SaleHoo Review – Ebay Powersellers Dream or Worst Nightmare?
Have you watched the shows on TV featuring people that have achieved financial freedom from working a few hours a day selling on Ebay? Have you brainstormed for hours trying to figure out how to break into the Ebay selling game but keep coming up with nothing?
You’re not alone and SaleHoo claims to have a solution for your dilemna. A built in network of over 5,000 wholesale suppliers willing to dropship in your name. So it’s it a legitimate opportunity or just another open window for you to throw you money out of? Let’s discuss…
Before we get into some of the pitfalls you may face, let’s briefly cover SaleHoo, what it is and what features & benefits they do offer.
Generally, if you were to open an Ebay store, you would need inventory and if you wanted to make a lot of money, you would need a lot of inventory. Inventory and money go hand in hand here. The more money you want to make, the more inventory you need.
Now the million dollar question… “What do I sell”?
Unfortunately the million dollar question comes with an almost equally expensive answer because it’s nearly impossible to find out on your own. Certainly Ebays top sellers aren’t going to tell you. Your friends probably all have great ideas of what you should sell, but are you willing to invest your lifes savings to find out if they’re right?
Not only that but to get your hands on lots of inventory, you’re going to need a lot of money. It’s starting to become a “Which came first, the chicken or the egg” thing.
Most legitimate wholesalers don’t deal with the general public, they require business licenses, tax information and bulk purchases. Then you still have to pay to have it shipped to you, (usually a business location is needed for delivery), then you must list it on Ebay, package and ship it when sold.
Does that sound like a bit of effort? Especially since you don’t even know for sure yet if the products you’ve chosen will sell and if they will, will they sell and still leave a profit that makes it worth your time and effort.
What I described above is usually what holds most people back from taking the leap and trust me, it will never happen if you never try.
This is where SaleHoo comes in. SaleHoo prescreens wholesalers providing you the opportunity to order as little as one product at a time and try different product niches until you find what sells.
With SaleHoo you can sell name brands like Sony, Gucci, Panasonic, Apple, Prada, Nike and more for almost every product category imaginable..
Another advantage is the you are able to search the SaleHoo suppliers by category, by keyword, product name, brand or supplier name. You also have the option to sort by wholesalers, manufacturers, liquidators or dropshippers (dropshippers send the product directly in your name, you never touch the product).
A few examples of products you may sell as advertised on SaleHoo’s main page.
Xbox 360 Premium Gold Pack Console (Suppliers Price: $249.99)
Before I get too excited about, let me find out if there’s a fortune to be made by selling these. I’ll log in to ebay and do a search for them. Ok, did that. The results show a whole mess of them between regular auction listing and Ebay Stores.
Prices seem to range from $241 to all the way up to $600+. The ones listed for less than the suppliers price above have pretty high shipping charges so they’re trying to make some money on the back end as well. Actually, it looks like pretty much everyone is trying to make some money on the back end upon closer inspection.
Now, that’s quite a bit of competition but surely everyone must just be raking in barrels of cash if there are that many people listing them. I’m getting really excited now but before I list, let me do my due dilligence and search the “completed auctions” to see how money I can expect to be making so I can inform my banker that I may need armed security when depositing my money.
To do that, I will use the search option in the left menu (I opted out of the “new” search experience so yours may be different) and tick the “completed auctions box” , scroll down and click the ”show items” button
OUCH! All those price figures in red did not sell. Keep in mind that you still have to pay Ebay fees when your items don’t sell. To be fair, Ebay will give you one chance to relist and not pay a second fee if it sells but if it doesn’t, guess what… that’s right, you pay double. Again, ouch!. All those people are putting money in Ebays pockets but none in their own.
Maybe it’s because they all used the exact same title of the product as it’s listed at SaleHoo. Maybe they weren’t creative enough with their title field or maybe I should simplify my search terms to just Xbox 360 to get a more realisic impression of how Xbox 360’s are selling.
After doing that and narrowing down to the category itself, I see much different results. Looking at the “completed auctions”, I see about 98% of everything on the first page of results sold, the only problem is that they sold for much less that the suppliers price above with the exception of two that also game with games and accessories.
This brings us to the downside of SaleHoo.
I’m guessing that nearly all of the auctions & store items are being sold by SaleHoo members. I’m just guessing because they all used the exact same title.
I guess to say the problem is a downside of SaleHoo wouldn’t be entirely correct, rather the problem is likely a result of people eager to get in, grabbing the first things they see and jump in without doing just a little bit of research like we did above.
SaleHoo themselves do warn of this and provide you with the tools to make good decisions about what products to list if you will just TAKE THE TIME to ready them. I can’t stress enough how important this is.
Learning how to follow market trends like Holiday, seasonal, hot topics, etc.. will make ALL THE DIFFERENCE between your success or failure.
A good place to start is The Ebay Pulse which will show you current trends as to what buyers are searching for. If you are serious about making a living by selling on Ebay, I would suggest not only bookmarking that page but also printing it each month. Printing it can help you get a jump on your competition for Holiday and Seasonal products by looking at the trends for the weeks and months leading up to these seasons and holidays.
Keep in mind, that while the current trends may show you the hot products, they also bring more competition which translates into lower profits. Not only that but you may be constantly working to promote the newest here today, gone tomorrow product. Not saying that’s entirely bad but you may also wish to balance that out with lower competitive niches with consistant sales results like… (sorry, can’t give away my most profitable niches 
) but believe me, there are plenty of them out there, just take your time and see how much competition you have and check the “completed auctions” to see how they do.
You won’t always sell every auction but by making a few dollars on the front end and a few dollars on the back end, you can consider unsold auctions as a cost of doing business and as long as you come out ahead at the end of the day, then you are, well.. ahead and that’s always a good thing.
Seriously though, let’s take a look at the Ebay Pulse once again. I see abercrombie on the list of “big movers” so I’ll click that link and look at the auctions. Nearly everything there seems to be getting bids, so I’ll check out the “completed listings” and see a pretty mixed bag of sold vs unsold auctions.
Browsing through the completed auctions, I want to look for any “trend” of my own. Abercrombie is kind of a generic terms and encompasses a large variety of items. It looks like Abercrombie jeans do well so I’ll do a search for that.
As I though, Abercrombie jeans has only 3128 items listed compared to the 17,000 or so auctions for term abercrombie plus it looks like nearly everything has multiple bids. Checking the completed auctions also shows a much different picture than before, nearly everything has sold.
You could probably even narrow it down further by looking at
womens abercrombie jeans
mens abercrombie jeans
vintage abercrombie jeans, etc..
That’s the key to success here. Taking the time to find the “micro-niches” that sell.
SaleHoo also boasts a leading buyers/sellers community forum which allows you to network with experienced sellers. Priceless when it comes to finding out if a particular supplier is what you expect or whether you are thinking of going into another product line.
Other materials supplied by Salehoo include…
SaleHoo Dropship Handbook
What To Sell
SaleHoo Shipping Handbook
SaleHoo Market Guides
How To Find Fantastic Suppliers
Of course, Ebay is just ONE of the MANY ways to market retail products. Another method would be to build your own online retail stores and sell merchandise directly from your own website.
Conclusion: SaleHoo is a respected member of the online BBB and is very well known and respected in the online marketing webmaster circles. Your one time membership fee is backed by a money back guarantee so you really have absolutely nothing to lose and an Ebay Powersell status icon to gain so I would suggest you go ahead and give it a try if you are serious about either selling on Ebay or finding the best companies and products to stock your online stores.
Remember, take the time to read through the materials provided and do the proper research before attempting to sell and you will do just fine!
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