The basic concept of being a wholesaler sounds simple enough, buy goods and sell them at a higher price. However, it takes some knowledge and work before you can get to this stage of the wholesaling process. Fortunately, you came to the right place if you want to learn how to get started in the wholesale electronics industry.
In this article, you’re going to learn:
The advantages of becoming an electronics wholesaler
The best electronics to buy and sell
What you’ll need to do to form your business
How to create an amazing online presence
Where to find wholesale electronics suppliers
Tips for pricing your electronics
Marketing strategies anyone can understand
What Are the Advantages of Being an Electronics Wholesaler?
If you’re unsure about becoming a wholesaler, it’s understandable to feel this way. With that in mind, you might want to learn about the main advantages of wholesaling electronics. As you’ll soon learn, there are more benefits of working in this industry than you might think!
A Popular Industry
One way to make things easier than normal for yourself is by entering into a popular industry. And, as research shows, the world of wholesale electronics is definitely a popular industry to be a part of. It seems like, almost everywhere you look, all sorts of people use electronics.
Think about how many electronic devices you use in a typical day. If you’re like most people, you spend the morning checking your phone or tablet. Next, you’re off to work where you probably add a computer into the mix of devices you’re using.
Making Money
Understandably, most people decide to start a business to make money while pursuing their passions. If you’re looking to make money, you’ll be happy to learn that selling electronics can provide you with massive potential for huge profits.
One of the best ways to ensure you’re making profits in this industry is by purchasing electronics in bulk. And that’s exactly what you’ll do when you become an electronics wholesaler.
Better Per Item Prices
The final main benefit we wanted to mention is that wholesalers typically spend less per item when they’re buying electronics. Since companies and people who sell to wholesalers love that they buy in bulk, wholesalers typically get more attractive pricing options than the average buyer.
Deciding What You What You to Buy and Sell
Before you can start buying items to sell, you need to know what you’re getting. Since you’re on this website, it’s a safe bet to assume that you want to purchase and resell electronics. But with electronics being such a broad topic, it could be helpful to narrow down your search a bit.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular electronics to resell and why you should consider ordering them.
Laptops
As you can imagine, computers remain some of the most popular electronics on the market. It’s easy to see why so many people love computers. Whether your customers use these electronics for personal or business purposes, almost everyone needs to use a computer these days.
If you want to buy electronics that are popular, it’s hard to find something better than the home computer. We also recommend checking out the many types of popular laptops for sale online. Laptop computers from Apple, Microsoft, and HP continue making electronics wholesalers tons of revenue.
Unlike bulky home computers, laptops typically have everything you need in one package. This makes your life much easier as a wholesaler than if you were selling towers, monitors, and everything else needed to use a computer separately. When compared to reselling home computers, selling laptops can also save you a small fortune in shipping costs.
Smartphones
Looking for more popular electronics to offer your customers? Then, consider buying and reselling smartphones. There are an insane number of smartphones on the market, including popular phones from Apple, Samsung, Google, and many other companies.
Smartphones are great types of electronics to have in your inventory because they’re so popular. If you can find popular brands and sell them at decent prices, flipping smartphones can become your company’s main money maker. What’s also great about selling smartphones is that you can bundle these items with many types of accessories.
Many electronics wholesalers love buying and selling smartphones because of their small size. The average smartphone is easy for someone to box, ship, and store. If you decide to start buying smartphones in bulk, you wouldn’t worry about these items taking up a lot of space.
Tablets
If you need more electronics to fill up your company’s inventory, it’s a good idea to also consider buying and reselling tablets. The tablet is similar to a smartphone, except tablets are much larger than smartphones. As is the case with computers and smartphones, people everywhere love using tablets.
If you don’t mind spending a little more than you would on smartphones, having tablets in your company’s inventory is rarely a bad thing.
Headphones
With so many people living fast-paced lives, it makes sense that they’d want to bring their favorite songs along with them. Considering that, headphones and earbuds have seen a dramatic rise in popularity within the past decade or so.
Modern headphones are sleek electronics that bring high-quality sound to peoples’ ears. You can probably recall one of the most popular earbuds in recent memory: Apple’s AirPods. While Apple remains at or near the top of the top-selling earbud companies, it’s far from the only contender on the block.
Companies like Samsung, Bose, Beats, and Sony all sell their own lines of high-quality headphones and earbuds. These companies have listening devices for everyone from bargain hunters to audiophiles who want top-of-the-line sound quality.
Cameras
Another type of electronic device that’s become more popular is the home camera. Nowadays, it’s easy for people to get affordable cameras for both their homes and businesses. We’re sure you can recall seeing a wave of advertisements from popular security companies like Ring, Google, and many others.
As the era of home automation grows closer, most experts expect sales of home security cameras to remain popular for the foreseeable future.
Smartwatches
Another electronic device that many people love to have is the smartwatch. These amazing devices combine the power of a small computer with the functionality of a smartphone and watch. Smartwatches can do everything from sending texts to letting you know how many steps you took in a day.
Apple began the smartwatch revolution when it released the Apple Watch. As is often the case, it didn’t take long before companies like Samsung and others were throwing their respective hats into the smartwatch race. If you know where to find smartwatches in wholesale quantities (which we’ll show you in a section below), you can make lots of money reselling these items.
Forming Your Business
You’ve spent some time thinking about what you want to buy. After learning what you want and how much you’ll need to spend to get it, you can begin officially forming your company. But what are the next steps you need to take to achieve this goal? Follow these steps below.
Coming Up with a Name for Your Company
Before you can do much in the way of forming a company, it’s going to need a name. We wish we could push a magic button and give your company the perfect name, but it’s not that simple. Maybe you already have a few potential company names in mind?
If not, take some time and come up with something great. One helpful tip is to remember that your company’s name is going to be everywhere. So, it’s rarely a bad idea to make your company’s name something that’s fairly easy for people and companies to remember.
If you find yourself stumped when it comes to deciding on a name for your business, you can always find a few online business name generators and see what they come up with. Regardless of what you decide to name your business, it’s not a bad idea to make sure it’s relatively short and sweet.
Creating a Business Plan
It’s always smart to have a plan. If you’re going to form a business, it’s important to create a business plan. Not only will a business plan help you prepare, but it’s also something most lenders will need to see before they give you funding.
If you took any business classes in college, you might have a good understanding of what a business plan entails. If you haven’t, that’s okay. Let’s cover the basics of what a good business plan needs.
An essential part of any business plan is a market analysis. This section would cover your competitors, particularly their strengths and weaknesses. Understandably, you’re not going to have insider information about your competitors. So, this section would only need information you’re able to access as a consumer.
Every good business plan also needs to have a marketing strategy. While we’re not business plan creating experts, you could gain some good marketing ideas by checking out our Marketing Your Business section below!
You’ll also need an executive summary. This basically is an outline of what you’ve already written before in a shorter format. Some people recommend writing the summary first. However, we think it’s much easier to write after you form the rest of your business plan.
Taking Care of Funding
Unless you’re able to self-fund your company, you’ll need to establish some source of funding. You have a few main ways to achieve this goal. You can choose to get a loan from a bank or other type of financial lender.
Since this is a beginner’s guide, we won’t get too in-depth about financial jargon. However, the tip we can give you is to do your research before applying for any type of loan. By doing your research, you’ll help ensure you get the best possible terms.
Another option to fund your business is to get a business credit card. Some business owners prefer this option because it’s sometimes easier to qualify for than a loan. With that said, a credit card's maximum limits might be much lower than if you got a loan from a bank or similar type of lender.
Coming Up with Goals
In life and in business, it’s always important to have goals. When you create business goals, this can help you understand what you’re doing right and what’s not going well. Don’t stress out too much over this part of forming your business, it’s always possible to change your goals as time goes on.
If you’re creating a new business, you’ll need to make brand-new goals. When setting your company’s initial goals, it’s important to avoid aiming too high. This will never give you the satisfaction that comes with reaching your goals.
Before we start sounding too much like a motivational speaker, we’ll wrap up this section by advising you to set reachable goals. As you continue flipping electronics and reaching your goals, you can then start setting the bar higher and higher.
Creating an Online Presence
Even if you only plan on operating a physical store, it’s still good to have an online presence. Don’t let this term make you feel confused, setting up your company’s online presence is incredibly easy.
Website
When discussing what you need to have to form an online presence, there’s nothing more important than having a website. Your company’s website is an online extension of your business. Considering that, creating a website isn’t a task you want to do the bare minimum on.
Hire Someone or Build a Website Myself?
Considering the importance of having a great website, you might wonder whether you should do this yourself or not. If you have experience building websites that look and perform well, there’s no real reason to hire outside help.
But what if you don’t know how to build websites or don’t have the time to do this? That’s where either using a website builder or hiring a professional enters the picture. Companies that utilize website builders make it incredibly simple for someone to build a website.
There’s also the option of contacting a web design company for help. If you choose this method, you’re going to spend a little money to get this task accomplished. However, the time you save could be worth the money you spend.
Social Media
Next, it’s also important to make sure that your company is claiming branded social media pages. If you don’t understand what this means, that's okay. It’s another way of saying that you want to be the owner of social media accounts that represent your business. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to start claiming social media pages.
We recommend visiting and creating accounts on the most popular social media websites, including:
Meta (formerly Facebook)
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
If you want to go the extra mile, it’s also wise to claim company pages on TikTok, WhatsApp, Reddit, and other popular platforms. Typically, you can create these accounts in just a few minutes. Even if you don’t end up using all of them, having these accounts claimed stops anyone from trying to falsely represent your company online.
After claiming these accounts, start posting content! You’d be amazed at how much engagement your pages will receive if you post content at least a few times per week.
Online Directories
Other popular places for businesses to be on the internet are online directories. These directories can be found on almost any topic, including companies that wholesale electronics. Sure, you’ll be sharing space with other companies on these directories.
However, if the directories you’re claiming pages on are popular enough, it can result in extra traffic coming your way.
Forums
One part of what makes the internet so great is that it’s a place where people from all over the world can come together to discuss topics. With that in mind, the internet is full of many popular online forums.
Finding Suppliers to Work With
The next step is to find suppliers you can start purchasing electronics from. You don’t want to head into your local big-box electronics store and start buying from these companies. Instead, you’ll need to use the same sources that electronics companies of all sizes utilize.
Trade-In Tech
If you want to find popular electronics at amazing wholesale prices, you’ll want to learn more about Trade-In Tech. Since this company began in 2012, it’s become one of the most popular wholesale electronics platforms on the internet. If you haven’t heard of Trade-In Tech yet, that’s okay. Let us tell you everything this company has to offer.
Joining Trade-In Tech
Trade-In Tech makes joining its platform as easy as possible. With that said, we place a lot of importance on keeping all of our members safe from scammers. Before you join Trade-In Tech, you’ll need to complete our verification process.
To do this, you’ll need to have at least a few references. You’ll also need to provide us with some basic information about your company for verification purposes. After we have the information we need, we’ll work quickly to verify everything and get you on our platform as fast as possible.
Creating Your Member’s Page
Okay, so you became a member of Trade-In Tech. Now, what do you do? As you’re about to learn, there are many amazing things to do on our wholesale electronics platform. One of the first things you want to do is to create your Trade-In Tech member’s page.
By creating your member’s page, you’ll be able to start connecting with people and companies throughout the electronics industry. You’ll find wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and many other people actively working with electronics.
You can also use your page to let everyone else on Trade-In Tech learn what you’re up to. Many of Trade-In Tech’s members like to create posts when they have new items available for sale.
Connecting With Other Members
Understandably, Trade-In Tech wouldn’t be much fun without other members. Fortunately, Trade-In Tech has members located throughout the world. Are you someone from the United States who wants to find buyers and sellers from the same country? We have plenty of members from this country on our platform.
What if you want to work with international buyers and sellers? If so, Trade-In Tech has you covered. We have members from some of the most popular locales for electronics, including Hong Kong, India, Japan, the United States, and many other countries.
Buying a Wide Range of Electronics
Now, we’re getting to the really fun stuff. When you’re ready to start adding electronics into your company’s inventory, look no further than the Trade-In Tech Marketplace. Our marketplace is the location of our platform where our members post what they’re selling.
Plus, Trade-In Tech’s platform is incredibly easy to use. Once you visit this marketplace, you’ll see listings categorized into brands, types of electronics, and more. This system makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Once you find one (or several) listings you’re interested in, just click on them to learn more about what they’re selling. You can check out pictures, view listing descriptions, and even connect with sellers if you have any questions or concerns.
Selling Electronics and Making Money
If you want to be an electronics wholesaler, you’ll need to sell the electronics that you purchased. Why not make things easy on yourself and also use Trade-In Tech to sell electronics? As you might imagine, selling electronics on Trade-In Tech is fast and easy. Just create a listing, including pictures, and information about what you’re selling.
Pricing Your Electronics
Now it’s time to start pricing your electronics. Don’t let this part of the wholesale process freak you out. Yes, it will involve some math. But we’ll make things as easy as possible. You might even end up being one of many wholesalers who ends up loving math, as these calculations have to do with how much money you earn!
Base Price
Unless you’re extremely lucky, you’ll have to give money to a seller in exchange for your electronics. In most cases, this isn’t really a price that you have the power to change. Although the price could change a little bit if you find a seller that’s willing to haggle with you. After you begin buying electronics, take note of what you spent. This total will be your base cost.
Factoring in Your Expenses
The next step in the pricing process is to determine your expenses. There’s no way around it, business owners typically pay lots of expenses. In this case, we’re talking about the expenses you need to pay to get an item to your customers.
If you’re unsure what these expenses are, let us walk you through what typically happens to get electronics ready for customers. In most cases, you’ll need to get this item ready to ship out. This means spending money on packaging and shipping materials.
You can also choose whether or not you want to offer free shipping. If you offer free shipping to your customers, make sure you factor your shipping costs into the price of your electronics. If not, these costs will eat into your profits. So, always make sure you’re factoring shipping costs into your prices.
What You’ll Charge Customers
The next step in the pricing process is deciding how much to charge customers. Essentially, you’ll want your prices to cover the base cost of what you spent, your expenses, and leave you some room to make a profit.
To help make things a little clearer, let’s put this into another example. Let’s say that you bought a new iPhone and paid $300. You find a buyer for this item, but it will cost you $20 to ship the iPhone to them. When you’re pricing this item, you’d need to sell it for $320 to break even. So, to make a profit you would want to set this item’s price higher than $320.
Adjusting Prices Over Time
It’s extremely rare for a company to keep its prices the same as time goes on. If this was the case, your fast food lunch would cost about $1, which certainly isn’t the reality these days. Eventually, you’ll need to adjust your prices.
One of the best ways to stay up to date on price changes is by looking at your competitors. You can also check sold listings on websites like eBay to see what popular electronics are selling for in the real world.
Marketing Your Business
Sometimes, the difference between a company that does well and one that does poorly often comes down to marketing. If you have websites, social media, and online directory listings, you’re on the right track. This section is going to cover how you market your business through these platforms to really kickstart your sales!
Establishing Your Target Audience
Before you get too in-depth with your marketing campaigns, it’s imperative to know about your company’s target audience. If you have the time, energy, and budget, you can use software to help find who makes up this important audience.
Pressed for time? That’s okay, too. You can form a base target audience by knowing who or what you’ll sell products to. Are you going to sell electronics to people or companies? Will you partner with other distributors? Answering these questions will help you form a target audience.
Choosing Marketing Methods
With a target audience in mind, you now know who you can start marketing to. But, you’ll first need to choose one or a few marketing methods. You don’t have to spend your spare time tracking down the best ways to market your business. Instead, check out the following marketing methods below.
SEO
One of the most effective ways to market your company online involves SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. This type of optimization makes sure your website looks great in the eyes of search engine crawlers.
If you’re unfamiliar with SEO and don’t want to learn about it, you can always pay someone to optimize your website. As you would with any business-related transaction, make sure to research whoever you’re thinking about working with. The last thing you want is someone unqualified to start messing with your company’s website.
Should you give anyone access to your websites, it’s also a good idea to change your passwords after they’ve performed all necessary optimizations.
Paid Advertising
If you don’t have time to create content and wait for organic results, you can also use paid advertising to market your business. Many popular websites like Meta, Google, and YouTube all allow people and companies to market their respective businesses.
When it comes to paid advertising, it’s imperative to keep a close eye on your marketing budget. Split test your paid advertising campaign and keep what works best!
Influencer Marketing
Lastly, we wanted to mention a newer type of advertising called influencer marketing. While influencer marketing might be a newer concept, it’s also one that’s incredibly effective. With influencer marketing, one company partners with another business or person with a large online following.
If you can find influencers with the right audience who are willing to partner with you, this strategy can bring in a lot of new customers.
Measuring Your Results
Reaching nearly the end of this guide, we’re now at one of the most important parts of having a business and that’s measuring your results. You can choose to measure your company’s results by many different metrics. Most companies utilize multiple metrics to decide how well they’re doing.
When you’re measuring results, look for things like clicks and impressions. It’s also important to use Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These two programs are free and can help you know exactly how well your marketing efforts are paying off.
We hope that you enjoyed this look at how to start making money as an electronics wholesaler. Since this was more a beginner’s look at being a wholesaler, we didn’t go extremely in-depth with the topics we covered. However, you can head over to the Trade-In Tech blog for more detailed articles covering the various topics mentioned in this article.