- Decide on which suppliers to buy samples from – Within 24 hours you should have replies from most of the suppliers you emailed. You probably only want to deal with the ones that email back quickly. At this point, you will want to “dry-run” each supplier and get a feel for how it is to do business with their company. Most of your communication from here will be through email or Alibaba messaging. Your first response from them will likely contain a few price sheets, product specs, as well as responses to your questions. As you are trying to message at least 5-10 suppliers, you should get a good idea of the high/low prices for your product. This information combined with your gut feeling on the supplier through talking with them should get you down to 2-3 suppliers you like well enough to buy samples from and test to see if you can actually make money.
- Buy samples – Like I said above, through your conversations with the suppliers you contact you should whittle it down to 2-3 suppliers you are comfortable doing business with and want to buy samples from. This usually happens through email as well – You’ll tell them what products you want sent to what address, they’ll tell you how much it will cost and where to send the money, you send the money and tell them that it’s sent. Expect the shipping alone on your sample to cost $25-45. I would only do business with companies that take orders through PayPal or Escrow. Any other way than that and you are risking being scammed and have absolutely no financial protection in your order.
- Sit and wait for your samples to arrive – It will usually take 7-20 days for your order to arrive. This part sucks.
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS I GOT ON THIS STEP…
Are the details on the product listings such as Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) concrete?
The minimum order suppliers list on Alibaba is generally not concrete, and most of the time represents their average or desired order size. There is no way to know for sure without messaging the suppliers directly, which is why I message 10-20 initially.
In my experience, overseas factories will go through many hoops to work with you on order sizes, unless they are a MASSIVE factory that only ships via sea. If they use normal air shipping at all, they shouldn’t mind sending out even a single item via air (which is what they do with samples anyways).
Again, some items will be different than others. For instance I looked into selling LED lighting that attaches to the sides of buildings, and the margins looked great, but the MOQ ended up being somewhere around $5,000 of lights due to the purpose of the item (to run down entire high rise buildings). I skipped over that one.
Another option is AliExpress.com, Alibaba’s site for smaller orders. You will get much better prices on Alibaba if you are willing to put in the effort to communicate with suppliers, but AliExpress is always an option.
When using these express carriers, are their quotes typically adding in the customs tariffs? Or will there be another unexpected charge when they arrive in country?
Just make sure they are sending via EMS, TNT, DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc to your house and you shouldn’t have any issues. The samples will likely be sent the same way your future orders will be sent, so getting the sample is good to try that out as well.
I haven’t really run into any additional fees when shipping via air, the supplier has almost always taken care of shipping flawlessly for me. I am sure there may be some exceptions, so I would ask your supplier before they ship. But really, I think you’ll be safe unless you’re importing something really strange, like food or plants or iron ore or something 
When comparing items on selling sites and Alibaba, is it important to find the same brands? Does it need to be the same manufacturer? Can I just find a comparable product and try to sell it?
It really depends on the product, but it would be prime if you could find the same exact products that are selling already, because then you can list your items directly on the sellers page for a product that is already selling itself. However, you could easily take a different brand of the same product and sell them on eBay or any other channel, because you know people are buying a similar item. Then it just comes down to positioning your product well.
In the light bulb example, I found the exact bulbs that were selling for a very healthy markup. That is ideal, but even if it were a different brand, light bulbs are pretty generic and people likely buy all sorts of different kinds all over the place. It would be safe to say I could even make a new listing with new bulbs and spend a small amount on advertising the listings and come away with a very healthy profit.
Is there a trick to finding products that sell without being branded? Maybe certain niches where brand name means less (or nothing at all)?
The reason airsoft guns worked were because nobody cares about the brand. People go on to buy a cool airsoft gun for themselves or their kids, not look for a brand name airsoft gun. Brand name airsoft guns are a completely separate niche, and I couldnt have dreamed of competing there. You have to find an area where the brand doesnt matter.
Is there a way to know the exact current volume of sales before choosing a product to sell?
I just count how many are sold in a given week on eBay, that will usually let you know a ballpark amount. Take note of the ratio of sold vs unsold listings for your product. Short of that you can watch Amazon pages to see if listings pop up and drop off, but eBay is going to be best for volume predictions as you can see that data. Amazon usually has a “#1,202 in X Category” indicator too, so you can at least compare items with Amazon too.
How much to buy at first
How should I negotiate with my supplier? How did you?
It really depends on your relationship with your supplier. You will usually find yourself talking with one person 95% of the time, so you will slowly become friends with them. It is a weird relationship, you both know that business is cut throat, but you are partners in it and will help each other as far as you can. Asian business is really different than in the US.
Whenever I negotiated prices with a supplier, it was very informal and very laid back. I would usually just email them along with my normal email saying something along the lines of “I have another factory offering me this product at $0.50 per unit lower than you, I may have to move to them for this specific product”, or “If you can give me $0.50 off per unit, I can sell X number of units more for you per month”, or “I am starting to do a lot more volume with you, do you think we could talk about lowering the product or shipping prices in order to account for these recent bulk orders”.
Sort of contrary to popular belief, they are extremely friendly, and will genuinely try to help you as long as they are making something on the other end. They really believe in Karma over there, that helping you may help you help them in the future, so why wouldn’t they?
I also haggled a lot on specific orders, so I would sometimes email or skyped him saying hey, I have an order lined up for 5 of this item, but they want it at this price. If you can give me this price on these, I can sell them right away. This worked really well for me to feel out what the actual cost of sale was for the factory and something to work towards.
How does escrow work?
The Alibaba Escrow service (or whatever service you want to use) consists of you sending the payment for your order to a third party (Alibaba in this case) who will hold the money until you tell them that you have received the order and it is to your satisfaction. At that point, they release the funds to the seller. If you arent satisfied with the order, you can basically dispute the transaction and get a refund. It may a little bit safer than PayPal, but normally I still try to use PayPal anyways.
How long does it take to find a good supplier?
Now, I could probably find a good supplier in a day or two, just because I know what to look out for now (most of which is included in the post). To find a perfect supplier like my airsoft supplier is a little more difficult, and requires some time and luck. You usually have to work with a few good suppliers to find a perfect one. Really, I don’t know how much of it is “finding” one as opposed to just developing a great relationship with a great factory. I often forget that many people over there are just as entrepreneurial and ambitious as I am, if not more. Find a great factory, and work with them to build your business. Once you have constant cash coming in, they will really start to help you out, because helping you increase your sales also increases theirs.
Step 4: Sell – How To Sell Your Product
Once you finally have your hands on your samples, deeply examine them and see how they are.
Is the quality what you expected? Do any areas look cheap? Are there any things that are missing? Does anything look like it will fall apart after some heavy use? Is the packaging quality up to par? Is there anything at all that would cause a customer to not be happy with this if he ordered it from you?
These are all things you need to ask yourself. If you decide that your samples are at least high enough quality to sell (most products don’t need to be perfect), then I still recommend doing one more thing before you start buying in bulk…
THE IMPORTANCE OF TESTING THE WATERS
I once thought I had an awesome niche in a certain type of bed cover. I bought my samples and got up to this point in the guide, impressed with the quality of the sample bed covers.
But instead of testing the waters and listing/selling my samples online, I immediately put in a bulk order…
A few weeks later I got my huge box full of 100 sets of bed covers. I jumped on my computer excited as ever and then started listing my bed covers…
I immediately sold 5 on the first night and shipped them out the following day. I thought I hit a gold mine.
After a week of solid sales, I started getting feedback from customers. It was HORRIBLE! Every single piece of feedback was basically hate mail.
Turns out the colors on my bed covers were running in the wash and not only ruining the designs, but in some cases more of the customers clothes.
I immediately stopped selling the covers, but not before the damage was done. I took a huge hit on my eBay feedback that would have gotten most accounts banned; as well as a hit on my bank account and pride when I had to throw away over 75 bed covers and refund all customers.
That is how I learned to always sell your samples first before putting in a bulk order, and I strongly suggest that you limit your risk and do the same.
HOW TO SELL YOUR SAMPLES
This part should be pretty easy for you, but here is a quick overview to help.
- List your product on eBay, Amazon, and/or Etsy – You’re going to want to set up a sellers account if you don’t have one, and then list you samples. The way I do this on is just looking at the “Completed Listings” for my product that have sold the most in the past couple months, and thenrewriting their copy. On Amazon it is even simpler than that, you just list a price and quantity. You usually won’t make a profit on your samples, you are only selling them to test everything out. Don’t get hung up on this part too much, just get your products up and selling and wait to see if you make sales. If you aren’t making sales, start comparing your item to ones that are and figure out why they aren’t.
- Ship out orders – Obviously if you start getting orders you are going to want to send out your samples. All you have to do is take it to the post office or whatever with the product and address.
- Wait and evaluate – You should soon enough start getting some feedback on your products. If you get good feedback, awesome! If you get back feedback or refund requests, not good. If you had to drop your price below what you thought you could sell at, maybe not good. If you didn’t sell anything and still have your samples, definitely not good. You guys will know if you want to move forward or not.
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS I GOT ON THIS STEP…
How do you handle returns and warranty?
Unfortunately, you’ll have to eat the costs on any returns at this point. Ideally you want to find a product that doesn’t have a huge return rate or high demands on quality in general. If you did that correctly, you should never run into any issues with returns outside of a 1-2% refund rate. But yes, you do have to eat the cost on all refunds and returns, and I suggest you do so happily to keep your eBay/Amazon/Etsy feedback scores high.
If one starts with a fresh email account on eBay/Amazon, does it take long before someone actually buys one of your items?
It was surprisingly easy to get started with very few feedback, that was one of my concerns though. If you are really worried, you can either a) sell some small things b) buy some stuff or c) buy an account with feedback. I’d recommend them in that order if you find it a problem.
Can you tell me would a typical Ebay/Amazon listing for one of your airsoft guns looked like, as an example? What would the description say about the gun? The maker? The supplier?
Does reselling in this manner require time to gain sales volume or is that mainly a factor of the quality of product/supplier you find? Is there a point where you would outgrow Ebay or Amazon or is this not a valid concern?
It takes time, but the first limiting factor is the supplier, and it can be tough the first time. It is really up to you if you want to outgrow those channels, you can build a business completely outside of those using other channels, and also leverage those channels to bring in recurring revenue. It is just if you decide to grow these ways, or just want a good side business.
Step 5: Grow – How To Move Forward & Other Questions
So at this point you should know a huge amount about whether or not you’d like to move forward with this. You should have all of the data you need to know exactly how much money you can make, exactly how many units of your product you should buy on your first bulk order, and which supplier you’d like to work with moving forward.
Growing from here is really up to you. There is no limit on how large or how small an importing business can be.
I have a friend who started out selling car audio sub woofers just like I describe here. He started selling 2-3 units per week on eBay.
Within a couple months he had expanded out to Amazon and started putting his own brand name on the sub woofers he was ordering.
Within a year he had a website for his brand and began bringing in more and more products to sell. He also began thinking of ways to turn Amazon and eBay customers into recurring revenue by signing them up for his email list and social media profiles.
Now, not even 2 years since he started, he is set to clear $700,000 of revenue for 2012 at just 20 years old.
He started out with this simple concept and decided that he wanted to build it out into his own brand. That is definitely one way you could go!
Of course this also takes MUCH more time and energy to build. If you want to build this up and still keep it as a side business, there are ways to do that as well.
Here are just a few of the ways you can grow your importing business from here –
- Listing yourself on other existing sales channels – Make sure you have all of your products listed on Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and any other places you can get sales from.
- Build your own sales channel – It is becoming easier and easier for anybody to create an eCommerce store and start building their own sales channel. Even if you don’t want to build your own brand, there are many benefits, such as listing your products through Google and Bing Shopping Ads.
- Advertising on existing sales channels – I had a lot of success advertising my product listings on Amazon and eBay, and I am sure you can do the same.
- Take on new products – As you sell more of your product you will have more feedback and money to play with. You’ll be able to test new products and start bringing in new things to sell.
- Brand yourself – Branding takes a lot, and obviously goes far beyond the scope of this post, but you can certainly build out your importing company into a brand like I described above. You can see how I pick brand names here.
- Recurring revenue – The best way to make money in any business is recurring revenue. You can start thinking about putting promotional materials in boxes, starting an email newsletter, monthly subscription packs, and things like that. The more people you can siphon from eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Google, or whatever into your contact databases (email, mail, etc), the better.
- Getting better prices from your supplier – As your volume starts to pick up with your supplier your bargaining power will grow with it. Don’t be afraid to ask for small discounts here or there once you have some volume going.
- Outsourcing parts of the process – Once you are making 10 or 20 orders a day, you will probably start getting sick of shipping things out constantly. Outsourcing this to a friend or employee of some sort is an obvious way to free up time to grow your business. Hiring a VA to keep track of your inventory and respond to customers immediately may be a good investment as well.
Here are things that probably won’t work –
- PPC Advertising – I have not had much success with Adwords/FB PPC with this method. If you know what you’re doing go ahead and try, but I know what I’m doing and don’t find it worth my time.
- Social Media – Just isn’t going to work for importing unless you are trying to build a brand or something. Social is good for brands, not for eBay/Amazon sellers. Again, different if you are building a brand.
- Pretty much anything I didn’t mention above – If I didn’t mention it in the “working” section, then it didn’t work for me.
Other Questions I Received…
There were a few questions that I received that didn’t really fit into any of the above steps, but I did want to include them anyways. Here they are –
What was your experience with getting the merchandise through customs? Were your orders always by air or did you dabble with larger container shipments?
I never had much trouble with customs. The supplier usually dealt with the customs when sending them out, and I only sold domestically after I got it. Any good factory/distributor is going to be going through customs enough to know how to get through smoothly. Even when I was doing the counterfeit goods, I never had an issue with customs (and then there was a real risk of big losses!). I think most Asian suppliers will be able to handle this with no issues for you.
Back in the day I always ordered by air, and never wanted to deal with FOB sea shipments. Really though, it is not too difficult to import a container, you just hire a trucking company at the port to bring it to your warehouse or whatever. There are also a few extra fees involved, but again your supplier will know them, so just ask them.
Nowadays I import via air and sea depending on the size of the order, and work with clients that ship full containers in regularly. Unloading and storing the product efficiently is usually the bigger problem at this point.
What are the hilarious boxes of useless stuff you still own?
I have a box of a bunch of purses and wallets taking up space in my closet. I have a pair of these ridiculous transparent gangster shoes (BAPES or soemthing) that I got sent instead of a sample I ordered. I have tons of airsoft stuff still laying around, more T-Shirts than I will ever be able to use, and probably more…
When to start advertising?
What do you think about the viability of this in a smaller international market like Australia?
I think this will work in smaller markets, but even more interestingly I think those markets may have more opportunities. Everybody is in the US markets, there have got to be some under utilized sites for different countries.
There might also be products that don’t sell very well in the US and do in Australia, which would probably increase your margins greatly. There have got to be some products that are Australia specific that might be awesome niches.
Shipping and imports might eat you, but in Australia I think you will actually get everything a lot cheaper than we do in the US (not sure though). I know Australia and China have been playing nice, and are obviously very close to each other, so it might be significantly cheaper.
Obviously, treat it with caution as my experience is in the US market and could be wrong because of that, but I think you should definitely look into it.
I live in Europe and anything outside of the free market is typically charged VAT as it comes in – how did you deal with this?
I definitely didn’t need to deal with VAT tax here in the US, and I would hate it if I did. Honestly, it probably won’t kill the method entirely, but it is going to limit your niches a bit more. You’re gunna have to find a really, really good niche, and probably on a small item with few parts to avoid a high VAT fee.
Why should we avoid WWB/Doba?
I think in some cases WWB/Doba can give you some good contacts, and it may have changed since I was a member. In my specific experience with them, I couldn’t find any items that I could make a significant margin on. I remember going through tons and tons and tons of data to find the most profitable items I could sell via eBay and Amazon and couldn’t find a single item to make money on. Coupled in with the cost of membership I couldn’t see myself ever making it worth the money, but again I was 14-16 years old at the time and may have been missing some vital points – but that is my experience with it.
Why didn’t you move to other products when you were younger?
I guess I don’t really remember why I didn’t start exploring other niches at that time. My best guess is that I was 16 and scatterbrained and wanted to try something new and exciting. I also got picked up on a professional paintball team right around that time also, so that took up most of my time for a few years…
Do you still find suppliers on Alibaba and sell items?
I still use Alibaba to find suppliers for me and my clients for whatever we need. Some of my recent imports have been yearbook-style books, branded promo materials (pins, bags, shirts, posters, etc.), and industry specific tools (think hair cutting shears, bartender items, things like that).
How do you find dropshippers?
Dropshippers are a little bit tougher to find than bulk distributors, because they need to trust you as well as you trusting them. I think it is really best to build a relationship through small bulk orders before moving into dropshipping. A great site for finding dropshippers is WholesaleCentral.com – but the best dropshippers are found through your existing suppliers.
When you find a product do you specify what you want on the product box/package in terms of language/design/brand/logo/etc? Or do you simply pass on what they have already created?
If you want to customize any aspects of the product, you are going to have to pay extra. Most factories will work with you to build anything you want really, even a completely new product if they can do it, and they will help you with many aspects of it. But, it will cost more, the MOQ will be higher, it will be more complicated, and increasingly so with each customization. If you are going down that route, you are likely building a brand.
How do you do taxes on this? Say you’re self employed and keep good records?
Yea, I never had many tax issues with it. Given I was 15/16, I was using my parents accountant to do it, and just gave them my records basically.
On shipping, do you buy a bulk order of boxes and print off labels or whatever?
Yep, that is exactly what I did. Add in a tape gun and packing peanut dispenser and you’re golden.
Additional Questions?
I tried to go as far as I could without getting boring in this blog post, and I may have even failed at that.
However, if you are still having any issues with any part of this process, feel free to contact me and I will do what I can to help you.
As many of our readers already know, I typically answer all questions with a couple of hours, and try to do as much as I can to help you succeed.
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- What a thorough and helpful guide! Have you decided on a product now? Tell us on the comments below!
