Hello,
I just registered with this forum after reading topics for a few days. The best wholesale information on the Internet I found so far!
I am thinking about buying wholesale items and reselling on the Internet, but I'm wondering whether online stores are still profitable nowadays.
There are numerous wholesale suppliers out there, and it seems many people are reselling the same items. For example, when you search for an item that is being resold on eBay, you usually see at least a dozen or two, all for generally the same price.
I understand many people are complaining about eBay, and I really didn't want to sell on eBay anyway. I was thinking about selling a few items with an online store eventually growing into a virtual mini-mall if successful. But again, are stores profitable with all the competition and the slowdown of ecommerce?
In other words, is it worth it to start out with this type of business, or should I look elsewhere to make money online?
Thank you.
goWholesale Forums » Wholesale Buyers » General Chat
Are online stores still profitable?
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My experience with retailing on a website is that yo uhave to cater to a niche. You cannot pay to advertise everywhere the big boys do because you would never even break even in most cases.
Everything really depends on what you are selling as well.
But if you have a fairly in demand product, a good wholesale price, and a means to target a small segment of the market, then it may be profitable. You have to be different in some way that appeals to a certain niche of folks. In other words, if you sell msuic CDs, you will never make it. however, if you were selling Music CD to a certain niche tha tlistened to some underground music like, say, hardcore swedish rock bands (my favorite), there is a good many folks interested in that stuff and ther eis not much competition.
Or if you wanted to sell book ad other media like CDROMS and software, you would not sell ALL books. You would never last. but you might be able to sell books and software on a certain subject that you were interested in yourself (but it has to have a big enough market). Like say you were into construction and general contracting for small businesses, you would build and informational sight where smaller companies would go to get info and subscribe to a newsletter f yours. hten you could have a store on a part of your site where you would sell books and software on your subject. Or even go the affiliate marketing rought and just provide links to amazon's books and make money on commisions if they buy after clicking your links. The last scenario here is more that of an internet marker, not a retailer. You would be really marketing your info site and make money from affiliate commissions and even perhaps sell ad space, like they do on this site. -
I see your point. Selling to a niche sounds like it has a greater chance of success than just selling general items, like I was planning to do.
Is there a way I can research what things are in demand? I don't mean specific products, but like category of products; e.g., electronics, smoking items, car accessories, tools, etc. Is there a Web site that has statistics and data about the current market?
By the way, I was thinking about marketing and getting paid commission, but I thought that a good amount of people would just skip me and go buy directly from the source. Why browse from my site when they can browse from the source? Besides everyone is marketing on their sites. I'll probably have greater success if I sell items that aren't seen on popular online stores like Amazon. -
Based on your information request, I really like Andale's products. Their site is http://www.andale.com . They have 2 features in particular you might be interested in.
The first thing is called 'what's hot'. It's a market research tool you can use to find out what products are in demand and how easy they are to sell on eBay.
The second is called 'research' which gives you a ballpark idea of how successful it is to sell a particular item under various circumstances.
Each subscription is only $2.95 a month for unlimited use, so you are basically going to get both for under $6 a month, a real bargain in my opinion.
I hope this helps. -
Keseko, eBay can be a good source of such info. If you go to their home page, click on a category, then scroll to the bottom, you'll see a Popular Searches area, and you can click on it to get an idea of what people are looking for.
I'm just starting to look into re-selling myself. I have a full time job, but have always sold personal goods on the side on eBay as a means to declutter my house. I would like to get a bit more serious about it and am researching what sells and sources to obtain it. eBay's message boards, especially the seller boards, are nice sources of info. Very helpful people there.
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