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Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

I confess I think what he's doing not just anyone can mimic. I do believe he's using creative tactics and strategies.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Saturation https://www.census.gov/retail/mrts/w...ec_current.pdf

https://wonderopolis.org/_img?img=/w...zeCrop,720,450

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Sunspot - Some people can win over competition by using exceptionally clever ways to save on expenses.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Like bigger orders? :noidea:

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

I really don't know or else I would do it. He told me there's something he does that's kinda black hat. Maybe using his software engineering background to create bots that take down competitors with vero or applying massive views to their listings so their sale/view ratio gets destroyed, boost his listing to number 1, botting home depot reps with getting 10% off every order (their maximum discount if you complain), buys gift cards from a private source for more off. Or maybe something completely else.

I really don't know. All I know is some people get creative or black hat enough to beat competitors or save huge on expenses.

Isn't sourcing or entrepreneurship just about creative advantages. :ranger:

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

do it. report back. k bye.:clap:

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

So, since dropshipping is what got my accounts terminated and the reason I came here I figured this was an appropriate place to make my 1st post.

Yes this is 100% correct. It can be done. I did this just by watching various youtube videos, reading webpages and stuff like that. It was approximately 2 years in the making before I created a new account to drop ship on. I didn't want to taint my 10 year old account with the negatives I knew I'd receive.

My main source was Lowe's. Bigger margins but more hassles. So I slowly started adding Home Depot items and while my margins shrank, so did the hassle.

My listings were lower than some of my competitors, not all. I was up to 120+ sales a day, $35,000 a month with a profit around 18%, not counting gift card savings and cash back sites.

Prices were roughly 20% above costs. But also there were many top selling items that were 50% above costs that were selling 10+ a day.

I only had roughly 350 listings running, with a 2nd tier store so I had free listings up to 1000 a month. Fees pretty much max out at 10%, with a store its 9% with a few categories having lower fees.

I had absolutely 0 paid services. I did it all myself working roughly 6 hours a day. I'd work a couple hours in the morning when I woke up placing orders, handling customers that asked questions thru the night and listing 2-5 items (usually listed 2-5 items a week cuz I'm lazy lol But some weeks I'd get to 10 items) then I'd work a couple hours around noon, again placing orders, updated tracking numbers and dealing with customers then repeat again around 8 or 9 at night. That was just me. I could have easily just spent 3 or 4 hours doing it all around 6 or 7 at night but I had nothing else to do besides nap, watch TV or play video games so "playing on ebay", as I called it, is what I done.

Fees - roughly 9-10% according to my ebay invoices including ALL return costs and store costs. Paypal of course is 2.9% plus 30 cents (never really figured the average fee cost here)

Home Depot -

I only had about 20 HD listings and my profit margin was roughly 10% after all said and done. No returns to deal with - if an item was lost or damaged, I would live chat with HD and either get a free return label or in most cases a refund sent in the form of a gift card (since I paid with a gift card) to my email within minutes. I never price matched, just loaded my cart to get the free shipping and placed the orders. I had a resale tax ID so I sent it to them, got the account set up and paid 0 taxes on items.
Gift cards for HD - could never really get any type of discount. Occasionally I'd find 5% on ebay and buy it but mostly I just bought them thru Kroger and gathered up fuel points to save $1 a gallon on gas. My truck has a 32 gallon tank and gets 14 mpg so I made more money there than any discount lol Excessive points were put on a different Kroger card and sold at a rate of 6000 points for $50 ($1 off a gallon of gas 6 times). So I was making/saving a little money there. Add another 1.5% cash back credit cards reward here as well. $30,000 in gift cards = $450 cash back.
Cash back - Huge money maker here. The site I use pays 8% back. I get between $350 and $400 deposited into my paypal account every single Monday evening. This also includes my Lowes purchases at 2% but swapping Lowes for straight HD - you get the point.
Paying fees with a rewards card - Ebay fees were between $3,000 and $3,200 a month, using a 1.5% cash back card that's another $40+ a month. (This will no longer be an option now that I have to go stealth lol) Again with Lowes sales, but switch with straight HD you get the point.

Lowe's gift cards - 5% off every time never less than and about 75% of the time I'd get them at 10% off. Again credit cards rewards.
Coupons - $20 off $100 orders + free shipping is 20% savings. However, no tax ID option so you pay sales tax at time of purchase -5-7%
Cash back - 2%
Returns/refunds - Huge pitfall as you get NOTHING from Lowe's. You can get a label for free but they refund thru in store credit and send it to your customer lol So you never see it. So I would either refund/reorder or pay for the label and get it shipped to me and resell it on a local app to recoup some money.
Cancellations - would come and go because of the coupon. March was horrible for me! Tons of cancellations. My profit shrank to about 12% in march lol The refunds for the cancellations, of course went to the customer in the form of store credit so it was all loss.

So short story long - Yes, I think you can make 28% profit margins with straight HD items and a little underhandedness. Tho it will be hard with paid services and I'd recommend shooting for 15-18%. People are dumb and know nothing about ebay and allow themselves to be "scammed" by sellers. I had probably $2000 worth of sales that were OOS and the buyers never responded to me and by the time I saw or remembered I couldn't cancel them nor would I take a defect on my account because they went MIA so basically it was "free" money.

Product markup - 20% - 13% fees = 7% + 8% cash back = 15% + 5% gift card savings = 20% + 1.5% CC CB = 21.5% + haggling for 10% discounts = 31.5% = Yeah I can see 28% if you are on top of your game.

I had a lot of fun with this model. Tho it was stressful at times and ultimately cost me 3 ebay accounts. Including my main 10 year account that I am sad I lost but because I found this site, I'm actually looking forward to rebuilding lol

Well there's part of my story :) Hope you learned something as I know how hard it is learning this model. But if you truly want to learn then just jump in, start doing it and learn as you go. For all the videos I watched, pages I read, nothing taught me more than just doing it.

Oh and PAY YOUR TAXES!!! Do not mess with the IRS!

Now I'm off to buy a new phone, get a new address and a mobile hotspot to start my new adventure! I'll be back to buy the book shortly lol

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

All this makes me think of is a cripple that can hit really hard. All you have to do is trip them up and they're on the ground forever. Guess I just prefer to be a stable tank rather than a fleeting glass cannon. Hell, I filled one order this afternoon at a $150 profit from some crap I import from China - it took less than 5min to fill and I don't have to ever worry about being kicked off ebay for poor DSR. I know when stock is coming in, when stock is going out, and when stock needs to be reordered. Simple as that.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

the question is tho.. when a customer wants to return, how does that work?

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Appreciate you adding something meaningful to this topic rather than being an ignorant skeptic who didn't watch the video or just denies it.

I would recommend if it's possible to hire VA's. What kind of profit were you making each month or yearly if you don't mind me asking?

Any software that you used? Did you snipe or optimized your listings?

Wow Lowe's is terrible then for returns. Did not know they would do that at all.

Btw is there any way I can find this guy's account you think on ebay? He said he has about 20,000 items from home depot listed.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

All I'll say is Lien (the original video guy I sent) has a team of VA's and now is making 50k a month off this. He never told us if he diversifies with stealth accounts. I heard a lot of drop shippers do so that if they get banned it's not as bad.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

For the record I didn't watch the video, no need to really as I've read/seen/ heard all the claims.

I never paid for anything. I did it all myself. A couple of years ago when I quit my job I was looking for a way to stay quit and work from home. My previous job allowed me to funnel a ton of cash into my hobby so my 9 year account became my real business and kept me stable. While looking around for online income I saw all the 50k claims yada yada yada so I thought why not and picked 10 items from Amazon and added them to my site. Not knowing how to compete I had to list at higher prices, well I sold some stuff. Made about $400 in a couple months and then hit my 1st OOS and price hike at the same time. Not wanting to damage my real business I just stopped.

Then I researched, researched and researched some more until finally I decided I was just going to jump in. I read up and saw you can have multiple accounts so I created another one so my main didn't get tarnished.

Listed 10 items and got shut down. Called them up, was 100% honest with them and was immediately reinstated. Still couldn't compete, well I could but I wasnt willing to make 40 cents on an item. 1 return or broken item would mean I'd lose all my profits. Then I actually ordered something on ebay and it came from lowes and I saw that a gift card was used and then I was off to the races. I searched the item I bought, found a few sellers and mimicked their listings.

As I said I did it all myself by hand. I learned thru my mistakes as I went and thru looking for other avenues to cut my costs (rebate sites, coupons, cash back cards). I read about all the software, VAs etc but didn't need them. In about 3 months time i was making enough to pay my bills and fund my main business so I was happy. Didn't really want to trust anyone with my cash cow lol

Could I have increased it all? Absolutely. But with a few hours of work a day I was paying my bills and investing more in my main business so I was perfectly happy.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Insightful posts branesergen - welcome to the forum - all the best as you master stealth :thumb:

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Mind sharing coupon and rebate sites? I use ebates and rewards credit cards on my everyday purchases but looking for more options for daily purchases.

I was reading gas cards being bought for 90% and reguraly some sporting resale stores(yup, vague on purpose) get sold on ebay daily for 80% of value.

If you dont want to share, I dont blame you at all. Thanks for your consideration.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Their bots scam your tracking to validate it was indeed shipped from the same zip code

That doesn't make sense. Lots of people mail from a zip code other than where their address.

If your route driver picks up from your house he probably goes to a different zip to drop them off, so when they're first scanned they're in a different zip.

In our city the blue boxes are all serviced from the bulk mail center 20-40 miles away, which has its own dedicated zip.

In my city there are maybe 20 zip codes, and there's no post office in my zip code, so it always originates from a different zip than the label.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Who said this statement?

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

It would be a whole lot easier if he just learned to quote wouldn't it?

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

My rebate sites are ebates and giving assistant. Giving assistant is the most consistent I've found with steady offerings. Ebates would have 0% or even 1% and GA would be at 2%. They also offer 8% on HD but it takes a while to register but it does back date. They also pay weekly after the 1st 3 months so daily purchases accrue 3 months behind and they pay weekly on the previous 3 months. I dont know if I'm explaining that right lol You're always 3 months behind. Monday I'll get paid for April 5th-April 12th, then next Monday I'll get paid for Apr 13th- Apr 20th - not exact days but to that effect.

As for cash back cards - they were thru wells Fargo (1.5%) and I just got a Citi bank one that is 1% when you buy and 1% when you pay (2% total) and my Amazon store card is 5% on Amazon purchases as a reward to use on Amazon which is what I used to fund my Amazon dropships.

You can watch ebay steadily and grab deals on gift cards. I got many, many lowes cards for 10% off. Home Depot was harder to find with any significant discount. Buy them on ebay, pay thru PayPal with my wells Fargo card and get an additional 1.5% off. Rebate sites dont give cash back on GC purchases tho.

As mentioned I also use Kroger when I'm in a bind (usually waiting for CC payment to clear over the weekend when I lose track of days). They offer 2x points and occasionally 4x points which is 1 point per dollar spent. So at 4x a $250 gift card gives me 1000 points which is $1 off per gallon of gas up to 35 gallons. Works out to about a 10% "savings".

As for the coupons - They're all over ebay tho I wouldn't recommend them as I'm not sure how legal it is. I got mine from the change of address packets at the post office with a ton of other coupons.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

So amazon doesn't ban you for violating terms and conditions when you ship to numerous different addresses on prime and use the 5% prime card cash back?

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

It was only 3 to 5 items a month. Most was Lowes (about 75%) and HD with a sprinkle of Amazon. I really don't like to jeopardize my main accounts, so I kept Amazon small, had I known drop shipping would get my main I never would have done it. I thought I was perfectly safe until they banned me. I was pissed after the ban and since my main was still going strong I didn't think they made the connection so I used the old account thinking its from 2008 so it shouldn't be linked but it was.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

ahh ok ya 3 to 5 won't ban you on amazon sending to many addresses.
Did lowes allow using 10% off coupon ONLINE? Or was it in store only?
Ebay stealth accounts will benefit you greatly. Many people have on here multiple accounts to separate their listings or even duplicate.

Re: 10k Net Profit Dropshipping from Homedepot to Ebay ONLY
 

Yeah, you can use any of the coupons online.

I've already created my 1st stealth account. Its as legit as I can make it lol This forum has been a tremendous help so far and I think I've learned how to take it to the next level. Who knows maybe you'll see me selling accounts here soon! haha

Only thing I'm going to miss is my cash back cards, but I'll figure out how to implement one soon lol