Is eBay Still the Goldmine it Once Was?

The eBay Income Opportunities

If you have read any articles on eBay, you've probably heard the success stories and the countless number of people making a full time living from eBay alone. It isn't unusual anymore to hear the newest success story of how one person went from being unemployed to making thousands per month on eBay. However, with so many success stories and all the new sellers wanting a piece of the action, where does this leave the selling market today?

If you were to hop on eBay today and just browse for a single hot item, you'll notice many PowerSellers selling those particular items. Now consider that a PowerSeller status is only reached by making at least $1,000 worth of sales in a month. There are different levels of PowerSeller status ranging $1,000 of sales up to $150,000 in sales each month. The $150,000 marker is known as Titanium Powerseller. With so many PowerSellers and so many new "wannabe making a fortune" people jumping into eBay everyday, how likely is it to succeed? Well, a lot of it is the approach you take to your new business. Let me explain.

If you go into this business thinking your going to be making $20-$100 on every item you sell, you are sadly mistaken. This is definitely a numbers game, where the more you sell, the more you will make, but you will have to sell a lot of items to be making thousands a month. Many Powersellers open up an eBay store and their own store online outside of eBay. Within these stores and their auctions, they will cross promote items or offer discounts on shipping for multiple items. Say you want to sell iPods. Well, naturally if people are going to be buying iPods or bidding on iPods, you should also sell iPod accessories to increase your sales and profits. Instead of making just one sale, you make 2 or maybe 3. Powersellers will use this to their advantage and have a fully stocked store of almost every accessory you can imagine so that they get these extra sales.

Another piece of the puzzle and certainly not the least important, is where do you get the products to sell on eBay cheap enough so that you can turn a profit. This is probably the most common problem for anyone going into this business, and true enough, this is why most people fail. They start out with selling stuff they have around the house to start with a little profit, then they start googling for free dropshipping services or wholesale products. While in some cases this works, in many cases it doesn't work out for the seller. The main reason for this is as follows: Everyone else has access to these same suppliers across the internet. Unless you have a tight niche in which you are selling, like certain types of fabric, people are always aiming for the high ticket items and selling the same items everyone else is from the same supplier. In doing this, everyone has the same bottomline price they must meet to profit and therefore, profit margins are slim to none with the competition.

The best advice I can give to anyone going into an eBay business is to tighten your niche. Sell one type of product with different variations and then some accessories that you can cross sell and promote. The only other advice, and the best there is if you can do it, is find a local business that you can partner with. Not Best Buy or some other big store, but the mom and pop shops that are local in your area that are looking to expand or will give you a deal if you sell more of their products. This is difficult, but if you get a deal with one of these shops, this is what makes unemployed people into powersellers overnight.



I currently run my own blog on where to find wholesale products to use in eBay auctions. I also provide tips and tricks that you can use to add revenue to your auctions. The latest tip I posted is so devious that many people make more from this than their actual auctions. To check it out, just click here