Make Money From eBay

Anyone – yes, anyone – who is serious about making money online should know about eBay, the darling stock of the dot.com boom earlier this decade.

eBay is one of the very, very few online businesses that weathered the dot.com crash. You can guess why – as its CEO Meg Whitman puts it – eBay is “transforming the way in which e-commerce is being conducted”. And eBay has gone from strength to strength since it acquired Paypal, the world’s largest online payment services company.

Can you make money by selling on eBay? The short answer is YES, without a doubt! I have used eBay to make at least $1,500 profit every month over the last 9 months. And I know for a fact that many people earn more than that. For selling online, eBay stands out from the crowd for 3 reasons:

• Its aim is to make selling easy for you – ordinary people like you and I can sell to as big an audience as the Marks & Spencer, Walmart and John Lewis of today;
  
• Other than the main search engines (i.e. Google and Yahoo), eBay attracts more traffic every day than any other website. Yes, Ebay reaches out to more people than any newspaper and/or television company in the world;
  
• 95% of the users of Google/Yahoo still use them for one simple purpose – surfing the internet. However, with eBay, it’s quite the opposite. 95% of people who use eBay are doing so with the intention of spending money online. You can make money from eBay precisely because of that quality traffic it generates;

How can you make money from eBay?

There are many ways of making money on eBay. Don’t forget that eBay is like a shopping mall, a marketplace. So all the fundamental rules of demand and supply, pricing, economics, business and plain simple logic apply! Essentially, it boils down to buying low and selling high, like traders do in all walks of life.

If I am not convincing you, then please follow the link below to “This is Money” website where it states that 70,000 people in the UK alone now earn a 2nd income on Ebay.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money-savers/article.html?in_article_id=406867&in_page_id=5

Here are various ways of making money on eBay. They are NOT exhaustive and I am sure that many people use other techniques. Also, you need to choose the technique that suits YOUR skills and lifestyle the best:

• Searching for misspelt items deliberately, buying them cheap and selling them at a higher price after spelling them correctly;
  
• Buying an item, then improving its listing and photo displayed, and reselling at a higher price;
  
• Sourcing an item that can be bought cheap in your area (e.g. in your local newspapers, at an antique fair, or in a developing country) and then selling on eBay;
  
• Buying in bulk from wholesalers and retailing on eBay;
  
• Buying and selling ebooks;

Personally, I make money on eBay selling ebooks. The beauty of an ebook is that it is not like a normal item. If you want to sell, say, mobile phones, you can only sell as many as what you have in stock. Whereas with an ebook, you can sell as many as the number of buyers prepared to pay for it. All you need to do is email the buyer the ebook once you have received payment.

For instance, I could have easily written all my blogs in an ebook, put a copyright on it, and listed the ebook on eBay for $10. With a catching title, subtitle and picture, I would sell about 4 copies every day. And if I sell 15 varieties of ebooks, I would easily make $1,500 profit every month.

However, you also need to be aware of the following pitfalls:

• eBay is only as good as how well you use it. If you do not master the listing techniques and, remember, apply the fundamental rules of economics, you WILL FAIL;
  
• eBay is expensive. It charges you a listing fee and a final value fee of 5.25% of the price you sold your item at. On top of that, Paypal, the online payment services company owned and used by eBay, charges 3.4% of the price you sold your item at. This means that at least 10% of the price you achieve will be paid to Ebay or Paypal. So if you are selling a low-margin item, this will get very risky;
  
• Both eBay and Paypal are trusted brands. Therefore, they invest heavily in ensuring trust and safety on their sites. They can – and will – punish any users who fail to comply with their listing rules and Acceptable Usage Policies. These policies can be onerous so I strongly urge you to familiarise yourself with them. Punishments from eBay/Paypal will range from removal of listings, temporary selling restrictions to outright suspension and lifelong bar for serious and/or persistent violations;
  
• Irritatingly, eBay and Paypal can sanction you even if you have not done anything wrong! You may feel that you have done nothing wrong, or more commonly, have been operating in a “grey area”, but for them, everything has to be black or white. If they do not see it your way, they will sanction you unilaterally and you will not be able to do anything about it.

Summary assessment:

Typical monthly earnings	$300-$10,000, depending on how well you use it. Ebay is very open-ended in this aspect.
Get rich quick?	Maybe, if you are generating $10,000 a month. But I think you should use it as a hobby to generate a 2nd income to start with.
Decent 2nd income?	Yes, easily.
All from home online?	Yes. But you may have to use the post for accepting checks, collecting recorded items and go to the bank to cash your checks.
Legal and ethical?	Yes, and it should remain so. If you fiddle the rules, you WILL be caught by eBay / Paypal. Remember that they invest millions in enforcing their rules!
Ongoing effort required?	I spend about 1.5 hours a day – 7 days a week
Initial cash investment required?	Variable – although I would recommend that you have about $300 of working capital to start with to cover your eBay fees. You may not use this at all if items sell fast and your buyers pay on time;
Initial time required to set up?	Max. 3 hours – but you will learn new things as you carry on selling

My Recommendation

I recommend that you try eBay if you are serious about making money online. Set yourself a budget, and start slowly. Do not act big at the outset. In order to maximise your chances of doing well on eBay, I recommend that you get yourself one of the following books. If anything, you should try eBay just for the eBay experience. How would you feel if/when you hear that people like yourself are earning extra cash every week on eBay and you aren’t? I have carefully vetted all these books and handpicked them from a list of over 200 ebooks on eBay.

• Wholesale Directory and Resources – for those of you who want to buy in bulk and retail on eBay. Even better, this book shows you how to “dropship”, i.e. sell on eBay first and then buy at a lower price and let the wholesaler deliver the item to your buyer. So you do not keep any inventory! Well worth the price and one of the best-selling ebooks around on eBay. Suitable for people all over the world;
  
• The Silent Sales Machine Hiding On eBay – a best-seller detailing many different techniques of making money on eBay. It’s only after reading THIS EBOOK THAT I SIGNED ON TO EBAY AND STARTED MAKING MONEY FROM IT.
  
• Make up to $11,212 a month on eBay – whilst I did not make anywhere near that amount, there is a lot of practical advice here on how to grow your sales. Useful when you have already acquired some experience on eBay.
  
• eBay Hidden Sales Engine – a very good ebook at a very reasonable price. Useful start if you are still wary about the whole thing – or are wary of spending too much money. It explains the various techniques of making money on eBay quite well;
  
• eBay Marketing Ebooks – that is the technique I use to make money on eBay. A must-read before you start selling Ebooks. Also at a very reasonable price.

The Truth Behind Make Money Schemes Online

Welcome to my blog, a comprehensive and objective review of “Make Money” Schemes currently available on the Internet. Its aim is to provide people with an unbiased, well-researched and thoughtful opinion of the various money-making schemes currently available online.

I have spent over 2 years researching and experimenting with the various online make-money schemes and would like to offer my views on them to anyone who is considering spending time and money on them. I have spent over $2000 buying such info on the Internet and spent over 2,000 hours of my evenings and weekends putting them into practice, all with mixed results.

So are you interested in making some money online? And you are not sure whether the scheme(s) you are interested in are scams or genuine? If this is so, then you’ve come to the right place.

Here, you will find

• What each of the schemes marketed entail – and yes, this includes information that they do not tell you about. Where it’s useless, you will be told it’s useless;
  
  
• How much effort investment, in both time and money, does each scheme involve – let’s face it. All schemes will NOT fit everyone’s skills, lifestyle and financial goals. Some require 30 hours of work a week, some only 3 hours a week;
  
  
• What are the realistic earnings for the new, inexperienced starter;
  
  
• Other people’s assessments of the various schemes and their comments on the opinions given (see “Forum” section). If you are moved to comment on a particular scheme or share your ideas, feel free to use the Forum.
  
  
• Some schemes that I have carefully selected as “best in class” for that category, having purchased, used and assessed dozens of schemes in most of them. If you feel that this particular scheme suits YOU (and only YOU can decide that), click on the link provided to read more about and purchase; Where I have not provided any “best in class” link (i.e. under the Sex category), it means that I do NOT recommend any products in that category;

Remember though, only YOU can decide whether a scheme is for you. If you make a wrong decision, you WILL LOSE SOME MONEY AND EFFORT. If this site lets you make a more informed decision, then it’s been worth your effort and my effort.

About Me

My name is Ashwin. I am 30 years old and live in London, United Kingdom. I graduated in economics from Cambridge University and went on to qualify as a chartered accountant. Today, I still have a day job as a Senior Financial Analyst in a major Oil & Gas company and have previously held various blue-chip positions.

Why do I hold on to my day job? There are 2 reasons for this:

• Money does not buy everything in life. I think that most people would not be as happy as they think if they landed a large sum of money or a regular income for nothing. Career prospects, job profile, intellectual challenge and fun also do matter in life at all levels.
  
  
• It’s not worth risking everything on internet income. Remember the dotcom crash in 2000-01? Whilst unlikely, such an event may always occur. And I would extend this advice to YOU too. Do not substitute any money-making schemes for the more traditional ways of achieving any financial goals. Work harder, cut down on spending, refinance your debts. Treat internet income as a bonus – don’t rely on it to pay your rent or your mortgage!
  
  

Is there money to be made on the Internet?

The short answer is YES. There are no “ifs” or “buts”. There are thousands of people out there making money online. Just consider the following factors to reinforce this view:

• Google today is worth over $140 billion. And most of its revenue comes from internet advertising;
  
  
• “…the vast roll-out of broadband, which they claim has finally made the age-old promise of the internet - fast, cheap, universal connections - a reality.
  
  
• Online retailers are now seen as retailers, not as 'dotcoms'. And a new range of businesses selling downloadable products and services is taking off.” (http://www.thisismoney.com/, 8 November 2006);
  
  
• People are now more accustomed to the idea of paying with their credit/debit card online. This is due to several reasons:
  - The growth of card payments as a replacement for cash and check;
  
  - The growth of Payment Services Companies such as Paypal, Nochex that go at lengths to keep your card details safe;
  
  - Better fraud prevention and fraud detection techniques online. Did you know that it is safer to pay online with your card than to hand your card to a waiter in a restaurant who then goes away and swipes it? You are more exposed to fraud in that restaurant – FACT!

However, if there is one lesson that I want you to take away from this website, it is the following:

You will come across many, many schemes where people claim to be making thousands of dollars every day using their particular techniques. And they propose to share these techniques with you for, say, $30. The realities are that:

• It’s true, they do earn thousands of dollars every day as evidenced by their scanned copies of bank or Paypal statements;
  
  
• Their technique is actually useless – they make these thousands from selling the information to people like YOU AND I!!!!
  

You need to be really, really careful of such schemes. This is the hidden fact that they never tell you. And why should they? They would be out of business otherwise.

I am currently in the process of writing my reviews on the following. The links I have put on to some keywords are for illustration only and I would urge you not to buy any of these products until you have read my reviews in the other blogs I have under http://ecashmint.blogspot.com

• Paid surveys;
• eBay;
• Google Adwords and Clickbank;
• Football;
• Stockmarket;
• Miscellaneous "Get Rich Quick" schemes;

I look forward to your comments on my reviews too.

Another blog that, in my view, has a wealth of information on these matters is http://newbieprofitschool.blogspot.com/


Please feel free to email me at pinoop411@gmail.com

Thanks!