I am always looking for ways to make money legitimately. I spend a lot of time reviewing classified ad sites, looking at Facebook group posts and watching YouTube videos to see what is out there and what people are offering.
While I was on craigslist one day, I came across some job ads that involved selling products on eBay. The ads stated that they wanted to hire X amount of people to copy and paste product information and images from Amazon and resell those products on eBay. No experience necessary, we will train you, blah, blah, blah and you get 100% commission. First of all, when someone wants to “hire” you to sell products on eBay, they are going to offer an hourly wage or a commission ranging from 10-20% of the net profits. No one and I mean no one is going to give you 100% of the commission for the eBay sales. That was the first “red flag”. That deceit should be enough to turn people away, but if they don’t know any better, they are likely to buy in it.
So just for the fun of it, I watched the presentation that every one of these ads has. I have to say that it is an impressive sales pitch. The guy claims that you can make a lot of money selling hot products on eBay and drop ship them to your buyers through Amazon. I believe that part to be true, but that is not my issue. The issue I have is that there is so much more to it than they are telling you.
While I was watching the video presentations, I jotted down the eBay user IDs of the sellers who were involved with DS Domination. The videos reflected some awesome results for those sellers. The dates of the sales went back 3-6 months from the time I watched the videos. That was fine, but I wanted to see what their results are in real time. So I want out to eBay, went to the site map, clicked on the link to find a member, typed in their user ID and looked at their sold items and completed listings. The results were quite different and not near as impressive as they were in the videos.
If you are familiar with eBay, you know that in the “completed listings” view, green (item price) means sold, red means the item was not sold. The items listed had “stock” photos with white backgrounds and that is one of things people are trained to look for. To be sure, I went over to Amazon and found those same products, with the same image and the same information so I know they were being drop shipped. It’s a simple copy & paste technique, which by the way can be considered stealing other people’s information.
I took it a step further and reviewed the feedback of those same sellers. Although not bad, there were buyers who left negative feedback for the item they purchased because it was not available or out of stock. So that told me they were having some issues with the inventory not being available at the time they needed to drop ship the item. That’s not good and too much of that will lead to selling limits and possible suspension of your eBay account.
I sent the those same sellers a short message asking them how the DS Domination was working out for them, but they never responded. I also sent an inquiry to one of the people who posted the craigslist ad and they never responded. If something is legitimate, people will respond. Their lack of response was another red flag. Why on earth would someone hire you and then let you keep 100% of the commission? That made no sense at all. That’s when I realized that they are selling the membership and they will get a residual income from the monthly membership fee.
Because I kept seeing this DS Domination everywhere, I decided to watch some videos made by people who claim that they have been very successful using the DS Domination system. I left a comment for one of the videos warning people to be careful, there is a lot more it, being careful not to use the word scam. A few days later I was contacted by a lady who is involved with DS Domination and she admitted that there is a lot of “upselling” after you join and it’s not as easy as they claim it to be.
Another issue I want to bring up is the amount of profit you can make doing this. It is possible to make a profit drop shipping, but the amount per sale is going to be low which requires the you to sell a lot of a particular product. You also need to consider the listing fees, the final values (eBay charges this fee on every sale) and the PayPal fees that you ill incur. What will the shipping cost be? After all of that, what will your profit be? If a lot of people are being pointed to the same products, what is the competition going to be? These are very important questions that need to be considered.
Now, I am in no way claiming that they are ripping people off or running a scam and I am not telling people to stay clear of it. I am explaining why I didn’t join. There are too may red flags for me to buy into it. If you choose to join DS Domination, do your own research and make your decisions based on what you find.
Drop shipping is a viable business, but in order to be successful, I recommend that you build relationships with your suppliers. Find out if their products are available year round and how many are available. Let them know that you want to use them as a supplier and you will be bringing them regular business. Good suppliers will work with you, but your have to reach out to them.
I hope this helps. There are so many legitimate ways to make money without misleading people. Again, I encourage you to do the research before joining one of these so called systems. A lot of them are complete nonsense and the people offering them are selling the memberships and will more than likely play no role in supporting you after you join.
My goal is to help people and that’s why I decided to write this. Good luck with your ventures and follow your gut feeling. I’m sure the DS Domination crowd will not be happy with my blog post and all I can say is if you are going to offer something like this, then be more upfront with people. Answer their questions and address their concerns.
If you are interested in selling on eBay there are numerous resources available for you to utilize; both free and paid.
To your ongoing success!
