Here is the first obstacle I’ve learned to overcome with dropshipping on eBay!

I recently had a customer buy one of my products that I am listing and when I went to order it from the dropshipping supplier it was….

‘SOLD OUT’.

At first I started to panic.  All I could think was that I had sold a product that I couldn’t supply to the customer.  I contacted my dropshipping teacher/mentor by email to ask for help but I wanted a response NOW, not in a couple of hours!

It suddenly occurred to me that there must be more than one supplier that had that exact same product.  So I went on a search through the recommended suppliers that my teacher/mentor had provided and sure enough I found another supplier that had the exact same product.  It was slightly more expensive and it meant my profit would not quite be as good but that was the least of my worries.  The primary goal here was to get the product to the customer as quickly as possible.

When my mentor/teacher did get back to me they just advised to contact the supplier.  Good advise, but being told that there would be a week or two delay in re-stocking the product was not the answer I wanted to hear either.

So the lesson I have learned here is to make sure I have at least two suppliers for each product that I list on eBay.  That way if I sell a product and it is sold out from one supplier then I always have a back-up supplier.  This is something every seller should do, especially if you are selling popular products or selling around the peak season, ie. Christmas!!

It may take more time to source products now but it means that I will never get this problem again.

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