How He Sold $250,000 on eBay (In One Year)!

today i'm sitting down with my friend daniel who's a successful drop shipper on ebay and facebook marketplace now he started facebook shops as well and he's going to explain how he wasn't always that successful with drop shipping he's going to tell us what the difference is between when he wasn't successful and now what made the difference for him as a successful dropshipper so let's get into that interview right now with daniel so daniel thank you so much for coming

on the channel have you been man it's been a long time thank you paul i'm doing well it's been a while since we've you know had a conversation you know so i still remember the first time we met you know um back in new york like almost going on three years ago and it was a you know great opportunity not only to interact with you but also with a lot of the other groups of people you've been interacting with over the last couple years so i'm doing great i'm excited to be here so thank you for having me no thank you and

we'll definitely get into how it is that we crossed paths because that wasn't the first time that you were exploring e-commerce right so why do you kind of take people back tell them what you were doing before you started looking at selling stuff online and how you ended up in this world of drop shipping and selling stuff online yeah actually it's a great story to be honest so for me all of this actually started back in 2015. and the reason why i started back then is because i actually went back to school so i went back and got my degree in a business and an international business at my university here in florida fiu for anyone who might be uh an alumni so when i was completing my studies there i took a course on entrepreneurship and i had a great professor it was only about a course that lasted about six to eight weeks but that just sparked an interest in me about entrepreneurship and startups and creating something of your own and i had this passion for it that i never even knew existed and i graduated obviously i got my degree you know i went back to my nine-to-five job it's a great job you know i've been at that company for quite a long time now i'm still there as we speak i haven't left my job yet i'm still working through so that's kind of when i started you know thinking about you know what are ways that i can generate some additional income and obviously the first thing that came to mind was something on the internet right and that's kind of where i felt on the rabbit hole so on youtube so i started researching different ways one of the first things that i tried was affiliate marketing and that failed dramatically i really didn't get any traction doing that i also tried on creating an instagram account and sort of kind of promoting trying to grow a following to then you know kind of monetize that and that was very difficult as well didn't do so well in that either and that's when i finally came across drop shipping and this is back in 2018 so august 2018 is kind of when i first started to get my first taste of ebay drop shipping and it was obviously through youtube and the first person that i don't remember the person that i learned it from was on youtube or some other platform but his name was david gu or david wu i think his name and he had a course on udemy and i bought the course and that was like my first taste of how to do this so i was hooked so from the minute that he kind of walked through it i was like really like people do this like people actually like like why is it anybody checking to make sure they're paying more from another you know from another platform like this is insane and he's providing proof that it works so i went ahead i tried that out and obviously from august to december was my first few months drop shipping and it wasn't great i did well because a lot of the content that david wu was teaching was a bit outdated for the time i think that course came out in 2016 and 2018 when i was already looking at it and there hadn't been no new updates been provided with that course but it was enough to get me started i opened up my own ebay account i started selling i started listing items from walmart and by the end of the year i have already made like eight thousand dollars in sales to finish out the year which it wasn't so bad for someone that started out not knowing what it was and to it and then to convert that into actual you know income you know during those months which was pretty exciting wow that's it's funny that story sounds very

familiar because it's very similar to my story and a lot of people i have on the channel where they try so many different things and just like none of them work i tried affiliate marketing it was just like disaster didn't work so my first question on that is what why'd you keep going why didn't you just say obviously making money online doesn't work i'm done with this what pushes you to keep going so i'm a pretty persistent individual like once i set my mind to something i really want to see it through and i remember you know looking back at my childhood when i was a lot younger there were a lot of hobbies or things that i wanted to try and i remember that i would get frustrated because it didn't work out on the first try the way that i wanted to and i would quit so that really like stuck in me like you know i never tried to see it all the way through and fail at it right because i was scared of failing like i think most people are so you know i told myself like no you got to see this through i mean if entrepreneurship is something they want to explore and see where it takes you then you have to keep pushing through so that was like a big motivator for me and i wasn't afraid of failing because even if i failed there'll be something else that will come my way you know it's not for the money like i wasn't enough for the money i mean i have a job that allows me to live a good lifestyle so it was all more for learning you know what it takes to be an entrepreneur to bootstrap and do things on your own without necessarily having to depend on anyone else so that was kind of a big motivator for me and why i kept pushing through that's awesome to hear and we're so glad that

you did now you eventually found ebay drop shipping you said something about it kind of hooked you on it what was that like what was it about ebay dropshipping that just kind of grabbed your attention like that so what grabbed my attention like that was the fact that it was basically me getting into e-commerce without having to necessarily have to go and buy my own products i didn't have to store my products i don't have to pay you know for shipping storage fees i don't have to secure some huge warehouse i didn't have to buy a bunch of um or invest a lot of money ahead of time for me to sell this product so the fact that it made it so easy to get started in e-commerce which i have already done the reading about how e-commerce is growing and continues to grow so the fact that i can actually compete in that space without me having to put a dime in it was just like it's a win-win like you know you why wouldn't you do it like you know and eventually it opened up a whole bunch of doors to some other things as well so that's really what kind of hooked me the whole dynamic of how you know easy you know it can be as an entryway into e-commerce yeah i

can't agree with that more so after your first year what what'd you do next after that so 2019 um that's when i actually started to find your content uh paul so you know 2019 was a difficult year for me actually that was a year that kind of you know really kind of pushed me to maybe like calling it quits because like i wasn't seeing the traction that i was expecting and the reason why was i was just kind of frustrated because i was comparing myself to others you know on their results and their successes and i kind of fell into that trap because i would be part of a lot of these groups that still exist today you know you have a group you know and everybody's posting their results and they're you know making 10k a month 20k a month and they're like what am i doing wrong like what what's happening why am i not seeing the traction so you know that's when i came across your content uh while on youtube and i think you were you know very early in your youtube career and i still remember um you and your apartment having your home depot boxes like behind you it's like stacked up you know that early content you were creating and um and everything you were saying is very you know resonated with everything that i was trying to accomplish you know it took everything that i learned from david wu and then you kind of took it to the next level because you were given a more up-to-date on what's happening in real time in the platform and things that are changing within ebay and you know tips to apply that kind of help you get over the hump so you know once i find your content that's when i decided to you know what you know put some skin in the game i think you've said that before in your video and i buy your one of your first courses i think what's your ebay course your first course and that really was like a game changer for me i mean it was very detailed everything was outlined organized it's basically all of your content on youtube nicely condensed packed together for you to consume and hit the ground running and that's exactly what i did and i just kind of opened up a lot more doors for me 2019 i had some incremental growth i was still not seeing the growth that i wanted to because i still wanted to like you know oh i have to make a hundred thousand you know dollars in sales you know in 2019. but in any event you know it was better i got over the hump you know my thoughts about quitting you know starting to diminish i continue to push through and by the end of 2019 um i did about you know 50 000 in sales compared to 2018 which for me that was a huge growth for me and i mean i couldn't believe it i had to like pinch myself sometimes it's like how am i doing this but i was able to get through it so 2019 was difficult i pushed through thanks to you thanks for your content thanks to your courses and that kind of you know prepared me for 2020 which you know and we'll get to it and 2020 was really the best year for me so far with ebay awesome well

that's awesome to hear that you didn't give up and you kept going because it's obviously been worth it and then i think you and i met what year was that was wasn't that 2019 2019 yeah so why don't you explain like how we cross paths there yeah so back then i think you had already started organizing some meetups locally when you were in new york and obviously i was following your content very closely and i saw one of them and i really wanted to participate so you announced that there was one upcoming i think it was in march of 2019 if i remember right but obviously i was going to be in new york city and i live in florida so i'm like you know i need to go to this meeting like i don't care if i have to fly to new york like i'll do it even if it is for just a few hours like new york and florida i'm not that far away there was something in me that was telling me you have to go to new york and you have to be around these people because whatever they're gonna share it's valuable and there's a lot of takeaways for you to take home with you so i did i bought my ticket um i think i left you know fort lauderdale airport like at four in the morning and that must have been like the longest day of my life because i was up from 4am spent the whole day in new york city and then came back home like around 3am on the next day but that was the price that i was wanting to take to you know interact with you and some of the other folks that were there so yeah it was something that i had to do especially because i listened to a lot of the content that you know gary vee creates and you know if you want something really bad like you know you have to put forth the effort i mean it doesn't matter what it takes like if you really want to succeed in something you have to be around those people who are succeeding right so i thought it was an investment i didn't see it as you know oh it's going to cost me so much money to go to new york or you know it's not only worth my time i'm not going to know anybody like i got rid of all those like negative thoughts and i'm like no this is good this is positive it's gonna help me somehow like some way somehow this is gonna pay off and it's gonna help me at some point and here we are today you know um i'm glad that i went got a chance to meet you um not only you but i also got a chance to meet you know dropship tyler um i got to meet noah menses you know these other two guys that they used to do amazon dropshipping can't remember the name right now a rico yeah so i got to meet them as well so yeah it was a great opportunity and i'm glad that i you know took the lunch and go there yeah i'm super glad

you came too i mean that was an awesome event i'm pretty sure it snowstormed that night too right after his done so i'm surprised you got out on time actually yeah oh you get stuck in new york it's not the worst thing but yeah i mean i've always found that if you really want something you gotta for my styles i go all in like put all my skin in the game you know doing stuff like that i mean that shows yourself and like the world that you are dedicated that you're willing to fly out for a day to new york just to mastermind with other people doing that which is so powerful i mean that that says something right there you know what i mean yeah definitely um my wife thought i was crazy she's like you're going where to meet who the drop shipping like no so i had to convince i had to sell her honest like no it's a good thing and at the time so i have you know two young children i have a five year old and i just have a newborn um my son santiago he was just born you know three weeks ago but at the time three weeks ago now like yes september oh congratulations thank you yeah if i look a little tired because i am i'm not sleeping much but um finding a way so at the time my my five-year-old was pretty young it was three i think so he's like you could be gone like the whole day what i'm gonna do is gonna be asking about you know all the family stuff and i'm like listen you know i just need you to support me right now you know it's something that i think i need to do and i think in the long term it's just gonna it's gonna be a positive so at the end of the day you know she was very supportive like to be honest with you paul like if it wasn't for her being so supportive i don't know if i could be able to do everything that i'm doing like the drop shipping stuff now i'm you know obviously getting started with youtube you know you really need a very good support system to be able to flourish and succeed because i mean you more than anybody knows how much time this consumes out of you so you know it's a very good fine line between am i working too much and i need to spend time with my family and i struggle with that a lot especially in the beginning right now i have this up like it's kind of step away and be like hey listen you know you need to pause turn the computer off go play with your kid and then drop you can wait until tomorrow so you know having a support system is key in anything you want to do so i'm glad that i have that yeah and uh

i'm glad you have that too it's really important but you know um i have found that sometimes you know you do have to make sacrifices especially in the beginning um and that's just the reality of it but you can do it in moderation right so you are doing a lot more now so let's kind of move your story forward and okay what will happen next because you're not just doing ebay at this point right so then 2019 comes to a close it was a very good year for me drop shipping on ebay so at this point in time i'm doing ebay of with the majority of my e-commerce and i did sort of dabble a little bit with amazon in 2019 just a little bit i have some success i was still trying to figure it out to be honest with you because as you know amazon is an entirely you know beast and it's in its own especially if you're trying to do drop shipping on amazon we all know how risky that can be especially if you're trying to do retail drop shipping so i never actually committed on amazon because i was just afraid to lose my amazon you know selling account that's something i didn't want to risk and obviously getting it back can be you know can be proved to be very difficult and you can pay you know people to try to do it but there are no guarantees so i actually started doing fba so towards the end of the year of 2019 i started dabbling with some amazon fba and that was kind of my first introduction into me trying to diversify it so i just didn't want to be like a one-trick pony with e-commerce i wanted to explore all the other marketing places so kind of 2019 was that for me when it came to amazon so then that brings us to 2020 which was you know quite the year for all of us and this is when i say that um what's the phrase i'm trying to see is this one like love kind of met preparation i think that's kind of how the saying goes oh yeah i know that quote it's um uh success is when preparation meets luck something like that you're right yeah it's something like that yeah exactly that's what kind of everything kind of you know came together right so obviously 2020 we're going to this you know situation worldwide and everybody's buying now from home because everything is shut down and e-commerce is just booming so i made the conscious decision at the end of 2019 that i didn't want to use walmart anymore the reason why is nothing against walmart because i don't want to say that walmart doesn't work or that walmart is not a good idea for you to start because it is and actually walmart is a great place for you to start like that's my opinion for you to start it's a great place eventually at some point i think you might kind of want to diversify and start moving on to other you know channels where you can source products from because i think we all know by this time you know not because it's bad but it's just there's a lot more information out on the internet now so you know the cat's out of the bag like everybody knows walmart is a great place for you to drop and it still continues to be but it's getting more competitive i guess at least in my opinion um so i decided that you know what i need to start looking elsewhere i use um sku grid for my repricing and my you know stock inventory and the great thing about sku grid is that it supports a lot more retail suppliers compared to the other you know traditional software's out there like auto ds dsm tool although i don't even know if dsm-2 is still around but um i think they are okay so so yeah so then i started you know finding other retailers for me to kind of test and see where it goes so i found a great one and that one kind of really catapulted me to putting me in a position where i'm not fighting with as many people other sellers and then you know the pandemic happens we're getting a lot more sales volume than you normally would and i just went like parabolic with sales like the goals of that i was thinking two years ago that i wanted to attend happened in 2020 and it was because i was prepared i had my store set up i had the right products listed the demand was out there so all i had to do was just fulfill that demand and and everything just kind of came together so you know 2020 i sold on ebay um over 250 thousand dollars on yeah from one supplier that's incredible i was in one supplier and it wasn't it was a niche supplier um that i was using so it's um like it's a lot of like business industrial products so a lot of things that businesses would want to buy and obviously during you know doing the pandemic i mean i don't even know if it's okay to say pandemic right now i guess you can edit that out if i can't say that i think you can say it now yeah a lot of businesses were also you know trying to buy things on ebay because there were so many shortages that i was getting orders from businesses like left and right and they were buying in bulk like they were buying multiple items so yeah so 2020 was a game changer for me that kind of solidified that you know this thing works and if you're prepared and if you have all the right systems in place and you know what you're doing and you can identify opportunities the possibilities are endless so yeah i mean 2020 by far you know great year for

me so you weren't doing amazon 2020. yeah so i guess let me go back because i didn't mention amazon towards the end of 2019. so in 2020 i was still exploring amazon on fba that went well however i wasn't going to get in the traction that i thought i would so then what i started to do was i started looking into wholesale suppliers for that with dropship for me on amazon and i found a few that i tested but i never actually saw the um the growth that i saw on ebay i think it's because ebay makes it a lot simpler you know with amazon you know it's first of all you have to find the supplier or the wholesale supplier just so you can abide by their terms of service right you don't want to you know do things that would you know hurt you and finding like good you know quote-unquote good also suppliers is difficult i mean especially online it's kind of a hit or miss but anyways i spent the time i even hired va's to help me go through like you know searches on the internet i even bought a access to a wholesale um directory i got access to them and i was able to find a few that i was testing out in the pet category so with the pet category i did actually i did well with um with also drop shipping on amazon but it's a lot of work it was because you got to find you know the amazon listings that have the you know good bsrs you know that are gonna actually convert and you don't wanna compete you know in a listing where there's like 20 sellers you know it'll make it very difficult for you so it was just a lot of work i continued to do it with vas but at the end of the day i had to stop because my va costs were just eating up too much into what i was actually profiting from on amazon so that's when i kind of decided to kind of ease back a little bit on amazon i mean i still do it um but my focus continued to be on ebay for you know the rest of the year last year i guess we'll segue we'll get to it eventually but then i started also paying attention into facebook marketplace which i'm sure we'll get to it you know well let's

talk about that right now what how did that all start and what's been your experience with uh facebook because it's kind of been the uh the hot buzzword of the year yeah very hot to be honest with you when it was hot i was ignoring it like i wasn't paying attention to facebook like i saw other people i was ignoring it at first too so i don't feel too bad i thought it was just gonna be like a quick fed that burned out quick yeah like fizzled away like you know like i knew like marketplace always existed the only thing that changed now you can actually ship items but yeah like i said i was ignoring it i wasn't giving it too much attention there were a couple people on youtube kind of talking about it but i was like my attention is on ebay especially after the year that i had in 2020 i was like oh you know i need to double down on ebay and continue to scale this but obviously you know once things went back to normal and kind of the big volume of sales i was getting you know took a hit i think everybody wasn't getting the sales velocity that i was um you know during the past year so my numbers obviously they went down i mean i'm still having some good sales numbers but nowhere near to what i was you know during 2020 and then that's when i decided that i was going to commit myself and start making you know content on youtube and that's kind of and that's how i kind of fell on to facebook marketplace because okay yeah because i started to notice a trend like okay so what's everybody in the community that is you know trying to do drop shipping you know what are they talking about and that's when i started to notice like all of a sudden that all the attention is now on facebook marketplace like everyone's talking about facebook marketplace drop shipping and that's kind of when i fell on it so i started looking into it a bit more i started you know learning you know from you you've been making some content on facebook marketplace i'm trying to see you know what are the pros and cons and i mean to be honest you know now that i'm kind of a few months in with facebook marketplace i mean it's really only pros i mean i guess the only cons would be the fact that you really don't have much information i mean from a seller support perspective you know from facebook you know everything is automated self-serve you know you kind of have to read through their help you know section to figure things out so other than that i've seen nothing but positives with uh facebook marketplace and i really decided to kind of double down on facebook marketplace especially now that now the new buzzword is facebook shops and so now that that's becoming a thing um i really think the opportunities are limitless when it comes to facebook that's another you know channel for e-commerce so how's

it been going so far with facebook marketplace and facebook shops since you started that right yeah so it's been going well it's incredible the sales velocity that you can get on facebook it's like it reminds me well it doesn't remind me but it reminds me what i guess you know folks like you used to say about ebay when you guys first started because you maybe started maybe a year or two years before i did ebay but you know the days when you would just kind of throw anything up and it would pretty much sell like there was really no need for like you know product research and that's kind of where we are with facebook because there really isn't a native like product research software out there because there's no data that we know of from facebook that's telling us you know what customers are buying what's popular so we're kind of just you know guessing based on other data you know that we're getting so the fact that you know you can kind of you know bulk up list a few products that maybe do well on ebay for example have a tendency to sometimes also do well on facebook marketplace so definitely i'm seeing a lot more movement from sales on facebook right now that i'm seeing on my ebay storefront you know that's something that really grabbed my attention because there's something going on here this is like an untapped market of people who like buying on this platform and they're loyal and you're getting a lot more traffic here right and perhaps to some extent maybe a little bit less competition because i don't think the cat is out of the bad game when it comes to face marketplace like if you're in the community you would feel like oh yeah everybody knows about it but i don't think that's the case yet i think it's still fairly new and there's still a lot of opportunities so that's one of the things that i like about facebook and i'm definitely getting a lot more sales and definitely a lot more profit margins like the profit margins are insane like i still can't wrap my head around that i'm selling items that i'm getting 50 profit on like i can only dream about that on ebay and that's pretty phenomenal like i mean you're pretty much getting profit returns as if you were you know buying from a wholesaler at wholesale price and reselling it at a markup you know so that's pretty incredible and as far as uh shops so that's something new so i just recently got access to a facebook shop it took me a couple weeks of trying and just you know trial and error because there isn't really like a blueprint on how to get a shop although a lot of people have their own ideas and theories on how to get a shop approved there really isn't a step by step on how to do it so actually i feel pretty fortunate that i was able to get approved because a lot of people are having a lot of problems getting their shop so i just got it i haven't really done with it done a lot with it recently i'm still kind of setting it up and getting ready to have my products listed up there but as soon as i you know get around to it i just think it's going to be a game changer based on what i've been hearing from other folks in the community saying that you know i'm not getting that many views or sales on marketplace however you know in my shop it's a whole different story so you know we'll see how that goes yeah it's definitely really exciting and what excites me most about shops is just the automation of it and with shops the diff one of the other big differences is that it's like designed for sellers like you can actually see data and it's just more like an ebay back store than facebook marketplace where they don't really give you a lot of information uh for that's helpful as a seller exactly yeah i agree 100 it's more about you know back office like you know in your ebay seller dashboard you know when you get in the comments manager on shops and you can actually set up your return policies your shipping policies you actually get more support from facebook if you have a shop you know as opposed from marketplace i mean marketplace you're like you know figure it out if something is you know if you have an issue so yeah shops i think is the future and not only that but there is the use case of you know retail drop shipping with shops but i think shop is much bigger than that like the fact that you can have access to that channel of customers that are coming from facebook marketplace over to you i mean that's free traffic i mean where else can you get that much traffic it's pretty incredible what faithful i know it's crazy because if you look at platforms like ebay they're really strict like do not pull people off of ebay not allowed when you're setting up a facebook shop they actually ask you what is your website and they will actually link to it so you can actually get people to visit your shop on facebook and then leave facebook and go to your shopify store and just buy directly there it's crazy and avoiding all the facebook fees that don't even exist right now because right now facebook shops is free to use exactly yeah great point paul yeah i forgot about that yeah you're not paying any fees until next year i think with shops and yeah and the opportunities are limitless like i was thinking about this the other day with shops it's like for example like i already have some good postal suppliers that i've used for amazon that now i'm thinking hey i can create a niche page about pets and you know create my own website and i just have my drop ship supplier fulfill my orders and then start creating another store that is just you know in the pet niche and i'm doing this via wholesale and i'm gonna get all the traffic that i'm looking for because i'll find people who are interested in buying pet stuff i mean that's a give me so yeah like i said i'm super excited about what's to come with shops and all the uh things that we can do as drop shippers with it yeah i'm excited to see what you do are you going to be documenting this kind of journey on your youtube channel i know you've already released some videos about shops already right yeah so definitely i'm going to be documenting all of this on my channel and right now i kind of you know decided to make a hard turn towards facebook marketplace you know at the moment so if you are visiting my channel that's mainly what you see perhaps over the next few months we'll see how it goes and yeah i'm going to be spending a lot more time on facebook marketplace and definitely talking a lot more about shops and as a matter of fact the next video that i do have coming out is going to be about my experience and how i got my shop approved so yeah so i think i got some pretty good takeaways and what are some of the things that i think might have helped me so i definitely want to share that with everyone because i know everyone wants to get access to a shop and i think my opinion you know why not like if you're already committed to wanting to learn how to sell and you want your own little piece of real estate in facebook then you know you should get access to a shop so i'll link up daniel your channel down in the description you guys should definitely go subscribe check out some of his videos if you're interested in shops definitely check out those videos and leave a comment there saying that you came from this video make sure you're subscribed when you go over there daniel anything else you want to share with everyone well while we have you here today uh yeah so i just want to say thank you to you paul and to your community for having me here on your channel i think this is a great opportunity for people to start to learn who daniel is and what daniel sales online is all about you know i'm just a normal person like you who decided to start drop shipping and i had my own you know pitfalls mistakes negative thought process of i was going to quit i'm not going to do this doesn't work i went through all that but the lesson here is at the end of the day if you stick to it if you're really committed and want to see this through it can happen to you because i'm sitting here right now and i'll tell you that i can pinch myself and i'm having a conversation with paul lipsky like i never thought it was going to happen so you know this could be someone else a year from now so if this is what you want to do then go after it don't quit you can do it just persevere and you'll get it done so thank you all for having me here on the channel if you haven't yet subscribe i know paul say he's gonna link all my social media in the comment section down below feel free to you know visit my channel if you like the content then consider subscribing and you know thank you paul for this opportunity i really do appreciate it thanks so much man and if you guys enjoyed this video make sure to smash the like button down below and leave a comment letting us know your thoughts if you have any questions about facebook ebay facebook shops let us know and maybe we'll have daniel back on to help answer some of those questions thanks so much guys see you next time