Ebay Powerseller Secrets Revealed - Exploring Ebay's Certified Provider Program - By Chris Yarbrough

As the admin of Ebay-Guides, I frequently get emails from readers asking me for what has become the Holy Grail of eBay selling; where are powersellers getting their merchandise. Surprisingly, even I had to spend several hours researching sellers and merchandise before I was able to track down a definitive answer.

While there are literally thousands of wholesalers and dropshippers doing business on the internet, I was very surprised to find that the vast majority of auction goods were being funneled through a single company. Delving further into the mystery of why, with all the choices out there, this mystery company had developed such a lock on the auction supply market, I finally found my answer. Buried on a developer page on eBay’s site was a listing of a select few companies that eBay had chosen to partner up with. Ebay calls this program, the “Certified Provider Program” and imposes strict rules for all participants. Getting into the program is a long, involved process, and the list of companies that have successfully applied to, and been accepted into the program is a short one.

According to eBay: “The eBay Certified Provider Program was established to recognize the best-of-breed eBay Platform innovators who are helping eBay users grow their businesses through services, including technology or data licensing services.”

In retrospect it should have been no surprise that the company with the lion’s share of the dropshipping market would be an eBay partner. Corporate America has always been about one company scratching the back of another.

After learning just who this company was, I took a stroll through their website. Not surprisingly, I found somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 products available for dropshipping; anything from a toaster to a 60 inch flatscreen TV. Prices and selection were good, but this hardly explained the overwhelming share of business the company was getting, even with eBay’s help.

A few more minutes of scanning their site, and I found my answer; integrated software. Reading over the companies service FAQ, I noticed that they were in the unique position of having authored software in conjunction with eBay. What does it do? Quite a bit really. With a few clicks of a button completed auctions could be created and uploaded directly into eBay’s auction platform. Mystery solved.

No wonder the major eBay powersellers don’t want this information getting out. With a 2-3 hour per day time investment, someone with even limited computer skills could create several thousand auctions offering just about any product under the sun, and place them on eBay for sale.

If you’ve read my prior articles on how dropshipping works, you would know exactly why this is a major money maker. Assuming everyone is a first time reader however, I will briefly explain the business model.

Dropshipping works very simply; you as the seller offer goods for sale which you do not own, and only pay for once you have received payment. This means you have zero inventory costs, zero warehousing costs, and no shipping hassles. You are quite literally just an advertiser.

I’ve written several free guides about how to effectively make use of dropshippers, and how to limit costs when listing auctions on eBay which can be found on various sites across the web, or on my own.

So who is this mystery company eBay has partnered up with? The powersellers certainly do not want you to know, and thus far they’ve been successful in keeping people misinformed. Will they continue to succeed? Quite possibly.

If you’d like to get more information on just who these companies are, simply visit Ebay Guides for the complete list and links, or try a search on eBay’s site for “Certified Provider Program”.

The simple fact is, the easiest way to make money on a site like eBay, is to work with the same companies they are. While there is no doubt that eBay is making money in some form from these companies, there is little doubt that they are receiving “special” treatment. In my experience, the easiest way to make money is to take the path of least resistance. In this case, eBay is basically telling powersellers who they want them to do business with. Unfortunately, unless you are a major powerseller, they don’t seem to be volunteering that information.

Chris Yarbrough writes for Ebay Guides, a free resource site with hundreds of articles and guides. You can view his guides at http://www.ebay-guides.com.