Scammers scour the internet tirelessly looking for victims. There's no way one would be able to list ALL of the sites these predators lurk on because they constantly have more and new portals to work with, tailor made for them to take advantage of would be entrepreneurs. These just tend to be more popular.
That said, legitimate products can be bought and imported from legitimate sellers (suppliers) on each of those sites. The key is knowing how to find a scammer, so you can separate them from legitimate sellers you want to do business with. With this guide, you can significantly lower your risk of being scammed buying products from other countries, including China. China is a huge exporter to the United States, one of those exports being scams.
What can "You" buy from China? By "You", I mean the guy or gal who may live from paycheck to paycheck. Under these circumstances, it takes effort to save enough money to purchase goods for resell. That is why I wrote this guide – to help others save their hard earned investments. So what can you buy? Pretty much everything under the sun. Metal detectors, cell phones, shoes, jewelry, clothes, cars, keychains, game consoles… raw materials such as stone, metal, rubber… you name it. Don't believe me? Check those sites out, and mess around with search feature, searching for items you want to sell. When you're through with that, search the internet for other business to business sites. There are tons of them. Just don't get too excited. ALL these sites are full of danger – scammers waiting to take your money.
Most of the contact is made through some messaging system provided by the B2B site, or through instant messengers (IM) such as yahoo IM or MSN IM, though sometimes through an instant messenger designed by the B2B site.
Let's go over a few industry terms.
FOB – Free on Board. It more or less represents the seller's price before shipping. You might see something like this: "FOB: $12 - $42". What this means is that the seller will get the item to the port listed at this price. Furthermore, the range of this price represents some kind of price break for buying more units, usually depicted in the details or description. In this scenario, if you were buy a small number of items, you could depend on paying $42 per unit before shipping is factored in.
MOQ – Minimum Order Quantity. Many suppliers won't even sell you anything unless you order at least a certain number of units. This number is the minimum order quantity.
LC – Letter of Credit. The LC can also be source of payment for a transaction, meaning that redeeming the letter of credit will pay an exporter. Letters of credit are used primarily in international trade transactions of significant value, for deals between a supplier in one country and a customer in another. The parties to a letter of credit are usually a beneficiary who is to receive the money, the issuing bank of whom the applicant is a client, and the advising bank of whom the beneficiary is a client. It is almost like a form of escrow that you set up with the banks. It is likely the safest way to do business, but it is also very expensive if you are dealing with small quantities.
T/T or TT – Telegraphic Transfer. This is more or less sending funds from one bank to another, or in other words, a wire transfer. A cheaper way to do business, but not a smart way to do business unless you know the company intimately.
Leads – While some B2B sites simply have suppliers list their inventory, many of them allow buyers and sellers to post something called leads. You can think of them as similar to classified ads. The suppliers ads are about products of sale, and the buyers (you) are like wanted ads, descripting products wished to purchased.