’t gonna bring home the bacon). So eBay is making a killing on thousands of us wannabes trying to figure out the secret to being a PowerSeller and ultimately giving up but only after listing a couple hundred dollars worth of crap that won’t sell because everyone and their mother is already trying to sell the same damn thing from the same damn place!
But still, I log in to eBay every single day and see them sitting there, laughing at me, shaking their heads in dismay, those PowerSellers that are raking in all the sales, even selling stuff that I can’t, like they belong to some secret exclusive club of know-how. They know and I don’t and like the magician on stage, they aren’t giving away any secrets.
So, along comes Simplx.com. (You were beginning to wonder if I had titled this article wrong, weren’t you.) Simplx.com, the answer to your dreams, the inspiration of hope, the holder of the secret of the PowerSeller. For only $700, you can get yourself a coach that will advise you on what to sell, how to sell it, how to design your store, where to find the products to sell, and basically hold your hand until they make you a PowerSeller! Exactly what I had been looking for. Exactly what I needed to get my business off and running. They claim, and my numbers backed it up, that I would make that $700 back the first month and if I don’t, they have failed me and would return the investment.
Where do I sign?!
I signed, I paid, I planned, I was on my way.
Thank God I mentioned all this to my brother that same day. Within minutes he had emailed me numerous links to stories and articles about this company (and others run by the same criminal) where people had been left high and dry. One hour of coaching and then a good luck pat on the back was what most had received. There were a few successes out there, but no where near enough for any sane person to get involved with them. And for all I know, those few could have been planted by Mr. Joshua Lee himself!
Like I said, sometimes I think I am just too stupid to live.
So, heeding my wise brother’s advice, I stopped payment on the check I had mailed them, a convenience check from my credit card. Then suddenly remembering that I had also given them my credit card number for a monthly membership fee to the largest selection of name brand drop ship goods in the world that would start after my coaching was complete, I decided I had better not take any chances and I canceled the card altogether and requested a new one, leaving no room for doubt.
Okay, saved by the brother. Thanks, Tim. I owe you plenty. But here’s the funny part and the final proof that my wise (younger!) brother was quite on the mark. Simplx.com didn’t know that I had stopped payment on the check. Today they gave me a call to set up the coaching. Here’s exactly how that conversation went…
Simplx Guy: David! How are you?! Are you ready to set up your coaching and start your new career?
Me: You know, I told my brother about this and he sent me about 50 links…
The phone went dead.
Like I said, I owe you, Tim.
I’m still working at my store. And I even still think I can make it a success, though I may never become a PowerSeller. But it’s not going to happen with drop shipping and I’m done looking for any coaches or paid professional advice. I’m not buying anymore memberships to any wholesaler’s warehouse and I’m not buying anymore bulk goods to sell. I do have a business card and I believe a consignment storefront in eBay will do much better than trying to drop ship everything with thousands of others trying to move the same product.
I’m also not going to limit myself to eBay, especially where this excess inventory I have laying around is concerned. Today I put ads up on craigslist.com and oodles.com for some of my inventory items. And guess what, the ads were free. I’ve already gotten one email, a couple hours after posting the listing, for a pair of dragon-head book ends (they haven’t bought a set yet, but that one question about my product was more than I had gotten on eBay for the same product after a week). They really are nice. I bought a pair for myself, too. On eBay, there are several others selling them for the pretty much the same price I am. On criagslist, no one else is selling them.
So this is what I am going to try to do, expand my playground. Sure, I will continue selling on eBay because you can’t find a bigger audience anywhere in the world. But I am also going to try to find other places to sell.
And I am keeping my paper routes. They pay the bills. Maybe my store will be a good supplemental income sometime down the road. I will continue to work hard at it, but with a new goal in mind. It may not become the full-time business I was hoping for, but it could even be a little fun (which is how it started a month ago…but it really hasn’t been very fun lately) assuming I don’t fall for anymore ruthless traps laid out by assholes like Joshua Lee who feed off the hopes and dreams of people like me who are still trying to figure things out.
Thanks again, Tim. You’re a good brother.