Can I really make money on Ebay?

Ebay is one of the few ways of making money at home that I have been doing for years.  As a kid, I always collected sports related items.  Mostly cards: football, baseball and basketball.  But I would buy various commemorative memorabilia items or posters that I liked.  As a teenager back in the 90's when cards were booming I would go set up a table at the local card shows and make enough money to buy more cards and do it all over again.  Then came girls, and the cards went into the closet.



I got married, but every now and then I would stop in the card shop and buy more cards.  So when my kids began collecting I was ecstatic because I got to start my hobby all over.  When they would "pull" a high end card worth a lot of money of course they would want to sell it.  So we started selling a few on eBay and they would get the money.

Since we only sold the most expensive cards our collection grew to the point it annoyed my ex wife.  So I needed to clear a lot of it out.  I began listing much of my collection of eBay  I would charged about a $1 extra for shipping and I would give it to my son as payment for packaging and mailing the items out because I hated this part of the process.

Making a few hundred dollars a week, I decided to try expanding into other items.  I would buy toys that were hot selling items from Walmart or Target and sell them as well.  The problem was finding them.  Rarely, can you find a hot toy that is selling for above retail in the store.  That is why the price is so high on sites like eBay.  But, occasionally I would get lucky and find a store that had just received a shipment and I would buy five or ten of an item and sell them for as much as double what I had paid.  Not bad for a few minutes of work.

Then I decided to move into antiques.  Antiques are big business and big money.  My family for generations had been pack rats.  And when my mom moved out of the farm house my family had lived in for over 40 years, she needed someone to go threw and figure out what was trash and what was worth something from an enormous barn filled with items.

For about two months I had a blast looking through items I had no idea existed, much less what they did or what they were worth.  I bought a few books, and visited a bunch of websites to determine the items value.  Some of the items were worth good money.  Some, worthless and a few I still don’t know there value because I can not properly identify them.

We sold a lot of items with no problem on eBay and made a decent amount of money.  I began thinking I could do this full time now that I had a decent knowledge of antiques.  So I began going to yard sales and flee markets in search of bargains I could make a profit on.

This is where my eBay career came to a dead end.  The problem with buying and resale is you have to have a constant turn over of items.  I could not find a steady stream of items I could resale and make a profit.  I would attend yard sales advertising they had lots of antiques for sale.  But when I would get there, they would have some old items, but because they were old people assumed they were valuable and would ask well above what they were actually worth.  I have literally had people offering me items worth a few dollars for $50 or more.

Occasionally, I would find something that look to be extremely rare and valuable, only to realize upon closer inspection it was a reprint or releases of an original item.  While sometimes these can be valuable, rarely are they worth anywhere near the original.

I have yet to try buying items in bulk and resealing them on eBay.  Although this does seem like a very profitable idea.  Most of the items you see on eBay come from China anyway.  I found a few sites from China that sale items in bulk and you can get them for a few dollars an item if you buy 100 or more.  Even if you don’t want to buy in bulk, you can find the same exact item on eBay being shipped from China for about double the price per unit than the bulk price.  The problem for those of us in the states is it can take up to six weeks with some vendors to get your merchandise.

This is where the US sellers make there money.  Some people in the states do not like dealing with overseas vendors.  Even if the product is made there.  Plus, as Americans we are impatient by nature.  We don’t want to wait weeks to get out item, I actually get impatient waiting three days for my item to come in.  So they mark the item up, advertise themselves as US sellers with fast shipping and they clean up.

I have actually seen some electronic items that I can buy in bulk for less than $3 being sold on eBay for as much as $100 by "specialty" stores.  Most of the time you can find these items going for about $10-$20 from US supplies, but the outrageous ads continue to be reposted so I would assume someone is buying the product, even if the numbers are low.

You just have to be careful in selecting an overseas vendor because you really have no protection once you send your money.  So research them before you buy.

Whatever, product you want to sell on eBay you will find a market for it.  I doubt you will get rich selling it, but you can make a living as long as you have a steady flow of inventory.  If you make a particular item in your home this is a great market to sale your items.  But if you have some old items laying around the house you want to get rid of, eBay will bring several times more money than a garage sale will.  Especially when it comes to high end collectable items.

I will write up another blog giving you some tips on what to look out for when buying and sale on eBay so you don’t get scammed or be forced by eBay to refund a purchase after you mailed the item to the customer.