2047 Comments (page 1)

Amazing article! Really enjoyed it, thanks a lot :)

Hey awsome article! I have a few questions. 1. How could you tell if a product is really selling on ebay? Is there a history somewhere or are you just using common sense? 2. You suggest in the begging looking for suppliers who will sell only 5-10 products. It seems a lot of suppliers have very large minimums. Are we just looking for the gems? Or am I missing some sort of haggling thing? Again thank you for sharing your experience! I wish more people were like you. - Z

Glad you enjoyed it Lamine, thanks for reading!

Hey Zak - 1. I should add a picture in the blog post, but in eBay there is an option to only view completed listings. Then you can quickly go through and see which products are selling at what prices, and at what price they stop selling, as well as frequency. 2. I answered this for somebody else on Reddit, so I am just going to paste that response here if it is alright - "The minimum order they list is generally not concrete, and is most of the time their average or desired order size. There is no way to know for sure without messaging the suppliers directly, which is why I go for 15-30 initially. In my experience, Chinese 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 shouldnt mind sending out even a single item via air (which is what they do with samples anyways). Again, with some items it will be different than other. 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 generally get better prices for the same amount on Alibaba if you are willing to put in the effort to communicate with suppliers, but AliExpress is always an option." Thanks a lot for reading Zak, and let me know if there are any other questions you have!

I really enjoyed the article. What was your experience with getting the merchandise through customs? Were your orders always by air or did you dabble with larger container shipments?

Will, Great article. Really cleared up a lot of the questions I had. It makes the process really straight forward from here on out. I guess finding that nice product niche just comes down to some hard work and diligence. Well who woulda thunk? I guess I still have to remaining points off the top you could address here or in another post. One reservation I have with the above process is I guess it just seems to good to be true - if it's as simple as finding the right product, won't other people already have identified the right niche? Maybe I'm just shooting myself in the foot before I get off the ground but I just can't imagine that there's so many easy loopholes left to exploit. Or is it just a matter of becoming yet another seller of a popular product? Sure, 29 people already sell fluorescent bulbs to customers in the US over eBay, but since 3000 are bought everyday, some of that business is bound to trickle over to number 30. Also, why do you think we shouldn't buy and sell that which interests us? Isn't the first rule of business sell what you know? Why couldn't a guy make money off of clothes or small electronics? Surely there's an exception to this suggestion. Otherwise keep up the good work. I'd love to see you continue this theme in your posts with even more specific information. You could even try to get back into the game and make some cash and document the whole thing. Make an even more step by step guide (this post is pretty damn good start though.) Thanks, Devan

Thanks a lot for reading Alex. I never had much trouble with customs (until they banned airsoft shipments temporarily). 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. 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. Hope that helps!

Hey Devan, Glad you liked the article, I was worried it might have grown too lengthy. I think you are correct on most of your thoughts about product/niche selection. I had the same reservations when I was getting started with this and honestly I think they really took a toll on how quickly I found success with it. There are products out there, they are just hiding in places nobody thinks of. You basically want to jump back a forth from the "hot product" tools I posted (ebay completed listings, amazon, etc) to Alibaba and see if you can find something with a good $10+ markup. Find a few of these and look around the ebay and amazon listings to see how many sellers there are, how consistent the sellers are, if all the items are being bought up immediately, if most of them are just sitting there with no interest, etc. If you do this for an hour or two, you should start finding at least a couple products with $10-20 markup potential. When I went and did it how I described it, I found 2 or 3 decent products in the first 20 minutes, so I know there are some still out there. The reason you can undercut in some markets is because you have no overhead. In airsoft for example, all my competition were running brick-and-mortar stores with inventory and employees and rent and utilities. I was sitting at home in my underwear in front of my computer instead of going to school, and getting the same prices they were (and eventually better). I am sure there are more reasons than this, but I think this is the main one (I'll probably add this point to the article) It is also good to find a market like you described, with ultra-high volume and few sellers. Amazon is great for this, and I will probably post soon how I still sell some things like this on Amazon on the side. Easy income really. I believe that you have to be passionate about your business 110%, totally agree with you there. If you wanted to create a fashion line, you'd better have a hell of a lot of passion, you'll need that and some more. However in this specific case, when we are basically engaging in arbitrage, I think it is best to focus almost completely on the margins. The only reason I did this was to make money on the side, and that required me focusing purely on margins. If you want to start a brand behind your imports though, you definitely want to pick something you love and can do for years to come, and you definitely don't want to just focus on the margins. My friend Kevin at SKAR Audio technically started out running an import business, but eventually became passionate about it and expanded it out into the SKAR brand, now selling over $100k of product per month. He turned his imports into a real brand and real business, and it required an incredible amount of work and passion. Much more so than me sitting around on my computer :) Also, I am sure there are some electronics and especially clothing pieces out there that you can make money on, I just haven't in the past so I can't really vouch for them comfortably. I can tell you though, be extra extra careful with electronics, as people get burned in that niche much more than any other. Great idea on getting back into the game too, maybe I will record a live case study! I love talking with you man, every time we talk we build up some amazingly valuable content and ideas! Thanks a lot for everything Devan, talk to you later

This article really hit home for me, literally. I work at the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach which are the busiest ports in the USA. I see these ships come and go every day, and I have stood by and worked with containers 1000's of times. When people ask me, "Do you know what's in them?" my reply is, "nope." It's not my job to know; it's my job to move them around the yard. I followed the advice in your article, and I came across a product with a good $10-15 markup. It seems to sell well on Ebay (1-2 a day) and Amazon only has 1 seller. I'm going to continue to follow your advice and go through with it trying to sell it myself, but first I am going to get my hands on some samples.

So awesome to hear you are taking action Raymond, nothing makes me happier. I think you should definitely get some samples on that product, and congratulations on finding a prime product opportunity so quickly. Makes me think I gave decent advice :) I would love to help you on your way to success and feature your story on the blog, email me if you are interested! Either way though, feel free to hit me up in the future with any questions, problems, or concerns. Congrats again on your initial success!

Wow, excellent article! I'm so inspired right now. I'm a student and business owner already, but I've been looking for new business opportunities. I love online retail (my current business is an online vintage store), and I want to suppliment my income with other sources. I'm really excited to look into this, and your post was incredibly detailed, so that will definitely help in getting started. Many thanks! Cheers, Dani

Will, A lot of informative stuff in this article! As far as taxes/tariffs go, did you run into any implications or astronomical expense, or was the burden of taxation borne by the supplier mostly? Also, at what point did you feel comfortable suggesting the product be drop shipped? Ideally, I would like to find a product in the 20-40 USD range that I could realize a pre-tax margin of 75% and also something that is more defensive and less vulnerable to macroeconomiic conditions both domestically and abroad. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated. Thanks!

Thanks a lot for the kind words Dani, I am glad you got some value out of it. If you are already running an online store, you will probably find great success with importing. The more you know about getting products up and selling, along with marketing them on the back end for recurring revenue, the more potential the importing opportunity has. Good luck, and please let me know if there is anything I can help with!

Thanks so much for reading Chris. With the smaller orders (under a pallet's worth), my suppliers generally shipped by air and most of the importing/shipping expenses were built into my product cost and taken care of by the supplier/shipping company. I wish I remembered how it exactly came about (I could probably go way back in my emails and find out), but from memory I think I started sending my supplier just straight SKU, quantity, and address for them to tally up and send to me. I was just copy and pasting them from my internal excel spreadsheet I was keeping because I was getting lazy with it. After about a month of that, my supplier mentioned to me that he has a US distributor that they use to ship single orders to customers in the US, and that he could get me set up within that process if I wanted. I of course accepted and my job became a hell of a lot easier. I also wish I had more advice on how to know when to ask for drop shipping, and maybe I will go back into it and do a live case study or something to find out. But, just speaking from what I know certainly works, I had to develop a great relationship with them before we had the mutual trust built up for that to be a possibility. As for the products that you are looking for, you are describing a dream products. Not that it is impossible to find, but it is going to take a bit of trial and error and work before you find a perfect product. To meet the specifications you mentioned, I would guess staple items (forks, underwear, lighters, lint rollers, weird stuff like that), maybe some toys (like those big inflatable transparent balls people can get in and run around in on water), and maybe some hobby items (RC airplane parts, RC drift car wheels, etc). Again, it is always going to be some weird product you'd never think of that turns out to be your bread and butter, you really just have to get out there and start looking around. I won't lie, it takes some time (though much less with this article). Hope that helps, and dont hesitate to hit me up with additional questions! Thanks!

I do have one question to start with. When comparing items on Amazon's best sellers list and Alibaba, is it important to find the same brands? For example, if I found a nail dotting pen by Shany Cosmetics on Amazon, is it important to try to find the same manufacturer on Alibaba? I don't even know if that is possible (I'm pretty new to Alibaba, so I'm trying to familiarize myself with it). Can I just find a comparable nail dotting pen and try to sell it? Thanks!

I really enjoyed this! But, the end of your blog is a business ending crash! Was it simply because of the product? Or, did the market go away, did the suppliers go away? And, if it was the suppliers, what's to prevent any other product having the same fate?

Hey Dani, It really depends on the product, but it would be prime if you could find the same nail dotting pens that are selling on amazon, 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 nail dotting pens and sell them on eBay or any other channel, because you know people are buying a similar item on Amazon. Then it just comes down to positioning your pens 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. I hope that answers those questions for you, let me know if you have any other questions. By the way, read your blog and loved it! Left a comment also :) Good luck to you, Will

Thanks a lot for reading it! I tried to cover it a bit in the article, but what happened to me was kind of a rare fluke. The Chinese and American Customs were having some dispute about weapons and weapon look-a-likes, so airsoft guns got piled into it along with my knives and other things I was selling less of. China started holding all of those at their ports and not letting them go for whatever reason it was (there wasnt much news or anything about this, just people talking within the industry). It ended up being 3-6 months before any of these items were smoothly going through both customs again, and by that time I had lost a lot of the value in what I had built. I could have gone back into it or changed products, but being 16 I decided to do other things :-) Hope that helps!

Great post, I really enjoyed reading it. I am intrigued that you made a business mainly by building connections over the internet. These are great times we live in. You spoke about how you look for niche products to sell in the amazon best sellers list. I am wondering if you could expand on that. What criteria do you look for in a potential product? Do you import generic items of brand name popular things?

So I actually took a step forward last night and found a decent product for a low price, did the comparison on amazon on ebay and found a good margin. When I contacted the company in China, they told me their FOB price was to their port and that I am responsible for paying for the shipping price - understandable. He quoted a fedex rate (~$360) from China to Louisiana (I'm in New Orleans) which added about $6 per piece, which still gains me a margine of about $15 a piece. Now my question. 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? Thanks again!! -alex

Thanks for reading Bryan. The internet is an absolutely brilliant tool, great times indeed :) I think you can take the product selection any way you'd like. I wish I could be more specific with it, but it is really just an exploration process for me when I do it. I know a friend who makes a ton of money selling generic razor blade replacements, so I know that is a possibility. I've also heard people mention they'd found opportunity in skateboard hardware, car floor mats...it is a really diverse group. I think I will be sending a video of me doing some niche product selection out via email in the next couple of days - look out for that, and feel free to ask any other questions.

Awesome to hear you are taking action Alex, seems like you are moving quick! Don't forget to order some samples before you start buying in bulk. Just make sure they are sending via EMS, TNT, DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc to your house and you shouldnt 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, 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 :) Keep me updated on your progress, and feel free to hit me up with anything I can do to help you! Will

Near the end of the article you guys said about automating the sales by having the supplier ship the product directly to the client. My question is, since they will be sending the products from Asia, wouldn't it take like a month to arrive to the customers? People can get mad inpatient and start throwing rocks at you.

What do you guys think of auctioning imports?

Hey John, My supplier had set me up with a US distributor of theirs (I think I mentioned in the article) to drop ship for me. I was working with the supplier for a while before we worked out that arrangement. I tried dropshipping from China very early on, but all packages will arrive with a ton of Chinese on them and take about 6-9 days, so that wasnt an option. You're exactly right, they did start throwing rocks lol I have seen some people have success in finding US suppliers from the get go to to dropship for them, but many more have success through small bulk orders at first and building from there. The dropship thing was a great thing I kind of fell into, but it is not easy to find a company that will trust you enough to take your returns and whatnot. Hope that helps!

Could you clarify? I'm not sure I understand...

Incredibly well written and informative article. Everyone thinking of starting an import business should read this!

Thanks a lot for reading!

Since you bring up the Chinese writing - 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.

If you did eBay, did you run into any issues with low feedback in the beginning? For example, if one starts with a fresh email account, does it take long before someone actually buys one of your items? I ask this because I never buy anything on ebay unless I see lots and lots of good feedback (200+)

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. Thanks for reading!

Hey Will, I have a question for you. What if I don't want to sell in Amazon, eBay etc and instead, I want to sell directly to a company let's say... some kind of office supplies they buy every month or something like that. How can I find out how much are they currently spending on an item and how much of it are they spending each month, so I can make a proposal? Best regards, John Saracena

Hey Will, Brilliant article. You really got me thinking about things and I really appreciate it! The big problem like everyone else is niche hunting. Are there any websites / white papers that you can recommend reading. Don't mind paying. Cheers James

Hi Will, So in regards to you purchasing the goods from China wholesalers, I'm a little confused. Did you purchase shipments and store them at distributors? Or did you get them to act as drop shippers, where someone would purchase an item and they would ship it? Wouldn't that make the time delays for the customer getting it too long? If they have to ship from China - one at a time...plus how much would that cost the buyer?? I've got a feeling I've got the wrong end of the stick! James

Great article, i remember my self back in 2004 when i ordered some of the chinese players ( some kinda Ipods) with flash memory of 256MB. I am from eastern europe and by that time this was kinda SF, super new. I sold the 2 players fast. Due to lack of cash i never purchased again. But this is a real business , i will do import more great stuff or will start a dropship business online. Thanks for the info and sharing though.

Hey John Thanks a lot for taking the time out to read and comment on this. You can certainly build a good business that way, and many have. To be honest, I don't have a whole lot of experience in pursuing contracts like this, but I can tell you from marketing that when I first started out I would stalk my competition to find out what they were getting away with charging. If I were going to go into what you are describing, I would probably do a similar thing. The best way to get pricing knowledge is to call up your top 10 competitors and act like your perfect customer and take notes on how they are selling you. The more deeply you can analyze every single word, the better. Everything down to the lingo, the rebuttals, pricing, customer expectations and service...you can leverage the knowledge of people who have made many mistakes to get to where they are (in terms of what decisions they have made on business processes). Hope this helps, if not let me know and I can go deeper! Will

Hey James, Thanks a lot for your kind words, I am really glad to hear you liked it! I will be putting together a video tonight to further explain the niche selection process. It will be free, I will probably be sending it via email to our email subscribers! Keep on the look out. I know the feeling, that everybody else is niche hunting. I always felt that before I began finding a few good niches. They are tough to find, but as long as there are more buyers than entrepreneurs I think we can still find great niches. Two or three people have emailed me since writing this with niches I could only dream of coming up with - I am seriously excited and proud for them. One girl found a product she can mark up 1000% right off the bat and has plans to build a brand with custom products and everything - all in one night! Seriously exciting stuff, I know you can do it! Hit me up if you need any help or anything, Will

Hey James, I think I have you under two emails on these comments - but I'll answer all of them! By the way, love the Pedal Juice company - great idea. I started out importing in light bulk, slowly increasing as I made more money. I was just storing and shipping out of my house at the time. After a certain point it began to be a real burden on me, all the shipping and storage, so I began to search around for some alternative. I asked my contact at our Chinese supplier if he knew of any options, and he told me that with how long I have been with him and how much product I was moving for them, he would try to work something out. He came back with the drop ship arrangement where their largest distributor in the US would package and ship our items for us, as well as take care of returns. On top of all of that, it was much cheaper this way as we could piggy back on their UPS discounts and bulk shipping. Like I said in the article, I don't think that dropshipping is as great as everybody says it is because it is tough to find. You have to develop strong relationships with the suppliers before they go out of their way to help you like that, they need to know you are going to move product and you're going to move a lot of it, the shipping is just holding you back. Hope that helps! Will

Thanks a lot for taking the time out to read and comment. The MP3 player market was a huge opportunity in 2004, I remember seeing some people making unreasonable amounts of money. I tried to get in there also, but electronics are a tough market for a 14 year old haha. Too bad you couldn't keep going with that, I am sure you would have made some good money. At least now you know that there is money there for the future :) Hope to hear from you more in the future, Will

Hey, New to your blog and this is a very encouraging article for anyone young "hustler". Especially in high school or college. I just had a question about Phone number. When you contacted the suppliers via voice. How did you do it?

Hey Daniel, thanks a lot for checking us out. Glad to hear you found some value in the article. I usually didn't need a phone number to contact suppliers. In fact, I barely ever even talked to my suppliers. They love skype and email over there. But if you need voice, like I said they love skype. Hope that helps, and hope to see more from you in the future! Thanks, Will

Let's say you found a very innovative product. The profit potential is there: $10 - $20 per sale. It's small. It's cheap. It has a low minimum order. However, it's not currently widely available on either Amazon or Ebay, except in extremely small instances (only one, brand name product available on Amazon). So in other words, there is no proven demand. What do you do?

That's either a blowout hit or a dud, it depends on the product. I gotta wonder though - how did you come to the profit potential if it isnt widely available? Love your site by the way!

Good question. I guesstimated with a significant margin of error. However, I just finished up a chat with the supplier and turns out I jumped the gun on the interpretation of their description. So it seems that this one is a dud. Thanks for the compliment. I just use it as a web card. I like the startupbros.com design to! Btw, found you via Reddit!

No worries, keep looking! A lot of redditors have been emailing me telling me about some niches they found that are better than anything I ever found! They are still out there. I would really like to get a personal site like yours, a web card - gotta add that to my list :)

Will, The issue of branding has me stumped, I was hoping you could expand on this. As I search for products being sold on Ebay/Amazon it's becoming increasingly clear that many of the products that sell are branded products. Is there a trick to finding products that sell without being branded? Maybe certain niches where brand name means less (or nothing at all)? Your LED light example seems to be less reliant on branding, at least on ebay where I'm finding thousands of non branded light bulbs. 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? The alternative to selling a non branded product is, of course, branding your product but my impression is, to do this right, requires a fair amount of extra work. You'd certainly have to create a credible website at the very least and I imagine there would much more to it than simply creating a brand name for yourself. Can you give more detail on this process? I appreciate any help/insight you might have. Thanks for the article. Best, Chris

Hey Chris, Thanks a lot for taking the time to read and comment! The reason airsoft guns worked were because nobody cares about the brand. People go on to buy a cool airsoft gun, 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. My listings would look like this - http://www.ebay.com/itm/ZM51-Spring-Powered-Bolt-Action-Airsoft-Sniper-Rifle-415-FPS-/200812917116?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ec161f17c Hope this helps, Will

Hi Will, Great article. 1) I'd like to ask how can one figure out how many units of item X are currently being sold each weak or each month (ball park figure)? I mean... is there any way you can know, BEFORE entering a market, that there are currently being sold 15-30 airsoft guns (or whatever) each weak ? I'm interested in knowing or predicting the current volume of sales before choosing a product to sell. Is there a way to do it? 2 ) What about offline... is there any way you can know how many of product X does a certain store or retail chain sell every month? Thanks! - Tom

Hi Tom, Thanks a lot for commenting. 1) I just count how many are sold in a given week on eBay, that will usually let you know the exact amount. 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. 2) It's gunna be much tougher to get the offline data for that, at least not without paying for it. Hope this helps, feel free to ask more! Will

Wow! Long post! You wrote some fascinating information. I prefer to deal with information products. Actually, I am trying to sell art, but I produce it myself. Perhaps in the future, if I build up, then I'll start trying to sell physical products like you that I import from overseas. Entrepreneurship is quite a wonderful thing! Thanks for posting this.

Fantastic breakdown of the importing business. There's a ton of money to be made there, but there's also some important things you need to watch out for. Thanks for explaining your experience in such a simple way (and pointing out some things others of us may have missed)!

Hey Michael, Thanks for reading. I also love infoproducts, working on creating a few currently :) Great luck with your art, unfortunately I don't have much experience outside of marketing a few musicians. Love your writings! Will

Hey Matt, Thanks a lot for reading and taking the time to comment, glad you enjoyed the content. By the way - I loved your article on Twinkies. Just one of the things I am kicking myself over for not getting into this month, including that Powerball Facebook Picture hoax and just buying a Powerball ticket and posting it to client FB pages saying "winnings to be shares with all that share!" or something. Three marketing fumbles in less than a month - and I call myself a marketer?! Congrats on hitting the top of /r/entrepreneur with it too, I saw you up there at the same time as us! Hope to hear more from you in the future, Will

Great read, really appreciate you sharing your experiences and lessons learned. 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?

Thanks a lot for reading and taking the time out to comment Sam. 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. Hope this helps, Will

Hey Will, Great article, thanks for taking the time to lay everything out step by step - you rock! Can you comment on what traditional sample policies entail? One supplier I contacted said the sample is free, I just have to pay $30 shipping. Another said that because they have to make the sample, it would cost $70 ($40 for the sample, $30 for shipping). This seem way out of line, since the unit price they quoted for 100 pcs is $5.50/pc. They did say that the sample price (less shipping) would be credited towards my first order, but still seems like way too much. Is this normal operating procedure or should I steer clear? (FYI - they are a 1st year Gold Supplier and have had an Onsite Check). Thanks! Glenn

Hey Glenn, Thanks a lot for reading the article and taking the time out to comment. That is usually how it goes, as it is pretty expensive to fly a box over the pacific. You can check shipping prices yourself on the UPS/EMS websites, but if multiple companies are quoting the same price I would guess that is the correct cost. It does sound like you have two pretty good suppliers to deal with though, it is usually tough to find a factory that gives free samples or credits them towards your next order! Unfortunately though, single item shipping is a bit expensive from what we are used to seeing here. It gets marginally much cheaper as you ship bigger (like your supplier said) Hope this helps, and congrats on taking action! Will

Thanks Will. I'm not so much concerned about the shipping cost - $30 sounds more than reasonable to ship a small box halfway around the world. My bigger concern is with the 2nd supplier, who is basically charging $40 for manufacturing a sample that probably costs them $5 at the most. Forgot to mention, they also said "We never use paypal, our payment way is westernunion and banktransfer". Is this a show stopper given that they are a Gold Supplier?

Yea, the factory that doesn't accept Escrow or PayPal I would avoid. I also don't like the fact that they are charging $40 for a knife, I didn't realize that on your first comment. Since they credit it towards future orders, I normally would think they are just trying to give samples only to serious suppliers. But since they aren't using a payment method that protects the buyer in any way, I would probably avoid... Hope this helps, Will

That was incredible. You could make a book with that information or at least a short ebook. Definitely one of the most informative posts I have ever read.

Hey Nikolai, thanks a lot for reading and taking the time out to comment! Funny you mention that - we were just talking about extending it out into a book tonight! Maybe we will :) P.S. - Love ThirdMinds!

That's awesome! Very happy to hear you're thinking of pushing forward with that idea. A post gushing with so much needed information deserves its own platform. Thanks for the TM love as well!

Thanks Will, We have 2.0 version coming hopefully soon :). I'm liking the readers comments and your replies just as much as the article :).

Hi Will, Did you already send out this video? I just signed up for your mailing list today and didn't want to miss it. Thanks!

Hey Bugsey, Luckily, I have been making everybody wait way too long for that video, so you didn't miss it yet. Hoping to get it out tonight! Will

Awesome post bro! I have been importing from China for a while and my importing empire is starting to take off now :)

Hello, Great article! Couple of questions... If we aren't supposed to focus on things that we know and buy, how are we supposed to be able to find a niche that will work aside from just randomly guessing and picking products trying to find something that will work? We are really struggling to find a product that we can make work. Also, is there any way to estimate shipping costs on products (as in when the factory ships to us)? Without knowing shipping costs it seems like it would be hard to figure out whether a product will work or not. Thanks!

Hi Bob, Thanks a lot for reading the article and taking the time out to comment. I'll be posting a follow up post tomorrow on niche selection for everybody. If you have issues after that post, email me with more questions and I will help you out! Thanks, Will

I've been doing a few hours of searching over the past couple days and having trouble finding products, too. I've been having trouble finding things that the market isn't already saturated with. I would think a key is to find a unique value proposition of some sort... bunching products together in a certain way, or branding a line of similar products... but I have been finding many things on Alibaba that are either identical or very similar to a bunch of products on Ebay. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong categories of products?

Hey Will, Great article. It definitely gave me some motivation. I just have a few questions, I'm new to this, so if any questions seem commonsensical, pardon me. How did you handle your returns, prior to drop shipping? Would you keep extra stock on hand, in between shipments from oversees, just in case? Also were there points where the cost to return it to China was more than the product, itself, and you just ate your loss? Or would you wait for a couple returns and then ship all at once? Additionally, did you have to do anything as far as applying for a fictitious business name? This may fall under the branding aspect, but I'm not 100% sure. Thanks! George

I am in the middle of writing an awesome Step-by-Step on finding a good product - it should be up by Saturday. Most of the products I make money on are exactly the same on Alibaba and eBay. I use the pictures and information from my supplier a lot of the time. Unique packaging or positioning helps, but then you are creating a different type of business than just a simple side importing business. Hope this helps, Will

Hi George, Thanks a lot for reading and taking the time out to comment. I am glad the article gave you some motivation :) Prior to dropshipping I just handled returns myself. People could ship back to me and I would either refund them or send them a new item depending on the situation. So yes, I pretty much just took the losses and factored them into my costs. I usually had a refund rate of around 2-3% You may want to file for an LLC once you start making some sustainable cash flow for tax purposes. Hope this helps! Will

Hi Will, This is a great article, although I do have a question which I hope you can help with: I live in the Southeast Asia region, Singapore. So my concern is the shipping cost. To ship a package overseas would most probably kill my profit margin. (There's not much option here, since Singapore is a small country) That, coupled with the additional shipping from my supplier, might not be enough to justify the effort that comes with it. I'd appreciate your input on this. Thanks! Stanley

Hi Stanley, Thanks a lot for reading! Yea, it may be tough to ship to the US from Singapore. There may be some opportunities selling to buyers in your area, maybe look into that. Hope this helps, Will

Hey Will, You mentioned sending shipments including coupons and such for your product. My question to you is how you were giving these coupons given you were selling through another website. Dan

Hey Will, Also, I was curious how you set up these deals and the SMS subscriptions. Dan

Hi Dan, Thanks a lot for taking the time out to read and comment. By the time I started sending out in-box promo, I already had my own ecommerce store set up that I could set up coupons through. Like I said, the purpose of the in box promo is to get ebay and amazon buyers information so you can market to them for free in the future - that is how you really start growing! Hope this helps, Will

The SMS subscriptions were set up through a texting service, but now you can use Twilio and Wordpress plugins to do much more powerful things. Email me at will [at] startupbros.com if you need the SMS marketing plugin I use nowadays for my consulting clients. Thanks again, Will

What sort of liability are we at as sellers of items? Like, for example, if I sold little ball magnets and a toddler swallowed them and got sick or something, could they sue? If so, what exactly would happen? Also, I'm a little weary of buying anything from China due to my fears that it may have been made with lead or some other toxic/potentially harmful chemical. Are these fears reasonable? If someone does get lead poisoning, or the product breaks and causes harm, am I liable or is the company in China liable?

Let me lead by saying that I am definitely not a lawyer - but here is my guess from my experience. In a case like this, the seller would likely be named in the lawsuit, but the primary liability will still lie with the manufacturer. Even so, if you are behind an LLC your personal assets are safe. Hope this helps, Will

Thank you! On another note, can a minor apply for an LLC? If so, how do I go about doing that? Just go talk to my bank?

There wasn't an age limit when I was under 18, it depends on your State but I doubt it will be an issue. You either need to do it through LegalZoom or google "File an LLC in (whatever State)" and you should find a way to do it online cheaper through your State, but it will take a little more research/legwork to get through the process on the clunky State websites... Hope this helps, Will

Wow, great article and very informative. Thank you for writing it. I've started comparing items on the Amazon best seller list and trying to find suppliers at Ali Baba. I've found one item that I could sell for a considerable markup, but I'm afraid I might be dealing with counterfeits. How can I tell for sure that the item I'm buying isn't counterfeit and that the American company will not come after me?

Hey Richard, Thanks a lot for reading and commenting! It is tough for me to know whether or not your specific item is prone to counterfeiters or might put you at legal risk without actually knowing what the product is. If it is a recognizable trademark, you probably want to avoid it. Also, look on eBay/Amazon and see how the climate is there with sellers - do a lot of people say "Genuine" "Not Counterfeit" "Real" etc? If so, then it is obviously a problem for that product, and is probably prone to counterfeiters. Hope this helps, Will

Hey Will. I was going to drop you a message on Reddit but I stopped here as well. On your recommend I bought The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (the new revision) and it is a darn good read/listen. It made me laugh in a few spots because not only do we have some similar ideas but he also used a couple of sayings I am a bit infamous for around work (easier to get forgiveness than permission). Thanks again.

Hey there, Glad to see you commented here, as Reddit banned my account for no real reason they can tell me... Awesome to hear you bought 4-Hour Workweek, it is definitely one of my top 10 books for entrepreneurs. I know the feeling about having similar ideas - I used to get people telling me I was stealing ideas from 4HWW before I had even read it. That's what convinced me to buy it :) Let me know how you enjoy it, Will

Hey Will, When you were first starting out, how did you deal with the crazy high shipping prices? I don't have a lot of money to put into this at this time, so I've been looking at items with free shipping. Is a good idea? Also, what would I do if I just want to buy a few samples of a product? I've been in contact with the seller and he has agreed to it, but would the payment be done outside of Alibaba since they may not sell just one item on the site?

You are SO AWESOME. A definite inspiration to me. I haven't gotten this excited about something for awhile. If I'm ever in Florida, I'm going to buy you dinner.

Hey Will, Thanks for the great read! Today, I was buying a sample from China (gold supplier) for 8$ + 25$ shipping (they only do FOB). They asked me for my DHL account number. I haven't replied yet, because I don't have a DHL account (and the 25$ seemed like a rip off, as I constantly buy personal items from china with free international shipping since they're labeled as gifts). What's the best way to handle shipping? Should I use DHL or FedEx, or something else to handle the FOB and EXW etc? Thanks, Summit

Hey Adam, The shipping prices are always going to be high coming across the Pacific, just something you have to account for. I don't think you'll find any factories willing to send samples with free shipping, but maybe you can. The sellers are used to people buying samples. Just make sure your payments are protected in some way, either through Paypal or Escrow. Hope this helps, Will

Haha thanks a lot! Looking forward to dinner and drinks :-P Love your blog by the way, good stuff! Will

Hey Summit, Thanks for commenting, and sorry about the delay - was out of town! They like to ship onto other people's shipping account. I think they will still ship themselves if you don't have a shipping account though, just ask them. $25 is actually the low end of sample shipping costs in my experience, at least if you are shipping to the US. I usually pay from $25-45 for the first sample shipments. Not sure how they could do free shipping unless it is baked into the unit cost. Honestly, I usually work with the supplier a lot to set up shipping terms that work for both of us. What works for you is going to be different from others, as everybody is shipping different items with different shapes and sizes and regulations, and they all want to do different things with them (store in garage, closet, warehouse). You really have to work with the supplier to figure out what is going to work best. Hope this helps! Will

Why does Alibaba have such bad reviews? Lots of people saying there a scam? I was really excited about a legit place to buy from until i seen the bad reviews :( Have you ever had a bad experience with them?

Why does alibaba have such bad reviews?i was excited about purchasing until i read about all the people that got scammed, have you had any issues with them or Chinese maufactureres?

Hey Bud, Like I said in the article, it is really easy to get scammed if you don't know what you're doing and aren't careful! Make sure you talk to Gold suppliers and use PayPal/Escrow to protect yourself. Hope this helps, Will

Will, First off, congratulations to your success in importing at such a young age. I am a 22 year old college student and just now seeing some of the potential in the import/export business. I have a couple of questions I hope you don't mind answering. Living in a small apartment with a roommate, I don't have the ability to store much product. Do you feel that there are any suppliers out there that will drop ship for me with no prior relationship to me? I did not even realize this was an option until reading your article, so thank you. I would also like some advice from you about a product I am interested in importing. What do you think of this http://www.amazon.com/Bronze-Finish-Power-Outlets-Rectangular/dp/B00427T4KY/ref=sr_1_60?ie=UTF8&qid=1358460321&sr=8-60&keywords=lamp+with+power+outlet. The margins are incredible. Doing ebay/amazon searches do not return many results for the lamps and I am not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. There seems to be little retail competitors, but maybe also few customers? I know it is something I would want in my home though. Just one more question if you don't mind. Do you feel that an LLC would be a good way to legitimize your import/export company? Thanks for taking the time to write such an informative article. I look forward to hearing from you. Nathan

Nathan, Thanks a lot for reading and commenting! It is going to be extremely hard to find a supplier that will drop ship for anybody that hits them up out of the blue. They generally want some sort of relationship built up first. My first couple years I was only importing a few boxes few of stuff and never ran into storage issues, but of course I don't know how much room you have. Lamps are going to be really, really tough to sell unless you have a list of people buying lamps to advertise to. You need to niche down a lot, just selling a random lamp is going to be really inconsistent and tough. I would assume there is no consistent base of buyers for the specific lamp you are referring to, meaning you will have to build up that base of buyers, which costs a lot of money! I'd find a different product. I think I mention in the article that I never file for an LLC until I know that my business is going to be around for a long time. That's just me, you could do it whenever you want though. Hope this helps, Will

So, please correct me if I am mistaken, you made a lot of money with only one product (the airsoft guns) sourced through alibaba, right? I understand that the regulations killed that product However what is preventing you of doing the exact same thing but with another product? Is it harder now with ebay? Do you consider ebay the best way to sell those products ? What about flee markets... Is it possible to make even more money there? Thanks in advance. Martin

Hi Martin, I think I replied to you on some forums, but here is my response from there - I didn't continue with it at the time just because I was young and didn't feel like doing it anymore. My goal in life is $1bn and didn't need the money, so I went down a different path that I thought would get me closer to that. I think it is probably a little bit harder now, but I also think that we will be looking back at it in 5 years saying "It was so easy back then!". I never tried Flea Markets, but I did almost try selling to flea market merchants as a supplier to them. Never got around to it before the ban though. Hope this helps, Will