How to get started for less than $100
Arbitraging is how we test out products before we invest in keeping inventory on hand. You get to test out products to see what products sell the best for very low cost.
First you find a product you want to test on a site like Ebay, you want to look for a seller who has a good rating, buy it now option, and more than one item in stock.
Second set up shop at Shopify which allows you to choose a theme that best fits your personality and what you are selling along with tracking addresses for you and shipping. You will pull the photos from the seller on Ebay and upload them to your store along with a description and set your prices and shipping costs.
Third Start running traffic to your site to test out your product. Some popular choices on this are off of an already established Facebook page or running Facebook Ads.
Fourth once you make a sale you return to your eBay or equivalent site you purchase the item, send it as a gift and ask the seller to not include a receipt since it is a “gift” then ship it on over to your Shopify buyer.
What to Do Once You Find a Winning Product
If you have 500 people visit your store and you sell 40-50 of your product then you have a winner and can start to think about scaling up. So once you are ready to do this you find a site like Alibaba or Aliexpress to purchase large quantities of your product for a cheaper price than you were buying them on eBay now you will be able to increase your profit.
Notable Sites
- How to Get 50 New Targeted Leads Per Day - January 5, 2016
- How to Get Repeat Business with a Single Red Envelope - December 22, 2015
- The 4 Types of Stories You Can Use to Sell More This Next Year - December 4, 2015
- How to Sell Physical Products Online for Less than $100 - November 24, 2015
- 5 Tools We Use to Run Our Multimillion Dollar Online Business - November 20, 2015
- How to Write Blog Posts That Grow Your Business Now (and for years to come) [Fearless Podcast #7] - November 9, 2015
- How to Target your Audience Intelligently using 2 Special Websites. [Fearless Podcast #6] - October 20, 2015
- Why you need to brand your Business like Batman instead of Superman [Fearless Podcast #5] - October 7, 2015
That is a great way to find out if something is going to sell before you invest a ton of money. Another great podcast.
My primary business is private labeling on Amazon, but I’m in the process of building a Shopify store for my brand. I like the approach you mentioned in this article as a way to test new products before I commit to adding that product to my brand.
I also have a couple of projects where I’m building a following for a particular niche and this sounds like a great option to monetize that.
I’ve heard the AliExpress is also a good source to get a product to test out. Have you guys used that site much for test orders?
Devin, I have used it personally a handful of times and have always had a good experience. I know a lot of people who only use it to run their Shopify businesses.
I would like to know if any of you have applied this in method in practice. The logic behind it seems sound but it would be great to know what kinds of products works well with such a strategy.
We’ve applied it to multiple niches and industries.
We’ve also taught thousands of entrepreneurs to do things this way. This is a model that is responsible for a a lot of results from our team and customers.
Just a few examples:
1) A Bare Bones Example: http://doxiestore.com
2) A More Laid out and Fleshed out Site: http://www.whiskeyballer.com