eBay is an online marketplace for all types of goods and services from cotton swabs to automobiles and even homes. They boast over 97 million active members across the globe and they facilitated the sale of over $62 billion in sales in 2010. They pride themselves on being a marketplace for both large brands and for small sellers that have a single product for sale. They allow sales to be made in an auction or fixed price format. They have as their mission to be a single place where anyone can sell anything.
How to make money on eBay
This last sentence is the focus of our topic. If you are anyone, then you can sell anything on eBay. Therefore the key to knowing how to make money on eBay is having something to sell, knowing how to market that product, and knowing how much that product is worth.
Having something to sell is where the average person gets stuck when they are thinking of how to make money on eBay. This is because they do not have anything that they want to sell that has value. This is a hurdle that many can overcome by thinking outside the box. For example, many people have garages full of products that could be sold on eBay and are nothing more than trash to the current owner. Old pictures, old toolboxes, old tools, old decorations you no longer use, inherited dishes, etc. You name it, the average garage or attic is filled with items people do not want and do not need and at the same time are worth money if sold on eBay.
If you are thinking that you want to make money on eBay but you are not interested in selling your personal items, then you have to take the time to find access to products that you can get wholesale and others are willing to pay retail. There are dozens of companies across the internet that you can sign up with and obtain products cheaply and resell on eBay. These companies are at times called drop-shippers, because they will ship direct to your customer and you never have to actually touch the product yourself.
Other ways to get items at wholesale that are worth retail is to buy large lots of the product at a discount and then sell at a higher per unit cost. There are many ways to buy a pallet of a particular popular product from local supplies in your community and then sell the items more expensively on eBay. These pallets of product or wholesale lots as they are sometimes called are oftentimes made available as overruns from local manufacturers or over orders from local stores.
Once you have identified some products to sell you need to package them properly on eBay. This means that you need to describe the product well and take some simple pictures. There are templates available to make your eBay ad look good. The better your ad looks, the more likely you will get a good price when selling the item. Take good pictures, describe the product accurately and be honest and friendly in your ad. That is enough to market most products on eBay.
Make money on eBay Tips
Knowing the true market value for products is critically important. Especially if you are buying wholesale lots for resale. Take the time to see what price auctions closed at and how many of those products are still left available for sale. If the products always close for $20 and there are no others for sale on eBay, then if you get the products for $10 each you are in luck. But if the last auction sold for $15 and there are 20 others waiting to be sold, you may not have a good product if you are buying at $10. Maybe you need to get that product at $5 and resell it at $10 to make it worthwhile. They key is in studying your target market and knowing real sale prices, not suggested retail prices.
In the end it is not difficult to make money on eBay so long as you take the time to approach eBay as a business. Study the market, study pricing, study what you have available to sell, market it professionally, and then sell it. It is a simple process that will make you money as long as you know your market.
