eBay?

[Zach]

Just wondering if anybody is an active eBay seller, and if you're having success with it. I've sold a couple dozen things in the past, but it seems like it's getting harder and harder to sell things for a profit, kind of like eBay is turning into one massive garage sale. Once in a while I got lucky, but the last few items didn't sell well at all.

I suppose, though, it depends on the market you're in...for example the few lucky souls who got their hands on a Playstation 3 for $600 and are reselling them for twice as much money.

Mind sharing?

[Dave Kaminski]

I've had more luck selling items on consignment for business who cant move product or have old equipment/parts they no longer need. Put on a shirt and tie and some dress shoes and see if you can help any local small or medium sized businesses move their stuff, and take a 33% commission.

[Fusebox]

ebay is a buyers market. If you are able to sell something new/different in trend you will most likely make money. Key with Ebay is to think in large volumes.
If you can offload for example, 10 hard-drives for $5 profit. you've just made $50 profit.

The only problem with working in large volumes, is the time effort required. If you can somehow manage to streamline your business, its not a bad alternative to making some part-time income.

[Erock]

Don't remind me of the PS3s. I went to target at 4 the day before, and saw no line, so I said, "what the heck, I'll come back at 7." BIG MISTAKE. 20 person line then. I'm still kicking myself, as right now I owe my parents 100 bucks.

[Zach]

Originally Posted by Erock

Don't remind me of the PS3s. I went to target at 4 the day before, and saw no line, so I said, "what the heck, I'll come back at 7." BIG MISTAKE. 20 person line then. I'm still kicking myself, as right now I owe my parents 100 bucks.

Ouch..that must have hurt. People were camping here outside of Best Buy overnight in freezing weather for them...that's going a bit too far.

[DmitryDavydov]

Originally Posted by Zach

Just wondering if anybody is an active eBay seller, and if you're having success with it.

The trend how among smart traders is to use eBay, so you don't have to sell on eBay. Sounds confusing? It's not. eBay is a great lead generating tool. For example, enter "iPod stickers" or "ebook" in eBay search. You'll see that a ton of them is being sold for pennies. There is no way it's profitable. So why do it?

Simple, you sell something for a few pennies and get persons name, email, address, phone. You build your own mailing list (I've heard of people who generate a list of 20000+ customers selling penny items on eBay in one month).

So now you have a list of X thousand people who bought iPod stickers. Based on the type of iPod sticker they bought, you can guess the iPod model. You send them a catalog of iPod accessories and do business outside eBay. Now you don't have to compete on price. And you are not dependent on auctions. You can mail them repeatedly. You can rent your mailing list. You can swap lists with other iPod retailers.

Same thing with eBooks. You can sell eBooks for pennies. Based on the topic of the book (Dog Breeding or Public Speaking) you generate the list and then sell them other products offline or online.

Hope that helped.

[Dave Kaminski]

Originally Posted by DmitryDavydov

Simple, you sell something for a few pennies and get persons name, email, address, phone. You build your own mailing list (I've heard of people who generate a list of 20000+ customers selling penny items on eBay in one month).

Now you don't have to compete on price. And you are not dependent on auctions. You can mail them repeatedly. You can rent your mailing list. You can swap lists with other iPod retailers.

Same thing with eBooks. You can sell eBooks for pennies. Based on the topic of the book (Dog Breeding or Public Speaking) you generate the list and then sell them other products offline or online.

Shh! You're giving away all the good stuff!

It took me a LONG time to learn that one. Combination of Seth Godin & Powerseller techniques.

[JKuehl]

Often these pennyitems are also used for large-quantity-buying from scam-networks to build up thousands of positive ratings before selling high-priced-products and scamming the buyers. There was a big article in germanys "c´t" about this kind of scam.