Selling on eBay is often serious business.  It’s been estimated that over 700,000 people make either a full-time or part-time living selling on eBay.  That’s a huge number of people! It’s far different from the thought that eBay is a marketplace where people treat it as a hobby. One of the most dangerous things you could do is let suppliers make decisions for you on what products sell well and which ones do not.

Who are the suppliers?  I’m referring to the people, companies, manufacturers, drop-shippers, actually anyone, who sells you ‘stuff” to sell on eBay.

Why is this so important?

Because most of these people generally do no care whether you can make a profit or not from selling on eBay.  Once suppliers get your money, their happy. 

Let me tell you, suppliers will market to you, they will lie to you, they will make almost unbelievable promises.  In fact, suppliers will do just about anything to get you to either buy their stuff from them or put in a ton of effort to send them business.

I’ve had several bad experiences in this regard.

I’ve worked with drop shipping companies who guarantee how well their products sell only to spend countless hours peddling their items for little or no profit.  I’ve received a container full of returned department store clothes only to find that none of them sell well.  I’ve been snookered by import companies who guarantee great selling items to find all of the items of terrible quality.

But I keep learning.  There are lots of good suppliers out there.  You just need to be smart on selecting good selling products.

So, I’m sure you want to ask me, “Rob, how do I avoid this problem?  How do I know if a product will sell well on eBay?”

Do your research!  You don’t need to be a trail blazer, risking your finances and time on guessing whether a product will sell well or not.

First, if you have not already done so, register on eBay.  This is free.  http://www.ebay.com/

Second, search on COMPLETED action items. This is also free.   Here is the direct link: http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/AdvSearch?sofindtype=1&ssPageName=h:h:advsearch:US

Let’s say you’re talking to a supplier who swears that his handcrafted cookie jars would be a big hit on eBay.  But, you need to buy 100 for a really good deal?  Do you purchase the 100 cookie jars?

I would log in to my eBay account and search on completed auction items for handcrafted cookie jars or very similar terms.  Did you know there were 212 cookie jars sold recently for the search terms “hand cookie jar”?  Some never sold but the highest went for a whopping $104.00!

Remember; don’t believe anyone but yourself on whether you can make money or not selling a product on eBay.  Do your homework.  Take my experience of auctioning and selling over 50,000 items a month on eBay.  If you’re not making money on eBay selling products, you don’t have a business…you have an expensive hobby.