I'd like to make a little bit of money selling on eBay. What should I sell, and where can I find a distributor

Question

I don't want to do the garage sale thing, and I have a vendor's license so I can open official accounts

Answer 1

usually, buying and selling doesnt work so well on ebay. There are a lot of "get rich quick" schemes on ebay and everyone seems to be trying them. Your best bet on ebay is to either have rare items or to be able to produce an item that is "in demand". I have had some success with making t-shirts, buttons, cd's and the like. In order to find success using the distributor and seller method, you need to find an item that is very hard to find, or hard to find in some regions. The same is true on eBay as in life... if it's too good to be true, it probably is... eBay has created a market of "under-value". Usually items sell for way below cost, making it difficult for sellers to "buy and sell". On the bright side, ebay also has has a huge market of sellers who sell items in "lot" form. A good rule on eBay is the more you buy, the better the deal you get. It is possible to generate a little revenue by buying lots (of merchandise) on ebay and flipping them for immediate profit. But... you have to remember that customers are shopping eBay for bargains, not for a retail price. Also, most sellers dont factor in the cost of eBay fees. As with any business, you need to create a realistic game plan for your businsess and then find the cheapest route to execute that gameplan. It is usually not as simple as joining an "as seen on tv" infomericial and raking in rediculous amounts of revenue...

Answer 2

You seem to be open to selling just about any product, so I would find out what items sell the most often. You can contact ebay and see if they will give you some sort of statistical information about products that do well. If they don't have the information, or won't give it to you, looking at sellers information may give you some idea. You can look at how often feedback is left as a good indicator of their sales. New jewelry for example, is a fairly hot selling item. You should be somewhat comfortable and knowledgeable about the items you sell so that your pages on ebay will reflect it. If you don't know about something, it will show and people may be leery of purchasing from you.

Finding a distributor is another adventure altogether, isn't it? It really depends upon what you want to sell, but it is basically no different than finding a distributor for stocking a retail store. Finding a distributor is important and is a huge piece of your puzzle, but I would decide on a worthy product line first.

Answer 3

I agree with some of the responders. Trying to do an ebay wholesaler deal is pretty hit and miss at best. I have yet to find any wholesalers whose prices were even remotely suitable for ebay.

I have dabbled on ebay for several years but it has been with big ticket items that I pick up at auctions for pennies on the dollar. Without doing the "garage sale" thing you are going to be competing with too many other wholesale hopefuls. Whatever you choose make sure you research the "completed sales" in ebay's advanced search option. You will quickly see that most listed items go unsold.

Answer 4

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html ---is an excellent page to review first. It tells you what categories and/or products are hot sellers. This is a monthly update from e-Bay.
A number of other sites including Yahoo are viable auction sites.
To find the distributors even e-Bay site has much information. A number of wholesalers including overstock.com and many others sell to the distributors who sell on e-Bay.

Good luck

Answer 5

Computer Accessories are always a popular seller. With your vendor's license you can establish an account with a reputable wholesale/Dropship supplier.

Answer 6

You should check out Amazon. You can buy and sell on there site. There are lots of low price items on its site also. Overstock.com has lots of bulk items for low prices. Woot.com is another with low prices on its site although there is one item everyday and you can only get 3 but the prices are super low too.

Answer 7

Eventually I will stop being amazed at the cosmic stupidity of people who think successful sellers will give their inventory sources away free to some dipshit too lazy to do his own research. But not yet.