There are many ways to get started in the electronics industry. One of these ways is by buying and selling electronics in bulk. While it might sound a little intimidating, buying electronics in bulk is a great way to make money. Not sure where to start in this industry? We’re here to help. Let’s take a look at the steps needed to become an electronics wholesaler.
In this post, you’ll find out:
The most popular electronics to buy and resell in bulk
The benefits of buying and selling in bulk
Types of bulk electronics
Where to find electronics for sale online
How to sell your bulk electronics like the pros
We have a lot of things to cover in this post. So, let’s not waste any time and get right into it.
The Most Popular Types of Electronics to Buy in Bulk
Sure, you can buy things like televisions in bulk. However, you’ll probably need a large space to store these items. Instead of listing every type of electronic, we wanted to focus on ones that are both popular and smaller in size. These types of electronics are the perfect ones to start stocking up on.
Smartphones
It’s tough to find an electronic device more popular in this day and age than the smartphone. These days, smartphones are more like small computers or personal assistants than they are devices that send and receive calls. Whether you’re an Apple or Samsung fan (or another company), there is a wide range of amazing and affordable smartphones on the market.
Brands to Watch Out For: Samsung, Apple, LG, Google
Tablets
While they’re a little larger in size than smartphones, tablets are other electronics that are great to buy in bulk. Their small and flat appearance makes tablets easy to store. Yes, most tablets are going to be a little more expensive than smartphones. However, you can also resell tablets for a higher cost than you could for the average smartphone.
Brands to Watch Out For: Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo
Laptops
If there was an electronic device that’s had more popularity than the smartphone, this item would be on a short list. With that said, one item you’d find on this list would be the computer. With that said, the average desktop computer isn’t that easy to store or ship. That’s why we recommend buying and reselling laptop computers.
Laptop computers contain everything someone would need to start using a computer. Plus, most laptops are incredibly lightweight and easy to store.
Brands to Watch Out For: Apple (MacBook), HP, Dell, Microsoft, Alienware
Smartwatches
As technology continues to evolve, it’s now possible to get most of the functionality of a smartphone or tablet on your wrist. Well, at least it’s possible if you have a smartwatch. While smartwatches might be the newest tech item on this list, that doesn’t mean they are slow-selling items.
If you’re interested in buying and reselling smartwatches, the top name in this realm remains Apple. The Apple Watch, now in its 7th generation, remains a top-selling item. However, Samsung, one of Apple’s main rivals, is making waves of its own with its Samsung Galaxy Watch.
Brands to Watch Out For: Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, Garmin
Premium Earbuds and Headphones
Lastly, if you’re interested in bulk buys, you might also be interested in premium headphones and earbuds. In the past, most people weren’t thinking of headphones as a big money-maker for their companies. Then, Beats by Dre headphones launched and everything changed.
Now, there are companies like Apple, Samsung, and many others releasing their own lines of premium headphones and earbuds. These types of earbuds and headphones provide unmatched sound quality. Best of all, most of these devices are incredibly easy to store.
Brands to Watch Out For: Beats, Apple, Samsung
What Makes Buying and Selling in Bulk So Beneficial?
Before you start spending money on electronics in bulk, it’s understandable to want to know about the benefits of this action. As it turns out, there are several main reasons why buying electronics in large quantities can be a great idea.
Stocking Up on Inventory Quickly
When you’re starting out in the electronics industry, it’s rarely a bad thing to have a lot of inventory. Fortunately, you can achieve this goal in one or two transactions if you’re buying electronics in bulk. By doing this, you could have a small store’s worth of electronics very quickly.
This situation is much better than buying one or two electronics at a time. It also tends to work out better for your customers, since they’re less likely to deal with out-of-stock issues by ordering from you.
Fewer Transactions to Manage
Another main benefit of buying lots of electronics at once is that you’ll typically have fewer transactions to manage. This includes less worrying about delivery dates, shipping times, and being available to receive shipments. Generally, dealing with fewer transactions makes the life of any electronics wholesaler a little easier than normal.
With fewer transactions to manage, you can spend more time focusing on other aspects of your electronics business. This might also help ensure you don’t need to spend a lot of money on hiring team members to manage your orders.
Potentially Paying Less in Shipping and Transportation Costs
We mentioned that buying bulk means managing fewer transactions. But it’s also important to note that buying in bulk could save you money. Let’s say that you had the choice of ordering a pallet of 100 smartphones or you bought 100 smartphones from 100 different sellers.
If you choose option A, you’d pay shipping and transportation costs one time. If, on the other hand, you choose option B, you’ll likely need to pay 100 separate shipping costs. Even if the shipping costs for your single item orders aren’t that much, it can add up fast when you’re paying these costs 100 times.
Types of Bulk Electronics
While you’re looking for electronics, you’re likely to run into some potentially confusing terms. Considering that, we want to help make things easier for you. With that in mind, here’s a look at some of the terms used for a pallet of bulk electronics.
Overstock
No, we’re not talking about the company named Overstock. We’re talking about overstocked electronics. It’s not easy for a business to perfectly manage its inventory. Almost every day, there are new products being released in the electronics industry. Because of this situation, many stores often run into overstock issues.
Overstock is another way of saying that a seller has too much of something. As someone wanting to buy bulk electronics, you should definitely check out overstock electronics. Since companies typically price these items to sell fast, you can find many bargains by looking at overstocked merchandise.
Want an extra tip that can help you find incredible overstocked electronics? Start looking for these types of sales as an electronics manufacturer is getting ready to release something new. Sometimes, stores will place fairly new merchandise in overstock pallets to make way for something newer.
Liquidation
Similar to overstock electronics, it’s also common for companies to put electronics they’re no longer selling on liquidation pallets. To liquidate something means to sell it for cash, typically as quickly as possible.
Liquidation sales will typically be in an auction format, meaning you have to bid on listings to get a chance at winning them. This also means dealing with the potential of losing an auction if you can’t bid enough money to beat the top bidder.
However, if you can find items you need on liquidation pallets, they’re definitely worth checking out. You can find things like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and much more on liquidated pallets of electronics.
Closeout
In the realm of electronics, almost every device reaches its end-of-life stage. This typically means that a company needs to reserve shelf space for newer items. Sometimes, the only way to have extra shelf space is to sell items that aren’t as popular.
A perfect example of closeout electronics would involve smartphones. Let’s say that Apple is about to release a new iPhone. Since customer demand for this smartphone will be extremely high, most stores will want to clear out some older iPhones. Next, the older iPhones become closeout electronics that are sold at a lower-than-normal price.
As is often the case with liquidated and overstocked electronics, you can also find great deals on closeout electronics.
Return Pallets
Almost every retail store has to deal with customer returns at some point. There are many reasons why a customer might return something. Fortunately, it’s rare for returned items to actually be faulty.
Most returns are the result of someone who either doesn’t want what they ordered or is returning something gifted to them. What’s great about this is that most returned electronics aren’t broken or damaged in any way. Plus, companies almost always sell returned electronics at a lower price than non-returned goods.
Unless you only specialize in buying and selling brand new and unopened electronics, buying from return pallets is a smart move for any wholesaler.
Where Can I Buy Electronics in Bulk Online?
We’ve covered a lot of the basics concerning electronics. Now it’s time to let you know where you can find electronics in bulk online. You don’t need to waste time searching for answers. Instead, check out this list of companies below.
Trade-In Tech
If you need bulk amounts of electronics, you’ll definitely want to learn more about Trade-In Tech. Starting in 2012, Trade-In Tech launched as a wholesale platform for people and companies in the electronics industry. Since we started, we’ve welcomed tens of thousands of new members to our platform. Here’s more information about why Trade-In Tech is the number one place to find electronics in bulk online.
Partner Up With New Business Connections
As mentioned below, one of the best ways to get bulk electronics is through partnerships with other electronics wholesalers and distributors. With that said, these partnerships aren’t easy for an average person to come by. It takes lots of time and effort to partner up with electronics distributors.
Fortunately, by joining Trade-In Tech, you’ll have an exclusive way to connect and potentially partner up with new business connections. Our platform has members located throughout the world, including the United States, Asia, Europe, and many other places.
When you join Trade-In Tech, you’ll get a chance to make your very own member’s page. By doing this, you can also start connecting with other companies in the electronics industry. In time, these connections could soon lead you to make new business partnerships. These partnerships are some of the best ways to get electronics at extremely affordable prices.
Electronics From the Most Popular Brands
There’s no point in spending your valuable time and energy buying electronics from no-name brands. You certainly won’t have this problem on Trade-In Tech. That’s because our company is a platform for electronics vendors from around the world to list what they have for sale.
Trade-In Tech’s members are always listing a wide range of inventory on our platform. While browsing the Trade-In Tech Marketplace, you can find electronics from some of the biggest companies, including:
Apple
Samsung
LG
Google
Microsoft
And many others
By buying electronics that come from well-known brands, you can pass this sense of brand familiarity on to your customers. In turn, this should result in you making more sales than if you stocked up on brands no one has ever heard of.
Use a Buyer’s Request to Find Just About Anything
While it’s very rare, there could be a time when you can’t find exactly what you need on Trade-In Tech. If this does happen, you can use the buyer’s request feature to find exactly what you need. Plus, a buyer’s request is incredibly easy to create. You just type in what you’re looking for and submit your request.
No Transaction Fees
Whenever you’re buying electronics online, it’s imperative to keep your expenses as low as possible. Unfortunately, almost every buyer experiences the moment when they see how much they have to pay towards transaction fees. While these fees might be somewhat small, they can really add up over time.
Trade-In Tech doesn’t want to see your hard-earned profits go towards paying ridiculous fees. That’s why Trade-In Tech proudly offers no transaction fees to our members. It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling electronics or buying them, you won’t have to worry about transaction fees on Trade-In Tech.
When you buy electronics on Trade-In Tech, you won’t have to watch your money go towards paying transaction fees.
Live Chat Rooms
Sometimes, you need electronics for your business as fast as possible. If this is the case, you don’t want to wait around for someone to message you back. That’s why Trade-In Tech hosts many live chat rooms. These chat rooms are all about electronics!
Since our chat rooms are live, these areas are great ways to start ramping up how fast you find electronics. Is there a specific type of electronic device or electronics brand you’re after? Let our members know in a Trade-In Tech chat room.
Local Partnerships
You don’t have to run your business entirely online. Depending on your location, there could be local companies available that are ready to partner up with a new distributor or wholesaler. With that said, many of them won’t be as willing as others to accept partnerships with someone who doesn’t have much industry experience.
That’s why Trade-In Tech can help you out if you’re a new wholesaler. Joining our platform gives you connections to distributors, retailers, resellers, and wholesalers. These same types of connections aren’t likely to be as easy to get otherwise.
How to Start Selling Electronics in Bulk Online
You have now reached one of the most exciting steps, making money from the electronics you purchased. To help you speed things up, we included some of the best tips to help you sell electronics in bulk online.
Join Trade-In Tech
No, your eyes aren’t fooling you. But it’s important that you know Trade-In Tech as a great platform for selling your electronics. Once you become a member of our platform, you can start selling electronics to our members. We mentioned why Trade-In Tech is such a great platform for buyers. However, we also want to mention how many great things our platform has to offer sellers.
Building Your Own Groups
Something that many sellers struggle with is finding legitimate buyers. You won’t have this problem on Trade-In Tech. When you become a member of Trade-In Tech, we put the power in your hands.
One of the many ways to get members of Trade-In Tech is through our group creation feature. With this feature, you can create your own private group and choose who receives invitations into this group. Whenever you have new electronics to sell, make a post and your group will instantly receive updates about this announcement.
Exclusive Tips and Training From Trade-In Tech’s CEO
While we hope that we’ve given you many great tips, you can get even more knowledge to help you out when you join Trade-In Tech. That’s because our member’s section has hours of exclusive training by Trade-In Tech’s CEO, Hayden Howard.
These aren’t just small pieces of filler content. We have entire, full-length articles covering all sorts of tips. Plus, there are hours of video-based training if reading articles isn’t your thing. Normally, training like this would cost a lot of money. But you get it for free with your Trade-In Tech membership.
You’ll receive video training, bonus articles, and other content that’s all designed to help you grow your electronics business. Some companies might try and charge you more money for this training. Not Trade-In Tech, you get all this content at no extra charge after joining our platform!
Gaining Access to Exclusive Lead Lists
Another one of the many perks you get as a Trade-In Tech member is access to exclusive lead lists. When you’re trying to sell electronics online, lead lists are some of the most valuable documents you can have. Fortunately, each new member of our platform receives a free list of leads.
With this list, you can drastically cut down on the time it takes to find leads. Plus, these leads could start helping your business make sales right away. This list gives you phone numbers, website URLs, and everything else you need to start ramping up those sales by contacting these leads.
No Limits on Listings
Something else that many sellers run into is listing limits. It’s unfortunate, but many platforms limit the number of listings sellers can create. In our opinion, this can hurt your results and how fast your company grows. That’s why there are no listing limits on Trade-In Tech.
Who wants to have to wait until a certain amount of time passes or certain listings sell before you can create other ones? Not us, that’s for sure. We know that people like phone flippers and other types of electronics wholesalers sometimes need to move lots of inventory each month.
As long as you have legitimate electronics ready to sell, you can create as many listings as you want. Since you know we don’t like fees, you can rest assured that there are no fees incurred by creating additional listings.
Make Even More Money Through Our Partner Program
You don’t only have to make money on Trade-In Tech by selling electronics. We also have a partner program that can put more money into your pocket. This program rewards you when you send new potential members our way.
It gets better. Unlike many similar programs, we don’t limit you on how many leads you can send our way. Depending on how many leads you send our way, Trade-In Tech’s Partner Program can help you bring in serious money each month.
The Power of Paid Advertising
If you have a little bit of money and don’t want to wait months for organic results, one of the best ways to get your new business off the ground fast is through paid advertising. This term might sound complicated, but it’s not. Chances are, you’ve already seen many paid advertisements the same day you read this article.
With that in mind, you can also use paid advertising to promote your business. Many of the world’s most popular websites allow companies to utilize paid advertising, including Meta, Google, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many others.
What’s also good about paid advertising is that you don’t need a huge budget to achieve your goals. How much you spend on paid advertising comes down to two things. The first factor involves where you’re running advertisements. The second factor has to do with the keywords you’re bidding on.
Launch a Retargeting Ad Campaign
Another great type of advertising method to utilize is retargeting. If you know anything about paid advertising, retargeting should be a natural marketing extension that’s easy to understand. The concept behind retargeting is simple: your company’s paid ads show up in multiple places online. What’s great about retargeting ads is that they act as if they’re following the user from one website to another.
Let’s say that you are targeting customers who spend a lot of time on social media. You could create a retargeting advertisement that appears on Meta, Twitter, and Instagram. Next, the person you want to start seeing your advertisements sees one in the morning while they’re on Twitter. Then, in the afternoon, they see another one of your company’s ads on Instagram. At this point, the user sees your advertisements almost everywhere they go.
The power of retargeting is that it keeps your company and its messages in the minds of those who are seeing your advertisements. Best of all, since retargeting…well, targets people who already visited your website, you also typically spend less to acquire a new user. This isn’t the case with paid advertising, which involves targeting a larger crowd that might not know your brand.
Get Active on Social Media
Not all types of advertising involve spending money. If you’re pressed for spare cash, you can claim accounts on social media platforms. Not only is this free, but it’s also a great way to increase brand awareness and get your company’s content out there.
When it comes to popular social media platforms, it’s never a bad thing to claim accounts on the most popular websites like Meta, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With these websites being so popular, you can easily start gaining a crowd of followers.
What’s also good about being on social media is that you track how well your company performs on each platform. By doing this, you can find out whether it’s time to post more on certain platforms over other ones.
Start Creating Content on Your Company’s Website
While you’re claiming social media accounts and creating new content, it’s also wise to start making content on your own website. It’s true that creating a website does require a few more steps than making social media pages.
However, there’s also the possibility of your website ranking well in search engines like Google. While social pages can sometimes rank well in search engines, you’ll have a higher chance of grabbing one of Google’s top spots with created content from your company’s website.
If you consider yourself even a little savvy with a computer, setting up a website probably won’t be too difficult. However, you can also choose from many services that build websites if you don’t want to do this on your own.
Split Test Your Advertisements
As you continue to market your business online, you’ll have advertisements and posts that perform well. Other times, you’ll have ads and content that never seem to gain any traction. So, how do you learn what does well and what doesn’t? By split testing your advertisements.
Split testing advertisements means that your company’s target audience will see different advertisements you created. While this happens, analytic software (which is free with most platforms) tracks how your advertisements perform. Have one ad that’s getting clicks while another collects digital tumbleweeds? Split testing will show you which ads to ditch and which ones you need to keep running.
Create a Referral Program
It’s understandable to wonder what a referral program has to do with selling electronics. While it might not seem so, these two things can go extremely well together. These days, it’s fairly easy for a company of any size to launch a referral program.
So, why are referral programs so beneficial? For one, they help increase your company’s customers. People are naturally attracted to working with a company after they hear good things about it from other individuals. If people are referring out your company to others, it can drastically help boost your amount of new customers.
Plus, referral programs can help build customer loyalty. If your customers know that you’re rewarding them for sending new business their way, the current customers you have are likely to feel valued. When customers feel valued, they should keep referring your business out to others.
Wrapping things up, it’s a good idea to think about buying and selling electronics in bulk. We hope that this guide helps you get ready to become an electronics wholesaler. If you’d like more information concerning how to do well in the electronics industry, don’t forget to check out the Trade-In Tech blog.