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Hey guys, so I'm having some problems sourcing products, I was dabbling in phone cases as they sell like crazy and I've been looking at Dhgate plus Alibaba and the prices are crazy when compared to prices on ebay. There is just no margin for profit. Even when buying bulk.

How do you find profitable products to sell? And where is your ideal place to source from? Lately I have been finding companies based in shenzhen, china and going on there website direct.

Also I DO NOT USE TERRAPEAK, it makes sense to get it however, the majority of people who sell on eBay use it so wouldn't it be 50% more competitive in prices?

If you know of a Thread in this website somewhere what goes into detail about sourcing and prices please could you link it.

Also does the stealth book go in to how to rank your product to page 1 and how to source etc, etc.

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Been there done that selling phone cases are highly competitive.

The problem is that now the Chinese are selling the same products and literally shipping the item to the UK for 2p yes that’s right 2p so it’s a very difficult category to sell in but not impossible.

For example how are you planning to ship the cases to the UK? I suspect by air which will eat the majority of your profits however now if you ship by sea freight it’s way cheaper however the down side is you have to wait 45 days.

As I said before it can still be done you just need to rank your listing high on the 1st Page, now there are 2 ways of doing this or the way I do it is sell low make a loss try not to if possible and eventually you’ll get sales coming through which will eventually start ranking you higher and higher and then slowly increase your price this method requires you have a lot of stock at hand though, the other method is sponsored adds @ 30% or 50% you’ll rank on the first page but this does not always work in competitive catogeries due to the amount of sellers selling cases but it’s worth a try and when you do start to rank higher lower your percentage this also requires a lot of stock at hand and you will make a loss initially.

Make sure your pictures are good better then your competitors and your description is good.

It was easier to rank high in the past but due to eBay stupid changes to there algorithm it’s abit difficult now but not impossible also your account plays a big part in ranking high like account age, metrics, feedback etc.

Some others may have different methods to rank high but I usually use these methods it’s more aggressive but does eventually get you there.

Re: Source
 

^^All valid advice.

Buying power is also very important in the saturated niches.