There is a lot of money to be made from online selling of goods, as long as you go about it the right way. When it comes to low costs and potential huge profit margins, manufacturers in China are very hard to beat. Only very recently, in the last six weeks, I was browsing through Amazon looking for something and I came across a VERY nice men’s watch in blue with a leather strap. I wasn’t looking for a watch, but when I saw the price, I ordered it straight away.

It was £2.25 plus postage of 0.59p!! That was for one item. Now I had to wait a couple of weeks for it to be shipped from China, but who cares? As it happened, it didn’t arrive at all, so I contacted the suppliers. They were full of apologies and promptly sent another one, which did arrive.

Now that was a total of £2.84 for ONE item – and at that price they were making a profit. Now imagine what they would offer if you bought in bulk – say 50 or 100 pieces. You could sell these watches online for £20 very easily, making huge profits in the process.

So where do you go in order to begin to find products to buy from Chinese manufacturers? You need to do some research online, but one very big supplier is Alibaba through whom you can buy almost anything at all. They have over sixty thousand manufacturers supplying them and somewhere over 15 million products that you can buy. In fact, according to Wikipedia, they are the world’s fourth largest internet company by revenue. Furthermore, Alibaba has a worldwide reputation to keep up, so they try to only deal with reputable manufacturers who can be trusted. However, it can happen that the odd bad apple features on their site, but when you sign in and click on Orders at the top right you can order with Trade Assurance.

Trade Assurance guarantees product quality and on time shipment. If the product quality or shipping time differs from what you and the supplier agree, Alibaba will provide you with assistance in getting a satisfactory outcome, including getting your money back if necessary.

Another thing you can do when buying from an Alibaba supplier is to carry out a Whois check. This will tell you about the ownership of the company. You can also Google the name of the company with the word "scam" or "fraud" in quotes next to it.

Another thing to do when you are looking at a specific product is to check out the transaction level. You will find this under the company’s name, and it will have a series of little diamond shapes next to it in orange. These give an indication of the transaction level points awarded to it by Alibaba where half a diamond is 0 – 5 points, a whole diamond is 5 – 10 points and so on all the way up to 5 whole diamonds which is in excess of 50,000 points. According to Alibaba, the Transaction Level is, "based on an accumulated score awarded for total online transaction volume and amount". Obviously, the greater the number of diamonds the better.

Furthermore, when you go to the company’s page there is usually a section devoted to Transaction History which will show you how many transactions they have carried out in the year.

If you are looking for a long-term supplier, you are better off looking for a manufacturer rather than just a trader. A manufacturer will be able to offer you better prices than a trader because a trader is really just a middleman who is adding his own profit to the transaction.

When you have found what appears to be a good and trustworthy supplier offering huge discounts for bulk orders, whatever else you do, don’t place a bulk order. Order a sample first. You’ll have to pay for it of course, but it will enable you to see it and handle it and confirm whether it lives up to your expectations. Even then, you probably don’t want to go ordering 10,000 units or whatever because, much as you might like the product, it is vital to see how well it sells first.