Make Money on eBay - Learn From my Mistake!


by Bob Hamilton - Date: 2007-02-27 - Word Count: 498 Share This!

Learn from my mistake! To aMake money on eBay is all about the value of the items that you sell. eBay buyers expect a bargain. There are a huge number of buyers waiting when you have products that are of high value, yet you are willing to sell at a reasonable price. That said, what was my mistake?

My daughter and I started selling on eBay as a means of selling excess inventory from our retail store. Like so many others, we soon found that there was a better opportunity on eBay than our established retail business provided to us. We could amake money on eBay much more quickly and easily.

eBay was a marketplace filled with ready, willing and able buyers! We saw that quickly and couldn't wait to get started. We selected our market niche. We selected our products to sell. Then we started selling and selling and selling. It seemed that we had found an almost limitless market and pot of gold that came with it. Soon we were selling hundreds of items each month. Purchasing, listing, pulling, packing and shipping products had become a fulltime job for both of us. We had found the way to amake money on eBay. Yet, even with those great sales, we were not making a very big profit.

As we examined everything we quickly found that while our sales looked impressive, and we had already become Powersellers, we weren't making the profits that we desired. Soon the culprit became clear. Yes, we were able to amake money on eBay. Our profit margins would have impressed almost everyone. Yet, we had selected products that simply sold for too little.

Here was our problem! We had found a great set of low-priced products. Let me give you an example: Would you rather sell a pencil for $1.00 with a final profit of 30¢ each, or would you rather sell a fire engine for $10,000 with a final profit of $4,500 each? More realistically, would you rather sell $1.00 pencils with a final profit of 30¢ each, or $15.00 pencils with a final profit of $4.00 each?

Though we weren't in the 30¢ category, we were simply working too hard for too little profit. We weren't selling $1.00 pencils. They were more like $2.50 or $3.00 pencils. At 30¢ profit per item, you need to sell a lot of pencils to make a living! Preparing and shipping a $1.00 pencil takes every bit as much time and effort as preparing and shipping a $15.00 pencil.

We have since evolved our business out of the $1.00 or $2.50 pencil category and into prices that provide a more reasonable profit for the time and effort involved.

Learn from our mistake. Include sales price in the formula that you use to select your products. If you aren't selling for at least $10.00 (Or even more.), rethink your product. You can amake money on eBay, but it requires that you carefully examine every aspect of what you are doing.

To your eBay success!


Related Tags: amake money on ebay

(c) 2007 Bob Hamilton
http://www.onlineauctionsmadesimple.net
http://www.openingadollarstore.com

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: