I know I've preached on this until people are tired of hearing it, but I still stand by it.
If you have a limited budget, start with things laying around your house. I'm sure that you have stuff that you don't use anymore. Childrens clothting, old video games, dvd movies, tools, toys, and on and on.
Everyone seems to think that you have to start out selling high priced electronics and such. To be perfectly honest, that's probably the biggest mistake you can make just starting out.
Try visiting the yard sales in your local neighborhood and pick up a few cheap items, try the local thrift stores. You can always find cheap items there. Also use your local newpapers want ads, they are always full of things people are selling dirt cheap, for the same reason I mentioned above. They were just laying around the house taking up space..
Spend some time browsing through ebay's completed listing for items that you have an interest in. Then browse the classified ads and see if you find any of those items listed for sale at a cheaper price that they are selling for on ebay. the buy them and resell for a small profit. If you can, invest a couple of buck and buy the 'auction inspector'. You will find it on almost any page on this site. It can save you time and make you some money when it comes to finding what is selling well on ebay...
You need to learn how the ebay systems works before you invest your money into it. If you don't, you will probably end up losing money, get discouraged and give up.
By starting small and slow and learning exactly how everything works will pay dividends in the end. But you have to do the homework first.
I started by selling old, and I mean really old, video games that I had not played in several years. They were actually made for windows 95. I listed them and made a whopping $2 profit on each one. Luckily I had about 10 games. I also sold some old movies that I had. I think my profit for the whole thing was less than 30 dollars for over a weeks work.
I took that money and visited my local game stop store and picked up a couple of more games and repeated the same thing. It took about a month, but I finally started to make a few dollars to where I could buy a few newer items at discount stores, and then finally when I figured out what I was doing, I then invested some money.
Ever hear if Rob Frechette? He started selling used jeans on ebay. He spent his weekends cruising the thrift stores buying up used jeans and selling them on ebay. Just him and his dad.
he was making just a couple of bucks per pair. Never sold anything new, just thrift shop jeans.
He now sells about 50,000 items per month on ebay to the tune of 2.2 million a year. He has a book out called Grand Stage selling. He's nothing special, just an average guy selling used jeans...
My point is, that you don't have to have alot of money to get started. My biggest investment to start was the 10 dollars I spent for ebay's photo manager. And you don't even have to have that now days, you can get hosting for free.
And you surely don't want to pay for any wholesale and drop ship memberships!!
Let me ask you this, would you shop at your local grocery store if they told you that you had to pay a membership fee to shop there and buy their groceries?? Probably not.
True drop shippers are really hard to find. If you feel that you need to use one, then be sure and ask the members on this site, who they recommend, before you buy. 99.9% of the so called dropshippers that you see plastered all over ebay and the web are really just 'middle-men' posing as wholesalers and dropship companies. The people you need to be buying from are the ones that those 'membership' dropshippers are getting their goods from.
They are buying their goods from a distributor or true wholesaler, then marking it up and selling it to you, plus making you pay a fee just to buy it. And don't forget that the person from whom the dropshipper bought it, has already marked it up too. So you are buying an item that has been marked up twice, plus paying a membership fee on top of that.
I don't know who recommended you to this site, but you should give them a call and thank them, because they did you a big favor.
Take advantage of not only the members here, but of the resources too. Do that and you will be successful..If you need any help,wether it be finding a product, need help with creating a auction listing on ebay, or whatever, just let me know. I'll be glad to help you in any way...