Simple story about how I generated $50K revenue drop shipping on Facebook Marketplace with this one simple approach. Exact details and numbers. Nothing held back.
Show Notes
Back in February of 2021, I made a decision to work with my 14-year-old son – we started a Facebook marketplace drop shipping business. We liked it because we didn’t need any special tax permits, we didn’t need a lot of capital to invest, we didn’t need anything special except a Facebook account.
From February to October, we were able to generate over $50,000 in revenues by shipping products on Facebook marketplace.
In generating that revenue, we spent $35,000 in cost of goods sold (the things we bought to sell) and about 10% on other expenses such as our Virtual Assistant, software costs and so forth. Our net profit ended up being right around 20%.
So in rough numbers, we sold $50,000 worth of merchandise on Facebook marketplace and we were able to keep $10,000 free and clear profit before income tax.
20% profit margin is not bad especially for a completely unoptimized business like Facebook marketplace drop shipping. We didn’t do anything special to negotiate any special pricing, we didn’t make any special deals with wholesale distributors, we didn’t do any special work to optimize prices to maximize profit. We just put stuff on there and sold it and we made a 20% return on that investment.
That’s a good deal. If you’re looking for an easy, extra income stream to start up, this is something that you can consider starting and this is how we did it.
Facebook Marketplace is the area in Facebook where you can go and see where people are selling things. It’s usually things out of people’s garages but recently, Facebook has added a shipping option so now there is an opportunity for you to list something for sale and show that to everyone in your country. If they buy it, you can ship it to them.
Drop shipping is when someone buys something from you that you don’t even have, and you take the money that they pay you and you use that money to buy that item and send that directly from the supplier to the customer. Then you keep the difference as profit.
We went to Ebay and we identified top selling items from highly ranked suppliers (those with a very high percentage of positive feedback on eBay). There is a Chrome plugin that you can use to find popular items called eBay popularity sort. Another thing that we looked for was a reasonable return policy. Most suppliers on eBay offer free shipping.
Once we found an item, we listed it for sale on Facebook Marketplace and we’d use the images that are being used on eBay. We’d use the eBay description, or sometimes edited versions of it, to simplify it and make it better. We would use the same product title used on eBay because oftentimes, eBay sellers are very good at using keyword rich titles that would search well on eBay, making the assumption that they would search well on Facebook marketplace.
Using a program called ZeeDrop (also a Chrome plug in) we would list the item over on Facebook marketplace.
It doesn’t cost anything to list something on Facebook Marketplace. Understand at this point you’re not buying this product, you have no money out of pocket. All that’s happening is you’re spending your time, which admittedly has value, but ZeeDrop can do the listing quickly.
Over the lifetime of this project, we listed approximately a thousand products on Facebook Marketplace. We simply priced everything 1.4x the price on eBay.
Now, the way Facebook works is they pay you once they see that the item has been delivered. In my case, we used a business credit card that paid a cash back amount so we made a little money there that helped with our margins.
We shipped items directly to the customer, entered the ship tracking number into Facebook Marketplace that would notify Facebook and Facebook’s customer that the item was on the way. Once the item reached the customer, the ship tracking number showed that it had been delivered and Facebook released their money to us. On average, my experience was that my money was tied up for about 20 days and that’s really convenient because typically, you can use a credit card to essentially borrow money for 30 days.
If you need more details, I’m recommending Tom’s Facebook Marketplace Drop Shipping course about how to optimize these listings so that they convert, what kinds of products to list, where to source them, what software to use if you want to semi-automate the listing and fulfillment process.
Links Mentioned In This Episode
- Popularity Sort for eBay™
- ZeeDrop
- Tom’s Facebook Marketplace Drop Shipping course
- Free Video Courses on How to Start Your Business Online
- Subscribe in iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or Spotify
Help Me Help You Succeed Online
The more I hear from you about your struggles, trials and tribulations, the more I can help. So, be sure to leave comments on this post to reach out to me on Twitter or in the Late Night Internet Marketing Private Facebook Group
Tell Me What You Think
I’d love to hear what you think about the podcast. Better yet, Id love to answer your question about Internet marketing on the show. Just drop me a line here on the blog or on the digital recorder at 214-444-8655. Dont worry, there are no stupid questions. Unless you tell me not to, when you ask a question or leave a comment might even use it on the show.
Help Me Help Others
Thanks so much for your reviews on iTunes. We get a ton of exposure from iTunes, and we really appreciate the reviews there. At last count, we were over 100 reviews worldwide and counting. Reviews help us get new listeners — so I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a review on iTunes (link).
Get The Episode Transcript
Interested in the transcript of this episode when it’s ready? Transcripts are available to all of my subscribers. You can find them along with all the other episode transcripts and special bonus content in the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast Vault (sounds mysterious, doesn’t it?)