Buying wholesale pallets for sale on Ebay

[MassiveStrumpet]

My husband needs a work-from-home source of income. He has sold things over the Internet, before (books, whisky) and he likes the admin side of things.

A woman I know said she used to do pretty well buying pallets of stuff from wholesale auction sites and reselling on Ebay. I believe she bought cosmetics/skincare items. She had another job and a small child and was "too lazy" to keep it up. Plus I think space and the overall organising of it was more than she wanted to deal with. Well, we've got plenty of space and my husband wouldn't mind the organising aspect. He's got plenty of time on his hands as the stay-at-home parents to children who are all in school.

We have no interest in selling clothing and we'd like to stick to smaller items. My idea is to try with maybe a 100-200 pound lot of stuff just to see how it goes. He would track all expenses and time spent and we'd see how much it makes then consider if it's worth scaling up.

Has anyone done this?

That's 100-200 British Pounds Sterling - not weight. I just don't have a pound-sign on my laptop and I can't be arsed to figure out how to make one. :)

I'm a business seller and looked into it but I decided it wasn't worth my while.

You may see the RRP of the products and what the asking price is for the bulk lot and think "great!", but those prices don't usually include VAT @ 20% and delivery. Then you have to be able to sell the products cheaper than other sellers in order to shift them........ Then take off about 13.5% for eBay and PayPal fees, then postage costs

Will you make a profit? Most likely not. If it was that easy

Don't get me wrong, I'm a business seller and if you can find the right products you can make a tidy profit, but IME this generally comes from "new" products, before other sellers jump on the bandwagon and you find its not worth your while selling the said item anymore...... Then you move on to selling something else.

I'm not saying it definitely won't be worth it, but just do all your sums and research first before investing in a job lot.

I do see what you mean. I disregard the RRP's anyway as they're just numbers made up out of nothing and most people think vaguely of the time they saw the thing on special offer at Boots and want to pay less than that.

If I buy something online it's because I can't easily find it in a B&M and/or I'm looking for a bargain.

However, we're thinking of buying stuff on alibaba - so not pallets of stuff from the UK, and nothing branded, but I think there are some things we could sell easily.

Hi OP, again make sure you do your research on how much things will sell for on eBay, based on your competitors prices ( minus fees and postage) before purchasing In bulk.

Also bare in mind customs charges when importing goods from China.

It's important you work these out very carefully to make sure you can turn a profit.

Also your selling allowances with eBay will be limited at first. You can apply to have this increased each month, as long as your seller performance is up to par.

PS I use a site called DH Gate. It seems cheaper than Alibaba / aliexpress.

Yes, we've kept import duty and VAT in mind.

We're probably going to start with very small things that can be shipped in an envelope for first-class postage, preferably several to one envelope.

that DHgate site is good - seems easier to place smaller orders for the thing I've been looking at. We don't want to buy 1000 of something that nobody may want!