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Do people who have ebay stores actually have an inventory of the products they are selling? Or do they tend to just ship the items from the manufacturing company? Seems like any one can have a ebay store which i think is great. but im curious as to whether they have all that inventory with them in a storage/home. thanks.
While I realize you are looking for a little business to make some extra money in this depression I have to ask you to look further into the future of ebay. Ebay sales have been falling for 4 years now. Worse yet the average price of items has also dropped off in the same time period. So many long time sellers have given up due to the extortion......oops I mean fees they charge.
Before you worry about inventory I ask you to think about the product you wish to sell and watch the listings that match it. What are they doing? Nothing right? The vast majority of all listings expire without a sale but ebay still makes bank, the seller loses. Whatever the case ebay forces you to use the payment service that THEY ALSO own. Then charge you more fees for every transaction there.
There is no money in ebay anymore. Their heyday was the early 2000s. I ask you to really take a harder look at this waste of time. Sorry that is not what you wish to hear.
The heyday was really 1999 and 2000, that was when it became a new fad and took off. When 9/11 happened it seemed to go down from there.
When I started selling in Mar 1998, ebay only had around 300000 items on the site which pales compared to today which is in the millions and millions. It was like the wild west with new settlers in town and no law. Nothing was really automated at all like it is now. Paypal actually was nice cause you didn't have to keep track of all these checks and money orders and who paid and when.
But I liken what has happened to ebay as what has happened to airline travel. People have traded freedom for security. And all the "security" on ebay which I would liken to a lot of bureaucracy has taken away the fun.
For inventory I sold smaller collectible items that I had sourced from Europe. I had a large walk in closet with metal racking with separate sections for the "sold row", things up for sale and excess inventory. If you can drop ship stuff great but there are probably a 100 other people out there doing the same thing for the same item. The real profits on ebay come from selling hard to find collectibles. Selling bog standard stuff that anyone can find isn't going to make any money unless you have some trick to outwit the competition.
The real profits on ebay come from selling hard to find collectibles. Selling bog standard stuff that anyone can find isn't going to make any money unless you have some trick to outwit the competition.
I agree with that 100%. I have used ebay for several years to resell collectibles items that I pick up at weekend flea markets and local antique shops, and have done very well with these limited items. Some weeks, I come home with boxes of good items, other weeks just 2 or 3, but I have made many times the cost of these items back in resale profits on ebay. It's good extra money that I use to pad my savings and investment accounts, and sometimes even a little beer money.
Other than that, for everyday commodity items, ebay is a very expensive business platform and a cut-throat market place.
People do actually store inventory, some dropship it depends on what works for you and your product. Ebay still is possible to make money, just more work is needed now. I suggest you find a niche nobody has or very little have. Remember you now competing with corporations who have their own ebay store and wholesalers who will sell to you wholesale but will also sell their products for retail on ebay. Google needs to come out and make an auction site to compete with ebay.
I agree with that 100%. I have used ebay for several years to resell collectibles items that I pick up at weekend flea markets and local antique shops, and have done very well with these limited items. Some weeks, I come home with boxes of good items, other weeks just 2 or 3, but I have made many times the cost of these items back in resale profits on ebay. It's good extra money that I use to pad my savings and investment accounts, and sometimes even a little beer money.
Other than that, for everyday commodity items, ebay is a very expensive business platform and a cut-throat market place.
I think that is where ebay comes into play is with collectibles. There might be a couple of people out there looking for that very particular item, but they are willing to pay a lot to have it. Basically cause you can't find it in the shops anymore.
But I ran into the same thing you do with finding collectibles. Sometimes you strike the motherlode and sometimes it's nothing. It's like mining, you find one vein of gold, then it is played out and you have to find another. It's a constant search, but that for me was the fun part.
Probably my best purchase was I got 5 posters for 8 euros and I sold them for around $400.
The people I know who make their living on ebay sell small, easy to ship things at high volume. They do have the actual items in their inventory. They have a couple hundred items for sale at any given time. They lose money on some items and make money on others, but somehow it works in their favor. I'm not really sure how. They do complain constantly about the paypal fees and ebay fees and what a ripoff they are.
Many businesses that keep inventory use eBay stores as their online web portal to offload merchandise to the public without having to use the slow online auction process. There is more responsibility in shipping and order fulfillment but the margins are significantly higher if the business is a manufacturer or wholesaler/distributor.
Most individuals that work from home however typically use dropshipping services so that they never have to touch the products or worry about fulfillment. There is less worry, but the margins are however much lower with this method.
If you are an individual the latter would most likely suit you.
My friend and i were going to start doing business on Ebay. We were going to find garage sales in the wealthiest neighborhoods of our city and buy what we can at bargain basement prices if possible, mostly rare or highly demanded items. We were then going to put them on Ebay, but i hated the fees, restrictions, etc. of Ebay. In any event, we never did follow through on this business. I still sell personal stuff on Ebay from time to time, but i usually use Craigslist now unless it was an item that couldn't move on there, thus having to use Ebay to sell it.
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