There is a lot of money to be
made as a seller on eBay.
Thousands and thousands of
sales are made each day,
resulting in a lot of income for a
lot of sellers. And there is still room for you if you want to get
involved – whether you want to earn some part time cash or set
up a whole new full time business
on the side.But where do you get your
stock from? How do you get
started? And how can you build
a business that gives you
PowerSeller status? Relax – you’ re about to find out. It’ s easy work to get started earning money on eBay. Once
you’ ve signed up for your free account the best way to get a
feel for what selling is like is to
auction off some of your
personal items that you no
longer want. If you are going to
start buying stock to resell, you’ ll do better by getting some basic selling experience first.While we are on the subject of
stock, you’ ll need to decide what kind of business you are
going to set up. Of course you
can sell anything you like, but if
you want to make a name for
yourself it helps to become
known for selling a specific type of product. Now that doesn’ t necessarily mean your product area needs
to be a small one; on the
contrary it could be quite large.
You could sell toys for example – there’ s plenty there to keep any seller going for months on
end without selling the same
thing twice. You do need to pick
a popular product though, and
it’ s worth doing some research using eBay’ s advanced search feature to find out what is
selling and how much it’ s selling for. So let’ s say you want to sell computer games, for example.
There are hundreds of games
you could buy to sell here, but if
you don’ t know which ones will sell you could lose a lot of money
buying the wrong stock. By
searching the ended listings you
can see which titles consistently
sell well, and which ones will
produce the best profit for you. Okay – so you know how to figure out what to buy. Now you
need to know where to get it
from. It stands to reason that
no seller is going to tell you
where they get their stock; that
would be like giving away the keys to their business. In order
to find the best sources for
stock you need to do a bit of
legwork. We should mention here that
there are two main sources for
stock – wholesalers and dropshippers. Both have their
pros and cons; it just depends
on which method you personally
prefer. Dropshippers hold all the stock
for you, so you only actually pay
for an item once you’ ve received payment from the
customer. You may have to pay
a fee to join the scheme in the
first place though. If you choose
to go with one or more
wholesalers you will need to have the room to buy the stock,
and the money to buy it in
advance. This comes with more
risk since you could buy stock
that doesn’ t sell, but with the tactic we’ ve already covered for checking completed listings
before you order anything, the
risk here should be kept to a
minimum. So – back to where to find these sources. If you have a particular
product in mind that you want
to sell, the simple act of looking
at the packaging can often
reveal the name of the supplier.
You can then check out their website to see what else they
do. Another method is to search for
what you want on Google. This
sounds deceptively simple and in
fact many people don’ t think of doing this. It can be a bit hit or
miss, but it’ s possible to find some excellent wholesalers
through this method. Over time
you will go from having one
wholesaler to a handful of
sources to get your stock from,
and you can build up your product range as you start to
grow. Building your feedback is an
important part of being a good
seller and the higher you can
get your score the better. It
sets you apart as being a
dedicated seller. And the faster your score climbs, the closer you
get to attaining PowerSeller
status. The PowerSeller symbol is highly
prized among serious eBay
sellers, and there are five levels
to strive for. The first is Bronze,
and it’ s a lot easier to reach than you might think. While you
might set a goal for yourself to
reach PowerSeller, you will find
that if you build up your product
range and gradually increase
your sales, you will reach it in no time. And if you get off to a
great start you might just do it
in three months – the minimum time you can actually do it in. Many sellers have their own
shop on eBay, but it’ s not necessary when you first get
started. In fact you are often
better off waiting until you have
a good range of stock before
opening a shop, since it can look
rather empty if you only have a handful of items. The final thing to think about is
the price of the items you are
selling. It stands to reason that
if you sell a hundred different
products in the $5 to $10 price
range, you won’ t make as much cash as you would selling a
hundred in the $50 to $100 price
range. But you need to work out what
you enjoy selling and what you
can sell lots of to experience
real success on eBay. Don’ t go for expensive products just
because they might bring a
bigger profit. Go for your calling
– that’ s where you will experience the biggest success. Above all, remember that it can
take time to build a successful
business – but if you’ re determined to achieve real
success on eBay you should be
enjoying the journey.