To be honest, before asking you about the wholesale supplier and assuming it is like other wholesale supplier, the first one is riskier. Selling on craigslist is easy but you need to keep in mind what you are going to sell and you have to find ways to break all other competitors with the similar niche they're in. Selling cellphones or electronics has been the niche of most sellers online.
- Let's get to wholesale suppliers first:
Who is your supplier? Do you have to pay monthly payment to be a member to sell? Have you been with them to sell other products before?. The reason I want you to know about it is because wholesale suppliers and dropshippers (sometimes they are the same) charge you monthly, and/or base fees. And since the niche has already been expolited online and most likely on craigslist too, you need to provide or sell the celphones with lower price than others. THAT "lower price than others" can take you to the different site of making profits. If not lucky, you will always be ending with negative out of pockets because lowering the price cannot or will ONLY cover your monthly fee, access fee, and base fee.
-Now let's go onto Craigslist itself
Have you sold large scale before? If not, keep in mind that people selling electronics and cellphones on there are not individuals or not solely individuals. They have gone to freelancing to get craigslist forum posters, craigslist posters who have many verified accounts. They are hiring them (for example at getafreelancer.com) for a fee of $500 and up for posting job to post the ads within time intervals. YOu may have to follow the same road to compete with them. And then again "following same road" has never been a unique way and always end up only as who can afford more race, ather than having your products and your ad styles being exposed in unique way.
-Now to Product Review Site
If you do it right, this is the more profitable one if you also have patience. THe way you can profit from this is by implementing multiple features, with articles, reviews, user forums, and probably a place for users to report about products in detail as a forum interface. While doing so you should use commission junction or clickbank type ads and make sure the site shows related items only when users are reading reviews. Also make sure the ad itself are grabbed from source in a way that they also show ratings. SO that users reading a review on your site will SEE the HIGHER rating ad and will click to read AND even buy it!!
Product review works well with articles too. Make sure you write or buy articles or hire article writers for products and encourage users to do video reviews or detail review for an exchange for some higer membership or something.
This site, if you have aptience, it is less risk, and if you put dedications and long time effort, you will succeed. PLus on brighter side, the money you will be paying to possibly trying to out-compete other cellphone sellers can ALL or less of that amount can be used to maintain and improve the product review.
Keep those in mind and all the best,
-Ko
@Lili Said
I think I've narrowed it down to two options: Creating product review websites, or selling refurbished cellphones on craigslist. I'm not sure which I should do.
They both have pros and cons. For selling cellphones, I've never had a problem selling anything on craigslist, so I'm fairly certain of being able to make money that way. I have a wholesale supplier available to me, so I'm fairly certain I could have a consistent supply. But I'd be on the phone making appointments everyday, and that's annoying. Plus, the profit margin isn't all that high, so I'm not sure how much money I could really be making that way, without it sucking up all my time.
For making product review websites, I feel like this is more of a gamble, but the payoff could potentially be significant. I have a "gameplan", but I also have writer's block, which isn't a good thing when trying to create original content for a website. And of course there's always the possibility I could put a bunch of time into and get squat for all my effort. There's always that possibility when it comes to websites. But if it paid off, I'd have tons of freedom.
I have a fair amount of experience with both of these things, so I'm up in the air. My preference would be for the second one, but it's riskier. I'm pretty sure the first one would work, but it's a lot more work in the long run.