Answer to a reader's question- Part 1

A reader recently msged me this question:

I am thinking about importing easy low prize products from the asian market to Germany and selling them on ebay. I read your post and your blog where you said you are exactly doing this right now. I would like to get in contact with you to discuss about this. I would be interested in what kind of products do you sell on ebay. Are you willing to share sources and your experience?

Instead of giving him a fish, it is better to teach him how to fish.

First of all, I sell multiple products on eBay and while some of them I obtain it from distributors in the US, I import most of them from China. The main products my business sells includes synthetic gemstone beads, shotglasses, poker equipments and others. While I cannot disclose my source for other products, I can tell you about my Dad's company, which exports synthetic gemstone beads from China. Their website is www.beautyday.com.hk, and some of their products sell really well on eBay.

Since there are SO MANY products that sell well on eBay, it is NOT a good approach to find what has high demand and source for it. It is a much better approach to recognize a list of things you are interested in selling, and then research whether there is a market for those products and finally source for it.

There are many ways of researching whether a product sells well on eBay. The easiest of all is subscribing to the eBay newsletter, which provides tips on what their hottest products are. Other than that, type in keywords of products you think might sell and click on "completed listings", if completed listings (green) are more than incompleted ones (red), chances are it is selling pretty well. eBay also recently launched a "marketplace research" function, but I don't know if it is available on its international sites, you have to check for yourself.


In part 2 of my answer, I will go in depth to talk about finding your source in China, how to approach them, and what to be careful of.