News Flash – 1

As many of us who sell on eBay and this question is asked even more to those of use who are eBay Education Specailists. Where do I find that cool Hot product to sell on eBay.

So starting each Friday I will be listing one supplier here in the UK, with complete contact details where I have them. And I will continue to list one a week till I run out of suppliers. So come back each Friday and by 9pm you will see a New Supplier listed.

Now to all my friends over seas, I am sorry at the moment I am unbale to list suppliers as I do not have the resourses to do this. But hey there is a way out of this problem, If you could leave comments after each of my posts with a supplier from your country.

So if I list Baby Clothes one week, if people could leave a supplier from their own country in the comments section then that would build up a massive resource for ebayers all over the world.

Happy Ebaying

Andrew (AndyUk)

Another Product Sourcing Tip

Today I had a few hours to spend in our Local town. I had gone in early to do some banking etc, and later on in the day our Church was doing a Walk for Water Walk – This was a walk of 4 miles (4 Miles is how far a child has to walk to get fresh water or as fresh as you can get in third world places).

Anyway I decided as I do not drive would spend time in the towns shops to look for trends and not get bus home.

I looked in the local charity shops and bought some items which I will be listing later on eBay, but I also went into our two book remainder shops.

So todays article is about buying items from this type of shop. Now before you all get excited and head off to this type of shop, Yes you can make nice profits on items but you can also make a loss. What you need to remember is these shops often sell books, DVDs etc that the normal places cannot sell.

Anyway in the one shop I saw a stack of DVD’s produced by the BBC so they were all good quality, all brand new and all still sealed. Each DVD was priced at £1.99 – so I got my trusty Internet friendly phone out and checked a few titles out on eBay and also Amazon, sadly some were no good, but around 8 titles were listed for prices like £8.99 upto £14.99. These were all buy it now prices so I new people were buying. Also checked the completed listings and this gave similar data.

I bought 5 DVD’s and will again list these this week, and will let you know how I get on.

So there you are another high street product source for you where you can buy hundreds of different items to sell. But please do some research before you buy – either on an internet phone or a computer.

Happy ebaying

Andrew Milburn

OsiRockStars

Product Sourcing Tips

Here in my multi-Part blog on Product Sourcing Tips, is an idea I learned from Ed. If you have not heard about Ed, I shall be telling you more about him later……He is another janelle he gives and gives and then gives some more. Well enough of the Ed fan club.

As I have mentioned and other people on the RockStars forum Product Sourcing is a must for any business. Product Sourcing after keywords will either make or break your business. If Product Sourcing is done right then you will have money in the bank.

So for todays tip. If you live in the UK or Europe pop along to your local large newsagents and if you live where they do not have a newsagent, pop along to where they sell magazines, but it must be a major seller.

Now take a look at all the magazines, all of them: Men’s, Woman’s, Children’s, Teenagers, Hobby Ones, etc, etc.

Next take a look at magazines where there is more than one on a topic. Now I know nothing about Tattoos but here in the UK I looked this morning and there were 8 magazines on Tattoo. Now that tells us people must buy these magazines (these magazines were not cheap they were priced at over £5.00 each)

Next you either need to spend some cash or go to a library but I do recomend you spend some cash and buy all the magazines on the subject, so if I was looking at Tattoo I would buy all the magazines.

Once you get home start going through them and marking the pages (this is why you need to buy) on the items you could sell. See where the trade shows are, if possible go to them.

Now as well as reading about Tattoo and the amazing culture you will begin to see trends coming out. Words they use in the magazines, Phrases they use, How they use photo’s.

Make notes of all these things, for if you decide to enter this niche you will be able to use the words , phrases and types of photos they are used to seeing.

For instance we might say ” Tattoo art for girls on their lower backs” Good keywords yes, but for a Tattoo fan means nothing.

They would need ” Tramp Stamp For The Girl With Attitude”  ******* A Tramp Stamp is a Tattoo on The Lower Back of a Girl.

This morning I knew nothing about the Tattoo Industry, Culture, but 10 hours later I can tell you from what I have read, prices I have seen and researched it is a market that has money to spend.

Tomorrow I will show you, how to check out what you have read in magazines with cold facts, that will tell us is this a market to go for.

Andrew Milburn

OSI RockStars

Continuing on my sourcing theme, I have found another great place – Discount shops, such as Costco, Asda (Wal-Mart) , Aldi, Matalan – A hint here please keep a lookout for my new low cost report coming soon.

As with charity shops you need to set yourself a budget for the day, and not go over it unless you find a real bargain, but do be careful and if you keep to your budget if it all goes wrong you will not loose much.

Also take your laptop with you so you can do some coffee shop research, or have your internet phone with you, or as your last line of research a friend or family member sitting by the phone and a computer who can do the research for you.

Most of these places sell bankrupt or end of line items and over stock - I shall be going over these in other posts and also in my report. Most of the shops carry new items and if they are customer returns they must tell you both when the item is on the shelf and when you go to pay for the item.

Hope this gives you another idea on where to source items to resell.

Andrew Milburn

OSI ROCKSTARS

Here in the UK we are not as lucky as our friends over in the USA. We do not have garage sales as such….. we have car boot sales, this can be a good place to source products to sell.

Another place to source is Charity Shops, Bring and Buy sales, looking at adverts in the local papers, Craig List,  eBay, Amazon and the list goes on and on.

Today I am going to talk about Charity Shops. Most towns have a few and the largers ones have over a dozen. Pick a day when you are going to visit the town or area. As well as picking the area decide before you leave home the budget you are going to spend in the day. Take this in cash with you because a lot of the shops do not have Credit Card facilities.

Also say to yourself right my budget is £100.00 and do not go over this……. a good way to keep to this is to leave your cards and cheque book at home.

You need to take with you a laptop if you have one (you can use these in Coffee shops most free of charge), if not a laptop then a mobile phone that can access the internet.
Failing those two, a phone so you can phone home or a freind so you can research the items you find.
If you know what you are doing you can buy blind, but I do not recomend this.

When you get to the shops, go round each one first and if you see a goods buy and it works out ok on the computer buy it But do make a round first and get a feel see whats in them, make notes.

Then it is time for a rest…….have a coffee and open your computer up and see if what you have seen can make you a profit. Make a note of all the winners, finish the coffee and go and buy.

When you have bought up the town, head for home and take your pictures and do the listings.

A question I am always asked is, what mark-up (profit) should I allow. And my answer is what do you want or better still what does the market want.
Your best action is put it on eBay as a starting price for what you bought it for then if you only get that price you do not lose money.

Hope This Helps

Andrew Milburn