Reading Entrepreneur.com recently I came acrossed a few articles about eBay. Now I do think eBay is a great place to make money, but the simplicity that that is suggested in this article is somewhat exaggerated in my opinion. Why? Well eBay isn't a secret anymore. If you were going to sell home theater seating and thought that it was going to be your "niche" as the article sugests you are in for a big letdown. Reason being is that many of the sellers on eBay research DAILY the products that are doing well. You won't get by very long with a product unless you have some sort of exclusive deal with the manufacturer, or company that makes the product. Finding where to buy them is just too easy.
I quit selling on eBay long ago. The fees were getting out of hand, and it was simply too much work to keep trying to find new products to sell on a regular basis. When i mean regular basis, I mean every week. That's right. You may be able to find a nice product with a great profit margin to make you a bundle one week, but the next week 10 more sellers have found where you are buying it, undercutting you, and probably taking a loss to try and drive you out. MAny of these sellers are new and don't understand allt he costs involved with selling on eBay. They themselves go out of business when they realize that they are selling things at too low of a price, killing the market, and ultimately losing money on almost every auction. Oh well, they go away right? Wrong. For every one of those guys that goes bust there are 20 more to take their palace the next auction cycle (10 days is the cylce I would use).
Do yourself a favor and forget all these "eBay is easy" things. It isn't. It is A LOT more work than people say. If you don't even know how to find new products, or aren;t good at networking with businesses to be their exclusive seller on eBay you are going to get undercut by someone with more money to burn. Tha tis just how it is. If you sell something for $100 and eBay makes $99 off of it they will likely figure out a way eventually to screw you out of that $1 you made.
Now don;t get me wrong. It is possible to make money with NEW products. It is just a lot more work than most would lead you to believe. USed items still rule the profit margin there. Yard sales, junk around the house, etc. is great to get good things to sell on eBay, but that is far from an easy process either. IT isn't the pot of gold it once was. Don't believe what you readon how easy it is. eBay is a HUGE corporation now for a reason. They rape sellers and let buyers get away with murder.
BIGGEST TIP YOU WILL EVER GET: Do not sell to anyone outside your own country. You have no protection. They say they didn't get it even with a UPS, Fed Ex delivery notice and you can't do a thing about it with PayPal, which eBay also owns. Deny users who aren't in your country from bidding. They aren't all out to get you, but most experience a scam frequently when allowing bidders outside their country to buy their products.
Check out Craigslist. No fees and you can sell locally for pick ups. Many sellers have moved to this route and have done much better.
