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Can eBay Make You Rich?
adamlazz writes "For 11 years, eBay has been a great resource to buy or sell goods without leaving your computer. And with many stories of people getting rich exclusively from doing business on eBay, NewsFactor has decided to go in depth with these stories, and explore what it takes to really make your million on eBay. From the article: 'A tiered system designed to reward qualified sellers, the PowerSeller program is by invitation only, and has a number of criteria that must be maintained to keep the designation. At the lowest level, Bronze, a PowerSeller must average at least $1,000 in sales per month for three consecutive months; have an account in good standing; and get an overall feedback rating of 100, with at least 98 percent of the comments marked as positive.'"
A better question than "can you get rich on ebay?" is "is getting rich on ebay worth the time, boredom, and effort?". I think the answer is no, at least for me, as there are more interesting things I would rather be doing (see sig.).
Philosophy.
There are a bunch of spammers selling tons of things in various uncontextually related categories so they get the most bid. They have polluted ebay with noise, and it seems little is being done to stop them. It makes searching for some products (especially specialized ones) such a pain.
"Getting rich on ebay" is akin to "keyword spamming with listings."
There is a group that makes money legitimately. However, that group is not insanely rich.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Because we vastly overestimate the intelligence of people. Some idiot sold a million pixels on his website for a million dollars, but we sit here thinking people expect something that's, well, worth something ...
Instead, all they want is pointless, worthless crap, or space on a giant banner ad site no sane person would ever visit save out of morbid curiousity after seeing an article carried by the AP. And no, I'm not about to link to the wretched thing.
Thus, the formula appears to be:
1. Invent completely something idiotic, yet popular[*]
2. ???
3. Profit
[*] These traits are entirely too compatible. For example, take Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey...
If you're bringing in $100,000+ per month in sales, you probably should get your own site. EBay is great for the 'small-time' or 'early-stage' seller. It's a robust engine that can handle heavy traffic and activity and is reasonably secure. However, if you've got sales as high as mentioned in the article, I can't imagine how EBay could provide an adequate solution for you. If you sell big ticket items, you probably want some binding contractual arrangement. On the other hand, if you have an incredibly high volume of sales, you probably want to better cater the shopper's experience and would have an E-commerce site of your own. Not to mention the fact that you'd need some internal system (even an Access database) to track all of your sales and shipping data. Maybe EBay's API allows you to do some of these things. I'd certainly be happy to hear about anyone experiences with it.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
I used to be on ebay as a powerseller in the heydays of 1997-2001 and made a lot of money. Now, I would not touch ebay with a 12 foot clown pole. The only way you can make a profit now is if you have something that is a true collectable or very valuable or very hot. For instance, if you got your hands on 20 PS3's you could stand to make about $20,000 if you sell the day the PS3 is released. There are rich people out there for whom money is no object and you can profit off of them. The downside on ebay today is actually paypal BUYER fraud. Let's say you do manage to get your hands on 20 PS3's and put them up for $1,500 each. You will get buyers who are legitimate and very rich. You will also get a lot of scam artists who will use paypal to try and defraud you. All the buyer has to do is say "not as described" and paypal will hold the money till they investigate fully (read actually do nothing till YOU send them proof--guilty until proven innocent). Catch 22, if you don't accept paypal, then you can't protect yourself from dummy bids (someone using a zero or low fb id, bidding a rediculous amount or just simply "buy it now"-ing all of your auctions. Also, since you don't accept paypal it actually makes you look shady! Plus the public has gotten used to paying for everything immediately and if anything the people on ebay have gotten worse and worse over the years. Make a million on ebay? Sure, no problem. Take home a million profit? No way.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
It seems to me that some of these people that do have a high volume of sales do have e-commerce sites, but use eBay as really cheap advertisement. Most regular people look to eBay as one of the first sources when they buy stuff. If the actual sale amount is cheap, then the percentage cut eBay takes isn't much, and the listing fees are constant if you do a high enough volume, which amounts to have much reduced cost of hosting, advertising, developing, and you reach a huge audience.
A big eBay seller opening their own independent site could be the death of them. eBay is like the super mall, it brings in a whackload of potential customers and everyone's marketing efforts sort-of cooperate in that environment. i.e. if your competitor's ad brings in people to the mall, they will also see your store and maybe you'll get a sale too, for "free". Just as if someone's looking at one eBayer's item list, then glances down at the "related items" table they might come across one of your sales.
The prime difference when it comes to eBay, and the one that makes it horribly dangerous, is that very same easy access to other shops. There is ZERO customer loyalty on eBay, people just check your feedback once they have already found what they want. You could be selling some doodad at the same price as a competitor, but that other fellow may charge a dollar less for shipping and you've just lost the sale. People come to the real mall with a specific store in mind, then walk around the rest to see if there's anything else they want. People come to ebay with a specific product in mind, and they will compare everyone's offerings to get the best deal. It's the Walmart effect, automated and unsupervised.
-Billco, Fnarg.com