Create Your Own E Store with Wholesale
- 15 Comment
As bloggers expand their base to include other blogs, affiliates and merchandise, opportunities are endless. You can make “internet entrepreneur” your official job title, you just have to work at it. Lately I have been experimenting and making money with affiliate programs, however, is that enough?
Be Your Own Affiliate
The problem with affiliate programs is that you are promoting another website. If you don’t convert that or sell anything, then, it’s essentially free advertising. I’ve given TLA over 500 hits in the past months with no real conversions. Who wins? It’s not me!
How about starting your own e-store selling YOUR products? People make millions of dollars every year hitting the e-bay scene. You can too.
Buying Wholesale
If I had some investment money I’d definitely consider this. Purchasing wholesale clothes you can get designer labels. Buying it in a huge bunch of say 5,000 pieces of clothing, you get a low base rate. That way you can afford to resell your purchases cheap.
At MerchandizeLiquidators.com for example, they offer a package of men’s clothing. The brands include Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Price per piece works out to be about 7$, minimum 500 pieices. Your cost would end up being 3500$ if you purchased 500. Even if you just sold each peice for a dollar more you’d make 500$ profit. Many of the clothes can range from 25$ to 400$. The opportunity could be a lot more. Along with clothes, you could do toys, electronics and more.
Risk and Reward
The problem with this would be the risk you couldn’t market your own store. People want reliability when shopping online, I’ve hesitated purchasing online at stores I never heard of.
If worse comes to worse you could always unload your merchandise offline, like at an open market or swap meet.
Would you consider buying wholesale?
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15 Comments on this post
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Eric said:
I think store itself would be fairly easy to market. And have product to offer at such rock bottom prices would help in a huge way.
But the issue for me is shipping and logistics. I’m a computer/internet geek. Do I really want to sit around packaging clothes, labeling the packages for shipping, and then dealing with postage and fees?
Not at all.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am -
Beth said:
I’ve wanted, for several years now, to open a small candle shop online. Candles are a hot commodity- no matter the season. While the costs for opening the actual site would be minimal to nothing, it would take a while to produce the right products that people wanted-which could become quite expensive when it came to supplies.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:50 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
yeah definitely, thats a good idea. I understand what you mean about it possibly being expensive
January 20th, 2008 at 1:36 pm -
Martin said:
I’ve never really liked the idea of selling products myself, you have to be very sure you can sell the products. I’ve always preferred the idea of selling services, there is less outlay, most of the cost is in the marketing. But I think that my preference is down to the type of work I do.
Martin
January 20th, 2008 at 2:01 pm -
sir jorge said:
selling products and e-commerce is a lot harder than people think.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:03 pm -
Emma said:
I’ve thought about doing this. But besides the risk of being stuck with the merchandise it’s kind of like being your own employee with shipping and other labor involved. So my answer is maybe. If I found the right product and maybe a possibility of eventually outsourcing labor. Thought provoking topic though.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:21 pm -
patrick said:
The thought of getting wholesale goods for such a cheap price per item is enticing, until you figure out how you are going to move that much volume. Using your own storefront online is fine, but you have to have some way to drive traffic, or use eBay. And I have to say, the razor thin margins on eBay are pretty discouraging these days.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:42 pm -
Matthew Henrickson said:
I appreciate all the comments. I understand what you all are saying, it is pretty risky. It is a lot of product to move, it wouldn’t necessary be easy, but what is?
I could see a problem with packaging it as well.
I agree with Patrick though, maybe it was the cheap prices that got me excited in it.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:49 pm -
webduck said:
I have tried the Ebay route for selling items with minimal profit. Even if I didn’t make a bunch of money though, I still learned how to do it and what was selling and what wasn’t. I did sell something in my Cafe Press shop (Cafe Pentimento) this week (whoohoo!). But I believe you are all correct, that the boxing and sending of things can be a pain. Did you know though, that you can order online Priority Mail free boxes in various sizes from the USPS and have them delivered with your mail? Then, spend about $50 for a good electronic postal scale. You can order mailing labels from http://www.labeluniverse.com, and open a USPS account for free. With that, you can enter the site and print and pay for postage, alert your mail carrier that you have a pick up and your package is on its way when you choose. Sorry this is so long-winded. 🙂
January 21st, 2008 at 1:31 am -
Matthew Henrickson said:
Great Comment, I wish I could work that into the post lol
January 21st, 2008 at 10:04 am -
Frank C said:
I did eBay retail sales from 2004-2006. It’s a lot of minimum wage type work, packing and shipping, plus a lot of marketing, purchasing and logistics work but still at a near minimum wage pay level. Unless you happen to hit on the right mix of product and market you’ll have bought yourself a $20,000 a year job and turned your home into a shipping warehouse.
If you want to make some money with eBay based ecommerce the better way is to sell things you buy in large bulk quantities in small bulk packages. For example, sell those 5000 pieces of clothing in lots of 100.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:37 am -
Shoemoney Lies said:
To do wholesale you have to think outside the box and not just be another ebay peddler. If you can find a product and sell it to a target audience that is a good fit for it but doesn’t know they need it, that is the way to go. My point is to find cheap products that provide a lot of value but without competition. For example, a grocery store sells hot dogs for $0.25. But a small vendor outside Home Depot on a hot day sells them for over 10x that.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm -
Stine said:
Hi! I found your blog through Entrecard, and decided to advertise. Thanks for accepting me! Today, I proceeded to visit your blog a little more in depth, and having just discovered the wonders of feed subscriptions, I subscribed… I will be back!
Good point about Blogrush/Scratchback, btw – I’ve been a bit squeamish about putting s-back up (dreading all those empty spots…), but you may just have turned me around. (If so, I will sign up through your link – I assume they have a referral program too!)January 22nd, 2008 at 1:14 am -
Eric P. Martin said:
Hi Matthew,
Regarding the wholesaling. I tried idea two years ago to try and make some extra money I had. I invested in some candle holders. I purchased 800 pieces. Now, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter what the item is, the idea is to turn a profit.
What you have overlooked with this idea is a few things to consider.
1. Shipping Cost. The weight of my 8 boxes ran about $300.00.
2. Outlet. I tried to sale them at a flea market. That cost money. I didn’t even cover the cost of my space. I think by the end of the day, I was selling them for $2.00.
3. I got rid of a lot of these candle holders eventually selling them to retailers at well below my cost. I sold them as low as .25 cents.
4. Gas. This is something else you must consider as you’ll be travelling to different locations.
January 22nd, 2008 at 10:44 am -
Desty said:
Ebay, drop shipping. Simple as that. I sold iPods and scanners on eBay for a month, made $1200 with little work, and stopped after I got burned. Experience and guts will get you going. Learning from mistakes will take you the rest of the way.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:26 pm