Whether you're just getting started or have been on eBay for a while, a common question that comes up is where to find more products. If you were a regular "brick and mortar" retailer, then you'd have to develop relationships with local wholesalers and distributors for the products that you carry. The same applies for eBay businesses.

People always wonder if the distributors and wholesalers will sell to the online retailer. The answer to that question is "it depends." Some wholesalers will, some wholesalers won't. You need to remember that every wholesaler is different.

So how do you start finding wholesalers? Well let me tell you where not to look. Don't do a regular internet search for them, because most of the websites that you'll find are false. Don't believe the hype, no matter how appealing they look to eBay sellers. You might think you won the lottery if you believed all their promises. Sorry, but it's not true.

Why? Well these websites aren't really the wholesalers at all. That's because wholesalers and distributors don't have to advertise for eBay sellers. Wholesalers already have enough offline business when they deal with regular retail stores. Instead, these sites are made by "middlemen" that make the connections to the wholesaler, then mark up the products before they re-sell them to you. Usually the mark-up is much too great to be useful to you, and you'll find that the prices you purchased products at are too high to make sense for you to sell on eBay.

So what do we do now? Well first you need to realize that the web isn't the best source for you to Wholesalers aren't on the edge of internet technology. They do business mainly by telephone because it's worked for them for decades. In my experience, the best wholesalers that we've found don't have websites, or they have websites that are difficult to use or find. So how do you find wholesalers if you can't search on the web? The best way is to go to the top. In this case, it's the manufacturer. Call the manufacturer by looking through the product documentation or warranty card.

Remember that the wholesaler's role is to help the manufacturer. They help the manufacturer because the manufacturer doesn't want to worry about selling products, but rather making them. Ask them for the nearest wholesaler or distributor to you.