Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
If you have enough of something people want at the right price then why couldn't you get rich selling things on EBay? It's not really any different then selling things in a shop or through your own website.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
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.
I'm sure the creator(s) of ebay are probably fairly well off.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
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.
If anything goes wrong for an Ebay transaction and you can't settle it with the seller, you may be out of pocket for at least the cost of providing 3rd party "impartial" proof on a company letterhead that there is indeed something wrong with the item you received, and if you're outside the US, you may to have to fax it at your expense to the US. On a low value transaction, it just isn't worth it and you're not going to get your money back...and this is if you pay by Paypal. One thing though. If you pay by credit card and you return the item if its not as described (again at your own cost) you might be able to get your credit card company to issue a chargeback.
Now, the only reason that a seller can't sell 100 low value items, then ship turnips instead is that it'd affect their feedback score.
I use to buy lots on Ebay until I had a problem with a low value transaction. I'm not planning to use Ebay again.
I'm posting anonymously because even though what I am saying is true, I wouldn't want Ebay or Paypal to initiate legal action as prooving that I hadn't slandered them would cost a mint.
Haven't you seen the infomercial? That guy's made millions! And it couldn't be on an infomercial if it weren't true, right?
Maybe not
"Gimme $2000 or I drop your posative feedback below 98%!"
What's to stop someone from using cheap chinese labour from making thousands of bogus accounts just for blackmailing ebayers?
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...
Realy, I learned a lot about the value of things by selling on Ebay!
Sell something realy good and expensive - nobody will bid.
Sell the contents of your wastebasket - undreamed of profit!
Tiered sales .... um, hint #1. Invitation only, hint #2. Minimum sell to achieve "privileged" status ...hm.
Can't I just buy the box of soap and go home?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
My friends mum does quite well for herself on ebay. She buys clothing from op shops and sells them on ebay for higher prices, usually ironing/washing and restoring the clothes herself if needed. She makes at least a few hundred a month, cant really remember how much, but she does very good for herself for a mother of 5 kids.
As is the case with any flea market, there are going to be people who think like 'businesspeople' and make loads of money from the operation. But for the rest of us it's a good place to exchange cool stuff with each other easily and with less hassle than in many other markets or forums.
The trick is to figure out who the 'hustlers' are so they can be avoided like pariahs. eBay can and is a peer-to-peer environment for many of us. I get cool older/odd/unobtainable tech there and don't regret participating in the least.
Anyway, most of the 'hustle' people are similar to the same sort of people at the flea market. Their 'booths' suck.
I used to sell on ebay, as a full time business. In antiques, collectibles, and later on, pick ups at auctions.
While this article alerts the viewer to the hard work necessary to get a profit, I feel the title alone makes people think it's more promising than other ventures. I say no.
For me, ebay was booming goldmine from 1997-2001 for items in the mainly sub-$500 range. Back then, I generally got the prices I wanted for many items and once in a while something skyrocketed in price beyond my dreams. In fact, many items I could not sell locally for years found an interest buyer on ebay. About 75-85% of what I listed sold. Better yet, people emailed me after auctions to make offers and I often sold another 5-10% on the remaining 15-25% or so. Ebay fees were also reasonable. The one downside was the shipping. Many people don't realize it the time it takes to package 5-10 items and ship them off (my items were fragile) including filling out insurance/delivery confirmation tags by hand. It take a good chunk out of your day. Also, as paypal was not the norm back then, cashing checks or money orders took quite a bit of time. Remember, I was a mom and pop operation, I could not automate these processes beyond a certain point.
To make a long story short, what happened?
1. After this period, ebay has clamped down. Every single fee has been raised, doubled, tripled, or more in price. Items that used to cost 50 cents to simply list now cost over $2.00 to list in some cases. More and more pay-for "options" were added, which wouldn't be so bad but they had the effect of making competition stand out more - so on one level with seller's it became a cold-war style game on who could outspend each other. The "gallery option" of a small thumbnail (which is almost ubiquitous in some categories) added (now) $.35 cents PER auction.
2. This all sounds like chumpchange, but my ratio of auctions sold went down, over time, to 25-40% selling rate. Worse yet, I hardly get after auction offers, as ebay clamped down on emailing members outside the control of their system a few years back. Also, the prices I had to accept were declining and going below what I actually could get locally for them. The fees started killing me. The profit margin was killing me. The shipping was killing me (if you ever see a guy with cheap prices on ebay but expensive shipping, that's because shipping is his profit margin, ebay doesn't collect fees/shipping off of that besides Paypal).
3. Everybody pays now with paypal. It is great and convenient but another expense.
4. The downswing in sales had several causes. One of which is because of ebay's success as a marketplace, every started selling there. While the amount of sellers went up exponentially by my estimate since 2000, the amount of buyers went up only linearly, creating a glut in that market. By looking at certain listings, it also is apparent to me that many must be or take sellers that work under minimum wage of the US. Some of that is because they are foreign sellers. It's fine that they sell, but I can't compete at their undercut prices - just a fact of life. They don't have the expenses I do. It's ebay's form of outsourcing.
I know other companies that had an ebay branch that have been losing money for years by creating too many listings, dazzled by revenue, but not checking all the expenses or just hoping to "build an audience" until they become profitable (customer loyalty is not strong here if prices differ more than a few percent). One such colleague just stopped after posting over 200 auctions daily for the last 7 years in addition to his regular business (he has workers, not that he sat there posting himself). After all this time, he ran the numbers and just noticed it did not make sense. After paying his workers, he was actually losing money. (The reason he never caught this was that the workers were considered as a expense on the whole company before, not that branch - he didn't seperate expenses). He just quit
Prices are very low on ebay. For someone selling stuff on an auction site you never know how much you are going to make on an item. But you can be sure of one thing. Ebay will make more on that sale than you will.
I ordered a 2 gig "SD" flash memory card from a Hong Kong vendor. The price for the card was $47.95 (au) ... the transaction appeared to me as $49.95 INCLUDING postage. I clicked "buy". It became apparent after accepting the transaction that the card was $47.95 and the POSTAGE was $49.95 on top. A total of $97.90. The postage was excessive considering the price of the article and I questioned the vendor by email. The only response that I received (multiple times) was "You bid - now you must pay - thanks" repeatedly. I advised Ebay about the vendor and the fact that they were breaking Ebay rules by using "Excessive Postage".
I even advised the vendor that i would engage DHL worldwide couriers and pay for shipping costs myself. The vendor responded as per above "You bid - now you must pay - thanks".
No resolution was reached.
See an explanation here.
Also, eBay makes UK users fill out an anti-money-laundering form and performs an additional verification once a paypal account receives £4500 (US$8300). This probably goes into the UK Gov anti money laundering and terrorist profiling systems.
Most IT folks who run home businesses should structure them carefully, because they could be subject to higher rate tax of 40% on profits plus 17.5% VAT. If you setup your ebay/paypal account as a limited company then you will only pay 25% tax and VAT can be paid as an offset percentage (agree with tax man) between 9 and 17.5%.
rd
Why this focus on a few people getting rich? In general, the economic benefit of the internet is spread across many people. Customers that have a slightly cheaper alternative one click away. Suppliers that gain access to markets that they could not access effectively otherwise. The overall effect on the economy is enourmous but only a few people are getting really rich.
How many are making a decent living off eBay sales? How many people's lives have been transformed by the ability to give up their day job and do what they like while getting paid for it?
For example this artist who left her job as a web designer nad is now making lampwork glass beads and selling them on eBat.
Disclaimer: I know her personally and this is a bit of promotion - but I think it's a valid example because it would be difficult for someone living in a remote place to have this kind of access to the markets that appreciate her art without eBay.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Short Answer: No
Long Answer: No, it can't make you rich.
games journalism blog
It was a good business and a good extra income, I sold old items and collectibles that I managed to buy in Portugal for what I believe the stuff ws 'really' worth and then sold it on ebay where I coud get a good profit. The main things that made me quit Ebay were
1) The raise of Euro - When the US Dollar was high it was VERY profitable to sell stuff on the US not only did I made some profit from the Item but the dollar value was good for me.
2) The raise of fees by Ebay.
3) PayPal - more and more peolple want to pay with paypal, and that eats profits BAD.
4) The decline of the market.
I do believe you can get rich by using ebay but, if you live in acountry where the 'money is cheap compare to USD' youll get much better quicker
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.).
It depends on what your goal is. I don't think you can get as rich as Bill Gates is by dealing on Ebay but you I know a few people who earn a living selling merchandize on sites like Ebay. If you happen to have a small corner shop that sells, say sports goods, photographers supples, new or used books etc.. you can supplement the income from your store, especially if you specialize in a niche market and cater to hobbyists or people who practice sports that are not quite as massively popular as foot ball or basketball and for which you cannot get supplies in your neighborhood sports outlet. Another new fad is used car dealers who make use of favorable exchange rates to buy used cars via Ebay but that is something you have to be very careful with since it is easy to get burned. Dealing on via an intermediary like Ebay or Amazon helps because they get a lot of traffic and because there is greater trust than if you are selling your merchandize through a badly designed homecooked website. Even so, Ebay wouldn't always be my first choice if I had to make my living selling stuff online.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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's getting harder and harder to find a genuine used bargain on eBay, because of all the rich idiots competing against each other to give the seller more and more money. Time after time, I see people getting sucked into paying more for a used item than its new price. Just last week, I bid £5 on a "used" item, only to watch the price rise to £68 by the close of auction - for an item that can be purchased new with a full warranty and returns service from an online retailer for £11. Astonishing, but common.
There are demonstrably people out there who can't or won't google for items before bidding silly money on them, which means that they're unlikely to check your selling history either to see that you've sold a hundred identical "used but unopened, unwanted presents". That seems to be the trick; pitch your "used" item as a bargain, then watch the idiots spend more than they would on a "new" item, apparently convinced that all the other idiots bidding against them must know what they're doing.
The only thing that keeps me coming back to eBay now is the opportunity to message the winning bidders in these auctions with links to where they can buy the same item new for less, often much, much less. Curiously, I've yet to receive a response to these helpful messages that's not a variant on "FCUK OFFF!!!!!!!eleven!!!!"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Maybe if you buy stock in UPS or FEDEX, because they look like they are making a killing.
$19 to ship a saw blade? Are you fucking kidding me? (and yup, that's from a power seller)
Before the apologists chime in saying "OMG GAS IS SOO MUCH AND I HAVE TO PAY FOR PACKING MATERIAL AND THAT IS WHY SHIPPING IS $12 FOR SOMETHING THAT WEIGHS 1 POUND" - USPS will provide (and even deliver) free boxes, packing material, tape (ok, no tape anymore, people sort of abused it, but then again, they did send you 24 rolls at a time) and will pick up your packages from your doorstep if you ship priority mail. A one rate envelope ships cross country for under 4 bucks.
You can't defend abusive shipping or handling costs. I'm surprised that ebay hasn't made a serious effort to get rid of these sellers, but that's probably because they make enough on paypal fees to make up for what they don't get in listing and closing fees.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
You can get ripped off very easily with them, they are nearly impossible to track, and the best the banks can usually do is tell the remitter when they've been cashed. That's it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
in the real 'beginning' feedback was not transactional.
I have a collection hobby, and I actively pursued ebay for more items of my hobby
when I saw weak or less than informative listings in their infancy I'd write the sellers, correct the name or spelling or whatever I knew about the piece to help the seller do a little better.. I have two feedbacks in my history that have no item #-- just sellers who bounced a thank you...
'course, my motivation was- folks who wanted the same series of toys would have less cash for the ones where I didn't help the sellers out....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I don't understand the rating system on eBay. But I now understand why it works the way it works. You can't really give other than positive feedback. If you try you risk getting slammed by sellers. I saw someone complaining that he got the things he bought in a flimsy envelope that just barely kept together during transport. So the poor sod gave a neutral feedback - to be slammed with a negative by the seller backed by the community when complaining. If one can't give anything but positive feedback without risking one's reputation on eBay - the system is flawed. But now I understand the mechanisms.
I hear a lot of sellers and buyers saying that eBay isn't what it once was, and that it's too easy to get screwed on either side of the transaction.
So, I ask you former eBay merchants: where have you moved to?
And where are you finding bargains as buyers?
-Rich
"And yet I noticed no mention of this 'wonder product', nor even a link to your business in your profile."
:)
;)
LOL, and I see even less about you than that, since you are Anonymous Coward.
No "wonder product" for me, the portion you quoted was simply the distillation of what I've learned, not a singular description of how I'm doing it at the moment. By "a good product to sell", I mean not the modly clothes out of your basement (even if they *DO* still have the tags on them, LOL), no product in particular (at least for me).
As to what products I sell personally, I started with stuff I already had. I've been moving dozens of boxes around since college and finally cleaned them out - from MIB action figures to vintage books, anything I didn't really want any more I got rid of. Then once I started learning how eBay "worked" by exhausting that supply, I looked for products that weren't already deluged with sellers (i.e., don't start trying to sell cell phone accessories...), or that were especially good bargains at retail and resold them.
For instance, I'll go to Ciruit City and find some video game accessory inexplicably marked down to a ridiculous price (like $2.99 for a game shark-type device), and resell it for $20-50 on eBay (many sales like that are reigonal, or when an item is stopping being manufactured, so people in other locations that are already sold out or never had the sale push demand). I go to Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples, stores like that every week or two anyway, so I was already seeing these types of bargains (it's not something I go out intentionally to do).
Lately I've found reselling DVDs, especially to non-US buyers, to be extremely profitable. Multi-standard DVD players and TV's are much more common in other countries, and they have to pay local importer specialty shops tons to get NTSC, or Reigion 1, exclusive titles (especially certain genres of boxed set). They pay huge premiums for the service (sometimes double to triple what they can pay to have it shipped and pay the duties themselves). They'd rather buy off of eBay, especially since places like Amazon won't ship non-reigion local DVDs to them.
Now, if you go to sell a title there are already 36 copies of out there for buy-it-now's of $8.88, then no, you won't make any cash. So it's not fool-proof, you have to actually figure out what is rare, accquire the product here (new or used), and get it up there. And by maintaining a simple list out there via free web hosting, I was able to list the titles available and take direct orders once the eBay contact was made.
That's just one example. One I'm sharing because I've started selling something totally different in the past week or two and I'm winding down with the DVDs for now, I think. That new one I won't share - have to keep some secrets.
It's funny, because I would never define myself as someone who makes a "living" off of eBay, until I read this article and actually realized it's really what is happening. I left my last job expecting to at least take the summer off and wholly live off of my savings, but each week I found myself being able to get by just with eBay. I don't expect it to last forever, and I have no designs of becoming a "power seller", but at the moment it's working for me.
AE