Matt Zenittini: It depends what you are selling, what your markup is, and how many you sell. Yup - that's it. I have sold on Ebay for nigh ten years now and it has its ups and downs. Ebay is constantly changing stuff and some of it made it worse while other things improved it. If you can find inexpensive items at yard sales you will do okay - but if you are thinking dropshipping - it is a hassle unless you can find a niche that isn't already full. There are times you can find stuff at yard sales that will pay you nicely - heck I have found stuff in dumpsters that paid nicely!
if you are a chinese manufacturer,,,,, Ebay is just for you =))))))))))) but am not sure is it ok to use Ebay if you want to sell your old shoes ,,,,, he, he =))
sstacy: if you want to sell your old shoes ,,,,, he, he =)) it all depends - I bought a pair of brand name shoes at a yard sale for my hubby and he wouldn't wear them - paid a buck for them so I sold them on Ebay for about $25.
I sold on Ebay before and it is a great opportunity and probably will be for a long time to come. But my advise as always been that you should work on building your own business. That way you have more control and you don't have to worry about getting banned if some customers lies on you or something like that. At least have a back plan is all that I am saying. Other than that, go for it . Perform a SWOT first, then execute your strategy. Good Luck
Ebay is a never ending garage sale of all sorts of wonderful stuff be passed on to other, then there the occasional really good stuff. If you like garage sales you'll be fine, if you don't, or don't want to bother with the garage sale concept for hopeful daily profits look to pursue other avenues that can give you a steady monthly residual income stream for your time and efforts.
It depends... It's great for some things, but overall I prefer to sell stuff on Amazon.com Marketplace. It's soooo much less work, and you don't pay unless you actually sell stuff. But not everything works on Amazon, so for the other stuff I use eBay.
bbray95 I have had no luck at all with ebay. Lots of problems right from the start and awful customer service. That's just my experience though.
I have sold things on ebay before, only things I don't use anymore but made little money. A friend sells hair products on ebay and does quiet well, she imports the products so its all branded and new. I think if you can find a product where you can get a good margin and there is a demand on ebay it can be worth it.
If you can buy products at a low enough cost, and sell the products high enough to make a good profit, I'd say go for it. If you want to see how much products sell for, you can do a Completed Listings search on eBay. The big thing is to try and project what your profit margin will be for each item, and decide if that is worth your time.
Personally, I have made money on ebay, however, it can be time consuming. If you could find a relatively small item that can be shipped easily and cheaply, AND, if you can duplicate that sale, which means you don't have to do your research over and over again for each new product or post new pictures, it can be lucrative. However, if you have a lot of stuff and plenty of time to post it and keep up with the emails, it can be way more profitable than a garage sale. Give it a try...you will know after a week or so whether it is worth it for you.
fees? they have fees.... the one that gets you is the final value fee. Just when you thought hey that was fun I made a little money ebay sends you another charge!
screwedbythrive: fees? they have fees.... the one that gets you is the final value fee. Just when you thought hey that was fun I made a little money ebay sends you another charge! And it's a ridiculous charge when you stop and think about it. I sold a piece of furniture the other day for $840 - final value fee that Ebay charged me was $56. So be careful when you list something that you include that!
I remember when I was just starting out online I heard of a strategy called "Ebay Arbitrage". The idea is to buy poorly listed auctions (no photos, bad quality descriptions, seller has poor feedback etc) and relist the items properly for a profit. When I first started doing this, I was actually surprised how easy it was. If you go through Ebay listings right now you'll see plenty of auctions that are just plain poorly listed. I'm sure if you're a smart cookie you can pick up the bargains and make some decent bank!
It depends on what kind of business you want to get into. To be successful on auction websites requires you to buy items in bulk to get a greatly reduced price per item. This also means you are likely to have a bunch of "stuff" around your house. For most people, ebay is a good way to make some extra spending cash but you have to have quite a bit of capital to make some serious $$$$
A lot of people use e-bay for traffic generation now instead of just for making money selling things. They will sell something cheap as a loss leader as a way to grow their list, etc. Jim Cockrum has a membership site called mysilentteam where there is a lot of information on using e-bay in different ways other than just selling your old stuff.
The competition on ebay these days is just too stiff, and you really need to know how to write a good salespage to see any serious results. Of course, some products sell easier than others, and i would say that if you do intend to sell on ebay, and you have the money to buy stock, then you should sell mobile phones.
Ebay is too much work in my opinion and in the end you can get not just scammed but worse banned for life for any silly complaint. Remember the customer is always right and you will get banned! you can appeal to your heart's content but you will get nowhere. Haven't said that I personally know people who make $5k a month from ebay profit easy. You need to have specific knowledge about a niche that has high demand or one that has a high margin. Taz
