You've read the success stories, and now you're ready to
move from eBay buyer to eBay seller. The challenge is finding
products to sell that people will buy, preferably at a premium
price.
Start the search under your own roof, scanning your closets,
rummaging around in your garage and opening those long-forgotten
boxes in the attic.
Once you've exhausted these options, consider your own
skills and interests for ideas on finding product. Tim Stallard,
35, and Todd McGohan, 40, made their golf addiction the link to a
successful business, Proshopwarehouse.com (eBay User ID:
proshopwarehouse), which had about $10 million in sales last year.
They began by selling their own used golf equipment. Satisfied with
the response, they turned next to their network of golf enthusiasts
for more supply. The first stop was a golf pro shop at a local
country club, where a friend sold them $5,000 worth of liquidated
equipment. "From there, we started looking for more people we
knew in the golf business," Stallard says. The effort
stretched from the company's base in Franklin, Ohio, to other
areas of the state and beyond.
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Product sources are only as limited as your imagination. A
friend eager to be rid of a dusty record collection could turn into
an eBay windfall. More traditional sources are garage sales, thrift
shops, going-out-of-business sales, real estate and storage site
auctions, and even junkyards. "You can make an extra $500 to
$1,000 a month going to garage sales and thrift shops," says
Skip McGrath, eBay PowerSeller and principal of Vision-One Press in
Anacortes, Washington, which publishes McGrath's newsletter and
books about eBay. "Virtually anything sells."
It helps to be a shopaholic with a knack for finding deals like
Margaret Demopoulos, 40, of Durham, New Hampshire (eBay User ID:
goatbeard). She haunts local retailers and outlets looking for
deeply discounted items, reasoning that the greater discount, the
greater the potential profit. One past success was with LeapPads, a
children's educational toy, bought for $9 each and sold for $21
each on eBay.
Sun W. Kim, 30, recognized an eBay opportunity in a bucket full
of computer cables at a Los Angeles flea market. He paid 50 cents a
cable and sold them on eBay for $10 each. Another flea market visit
turned up older versions of the popular Crystal Reports business
reporting software in unopened packages for $2 each that Kim sold
for an average of $350 each. Kim (eBay User ID: tekgems) has since
started sourcing straight from manufacturers (check out
"Bigger Deals" on page 52). His San Francisco company,
TekGems, grossed $300,000 in 2004.
Marsha Collier, author of Starting an eBay Business for Dummies, and
her daughter Susan used their knowledge of the fashion world to
take advantage of $450 Fendi handbags selling for $200 at Costco.
They sold for $350 each on eBay. Says Collier, "Most success
stories on eBay are from people who sell what they know."
Find It Online
Where to go to source products online:
Source: Starting an eBay Business for Dummies, Marsha
Collier
Julie Monahan is a writer in Seattle whose articles on small
business and emerging technology have appeared in numerous consumer
and trade magazines.