Have fun! Import products (and learn something new)
July 19th, 2009A simple business hack if you are a bit bored this week.
1) Jump on Alibaba.com. Find five products you are interested in importing. Contact each of the suppliers and order a some samples of each.
2) Setup a cheap local adwords campaign for the products you have sourced. Point them towards a quick page of info about the product (collect emails of interest).
3) Finally once the products arrive, test one of the samples, sell the other on Ebay (or your local equivalent). You should be able to easily sell it for more than the total cost of both units, often making a tidy profit.
(Note: You can stop here, the next step is if you want to build a small business out of it.)
4) Review your adwords / traffic of your test websites. Which has gained the most interest? Use that data to sell to a local retailer or setup a niche online store selling them.
5) Begin systemising, once you have sold a few start building some systems to automate sales and distribution. Often you can get dropshippping (manufacturer ships direct to consumer).
Give it a go, have a bit of fun, I have done this every now and again made some good dollars but at the very least you’ll learn something.
(Passionate about local products? Do the reverse help a local manufacturer get their details on Alibaba and help them sell to the world.)
July 19th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Cheers for this article Ben, I’ve been trying to find manufacturers of green products to import and sell online, I’ve even been contacting speakers at TED.com who have are involved in ecology etc to pry some contacts from them. I haven’t had any luck yet. I guess it would be even better to find a Kiwi manufacturer whose products I could sell online. Do you have any B2B suggestions for New Zealand?
Cheers
July 20th, 2009 at 6:14 am
Hey Jake no problem, glad you enjoyed it. At this point in time your best bet is to talk to NZTE I would imagine. What kind of products are you looking for specifically?