Getting an eBay dropshipping business started is a great way for entrepreneurs to tap into a sprawling market without the need to invest in it first.

With eBay’s diverse customer base and user-friendly listing and selling tools, it’s easy to build a product catalog and post listings that will allow sellers to sell directly to their target audience and maximize their earning potential.

So, in this guide, we’ll explore the basics of starting an eBay dropshipping business and a blueprint we can follow to get started. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons, and procedures for setting up an online store.

What is eBay Dropshipping?

To begin a dropshipping business, first, we must choose a selling channel. Selling channels are marketplaces and eCommerce websites where we can market and sell products.

In fact, if we use a marketplace like eBay, we can leverage the trust and recognition that the marketplace has yet. On top of that, we can utilize the large audience that is readily available on eBay.

To clarify though, dropshipping is an online retail fulfillment method where the seller doesn’t keep the inventory they sell in stock. Rather, we buy the product from a third-party supplier when we make a sale. The supplier then directly ships the product to our customer. Consequently, the dropshipping model is low-risk and low-investment with high-profit potential.

Why Dropship On eBay?

With a clear understanding of eBay dropshipping, let us explore the reasons to dropship on eBay. One great advantage is its high level of traffic. Statista reports show that over 600 million users visited eBay US each month between February and July 2024, making it the second most visited website in terms of traffic.

This data only proves steady organic traffic, increasing our chances of sales. Plus, with such a vast number of users, our items will get views without spending too much money, time, or effort.

Furthermore, we can dropship in multiple regions, including ebay.com, ebay.co.uk, ebay.de, ebay.fr, ebay.it, ebay.com.au, ebay.es, and ebay.ca. That way, we can target and tap into multiple markets to increase our number of sales. By selling on eBay, we can reach millions of shoppers worldwide.

And last but not least, we can do all this with a $0 upfront investment. So, that means we don’t have to pay anything to start selling on eBay since we can list up to 250 listings for free. Then, once we begin making profits, we can invest in expanding our product offerings.

Advantages & Disadvantages Of eBay Dropshipping

Like any other business model, eBay dropshipping has benefits and drawbacks. To have a clearer picture, let’s take a look at its pros and cons:

PROS	CONS
Free organic traffic	Difficult to build a brand
Easy to start	Selling limits
Zero upfront investment	We don’t get customer info
Easy ways to market

eBay is the largest auction website and marketplace, and certainly one of the top online eCommerce platforms, boasting over 180 million users. That way we will have lots of organic traffic for free, and people will buy for us. What’s even better is that eBay is the perfect option for beginners and experienced sellers as it’s so user-friendly. It has a really user-friendly platform and we can get started for free.

In fact, eBay even lets us put up our first 250 listings for free. I can then guide you step by step through the easy listing process on how to begin your own dropshipping business without having to know much in the beginning, and relatively few funds needed in the beginning. But once we begin to sell, eBay makes it incredibly easy for us to market what we’re selling. We can have a breeze of advertising our product / products using Promoted Listings Standard and Advanced. These are eBay’s in-house features to make our listing more visible on ebay.

But, eBay is not a quite customizable eCommerce platform (it is highly limited). So it’s hard to establish a brand and any kind of recognition. But we can make our listings that much sexier.

Moreover, new sellers on eBay are under the listing restrictions and can list 10 items with a value of $500. These thresholds work to identify untrustworthy sellers. But playing by eBay’s rules and slowly building a reputation, a seller can request higher selling limits via eBay support.

And finally, because eBay is a marketplace, everyone who uses it is an eBay customer. So, we can’t gather their personal information, such as their emails, which may be nice for our marketing purposes. But, hey! OK, at least we get to keep the profits.

How Much Does it Cost to Dropship on eBay?

The price of eBay dropshipping costsIt is true that the cost of eBay dropshipping will depend on several factors. So what are some things to consider when you want to do dropshipping on eBay?

Free Listings

So, eBay is an excellent place to start dropshipping as we start with 250 listings for free. Instead, we can keep our initial spend to zero or close to it. But if we want more listings, we have to pay per listing, or, more conveniently, pay for a subscription.

In reality, these 250 free listings equals the cost of getting your starter store! After those initial 250 free listings, eBay offers us a handful of subscriptions we can sign up for, and decide on which goal we are after and which level of support we need.

Subscription Fees

eBay has different selling packages based on seller levels with differing costs and benefits. The primary plans are Starter, Basic, Premium, Anchor and Enterprise.

The Starter plan is perfect for beginners, providing an affordable way to get into digital auctioning with a maximum listings amount. With the basic plan you get more free listings and lower final value fees, making it ideal for medium size businesses.

The Premium plan includes additional listings and benefits, including discounts on eBay-branded shipping supplies. The Anchor plan is targeted towards high-volume sellers, providing them with dedicated customer support and even higher listing allowances. Finally, the Enterprise, for big biz with individual needs, enjoys the highest level of support and listings.

There are monthly or annual subscription fees associated with each plan and they vary according to which features and support options it has and sellers can select the one that best suits their needs.

Monthly renewal:

• Starter Store – $7.95 per month
• Basic Store – $27.95 per month
• Premium Store – $74.95 per month
• Anchor Store – $349.95 per month
• Enterprise Store – N/A

Annual renewal:

• Starter Store – $4.95 per month
• Basic Store – $21.95 per month
• Premium Store – $59.95 per month
• Anchor Store – $299.95 per month
• Enterprise Store – $2999.95 per month

Insertion Fees

Each store subscription plan has a certain number of free insertion fee listings. The higher the subscription level, the less the seller will pay for each additional listing. Here is a detailed overview of insertion fees:

• Starter Store – 250 fixed price listings + $0.30 per additional listing
• Basic Store – 1000 fixed price listings + $0.25 per additional listing / up to 250 free auction-style listings in specific categories
• Premium Store – 10,000 fixed price listings + $0.10 per additional listing / up to 500 free auction-style listings in specific categories
• Anchor Store – 25,000 fixed price listings + $0.05 per additional listing / up to 1000 free auction-style listings in specific categories
• Enterprise Store – 100,000 fixed price listings + $0.05 per additional listing / up to 2500 free auction-style listings in specific categories

To be certain of the insertion fees we need to pay on eBay, AutoDS has a handy eBay Insertion Fee Calculator at your disposal. It is a fast and simple way to guarantee that the appropriate amount of fees are accounted for.

Final Value Fees

After insertion fees, we have to consider final value fees. Final value fees are fees charged by eBay for selling items on their platform. The fee is calculated as a percentage of the total sale amount (item price + postage and handling charges) plus a fixed charge of $0.30 per order.

The final value fee can change based on the product category sold. For instance, let’s assume we have subscribed to a starter store selling men’s shoes. As such, we have to pay 8% per item if the sale amount is over $150 and 12.9% per item if the total sales are under $150.

On the other hand, if we have Basic, Premium, Anchor, and Enterprise store subscriptions, we have to pay 7% per item if the sale amount is over $150 and 12% per item if the total sales are under $150. The final value fee is calculated and automatically charged by eBay at the end of a sale through eBay Managed Payments.

Promotional Fees

Standing out from the crowd is crucial when dropshipping on eBay. So, besides the mandatory fees, we might generate promotional fees. These are fees we pay eBay to market our products. Without a solid marketing strategy, getting our products in front of the right people and making sales can be difficult.

As such, eBay also charges a promotional fee for sellers who choose to use the platform’s promoted listing features, Promoted Listings Standard and to Promoted Listings Advanced.

When we utilize the promoted listings standard, we pay eBay a set percentage only after we make a sale from their promo. On the other hand, with promoted listings advanced, we pay a daily budget in advance to run our ads. This works similarly to the way pay-per-click (PPC) ads work.

Conclusion

And eBay dropshipping is a great way to do just that – build a profitable online business without a big initial investment.

With an in-depth knowledge of eBay’s rules, lists tailored to eBay and a few high-quality suppliers, you make shopping easy for your customers.

Since we learn a method on how to dropship on eBay and use the automation from AutoDS, we can put aside the hurdles and start building our business.