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From the time EBay first appeared on the scene in 1995, people began selling items and making a profit.  Fifteen years later, can someone still start a business on EBay?  From my experience and from others I know, it’s still possible.  Moreover, it should be encouraged that someone start their business on EBay first.

What To Sell On EBay

How do you know what markets are profitable if you never sold on EBay before?  The answer is try.  Try to sell what you have in your house- old toys, things you’ll never use again, anything.  In fact, this is how Cameron Johnson started his EBay business.  He sold his sister’s Beanie Babies and found there was a market.  After that, he brought them at wholesale prices and sold them for a huge profit.

If you find that there are a lot of people bidding on items you’re trying to sell, there might be a market for those items.  I have very old generation 1 Transformers from the 80′s.  I thought they could be worth something.  I did a quick check and found there is huge market for these 30 year old toys.  Most sell for in the $50 range but some go as high as $1,000 for unopened ones.  People now are buying them as both collectibles and investments.  There’s one market right there.  You know what else is a market?  Baseball cards.  This I also found out after trying to sell my childhood collection.

Calculating Profit Potential

Once you found a market, it’s time to check how much things sell for.  That’s done with the “completed listings” option.  Here, EBay shows you how much an item sold for in the past.  Keep your own Excel sheet of the items sold because EBay doesn’t show you items past a certain period.  After a while, they remove the older sales.  Also in your Excel, create a column for the Ebay and Paypal fees.  Paypal is about 2.9% while EBay changes for different items.  Now, subtract those fees from the sale price to see how much you need to buy the item at in order to make a profit.  Sometimes, the item can be brought on EBay, then flipped for a profit.  But many times, items need to be brought through wholesale means.  And the best place to find suppliers?  Check Alibaba.com or TheWholesaleForums.

Benefits of Business on EBay

I can’t think of a better business to learn about cashflow than an EBay business.  Once you find a market you can dig into, you just need to calculate how much you need to spend to find how much you will profit.  The market you find will have lots of people bidders.  That means there should be a higher demand than supply.  And because of that, your inventory can always be sold.  Once this is figured out, you can calculate how much each item will make you after factoring in the various fees.  From that, you have your price you need to buy the item at.  Now, you know how much you need to spend in order to make $X.

It’s also a great place to learn about customer service.  I always like it when I receive my items quickly.  And that usually happens when a seller ships the item on the day of or the day after the payment was received.  The reverse is true.  If a seller takes forever to get the item to me, I’m never going to do business with them again.  What will your business look like?