Is eBay the Promised Land?

johnny.shz asks: "Even the politicians were claiming: millions of people are making a living off eBay. eBay does have millions of people selling at any given time, but how many are actually making a living? I've sold many things on eBay, mostly junk. My feeling is that I'm making eBay richer (all fees plus PayPal account about 10%), but certainly not myself. Despite all the hoopla of the new promised land, I don't see the promise on eBay. How many of you are making a living off eBay? How many of you actually know someone who does?"

Comments

Yes, but usually not the individual.

[Rolan]

There are certainly people making a living off of eBay. They aren't your general user (like you). I'm curious where you read the politicians claiming "millions."

The people making a living off eBay are the small business owners that may (or may not) have a storefront in some town with limited exposure. They setup an eBay store, or list a most of their items on eBay for sale and make additional sales from stock they already had. They adjust their prices to compensate for the fees of doing business (which may very well be cheaper). They're generally able to avoid dealing with taxes (unless you're in their state), they don't have to deal with the overhead of store rent, electricity, etc that a physical store incurs.

If I were so inclined, I'm sure I could setup a business in my house that sells purely online/through eBay and be able to make a better profit than a standard storefront, simply due to the considerable difference in overhead. However, I'm not interested in owning that kind of business.

Craigslist

[winthrop]

The real promised land is Craigslist.

If you live in a city with lots of rich people, they just throw good stuff away. I've got a washer/dryer, clothes, guitar, rugs, furniture, most free, some low-cost. A penny saved is a penny earned.

In olden times, using internet chronology

[alexjohns]

There were people who used to do this. Back in '98 or so, there were quite a few people who would haunt flea markets and yard/garage sales, buy anything and everything they thought they could resell and hawk it on ebay. I know I read more than one story about these 'entrepeneurs'.

Eventually, the masses figured out they could do the same thing and supplement their income. All of a sudden, things were a lot scarcer at the junk sales. There were all kinds of articles about the lot of the poor ebay entrepeneur.

I'm sure there are still a few people making a living off of ebay, but I seriously doubt it's 'millions'.

Not a living, but making Earth more livable

[computersareevil]

I'm certainly not making any real money on eBay, but I can't tell you how much better it feels to ship some piece of junk to somebody who want it, rather than dumping it in the trash can.

eBay may not be the "promised land", but it certainly is improving the land by being the best recycling tool ever invented.

Re:Be very careful on eBay due to shill bidding

[winkydink]

If you're doing a high volume of transactions, the costs associated with "selling" to all those winning shill bidders will take a significant bite out of your margins.

I've been selling casually on eBay since '98 and have never engaged in shill bidding. Only once have I been disappointed with the final selling price of a "big-ticket" item.

Promised Land

[turgid]

It's where they promised to send me something, and it never turned up.

50% of my ebay transactions have resulted in the loss of my time and money. I don't use ebay any more.