EBAY BUSINESS

eBay business

So far we’ve looked mostly at business models that are quite unique to the web. We’ve been looking primarily at selling digital products or making affiliate sales – all things that revolve around information and content and don’t involve any good, old-fashioned real products.

Well that all changes with eBay, which is actually a fantastic tool for making money and which presents a ton of different options. If you’re looking for a more traditional way to make money by selling products, then eBay is the perfect choice.

Selling Things You’ve Made

Actually, you can combine one of the business models we’ve already seen here. If you want to, there is nothing to stop you from listing your digital product on eBay and selling it that way. Likewise though, you can also sell physical things you’ve made and if you have any skills in DIY, arts or crafts or anything else, then you can make money selling those items on eBay.

Enjoy making jewelry in your spare time? Good at painting beautiful sceneries? Then why not just list your items on eBay with a smart keyword and start making money from your hobby? With time you can set up your own online store and eCommerce option, but eBay is a great way to get this business moving and to find new customers.

(Another option here is to use Etsy (www.etsy.com) which is effectively a version of eBay focused on home made products.) And actually, you don’t even need to be particularly great at crafts to make money selling items on eBay that you made. I once bought a poster that was supposed to look like stars glowing in the dark when the lights were off.

What I received was clearly a large A3 piece of paper that someone had dotted with a glow pen. I was pretty annoyed (it cost $15!) and I’m not suggesting you trick your customers but the point is that there are smart ways to create value using everyday items.

Buying and Selling

If you want a more scalable business model though, then a great option is to buy products and sell them for more.

The best way to do this is to buy the products in bulk or wholesale and ideally you should do this directly from the manufacturer. When you do that, you will make a big saving on your products and potentially you can expect to get the items at less than half price when you order 100 or more at a time.

This is called ‘keystone pricing’ and it’s a standard that most wholesalers and resellers adhere to (you are now a reseller, by the way!). So you buy 100 pairs of jeans/blank CDs and then you simply sell them individually on eBay for twice the price. This then means you can sell the lot and end up with a 100% increase on revenue. Minus the costs of listing the items and of delivery and you can make 80% profit on your initial investment or more.

Now what you do, is you simply take some money out of that and put it in your bank as your earnings and then you invest 150% back into buying more stock and inventory. The only risk is that one initial investment and from there, you’re simply reinvesting the profits back into more items.

Eventually, you’ll be putting in orders for thousands of items and making thousands of dollars for selling them. And all you need is an eBay account and a room big enough to store your inventory. Note that you can also find ways to add extra value yourself in order to make even more money still. A good example of this would be to hand paint a phone case, or perhaps to bundle items together and tie a nice bow on them – creating a ‘gift pack’.