One woman made over $250,000 last year on items sold on eBay. She is just one out of thousands and thousands of people that make a ton of money just selling merchandise.

Are you ready to learn how to be an eBay seller? You will find it to be easy, fun, and exciting. Here are some of things that you need to know to get started.

Just eBay

Although there are several other quality auction websites, eBay is by far most popular and most successful. Although you could start using all other sites, by spreading yourself out too thin you take risk of getting things mixed up. In reality, it is better to use eBay and focus your attention and efforts on this one site. You will not be disappointed.

Look Around

Navigate through each section to familiarize yourself with all different pages. You will find a site map and help tab, which are very useful tools. It will take a little time to get used to site but start by looking. As you start selling, navigating will become much easier.

Terms & Conditions

You will run into all types of buyers that try to move past terms and conditions provided by eBay. Know Terms & Conditions inside and out and if you have problems, contact eBay immediately. A few examples of insider secrets are listed below:

* Bid Shielding – Two buyers work together. One person bids high to protect a low bid place by other person. Right before auction closes, high bidder cancels, meaning low bidder gets your items for a huge bargain.

* Bid Shilling – This is where seller actually uses a separate ID set up to inflate number and price of bid.

* Deadbeat Bidder – The deadbeat bidder bids on your auction and then simply fails to pay.

* Sniping – A “sniper” is a bidder that waits until there are only minutes or seconds left on an item and then quickly bids just a little higher to get items. Although not against T&C’s, it is considered unprofessional and limits competing bidders from driving a high price.

Selecting a reliable drop shipper is a very crucial element in your drop shipping business. If drop shipper you work with is honest and reputable, you can consider yourself to have won half battle in order fulfillment process. Although this may not be true in some circumstances, direct manufacturers and upper level distributors are usually more reliable than smaller distributors. Manufacturers usually produce their products in large quantities, and require higher capital to finance their companies. More often than not, these businesses are reliable companies, because only businesses with a strong track record have ability to secure such high capital to finance their manufacturing process. Also, first and second tier distributors are usually reputable as they are bigger and more established, since their distribution spans a wider region. This is in contrast with lower tier distributors or middlemen, who make their profit simply by marking up prices. Some low-tier distributors may be fly-by-night organizations or businesses that may shut down easily due to their small size. Hence, whenever possible, you should look for direct manufacturers or distributors of products and ask if they offer drop shipping services, due to their reliability. Direct manufacturers or distributors should also be your first choice because their prices have not been marked-up by any middlemen, and thus higher your profits can go.

(This is not to say that smaller distributors are unreliable, there are also numerous honest distributors out there with established track records.)

Simply phrased, drop shipping process is as such: You set up a website catalogue selling goods that you want to sell. After a customer has placed an order on your website, you can call or email your drop shipper to deliver specific quantity of products to your customer. Your drop shipper will then ship products to mailing address as specified on order form.

When selecting products you want to sell, you have to also consider shipping costs involved. If your drop shipper and your customer base are located in different countries, you should definitely sell products which cost in price range of hundreds or thousands of dollars, so that higher international shipping fee would account for a smaller proportion of retail price of product. If your drop shipper and your customer base are located in same country, it would then be feasible to sell products that are cheaper as shipping costs are much lower.

So how should you go about looking for your product suppliers? The first approach you can take is through search engines. You can start off by searching for ‘Manufacturers directory’, ‘Wholesalers Directory’, or ‘Drop Shippers Directory’, and look through websites containing lists of such manufacturers. Alternatively, you can type your product keyword together with word ‘wholesale’. For example, if you want to sell wooden carvings, you may want to try term ‘wholesale wooden carvings’ and take note of websites offering wooden carvings at a wholesale price. After which, you can email or call manufacturer and check if they offer drop shipping arrangements. Or, if they offer function to sign up for their drop shipping service on their website, you can immediately sign up for it, but only after verifying that they have a record of excellent and ethical service. (You can do this easy way by browsing their website. Most of them will display awards or commendations they achieved for excellence and reliability.) A good example of a wholesaler that offers drop shipping registration on their website is http://www.artinternationalwholesale.com. The drop shipping service can be found on left navigation bar under ‘Wholesalers’.