Five Ways to Make a Living on eBay

Most eBayers simply use the site to buy rare or cheap items, or they use it to clean out their attic and sell off their old junk. But, if you use eBay regularly, it may strike you that plenty of people seem to make a lot more from eBay than you might think possible. Somehow, they manage to earn a full time living from nothing but the auction site.

How do they do this? Well there are four main ways. "Four you say?! I thought this article included five ways to make a living on eBay." Hold your horses! This article does indeed discuss five methods, but the final one is not currently used by a large number of sellers.

The first way is to purchase goods from wholesalers, liquidators, closeout merchants and auctions. It's simple: get yourself a CD wholesale list on eBay for $2, pick a supplier off the list, send in your order and viola, instant goods to sell at a profit. It certainly should prove simple if you read the ads for those CDs, but of course, it never actually turns out that simple does it?

Now don't get me wrong, you can make some great money this way, but you'll need to do a bit more than just buy a CD. New goods on eBay sell for roughly the same as wholesale prices, so to make a profit you'll need some way to get them for less. Certainly, if you can find sellers of closeout and liquidated stock and pay them a visit, you can find some great bargains. The same goes for auctions.

When it comes to wholesalers though, you'll need to look out for special offers. Often you can only get these by actually visiting the warehouse. You'll need to maintain a constant vigil for new suppliers. If you can find some low priced ones and build a relationship with them over a period of time, however, you can get the goods surprisingly cheaply.

Be warned though this isn't one for the faint hearted. A business like this will take a lot of work and long hours. You will need a warehouse of your own to keep stock and employing people will be a must before long.

A similar, but simpler route than this is drop shipping. Drop shipping involves sending your order directly to the manufacturer who will then pick and post it to the customer themselves. You send them a fixed amount and anything above that is your profit. You don't need to keep stock or visit warehouses, but again, it's difficult to find goods cheap enough to make a profit on.

Drop shipped goods will generally be more expensive to you than wholesale ones, since your suppliers are storing, handling and shipping the stock themselves. But again, if you can find a few manufacturers who will supply you cheaply, and ideally which few others use for drop shipping, then you could be onto a winner.

You've probably noticed that antiques and collectibles are a pretty hot seller on eBay. If you know what to look for, then you can certainly make a good profit. Antique dealers are clearly going to be at an advantage here, but if you select a particular area (ex. porcelain), and focus on studying and seeking out the kinds of items that will make money, then this represents a great opportunity. It may take a while to build up expertise and follow the learning curve, and you will also need to find somewhere to store the items, but this is certainly an area to consider.

The biggest seller online though, is information. It can come in the form of physical books (great sellers themselves), or it can mean downloadable information. Selling downloadable information has great benefits. You don't need to deal with stock or suppliers and all you business can be done from the comfort of your own home. You can create products yourself, or sell products that other people have written, if they give permission.

Unfortunately though, as most eBay sellers who dabble in this area discover, it's not as simple as it seems. You will need to keep finding new products to sell and sell them in a unique way. Why? Because unless you sell something you created yourself (which can be very time consuming), you'll probably find loads of other sellers pushing exactly the same thing.

You really need to keep selling new products and to get in fast, because after two or three weeks, you could find that competition has driven the product's value down from $19.95 to $0.01

Now, time for that untapped gem we alluded to earlier. The final way to make a living on eBay is through selling websites. Even if you've never designed a site before in your life, you can make money in this area. It'll surprise you how little you can get a site designed for. Then you can make simple modifications yourself, write an ad and list it on eBay.

This is also a great opportunity for web designers who often struggle to find work. Any time your work runs dry, simply design a web business and list it on eBay.

This will, of course, take a little work, getting the site set up, listing it and promoting it and you'll need to keep an eye on what sells right now and produce it accordingly, but unless you qualify as an expert in one of the methods above, then it's certainly the simplest way to make the kind of money your looking for on eBay.

Now, I'm not saying these are the only ways to make a living on eBay, but they are the ones that present the best opportunity to entrepreneurs trying to start out in business on their own. Take your pick as to which one you want to pursue, but promise me one thing. Whichever you decide on, take some action towards starting your business TODAY!

By Joe Beaven

"Ensure Your Success with the Covert Secrets of Creating an In-Demand Website in Just a Few Days, and Selling it on eBay at an Astounding Profit!" www.smallsiteseller.com/d/t/16