Top rated seller - questions

[asafs]

Hello!

I created a new account with my real details a month and half ago, and even inreased my limits from 10/500 to 100/5000 with a phone call to ebay rep.
My next goals are call every month to ebay for increase my limits and become a top rated seller.
The rep asked me if I am doing dropshipping or selling from my address.
I am living in Israel , so my plan to become a top rated seller is to sell cheap but high-demand items in cost price with tracking number from my address to customers from the USA only.
In this way I will lose about 3.2-4$ on each item (320-400$ a month). I don't want to sell with dropshipping.

Could you please share you thoughts on this plan? Am I doing the right thing to become a top rated seller and increase my limits? Is there any other plans without dropshipping?

[Play]

You want to spend $1,200 USD over three months just to become a top rated seller?

Bear in mind there is no guarantee in three months you will have become a TRS, since your selling internationally, which means buyers won't read your listing to state it will take longer for delivery, which means when they rate your DSRs they will give you a lower rating, which means you wont meet the threshold for becoming a TRS, which means you would of spent a lot of money and effort, and the result could potentially be a 3 month old account that still doesn't qualify for TRS.

Why not just sell locally, to get to TRS?

[asafs]

Originally Posted by Play

You want to spend $1,200 USD over three months just to become a top rated seller?

Bear in mind there is no guarantee in three months you will have become a TRS, since your selling internationally, which means buyers won't read your listing to state it will take longer for delivery, which means when they rate your DSRs they will give you a lower rating, which means you wont meet the threshold for becoming a TRS, which means you would of spent a lot of money and effort, and the result could potentially be a 3 month old account that still doesn't qualify for TRS.

Why not just sell locally, to get to TRS?

You wrote here many things that I didn't consider. Thank you for that.
I didn't consider the DSR. Deliveries from Israel to USA with tracking numbers take about 7-14 days. Customers will probably give me low ratings about that.

What do you mean by selling locally? I can't sell it in my country because then I will need to 17% VAT. And the Israeli customers usually buy from chinese sellers.

My plan B is keep selling from here for a while with regular mail/registered mail, and then start sell items from USA (all items will be located in one warehouse) to USA customers.
Could please share your thoughts about this plan?