First off all let me tell you quickly that i started an online retail company about a year ago and in that year i have learned so much. I would like to share with you in this HUB (My first HUB) a little of what i have learned.

First thing you have to do when starting out on ecommerce is to decide what you want to sell and here is my first big peice of advice for you DO NOT TRY TO SELL APPLE IPODS, PRADA HANDBAGS, GUCCI SHOES or any other big brand names unless you have £100,000 in the bank. You cannot buy these products wholesale trust me on this.

There is nothing stopping you selling accessories for the ipods such as headphones, speakers covers ect.

I would suggest to you that when you have dicided what product line you are going down to start selling on EBAY. The reason for this is simple and that is traffic.

Congratulations you are almost ready to sell you know what you want to sell and were you are going to sell it.

Now for the most common question in ecommerce "were do i buy my stock"

There are two main ways to get stock to sell on either ebay our your own website and that is WHOLESALE OR DROPSHIP.

WHAT IS WHOLESALE?

Raw materials will go in to a factory and the factory makes the product wether its clothes, tv's, shower heads whatever.

The product is then shipped to a wholeseller at a very cheap price who adds on a little markup and sells on a specific quantity to you the retailer you then add on your own markup and sell on to your customer.

The quantity will change from wholesaler to wholesaler but dont worry most light bulk wholesalers will be as little as £50 an order.

WHAT IS DROPSHIP?

Dropshipping is a brilliant way to start in my opinion first let me tell you what it is.

Simply put you dont pay for the product until you have sold it.

What you do is join a dropshipper and they will have a list of stock. You will then download pictures of there stock and add them to your EBAY auction with an item description or put them on your own website.

Once you have sold an item you then will buy it from the dropshipper and send them the name and address of your customer and they will ship the item direct to your customer and you keep the markup you have added on to the item.

How good is that? Superb i say. Think about it for a second this means you can list 50 things on Ebay and you never have to pay for them until you have sold them. Like i say dropshipping is a great way to start.

There are other ways to get products such as importing and liquidation lots but start with wholesale and dropshipping and you wont go wrong.

OK YOU NOW KNOW

WHAT TO SELL

WERE TO SELL IT

WHAT IS MEANT BY WHOLESALE

WHAT IS A DROPSHIPPER

At this point i would like to point out a PITFALL when searching for wholesalers and dropshippers one of the worst places to look is search engines like yahoo google ect. What you will commonly find in these search engines are middle men these as people who are pretending to be wholesalers but are just people with a web page buying from a genuine wholesaler and putting up the price and selling to you which means you are going to have to up your price again and you are not going to be able to compete with the market.

At the end of this i will put up some excellent webpages that will help you with this.

A quick appology i didnt mean for this to go on for so long anyway back to it.

You are ready to start your market research dont let this part worry you it is very easy. At the bottom of the page check for links to great market research tools.

The aim of this is to check that you are buying low and selling high. There is no point buying watches at £50 when you can only sell them for £40.There is a bit more to it than that but that is the main thing to be looking for.

Lets say you have found a wholesaler were you can buy Yonex nano speed 9000 badminton racket for £40 each you have to check you can sell them on EBAY for more and here is how. Log on to EBAY and search for Yonex nano speed 9000 when the search results come up you will notice on the left hand side you have lots of options look down them and check the box next to the one saying completed listings. You will then have a list of all the Yonex rackets that have sold when they sold and for how much.

If the average sale is over £40 then you are on to a winner its as easy as that. Once your in business for a while you will learn a lot more little tips and tricks i am just giving you the basics to start ypu off in the right foot.

I don't want to pickle your heads any more just now this is a great starting point and as promised here are som links to help you get going.

WHOLESALE

http://www.worldwidebrands.com

There is a wealth of information on this web page from free ebooks to free videos free radio shows i spent about a month on this web page when i first found it and still go back to it all the time. If you are serious about starting an online business you must soak up this website it is brilliant.

MARKET RESEARCH

http://www.terapeak.com

http://www.hammertap.com

Both these sites are great for market research thay will show you not only average selling price but help you find trends what is sellng best what key words to use. There is lots and lots of information to be gained with any one of these sites.

That is it thank you very much for taking the time to read my first ever hub. I hope you found it useful and good luck in your online business.

OH IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS OR NEED HELP WITH ANYTHING I HAVE COVERED OR HAVENT COVERED JUST GET IN TOUCH AND I WILL HELP AS BEST I CAN.