Preparation, Preparation, Preparation and then The Grand Opening

So, in the last episode I talked about trying to find a reputable dropshipper the best way to do this in my opinion was to read the 100's of posts on www.dropshipforum.co.uk.

Now I had found a few reputable dropshippers I had to decide what to sell. This proved even more difficult than finding a reputable dropshipper. There were so many questions to I had to ask. What is the most profitable product to sell? Do you go for a popular product or try and find a niche? Which products sell most on eBay? these are just a few of the mant questions.

My first thought was to sell consumer electronics, MP3 Players, Playstations, X-Boxes etc... I looked into a few dropshippers of these products and found that the profit margin was quite small espeicially with other sellers shipping the same products in from China selling them for next to nothing. I decided to steer clear of consumer electronics and although I would give the same advice to any new starters I would also say it is entirely your choice if you think you can prusuade buyers to buy your item even though it is more expensive than the competitiors although, I were buying I would much rather purchase the product from the UK than China. nother note to add here is I would definatly not reccomend using dropshippers bsed in China although there will be reliable companies out there I feel it is way too risky and and on top of this there is the added cost of import taxes.

I looked through many other dropship sites selling many different items and I finally came to my decision to try and sell lingerie which is now available at stores.ebay.co.uk/JMP-All-You-Need. The dropship site I decided to use offered you membership for free but you have to pay £4.99 before you place your first order. The site I chose was highly reccomended to me and I actually met the owner on a forum and so I trusted them.

Since I had found my dropshipper I designed my shop logo and found a free auction template online. Using this template I and my logo I opened my shop. I decided to go for the basic shop at £6 a month with the first month free. This was my first mistake the advanced shop had the same offer, I now realise I should have taken advantage of the offer and simply downgraded at the end of the first month. Don't make the same mistake as I did if something is offered to you free then take advantage of it. It's an obvious piece of advice but so many people I have spoke to made the same mistake I did.

So, my shop is open. I then go straight to my dropshipper select a few items and list them using the template I found online. I log out of eBay and call it a night. The next day I get of bed do the normal thing and decide to check how things are going, I take a look on my eBay nothing has sold! I can't figure out why I still thought this was easy. I go straight to www.dropshipforum.com (DSF) and start searching.

A few hours after searching I realise I have done everything wrong. I have listed my items and I have expected an easy sale and it hasn't come. After reading another 100 or so posts I can see why. Here is a ist of things I still didn't know would get me more sales after hours and hours of researching.

Use RSS Feeds
Submit your site to search engines
Submit your products to Google Store Connector
Make buyers want your item
Put items in Fixed Price Auction Style listings as well as Shop Inventory listings
Write articles and blogs to promote your items
About Me Page

I found mounds of information about most of these topics I started with submitting my site to search engines. This turned out to be simpler than expected you simply go to a search engine such as MSN and add your URL and thats it. Simple.

The next thing i concentrated on was making buyers want your item, I looked through similar sellers items and realised that the template I had been using was nothing compared to there bright colours and very attractive listings. I searched the internet for more free auctions and couldn't find any that came even close to the other sellers listings. I started to think about spending a few weeks learning HTML. Then I remembered my ICT A-Level when we had to design a website using Dreamweaver, I could simply design my listings in design mode then copy and paste the HTML code. It worked. I now use this software to design any page I am going to put in my store and they all look pretty good although, I have reworked all my pages around 5 times.

I then decided to list more items I looked at the kind of things people were selling and decided to try and go with the trends, I list my items using the new template I have created and I gave more detailed item descriptions to try and pursuade my potential buyers to become buyers. This time I decided I would lista few auction items and mostly fixed price items in a bid to drive more traffic to my site.

At this point my shop has been open for 5 days but still isn't getting enough traffic and still haven't made a sale. Saturday proves to be quite succesful find out why in the next episode where I will talk about:

RSS Feeds
Articles and Blogs
About Me Page
Saturday 11/05/2008

At the moment we are one week behind where I am now so I will try and get you up to date by Monday.

Thanks for reading,
Jon

Visit stores.ebay.co.uk/JMP-Lingerie-4-You now!