Ebay to Amazon Dropshipping Guide Step By Step

Many people looking to make money online have found that by combining two of the largest marketplaces, eBay and Amazon, with one of the most popular business models, dropshipping, you can make a profitable business.

Dive into the numbers and you can see why!

Amazon sells a whopping 600 million products, while on the other side, eBay has 180 million active, hungry buyers. That’s a great recipe for a successful dropshipping business.

In this article, I’ll show you a beginner’s step-by-step guide of how to sell your first items from Amazon to eBay, and provide answers to some of the most commonly asked questions.

Contents

What is Amazon to eBay dropshipping/arbitrage?
Is dropshipping from Amazon to eBay legal? Does eBay allow it?
Does Amazon to eBay arbitrage work?
Want to skip straight to the guide? >> How to start dropshipping from Amazon to eBay – a step-by-step guide
Common problems when dropshipping from Amazon to eBay
Amazon to eBay dropshipping automation – How software helps to speed up the process

What is Amazon to eBay dropshipping / arbitrage?

First, let’s start with “dropshipping” in general.

Dropshipping is a common business model where a business lists items for sale without holding physical stock of any of the items. Instead, when a customer places an order, the business orders the item from their supplier and has it shipped directly from their supplier to the customer

This means no inventory costs and no risk of holding money in lots of physical products that never sell. A win-win situation for the business.

Now that you understand dropshipping in general, here’s the process for Amazon to eBay dropshipping:

You list products from Amazon for sale on your eBay store
A buyer makes a purchase from your eBay store
You order the item from Amazon and have it shipped directly to the customer

Instead of the term “dropshipping”, you may sometimes hear of “retail arbitrage”. Retail arbitrage is simply a word for any form of dropshipping where your supplier is a retailer.

If you’re a beginner wanting to learn more about eBay dropshipping in general, you may find it helpful to read our eBay dropshipping article.

Is dropshipping from Amazon to eBay legal? Does eBay allow it?

Is Amazon to eBay dropshipping legal?

Yes – In terms of legality, we are not currently aware of any laws anywhere in the world that prohibit dropshipping between these marketplaces (or any others).

The main legal risk you should be careful to avoid is listing items that have copyright or trademark protections. These items fall under eBay’s VeRO policy which you can read more about in our eBay VeRO violations guide.

Is Amazon to eBay dropshipping allowed?

eBay says they will not suspend you for dropshipping from Amazon to eBay. You’re free to ask eBay about this as we have in the screen share.

You do need to be aware that eBay has released a new dropshipping policy that gives them the power to take action against dropshippers and eBay arbitrage businesses if they want to.

However, our understanding from eBay is that they’re only interested in suspending Amazon to eBay dropshippers that are abusing the eBay ecosystem and causing a bad buying experience.

For example, dropshippers may be suspended if they list VeRO items, provide poor customer service or engage in bad selling practices.

In addition, while eBay won’t suspend accounts for dropshipping, they will place a flag on your account that will restrict the number of page impressions your listings receive and potentially remove top-rated status from you.

That being said, many dropshippers still operate very profitably despite being flagged by eBay. In fact, we’ve written a separate article about the strategies to succeed with flagged accounts.

Does Amazon to eBay arbitrage work?

Yes – we have many case studies from people that run very successful businesses by dropshipping from Amazon to eBay.

Here are 3 of them you can read more about:

Pini Rahum – Pini and his brother Orel run an Amazon to eBay dropshipping business with 30 stores, 1 million listings and $30,000+ of net profit every month. What’s more, he employs 8 workers in Ukraine to handle 99% of the work so barely spends 1hr/day working on his business.

Shezzy Sheikh – From student to 7 figure eBay dropshipper. Shezzy Sheikh is one of the most successful eBay dropshippers in the industry with $200k+ sales in December 2018 – check out our interview with him to learn from his insights into Amazon to eBay dropshipping.

Vik and Joao – Sometimes it’s not just about the money. For this couple, becoming Amazon to eBay dropshippers helped them move to Portugal, spend more time with their children, and become much happier with themselves. We spoke to them and wrote all about their inspiring story.

How to dropship from Amazon to eBay – a beginners step-by-step guide

We’ve written this guide to give you a beginner’s step-by-step overview of how you can dropship your first item from Amazon to eBay.

The main purpose is to help you get set up if you’re brand new to dropshipping and give you an understanding of the process from start to finish.

Later in the article, we’ll show many reasons why using software to dropship items from Amazon to eBay will allow you to automate the entire process and make everything far quicker and easier.

With that said, let’s get started.

Contents

Setting up your accounts and settings

To dropship from Amazon to eBay, you’ll need to set up 3 different accounts:

An eBay account
An Amazon account
A PayPal account

Creating an eBay account

Creating an eBay account is super easy and can be done in a minute.

Make sure to go to the eBay site that you wish to dropship on. For example, if you want to sell on eBay US, go to ebay.com or for eBay UK, go to ebay.co.uk

Then, click register and complete the details as below:

You can even use your Google or Facebook accounts if you wish, though it’s advisable to keep them separated from your eBay account.

Bonus tip: Once you’ve signed up, you can choose a professional account name by going to Account -> Personal Info -> User ID -> Edit

Creating an Amazon account

Super simple. Go to Amazon.com (or the location you want to dropship from), and click register account. Then complete the details as below:

Creating a PayPal account

You’ll need this in order to receive payments. There isn’t much difference between picking a business or personal PayPal account and in most locations you’re allowed one of each.

You may find it advisable to keep your personal PayPal separate from your business and therefore set up a business account in the long-term. However, if you’re just looking to get a taste of eBay dropshipping then follow the instructions in the video below:

Finding your first profitable item to sell from Amazon

There are 3 main ways to find your first profitable item to sell:

1. Market research software

There are a few companies that specialize in eBay market research tools. By using these tools, you can find out what’s in demand and find profitable opportunities to sell products.

The 3 biggest companies that offer eBay market research are:

If you’re looking to set up a long term Amazon to eBay dropshipping business, you should consider investing in some market research software to help find profitable items.

2. Listing software that includes an item locator

Some listing software, such as Salefreaks will include an item locator as part of the subscription.

You can see how the Salefreaks item locator works below:

3. Manually searching

If you’re reading this article, and aren’t sure whether an Amazon to eBay dropshipping business is right for you, you can try to find items by manually searching on Amazon.

Obviously, doing this will take you a lot longer and is not scalable, but if you’re looking to get started for free, this will help you out.

Your sole aim is to look for non-branded items on Amazon, that are selling for a higher price on eBay.

Start by going to Amazon, typing in “best seller” on any category and clicking on any non-branded item.

For example, look at this item:

Price on Amazon $21.99

Now put the item into eBay and see what people are selling it for on eBay.

What you want to find is a situation like where the lowest priced eBay seller is still selling the item successfully for more than the Amazon price.

eBay seller 1 price: $24.99 – 20 sales
eBay seller 2 price: $25.50 – 10 sales
eBay seller 3 price: $26.12 – 3 sales
eBay seller 4 price: $27.33 – 0 sales

From these figures, you can see that if you charged below $24.99, but above $21.99, you’d have a good chance of gaining sales.

Listing your first item

When trying to list an item for the first time, eBay may require you provide some verification details such as your phone number and address. Fill this in as normal and then head onto to “sell” page by clicking sell near the top right corner from the homepage.

You should then appear on the page below:

Click “advanced tool” and confirm you want to switch to the advanced tool.

Copy the name of the Amazon item and choose an appropriate category.

It may say there are no results, just click continue listing.

On the next page, you’ll see all the listing options. Most of these should be self-explanatory.

Make sure to:

Add royalty-free photos to your listing
Add any item specifics and description from information on Amazon
Click fixed price, and choose a price higher than the Amazon price, and lower than the lowest competitor on eBay
Click to accept PayPal and enter your PayPal email address
Enter weight and dimensions using information from the Amazon page

At the end, click list, and your listing will be online!

Don’t worry – if you decide to start an Amazon to eBay dropshipping business, you won’t need to manually list items individually in future.

Instead, most eBay dropshippers use software like Salefreaks to automate the process of listing items. We’ll talk about this later in the article.

Fulfilling your first order

If you’ve found a hot item to sell, you’ll soon wake up to a “kerching” noise from the eBay app and have your first order.

Once you’ve confirmed you’ve received payment from your buyer, all that’s left is to despatch the order.

Login to Amazon, add the item to your basket and checkout, marking the item as a “gift” and inputting the customers’ address.

Congratulations, if you’ve followed this guide, you’ve now dropshipped your first item from Amazon to eBay!

With that said, if you want to make this into a business, you’ll want to know how to avoid some common problems and use software in order to scale. Continue reading to find out how.

Common problems when dropshipping from Amazon to eBay

There are a few common problems to be aware of when dropshipping from Amazon to eBay, but most of them can be solved with the right know-how.

Here are 5 of the top problems that Amazon to eBay dropshippers face:

1. VeRO Violations

When you list hundreds or even thousands of items on eBay at a time, you run the risk of accidentally list an item that is protected by a trademark or copyright.

But doing so could come at a big cost. If you breach eBay’s VeRO program (an acronym for Verified Rights Ownership), you could find yourself with a temporary or permanent suspension from the site so it’s vital as an Amazon to eBay dropshipper that you find ways to avoid uploading VeRO items.

Take a look at our guide to eBay VeRO violations to find out how.

2. Being unable to provide Amazon item tracking

Like the person in the Facebook post above found out, Amazon tracking numbers aren’t easily shareable. With most traditional carriers, you can hand anyone the tracking number and they’ll be able to track their delivery by inputting it into their website. But not with Amazon…

Amazon has their own carrier network which only lets you view item tracking if you’re logged in to the Amazon account that ordered the item. And given that you aren’t about to share your Amazon account details with all your eBay buyers, you have a problem.

Why? Without providing item tracking you’ll deal with more customer service queries and lose more cases on eBay.

Want to see the solution we found for this? See how to share tracking with eBay buyers for parcels being delivered by Amazon Logistics

3. Out of stock items and price changes

You find an item from Amazon for $9.

You sell it on eBay for $13.

You make $4 profit (before fees).

…Or do you?

What if the Amazon seller changes their price to $15 before you place your order? Or worse still, what if the item falls out of stock?

If you run an Amazon to eBay dropshipping business without the right software, you may well encounter these problems.

Logically, there are two things you need to ensure.

Your Amazon orders are placed as soon as you get a sale on eBay – this prevents items from becoming out of stock
Your eBay listings are automatically repriced when the price on Amazon changes – this prevents accidental losses from Amazon price changes

This is why you should look at using software to automate your eBay business.

The specific features you need to look for to prevent these issues are:

Auto-order: Software with an “auto-order” function will automatically place orders on Amazon for you once you get a sale on eBay

Repricer: A basic eBay repricer can change the prices of your listings when the price on Amazon changes. More advanced repricing software can also change your prices according to your competitors on eBay to help you win more sales and make the maximum profit possible.

4. Amazon account locks

Sometimes, Amazon to eBay dropshippers encounter having their Amazon account locked. For example, if they:

Use an unusually heavy amount of Amazon gift cards
Login to their account from multiple IP Addresses
Use fake account details

And given that your Amazon account shows you all the details about your customers’ orders, it’s vital you regain access as soon as possible if it happens.

We wrote a guide complete with copy and paste template to send to Amazon if it happens to you. See how to unlock your Amazon account.

5. Being flagged as a dropshipper

eBay’s new dropshipping policy doesn’t mean you’ll be suspended for dropshipping from Amazon to eBay. But it does mean you’ll be flagged as a dropshipper and face certain restrictions, such as a fall in the number of views your listings get.

Screenshot of flagged eBay account impressions

You can’t become “unflagged”, but can you still create a profitable Amazon to eBay dropshipping business after being flagged? Yes – though you need to adapt your way of working.

If you’ve been flagged and you’re not sure what to do, here are some new strategies for flagged accounts you can follow.

Amazon to eBay dropshipping automation – How software helps to speed up the process

Trying to dropship from Amazon to eBay without software, is like trying to win the 100m finals at the Olympic games with your legs tied together.

Software storming ahead!

Here are 9 ways that using software helps to make the dropshipping process quicker and easier:

1. Finding items to sell

To make money dropshipping from Amazon to eBay, you need scale.

While you aren’t likely to make much profit with 100 listings, once you start creating thousands of listings you have many more opportunities to sell.

But to create thousands of listings, you need to find thousands of hot items to sell.

That’s why software like Salefreaks include an item locator that can scan Amazon subcategories with up to 10,000 items at a time in a few clicks.

Alternatively, you can also use eBay market research software such as ZIK Analytics, Terapeak or Chilli Hunter that specialize in finding hot products.

2. New methods to sell items

One big advantage of using eBay dropshipping software is that they often include features to find and list items that you would otherwise not be able to do manually.

For example, Salefreaks includes a feature called the Coupon Hunter that tracks items from Amazon that have coupon discounts and lists them to your store automatically. Without software, it would be nearly impossible to find these items manually, yet these items are some of the most profitable that you can sell.

3. VeRO protection

Checking if the items you want to list are in breach of eBay’s VeRO program manually would take a long time, and you could quite easily miss if a brand is registered for protection with eBay.

But if you use an established eBay dropshipping software like Salefreaks, you benefit from having access to a comprehensive VeRO list with millions of banned items that the software will scan your listings for and automatically prevent you from listing.

4. Repricing items

If you manually list items from Amazon to eBay, you run the risk that the price on Amazon rises and you sell items at a loss.

But by using an eBay repricer, you can let the software automatically change your prices according to the price on Amazon (and with Salefreaks, according to what competitors are charging too!).

5. Auto-ordering items

Likewise, if you manually list items from Amazon to eBay, you run the risk that the item falls out of stock before you place your order. That’s why it’s important to find eBay dropshipping software that includes an auto-order function.

Auto-order tracks sales made on eBay and then automatically orders the corresponding item for you from Amazon within minutes of the sale going through, meaning that out of stock items rarely occur.

6. Filtering items and optimizing your store

Finding items to sell, and listing them onto eBay is one thing. But you also need to regularly remove items that don’t sell to keep your store optimized. If you don’t, your costs with eBay will be unnecessarily high and could lose your search ranking.

Using software like Salefreaks allows you to easily filter all your listings according to your needs such as; finding listings with no sales in 60 days or finding listings that only have a few views.

Salefreaks’ most successful customer, Pini Rahum rates this feature alone as one of the key reasons he managed to scale to 1 million Amazon to eBay listings.

7. Listing items

Even if somehow you managed to find a thousand hot Amazon items manually, you’d still have the task of listing them all.

Most eBay dropshipping software provides a couple of options to be able to create quickly listings. Firstly, if you’ve found items using market research software, you can normally import the items via a CSV file and then mass-list them to eBay. Alternatively, some dropshipping software also includes a listing generator that can automatically create listings for any items you found using it.

8. Using a CRM to deal with customer service issues

It’s possible to deal with customer service tickets without a CRM (customer relationship management software). However, when you start to create multiple eBay stores and multiple Amazon accounts the task becomes much harder.

For example, when you have 10,000 listings, how do you keep track of which Amazon account fulfilled the order? Or which eBay account the buyer purchased from?

A CRM can display all the information you need in one place making it much easier and quicker for you to respond to customers and be accurate in your answers.

9. Keeping your Amazon accounts safe

If you’re just starting out, you may only need one Amazon account.

But as you grow and fulfill more and more orders, it’s advisable to create multiple Amazon accounts to minimize the risk to your business should anything happen to one of them.

If you’re at this stage, there are two main benefits of using Salefreaks.

First, you can connect and manage multiple Amazon accounts under one roof which makes it easy to scale. And second, Salefreaks includes Safe Access™ which is a feature that keeps all your Amazon accounts unlinked on separate IP addresses.

Thanks for reading the article – Any questions? Let us know in the comments!

What is Amazon to eBay dropshipping / arbitrage?