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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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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
Two words:
Yahoo! Auctions.
Yahoo! does not charge ANYTHING to list, sell or buy. When enough people start switching to Yahoo! auctions, it will put eBay out of business. Yahoo! ought to actually start a new site, use the same software to run it, and advertise it on television the way eBay does with their site. eBay also actually has a contest with the US Postal Service - there are actually ads in the Post Office to get people to enter an eBay contest.
Add to that the fact that PayPal (owned by eBay) charges you a fee on the TOTAL price (including shipping & handling) - you end up paying eBay TWICE.
It's time to stop paying eBay and start using services that actually make sense for the seller.
Hopefully Yahoo! will purchase StormPay or any of the other online payment services, keep the fees low there and take down the eBay behemoth.