Let me start by telling you that it is still possible to make money on eBay — A lot of it! For most people it’s not as easy as it used to be, but it can still be done. There are many people earning a great living from their eBay home businesses and it’s still a really good way to start an online home business, or just earn extra money if you need it.
Many people who start eBay businesses actually begin as buyers to get the feel for things and then start selling things around the house that they do not need for some extra cash. Buying and selling a few small things is great way to get experience in the whole eBay process and if you are just starting out, you should not skip this step.
After you have learned the basic eBay buying and selling process and built up some positive feedback, you can move on to actually getting started on your eBay home business and figuring out your process for how to make money with less effort.
When selling individual items, you will notice that it can take a long time to write and design a good auction listing. In addition to that you have to take photos and then upload them. All of these things take time and it is not going to be worth your while to sell a lot of different items for a small profit if you have to write a new description for each one and photograph each one individually. It’s too time consuming for the amount of money you will make. This means that the best way to make money on eBay is to sell a lot of the same item or a small range of items so all you have to do is write one listing and take one photo then keep repeating the listing.
Selling a lot of the same or similar items will also help gain buyer trust. This is because if you are always selling a lot of the same items, they can see that you are a serious seller of whatever you have decided to specialize in and are more likely to send them the item they are bidding on as well as have knowledge of it in case they have questions.
In fact, if you have two very different ranges of goods, such as dog training equipment and oil filters, you might want to set up different eBay accounts to sell them from. Otherwise there is a risk that somebody who is ready to buy $250 worth of dog training supplies from you might change their mind when they check out your other eBay auctions and find you are selling oil filters and other random stuff.
What you sell will partly depend on the amount space that you have available in your house to store inventory. Established sellers may rent warehouses but this is not usually an option when you are starting out. But you could rent a storage unit or clean out a part of your home where old junk is stored now. You could also use drop shipping, but be aware that many other people do that and they might be in direct competition with you on eBay, and your profits per sale will typically be lower when you do it that way because of the drop shipper costs. Often it can be good to use a site like alibaba.com to source imported goods.
Many eBay home business sellers find that it works out best to list items with a Buy It Now (BIN) option. You can experiment with this for your particular range of goods. With auctions, you may sometimes have people who really want what you are selling so they keep bidding and push the price up high, but this is not so likely to happen if you are selling repeat items because all they have to do is move on to your next listing. Also buyers are sometimes prepared to pay a little more to save the hassle of coming online to bid again and again before an auction ends, or missing out on the item completely, so Buy It Now can be a simple and effective solution for both buyer and seller, and can help you build a great online home business making money on eBay.
There is still plenty of profits to be made on eBay. You just have to figure out your niche, find some good products, and find ways to stand out from the other sellers. It can be a great way to earn a little extra income or build a serious business. Give it a shot!