Small Business Ideas – Quick Cash on eBay
Selling on eBay is a very rewarding job, because it utilizes very few resources on the side of human input and can, if done properly, develop into a full-fledged online business which generates enough money for a full-time income and eventually even pay some employees to do the work for you. eBay is such a hyped and such a successful business possibility because it just works: It is not an obscure technique which depends on some mysterious knowledge and technology, it is plain old buying and selling, and this is why an eBay home business is not subject to trend changes like some other internet businesses are (think Twitter, Facebook, and so on; if ever they become uninteresting, as MySpace did, nobody is going to make money off them anymore, even though for the moment they seem quite popular). The important thing to remember is that it is an easy way of making money if you are willing to put in the effort that is needed. As with any other business scheme, it doesn’t work if you are not ready to make the commitment and do the work, and it won’t make you a million in a month either, so be prepared to work for some time until you see real results, meaning until you can quit your day job.
Let’s just use an example of what is typically possible as an income in a short time on eBay. As you may know, you have to buy the items you want to sell somewhere at a good price in bulk, these companies are called “wholesale” companies, and then you sell the individual items again on eBay at a higher price (hopefully) which will make you a profit. This profit is the difference between the price per item that you paid and the price you sold for. Different product categories give you different margins, i.e. the range between these two prices is of different size with different sorts of products. If you sell toothbrushes, you may be able to get only 10% more than you paid for them, but if you sell electronic devices, your margin may easily be 20% to 30%. Of course toothbrush selling requires less start budget, but you won’t make as much money as fast as if you sold more pricey items. So let’s say you started with a budget of $2500 and you decide to sell cell phones.
- Start budget: $2500
- Bulk price for 10 cellphones at a random wholesale company: $2000($200 per product)
- Average price on eBay for that particular cellphone: $220
If you sold all ten cellphones in 10 days (which is the longest possible duration of an auction on eBay and you got, as an average $220 for each one (some paying $240, others only $210) you would have made a total of 10 times $220 = $2200. That is $200 gained on your operation, a profit of 10%. This 10% could be reinvested into new cellphones (maybe the same model, maybe others) and would help you make more profit, which adds up to more money and more capital to reinvest. At first your profit would grow slowly and certainly you might make some mistakes initially and loose some money in the process of learning how to present a product well on eBay, but after some time you should be good to go and your overall profit should allow you to make some mistakes sometimes (which everybody does). Now 10% of $2000 is “only” $200. But imagine if you put in $20,000 at 10% profit: This would already be $2000 profit in only 10 days! Of course it would also be more work, but assuming that you sell the same kind of product many times, you will only have to make small adjustments and you can sell 100 items of the same model at the same time with only one auction to setup, which isn’t that much work, really. Later on you might employ somebody to do the dirty work for you and pay that person a salary if you don’t want to work yourself.
As you see, eBay is quite a good internet home business to startbecause it doesn’t require you to take any courses or something, you only have to be patient and do the work, and slowly the money will come in. If you have some money on a savings account, you could try doing this. Even starting with only $2000 can give you a good start on eBay, as I already pointed out, you don’t need millions for this, so why don’t you try?
If you look for a good starting point which gives you information about this process of setting up your business, you should visit “How To Sell on eBay”, they have a quite extensive list of dropshipping resourcesand good information about some eBay secrets, too.
