I once owned a website called eBaymysteries.com. I owned this website before I ever even knew what the word SEO meant and I spent a lot of time teaching people the ins and outs of selling items and making money on eBay through my writing. Unfortunately- the website never made me any money (part of the reason was that I didn’t want to put in the time and part of the reason was that I knew nothing about making money on the Internet – only on eBay) so I eventually stopped working on it, but looking back, the site probably would have made me a lot of money if I would have stuck with it, maybe not as much money as if I were to stick with an eBay business – but definitely a lot more cost-effective.
Myth #1: Making a living off of eBay is easy.
Sure, if you have a couple of items around the house that you just want to get rid of and feel like making a couple of extra dollars off of on the side then eBay is definitely the best and easiest place to do so.
That being said if you are trying to start to make eBay your main source of income, then you are definitely in for a lot of work, and that doesn’t even count trying to beat out all of the competition that is out there. Dealing with one item on eBay doesn’t mean just listing it. It means listing it, wrapping it, weighing it, measuring it, shipping it out, responding to emails and questions, setting up a PayPal account, and dealing with everything else that comes in-between. When you do it on a large scale these problems get intensified exponentially.
Myth #2: Dropshipping Works Great on eBay
If you Google the term “Dropshipping” one of the websites that always ranks number 1 is DropshippingSucks.com. In fact, the headline of the website reads: “Dropshipping Sucks – and will never work on eBay!”
Dropshipping is a terrible solution for making money on the Internet. The market is flooded with competition, and even though most companies promise that they can offer you items at wholesale prices most of the time there are a whole bunch of middlemen that you will have to go through first – and the prices are truly not that low. All in all, you end up doing a whole bunch of work just to make about a dollar in profits off of each item you sell – which is not worth it at all.
So What is eBay Good for?
eBay is especially great for your local Wal-Mart and shop clearance rack items. There are a lot of items that sell poorly in some countries – yet are in high demand in other countries. For example, I found that steel propane Lanterns were heavily wanted in Thailand – and 8 lanterns that I had bought on clearance for $15.00 all sold for more than $45. All to people in Thailand!
The clearance rack is like a gold mine in some cases. However, in some cases, it is just a waste of money. The trick is to buy some tester items that you think may sell well and then always constantly be on the lookout for those items. Another example of an item that always sold really well for me is anchorites. There are all sorts of things that work great on eBay. The trick is putting in the time to be original – because most of what you read on the Internet about “how to make money on eBay” just involves signing up for something that makes other people money – not you!