It seems like these import businesses CAN work, but you need

If you order a normal small number of products for personal use, they will probably all be good. As soon as they realize you are a reseller, they will start tossing defective shit in the box as well. I am told this is just Chinese logic, as the price goes lower, you are expected to just assume the quality will go down as well.

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>>1536944
welp, fuck that idea then.

>>1536925
The only way you can make money from alibaba is selling it on the street. Its oversaturated on amazon and ebay.

>>1537026
Basically this.

I sold knockoff knives and small swords to retards who just want the look on craigslist years ago. Was profitable for a while. Not anymore, not unless you have a target market of people looking for designer products, who are also gullible/stupid enough to buy knockoffs.

Quality control is nonexistent if you aren't running through escrow of some sort, and if you are, the margins get so thin that it's not worth bothering. Plus, you have highly volatile inventory. Even if you aren't paying for damaged/defective product because of escrow, you could be stuck dealing with a shortage for weeks.

I've since moved on to actual businesses, and I basically never deal with China directly anymore. Too much effort. I'll gladly pay someone else to deal with them. They can get their markup when I'm buying bulk product. If it's defective, I just force my supplier to deal with it. If they won't, I sue them. Their profit margins are my insurance. I've found that for most things, it's worth a few % markup to make it "not my job".

Especially for anything metal. Steel piping either comes from a warehouse supplier, or for big shit, I get it made in America. It's higher quality, and an American company won't shave off half a millimeter to cut corners. It's more expensive, but the turnaround times more than makeup for it.

>>1536948
Better to know it now than when you are balls deep in $1000+ worth of shit that you can sell less than half of.

>>1536944
this is where the solution is relations.

You have to get good with the head chink, develop a professional, healthy, happy, and friendly relationship with whoevers in charge.

If you do not associate with them and only place orders from behind a computer online they couldn't care less about you, the only thing they want is your money right here, right now.

Chinks are much different than us in business. I developed a business relationship with a few of them over the years, often times once you get to a certain point they start treating you like family. I was invited to come visit in china and stay with him and his family, get shown the factory where my inventory gets made, etc etc.

I assumed id wind up getting my head chopped off, but this is a normal practice in china. good, friendly relationships are key.

on the other hand, if you piss them off, you will get your head chopped off.

Watch documentaries or pay attention to the behind the scenes stuff startup companies show. Companies like dell or apple have already established a firm control in the country so they dont need to, but new companies who are just starting out with Chinese productions, how they manage to have a successful operation with their chinese production -

youll often times see the company owners will travel to china and visit the factories they're considering working with, this is to establish a real life relationship with the higher ups in order to insure good service. They more than likely not only visit the warehouse, but meet the factory owners family, have dinner with them, might even be staying at their house as guests.

>>1538774

There is also the "Chinese yes" that fools outsiders doing business with them. In Chinese culture it's almost like a sin to tell someone you cant do something. Their culture insists they respond positively to any request. as a businessman from the outside country, you might ask "this has been great, I would like to increase my orders from 100 a month to 10,000 a month. can you handle that volume?"

even if its just him and his wife packaging shit in a 1 room closet apartment, hes going to say yes, as business culture there dictates.

Then the bad shit happens. ur oder is 6 months late and not getting delivered, then when it finally comes everything's all fucked up and shit

granted I've noticed with online chink vendors I have noticed many of them are willing to say no i cant do this or no i cant do that plenty

>>1537026
I'm a professional ebayer and IM'er, im one of the guys that comes in and responds to all the "sell online" and "online marketing" threads.

It's far from dead, theres thousands of products that you can make bank on. Believe it or not there's even things avialable that arent even listed on ebay yet, meaning you can dominate the entire market for that item.

Just yesterday around this time I found a niche that has a high traffic volume of buyers and an entire range of products (a sub niche if you will) that I can get for pennies... and arent even listed on ebay -at all-, meaning I can completely dominate and own every sale in that sub niche. I will probably be ordering a few dozen for a test run later this week and if it makes any decent sales (which i fully believe iet will) I'll be buying hundreds if not thousands to absorb it all before anyone gets wind of it.

the problem is people get stuck inside a box. They only pay attention to brand names and very specific items with very specific interests, and in turn can only see illegal and/or high competition items with no profit margins left

>>1538783
>I'm a professional ebayer and IM'er, im one of the guys that comes in and responds to all the "sell online" and "online marketing" threads.

>It's far from dead, theres thousands of products that you can make bank on. Believe it or not there's even things avialable that arent even listed on ebay yet, meaning you can dominate the entire market for that item.

Sure, if you don't mind changing markets every couple of months when copycats start coming along. Once people realize you are selling something, they'll come in and undercut you, and each other until it's not worth sticking with that product. You need to be able to tell if a product is good, and you need to plan around having surplus product you can't get rid of once the undercutters tank your margins.

Definitely money there, but it's a lot of legwork, and anyone going into this should be fully aware that they might have some prolonged dry spells while looking for new shit to sell, and they very well may need to write off a lot of inventory.

>>1538774
You are correct, biz is totally different in china. They consider lying and cheating a normal part of practice. So much so that they dont really even get mad if they were on the shit end of the deal, theyll just say good job you won this time. Its kind of fucked up but understandable.

>>1538783
How do you go about finding these niches that arent in ebay? How will you know they sell on ebay if its not already there? I simply just go on see if an item sells alot see what i can source it for if its worth it go for it. Plox help me expand

>>1539201
i've been in the same primary niches for 5 years, there are plenty of areas that have tons of profits to take but dont get peoples attention.

however yes, sometimes you'll have to get out of a niche, no denying that. But the nature of any business is change. You will never create a complete operation and never have to adjust anything about it. there's no reason to single ebay out for it.

I would be looking for new niches and products daily anyway, because I want to grow into a giant monster who gets all his power from his giant fucking wallet stuffed with cash. Cashzilla.

>>1539318
i really dont have much to tell you besides always keep your eyes and ears open to potential. i pull my phone out probably atleast once every time I go anywhere because I see something and think "I wonder..." and see if I can A. sell it on ebay and B. find a source cheap.

Also when youre in a niche consider what branches come from it, in one of the other online marketing/ebay threads (search, i dont remember which one) i made an example about being an ice cream man and how that can shift into completely new categories. Much like that, but instead of jumping into whole new categories, refine down into sub-niches within the main niche you're currently in. You'll start seeing things like:

-people collect shoes, you go into business selling shoes
-people collect nike and jordans, you start selling those
-you notice more people like the high tops than the low tops
-you notice people like the crazy color ones more than solid single colors
-you discover pink is a hot seller compared to blues, blacks, whites, etc
-you start sourcing pink nike, one has pictures of dragon dildos printed on it, no one is selling it on ebay
-you buy one and it sells within 24 hours for top dollar
-a month later a shipment of 5,000 dragon dildo print nike shoes is surrounding you

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You just have to find the right niche.

In attempting my own dropshipping business I have been successful in identifying some market making stock and I must emphasise that you must choose a product that you know and understand well. It is also important that you understand the sociocultural makeup of your target market. Analysing the sociodemographic makeup of my market, I identified that the niche I was looking into was underserved and that competing products either lacked sufficient quality or didn't meet a price point to be competitive. It was only though dilligent research that I found a competitive product that possessed the qualities required.

So I began ordering and negotiating the pricing and shipment arrangements for my rubber vampire masks. Initially I started with just an experimental shipment of 500 pieces using a little cash I saved from various other small scale ebay reselling jobs. The 500 masks sold quite quickly and I made a reasonable profit so the next stage was to identify my market limit, so this time I ordered 5000 rubber vampire masks and they sold even faster, I guess word got around about how good they were, and I also had bought some advert space with Google so it was being promoted.

I currently employ 10 people in a small rented warehouse which is basically my fulfillment centre, we currently sell about 10,000 of these masks a week and I am looking to expand my operations with additional staff deployed for marketing, research and procurement. This means I have a turnover of about $50,000 a week and my personal wage out of this is about $85,000 a year.