How online pricing actually works.
Start with any question.
- Guide
What is a dropship markup?
A dropship markup is the difference between what a reseller pays a supplier for an item and what they charge you for the identical item. The reseller never holds the stock — the supplier ships it directly — so the markup pays for the storefront, the advertising and the margin, not for anything done to the product. Markups of three to five times the supplier price are common on unbranded goods, and the clearest way to spot one is that the listing uses the supplier's own photograph unchanged.
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Why do most products online have no barcode?
Most goods sold online have no GTIN, UPC or EAN because barcodes are issued per brand, and the majority of listings on marketplaces are unbranded goods produced by factories that never registered one. A barcode costs money and only pays for itself in retail distribution, which these products never enter. The consequence is that every price comparison engine, which matches products by identifier, is structurally blind to exactly the products with the widest price spreads.
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What does 'cheapest that fits' mean?
'Cheapest that fits' is the lowest price among sellers that satisfy every constraint you actually gave — budget, origin, delivery window — as opposed to the lowest price overall, which frequently violates one of them. A $8.99 listing shipping from China in twelve days is not a better answer than $12.49 shipping from a US warehouse this week if you said you needed it this week. Showing both numbers, and naming the reason the cheaper one does not qualify, is more useful than showing either alone.
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What the index has learned.
Findings are the other half of the reading room: what 74,691 photo comparisons turned up, and what they did not.
Questions answered. Now ask for the thing.
Describe it the way you would to a friend. We show every price for the same photo and the cheapest one that fits.