First off I am not an expert. My friends Scott and Lewis gave me this idea and I've been researching extensively. I also used to sell on eBay a long time ago but have been "off" for awhile and things have changed a little so I'm still learning too and I just wanted to share what I've learned so far about eBay. If anyone has any more tips to add to this please feel free to leave a comment.
You can sell just about anything on eBay but certain things just sell better locally. So I'm going to write about how to discriminate between what to sell on eBay and what to sell in your local paper or free community classifieds website.
I'm also going to write about how to find out "What's Hot" on eBay. Lot's of people already know this. If you know what the hottest selling items are you can usually find a discount on that item and move it for a profit.
What I used to do is go to eBay and search for products I think are going to sell pretty good on eBay then compare prices. After that I do another search and compare the number of bids the item has on it and how many days are left with the price. Items that have ALOT of bids (More than 25) on it regardless of the price are usually pretty good sellers. If they have that many bids and they are only 2 or 3 days old then you have a really good seller.
Well I found a site that helps me figure it out. The guy who runs it is named Edward Alvey. He's a pretty awesome guy. He provides loads of useful information and the site is free.
His site is called thebidfloor.com
I really like the What's Hot and What's Not on eBay section. There is a nice little chart with a quarterly glimpse into the sub-categories and the sweet spots on eBay where demand is greater than supply. This is a great resource. He even shows you where to find the best dropshippers and gives some tips and guidelines about making a profit.
What I like To Sell On eBay
- Small items that are easy to ship (under 10 lbs.)
- Things that are hard to break
- Large, bulky items that are hard to ship like couches and furniture.
- Glass and breakable things
So I plan to sell all my big stuff like the couch and some furniture on our local community classifieds site Ocala4sale.com and the rest of it is going on eBay. I hate shipping big stuff so if I sell it locally someone can come pick it up and it saves me the trouble of lugging it around.
I used to sell nature jewelry on eBay a few years ago so I may sell off a few leftovers from that and start finding things that turn a profit after I have my garage sale.
There are plenty of tips and guidelines to selling on eBay at the eBay site itself too. Just create an account and start exploring. You will learn alot by just reading the help areas of the site. Don't buy a book about selling on eBay until you explore a little further. All of the information is there you just have to dig it up.
