How to Start Dropshipping on eBay in the US: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide (2026)

Dropshipping on eBay means listing a product for sale, and only buying it from your own supplier once a customer has actually paid you for it. The supplier ships it - usually straight to the customer - and you keep the difference between what the customer paid you and what the supplier charged you, minus eBay's fees.

Done properly, it's a real business you can start with a few hundred dollars and no inventory sitting in a garage. Done carelessly, it's the fastest way to get an eBay account suspended in your first month. The difference between the two comes down to a handful of decisions you make before you list your first item, and this guide walks through every one of them in order: the supplier model eBay actually allows, setting up your account, pricing so you keep a real profit, writing listings that convert, and running orders and returns like a seller customers trust.

I run Sellhelm, Windows software that prices eBay listings after every fee and watches supplier stock and prices for US sellers, so a lot of what's below comes from watching what actually trips new sellers up - not just repeating what eBay's own help pages say, though those are cited throughout wherever a specific rule or number comes from them.

1. What eBay dropshipping actually is (and the one rule that decides if it's allowed)

eBay's own policy is specific, and it's worth reading in full before you build a business around a model that might not survive: dropshipping "where you fulfill orders directly from a wholesale supplier" is allowed, but "listing an item on eBay and then purchasing the item from another retailer or marketplace that ships directly to your customer is not allowed on eBay." That's eBay's dropshipping policy, word for word.

In plain terms, there are two different things people call "dropshipping," and only one of them is welcome on eBay:

• Wholesale dropshipping (allowed): you have an account or agreement with a genuine wholesale or manufacturer-level supplier, you list the product yourself with your own photos and description, and when it sells, the supplier ships it to your buyer - often in plain packaging with no mention of the supplier at all. You are the seller of record and the one eBay and the buyer hold responsible.
• Retail arbitrage (not allowed): you list a product you saw on Amazon, Walmart or another retail site, and when it sells on eBay, you go and buy it from that retailer and have it shipped to your buyer. eBay calls this out by name as against policy, because the buyer has no idea their item is coming from a competing marketplace with its own packaging, its own return address and its own delivery promises that you don't control.

Why eBay cares: a retailer's packing slip, return address or promotional insert arriving in a box the buyer thought came from your shop is a fast way to generate an "item not as described" case, and eBay's enforcement has been getting steadily more aggressive about the retail-arbitrage version for exactly that reason. This guide only covers the wholesale model - the one eBay's own policy explicitly permits.

That distinction shapes almost every decision in the rest of this guide, starting with where you actually source products from.

2. Find a genuine wholesale supplier

A real wholesale supplier for dropshipping usually has a few things in common: a proper account or application process (not just a public retail checkout), pricing that's clearly below retail, the ability to ship directly to your customer under your branding (or no branding at all), and a product feed or catalog you can actually check prices and stock against.

What that rules out is sourcing from an ordinary consumer-facing retail website and quietly reshipping - that's the exact model eBay's policy prohibits, regardless of how many other sellers appear to be doing it. "Other sellers get away with it" isn't the same as "it's allowed," and you have no way of knowing why one account has survived while another was suspended.

A few practical ways US sellers find legitimate wholesale suppliers:

• Directories built for it - services like SaleHoo and Worldwide Brands vet suppliers before listing them, which is worth the membership fee if you're new and don't yet know how to spot a fake wholesaler from a relabeled retail account.
• Dropship-specific platforms - CJ Dropshipping and Spocket both offer US-warehouse inventory specifically aimed at sellers who need believable delivery times to US buyers, and both are built around the model eBay allows: you place the order with them after the sale, they fulfill it.
• Category wholesalers - Costway, for instance, is a genuine US-based wholesale distributor for home, outdoor and furniture items, and explicitly permits reselling on marketplaces including eBay, which is worth confirming with any supplier before you build listings around them.
• Manufacturer direct - for some categories, contacting a manufacturer or its official distributor directly and asking about a dropship or reseller program is the most reliable route, even though it takes more legwork up front.

Whichever route you take, check three things before committing any real listings to a supplier: do they actually hold stock in the US (so delivery times are realistic for a US buyer), will they ship in neutral packaging with no paperwork that reveals their name, and can you get a live read on price and stock rather than a monthly export you'll be selling against for weeks after it's gone stale. That last point is the one that quietly kills more dropshipping accounts than anything else - see the section on stock and price monitoring further down.

A few warning signs are worth treating as disqualifying rather than a minor inconvenience: a "wholesale" site that lets anyone check out instantly with no application, minimum order quantity or account approval at all (a real wholesaler almost always has some kind of vetting step); pricing barely below what the same product sells for at retail, which leaves no realistic margin once eBay's fees are counted; no way to confirm current stock before you commit to a listing; and a refusal to answer direct questions about where they ship from or how returns are handled. None of these alone is automatically a scam, but a supplier that fails more than one of them is a genuine risk to build a shop around, however attractive their product catalog looks at first glance.

3. Set up your eBay seller account properly

Register as either an individual or a business seller - a business account isn't required to dropship, but if you're planning to sell regularly and expect to be treated as a business for tax purposes anyway (see the tax section below), registering as one from the start keeps your paperwork consistent. You'll need a verified bank account for eBay's managed payments, and it's worth using one you actually monitor, since that's where holds, refunds and payouts all show up.

From there, three settings are worth getting right immediately rather than fixing later:

• Return policy. Set one you can actually honor once a wholesale supplier is in the loop - see the returns section below for why a vague policy causes more disputes than a strict, clear one.
• Business/registered address and details. Keep them accurate; they're what a buyer or eBay sees if a dispute escalates, and mismatched or fake details are a common reason accounts get restricted early.
• Payment and tax information. eBay will ask for a Social Security Number or EIN to release your funds - this isn't optional, and delaying it just delays your first payout.

Then list slowly. Five to ten well-made listings a day, focused on actually completing those first sales end-to-end - order placed with the supplier, tracking uploaded, buyer kept informed, delivered on time - builds the clean early history that everything else in this guide depends on, including the selling limits covered next.

4. Understand eBay's new-seller selling limits

New and infrequent sellers on eBay start with a monthly selling limit, typically around 10 items and $500 in total sales in most categories, though the exact starting figures vary by account and category. eBay's own selling limits page covers exactly how these are set and reviewed.

The limit isn't a punishment - it's eBay protecting buyers from an unproven seller suddenly listing thousands of items with no track record. It rises on its own as you build a history of completed sales with good feedback; eBay reviews accounts monthly and increases limits automatically for sellers who are consistently meeting demand. If you're regularly hitting your cap, you can also request a manual increase from Seller Hub's Overview tab (look for "Request to list more" under Monthly limits) once every 30 days, and you'll have a stronger case if you're already Above Standard or Top Rated and close to your existing cap.

Don't try to route around the limit by opening a second account - eBay links accounts by device, payment details and address, and a second account created to dodge a limit is more likely to get both accounts restricted than to solve the problem. Selling through the cap and growing it properly is slower, but it's also the version that doesn't end with a suspended business.

5. Price for a real profit - after every fee

This is where most new eBay dropshippers quietly lose money without realizing it. eBay's US final value fee is around 13.6% of the total amount the buyer pays - item price, shipping and any tax collected - for most categories, up to $7,500 per item, dropping to 2.35% on the portion above that. On top of the percentage, there's a flat per-order fee: $0.30 for orders of $10 or less, $0.40 for anything over $10. eBay's selling fees page has the full category-by-category breakdown, since a small number of categories (like books, movies and video games, or business & industrial equipment) charge a different percentage.

A worked example: you sell an item for $50 with $5 shipping, so the buyer pays $55. The final value fee is 13.6% of $55, which is $7.48, plus the $0.40 per-order fee, for total eBay fees of $7.88. If your supplier charges $30 for the item and $4 to ship it to your buyer, your cost is $34. Your actual profit is $55 - $34 - $7.88 = $13.12, not the $16-$20 it might have looked like from "sale price minus supplier price" alone. Multiply that gap by every listing in a catalog of a few hundred products, and it's the difference between a profitable shop and one that's quietly breaking even.

If your sales volume grows, an eBay Store subscription can lower your effective final value fee percentage in many categories and adds a batch of zero-insertion-fee listings each month, which matters once you're running more than a couple hundred live listings - it's worth checking the numbers against your own volume rather than assuming it pays for itself immediately.

Whatever method you use to price - a spreadsheet, a calculator, or software that does it for every listing automatically - the rule is the same: work out the real cost of a sale (supplier price, supplier shipping, eBay's percentage fee, the per-order fee, and an allowance for returns) before you decide what to charge, not after you've already sold ten of them at a loss.

6. Write listings that actually convert

A wholesale supplier's product photos and description are a starting point, not a finished listing. Buyers can tell the difference between a listing someone put thought into and one that was uploaded in ten seconds flat, and it shows up directly in conversion rate, not just in how the page looks.

• Title: lead with what a buyer would actually type into eBay's search bar - brand, product type, key spec (size, color, model number) - in that rough order of importance, not marketing language.
• Photos: use the sharpest, most accurate images you can get, ideally more than the supplier's default set. If a supplier's stock photos are low-resolution or watermarked, that's worth fixing before the listing goes live, since eBay hosts the images itself once a listing is published, so nothing depends on a third-party image host staying online.
• Description: put the specs a buyer actually needs to decide (dimensions, materials, what's included, compatibility) somewhere easy to find, not buried under paragraphs of marketing copy copied from the supplier's own page.
• Item specifics: fill in every relevant field eBay offers for the category. These directly affect whether your listing surfaces in eBay's own filtered search results, which is free traffic you're leaving on the table if they're left blank.

None of this needs to be complicated or take hours per listing - it needs to look like a real shop put it together, because that's the entire difference between a listing that converts and one that sits with zero watchers for a month.

7. Set shipping policies you can actually honor

Your stated handling and delivery time is a promise to the buyer, and eBay tracks whether you keep it as part of your seller performance metrics. If your supplier typically ships within 2-3 business days, don't advertise same-day dispatch just to make the listing look more attractive - you're setting yourself up for a late-delivery mark on every order that runs long, which happens more often than any supplier's average would suggest.

Once an order ships, upload tracking immediately and actually watch it - a package that stalls in transit for several days is still your responsibility to notice and address before the buyer has to ask where it is. A quick "just checking in, your order is on its way, here's the tracking" message costs nothing and heads off a large share of "where is my order" cases before they're ever opened.

8. Run orders like the customer bought from you - because they did

The single biggest adjustment new dropshippers underestimate: your buyer has no relationship with your supplier and doesn't care about the distinction. If the supplier is out of stock, ships the wrong item, or is slow to dispatch, that is your problem to solve, not something you can point the customer toward.

A workable process, order to close: place the order with the supplier the moment it comes in, confirm dispatch, upload tracking, message the buyer with a friendly confirmation, monitor the tracking until it's delivered, and follow up briefly if anything looks delayed. Answer buyer messages quickly - even a short "I'm looking into this and will update you shortly" is far better than silence, and silence is what turns a minor hiccup into a return, a bad review, or a claim against your account.

Here's what that looks like end to end on a single order: a buyer purchases a $60 item on a Tuesday. Within the hour, you place the matching order with your supplier and note the order number against the eBay sale. Wednesday, the supplier dispatches and emails a tracking number - you upload it to eBay immediately and send the buyer a short message confirming it's on its way, with the tracking link. Thursday, the tracking shows no movement since pickup - not yet a problem, but worth a mental note to check again Friday. Friday, it's moving again and shows an estimated delivery of Monday, inside the window you originally promised. Monday, it's delivered, and you leave it there unless the buyer reaches out. Nothing about that process was complicated, but it's the difference between a buyer who never had a reason to worry and one left guessing whether their order is coming at all.

How you handle the moments things go wrong is exactly what eBay's seller standards measure: cases closed without your resolution, and your overall transaction defect rate, both feed directly into your seller level, which in turn affects your fees, your selling limits and how visible your listings are in search.

9. Handle returns as part of the business, not an afterthought

A clear, honest return policy causes fewer disputes than a vague one, even if the honest policy is stricter. Buyers who know exactly what to expect rarely escalate; buyers who feel like the rules are being made up as they go almost always do.

When a return request comes in: get the correct return instructions from your supplier (return addresses for a dropship supplier are often different from their main warehouse address, so don't assume), pass them to the buyer promptly, monitor for the item's return, and process the refund once it's confirmed - the same professional process every time, regardless of whether the return is your fault, the supplier's, or the buyer changing their mind. Staying calm and solving it quickly is cheaper than the alternative in every case that matters: a case opened against your account costs you far more in seller-standards terms than the cost of the return itself.

10. Monitor stock and price so you don't oversell

A wholesale supplier's prices and stock levels change without warning, and if you're relying on manually rechecking a spreadsheet every few days, you will eventually miss something. Two failure modes show up constantly with new dropshippers: the supplier quietly raises their price after you've already listed at a fixed margin, so every sale after that point loses money until you notice; or the supplier sells out entirely, and you're stuck canceling an order you already confirmed to a buyer, which counts against your account.

Whatever the scale of your catalog, some form of ongoing price and stock checking - whether that's a recurring manual check for a handful of products, or software that watches it automatically once you're running more than a few dozen listings - is the difference between a business that notices a problem the moment it happens and one that finds out from a loss, or from a canceled order.

11. Understand your tax obligations from day one

If you're regularly selling to make a profit, the IRS treats that as a business, not a hobby, and income from it is taxable whether or not eBay ever sends you a Form 1099-K. Selling occasionally enough that eBay doesn't report your account changes nothing about whether you owe tax on the profit - it only changes whether the IRS gets an automatic copy of your gross sales figure.

On top of ordinary income tax, running your own eBay dropshipping business as a sole proprietor typically means self-employment tax - 15.3% covering Social Security and Medicare - on your net profit, and if you expect to owe $1,000 or more for the year, the IRS expects quarterly estimated payments rather than one lump sum at filing time. The IRS's own estimated tax guidance covers the deadlines and how to calculate what you owe. This guide only scratches the surface of US eBay seller taxes - the full breakdown of the 1099-K threshold, sales tax, deductible mileage and quarterly payments gets its own dedicated guide, linked in the sidebar.

12. Picking your first products to list

New sellers tend to make one of two mistakes when choosing what to sell: chasing whatever looks viral that week, or trying to cover ten unrelated categories at once so "something" sells. Both make it harder to build the supplier relationships and listing know-how that actually compound over time.

A more durable approach is to pick a narrow starting category - one your chosen wholesale supplier is genuinely strong in - and go deep before going wide. A few things worth weighing for any product before it becomes a listing:

• Margin that survives the full cost stack. Run the actual numbers from the pricing section above before listing, not a rough guess. A product with a 40% "markup" on paper can still lose money once shipping and eBay's fees are counted.
• Demand that's stable, not a fad. eBay's own completed-listings search (filter sold listings for a product) is a free way to see whether something has been selling steadily for months, or spiked once and died.
• Awkward, heavy or bulky items are often a moat, not a downside. They're harder for casual sellers to compete on because they cost more to get wrong, which is exactly why fewer people bother - furniture, outdoor equipment and larger home goods often have thinner competition than the small, easy-to-ship items every beginner gravitates toward first.
• A supplier whose stock and pricing you can actually check reliably. A supplier with no real-time feed and no way to verify current price or stock before you list is a much bigger risk than a slightly more expensive one you can monitor properly.

Once a handful of products in that first category are selling consistently, expanding into an adjacent category with the same supplier - or a second, equally reliable one - is a much safer way to grow than duplicating the same starting mistake at a larger scale.

13. Common mistakes that get new sellers suspended or lose them money

• Retail arbitrage instead of wholesale sourcing - the single fastest route to a policy violation, however many other sellers appear to be doing it.
• Pricing off "sale price minus supplier cost" and forgetting eBay's percentage fee, per-order fee, and supplier shipping - all of which quietly eat into a margin that looked fine on paper.
• Promising delivery times the supplier can't reliably hit, which shows up as late-shipment marks against your account every time the supplier runs slow.
• Going silent when something goes wrong instead of messaging the buyer proactively - silence is what turns a delay into a case.
• Listing thousands of products with no way to track supplier price or stock changes, which leads to canceled orders and margin that disappears without anyone noticing.
• Opening a second account to dodge a selling limit instead of growing into a higher one - a shortcut that risks both accounts.

Where to go from here

Start with one reliable supplier and a small, well-managed batch of listings rather than trying to cover ten categories on day one. Get the process right - order, dispatch, tracking, buyer updates, returns - on a handful of sales before you scale, and put some form of price and stock monitoring in place before a supplier's quiet change costs you a sale you didn't see coming. The rest of this site's blog goes deeper into eBay's exact fee structure, the full policy picture, choosing suppliers, and US seller taxes - each linked in the sidebar - if you want the fuller version of any single step above.

The bottom line: eBay dropshipping is a real, allowed business model in the US when it's built on a genuine wholesale supplier relationship - not a shortcut, and not passive income, but a business you can start small, run properly, and grow without ever holding inventory yourself.

None of the steps above are difficult on their own. What actually separates the sellers who are still trading a year later from the ones who quietly disappear is doing every one of them consistently, order after order, rather than getting the first few right and letting standards slip once volume picks up. Treat the early months as building the habits and supplier relationships the rest of the business runs on, and the scaling part takes care of itself.

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