HI,  I am Outstandingbooks on Ebay and i've been a seller for almost 5 years now.  I love my full time job and even though it has been a struggle to refine everything,  I"ve made a fairly good living in recent years.    Selling something on Ebay is not difficult.  You can list and learn fairly quickly how to add good keywords and make your item sell.  Ebay provides so much help in that area that if you search for help you can find any information you need on the actual structure of your auction. 

The difficulty in making your full time living on Ebay is to balance your selling with your time and with your Business Expenses.  I believe this is true of any Brick and Mortar Retail venture.  Ebay is the same. A business has to refine it's expenses but not be so cheap with advertising that nobody can find you.  Although I am still refining and trying to learn.  I have learned some great lessons in recent years that i'd love to share. 

 1.  Use the Ebay store.  Ebay wants to make it easy for items to be constantly available to your customers.  The problem with running only auctions is that inevitably you will get the Flu; You will have sick kids; or you will want a vacation.  You can't Gear up new auctions all the time if you need a few days off.  It usually ends in frustration and no income for the week or two until you can get back in the mode of listing.  In the meantime you've lost customers who looked for you and you didn't have any items listed.  So please setup and use your Ebay store.

2.  What to sell and how much to buy.  You have to research your product by looking at others on Ebay with the item. Can you do better. Can you do it cheaper? If not move on to another product.  And last but not least--Can you find enough of this product to make a living.  I can sell a certain set of books for $250.00 everytime i list it--But i can't find those everyday. You need something you can get your hands on to sell.   Once you are sure it will sell you have to find a source.  That is the biggest area people struggle with. You have to research reputable dropship companies and Wholesale companies.  THey are out there--Nobody is going to give you the information. You have to create these relationships yourself.  What is your expertise in?  What have you been doing until now?  How can you use that to find a relationship with someone with a product? The biggest mistake i made in this area that Contributed to keeping my expenses high--Was to stock up TOO much on inventory.  I did get a Wonderful price for buying alot--but in my case it was about 3 years worth of stock.  The downside is not the initial money I spent on the inventory--That was relatively a bargain--But it was the STorage costs and the Interest costs on the debt.  THat has taken over $500.00 out of my profit each month that i just didn't budget for.  Thankfully i've Refind the system again and typed as fast as possible and I'm now down to $90.00 a month in STorage costs and $250 in interest on my debt.  THat is going down fast and I'm very optimistic.  Only buy what you can sell within say 3 months.  Carrying dead stock is a drain to your entire operation. Walmart gets rid of anything that hasn't sold after Christmas. They don't pay storage to keep it until the next year. You can't either. GArage sale it; Sell it at a bargain on Ebay itself; Whatever it takes--Rotate the low end stock you have.  A side note to this is do you really need the Credit card machine?  Do you really need the FAX?  Buy technology that helps you list your items or helps you provide something important.  Don't buy items like I did--I might lose one customer by not having my own credit card machine but i'm not paying $25 a month anymore which adds up quickly. 

3.    Listing fast and furiously is the key.  YOu can't make a living listing 10 items a week or even a day in most cases.  You have to refine this part of your operation.  Use a listing service; or use Turbo lister.  Put in your default information so you aren't retyping it.   I invested $1500 in outside software that I needed to organize and inventory my books. It was the best $1500 i ever spent.  I've rotated my books twice as fast since I looked into the top software in my industry and bought it! It was a stretch believe me; I had to buy it before I was truly successful on Ebay. If this is your full time endeavor and you've cut other nonessentials you can do it.

4.  Advertising your listings and building a customer base is the most vital thing you can do. This won't happen overnight. You need to do some Auctions and Fixed price listings to get exposure to yourself and get customers in your store. Be sure to mention in large print To go to my Store. See my other items.  Get a shipping discount-Go look! Something to let them know they even have such a thing. Some buyers are new and don't have any idea about Stores.  You have to lead them to you.  Advertise using Keywords also. This seems to have helped my business.

5.  Keep your Feedback high by slowly but surely handling each problem.  That's why you need to build a system. I have a system for each piece of paper that comes into my hands. I file it and make notes as to what i did with that customer; Date i shipped the item etc.  Your feedback is EVERYTHING.  Give a customer a refund for ANY reason. You can resell the item and keep your customer happy. 

I hope this helps a seller trying to make the leap into Full time or Successful Ebay selling.  It's the toughest job you'll ever love as the military says! It's not FREE money but it is a viable way to support a great lifestyle. THanks for reading!