There are a lot of ways to make money online and my choice — freelance writing — is but one of them. Something that has really increased in popularity in recent years is the buying and selling of items online, particularly through an eBay store. As I’m sure you’re aware, countless “legitimate” stores have an eBay counterpart where they can cater more to an international marketplace, increasing their level of exposure and growing their customer base. There are several advantages to selling your wares (and re-selling items that you purchased in bulk / at wholesale) online versus setting up a brick-and-mortar establishment.
Just like starting any other business — online or otherwise — rookies can have a lot of trouble in the beginning, figuring out all the ins and, er, outs. When I first started this blog, I wasn’t on WordPress. I went with the free tool offered by GoDaddy (QuickBlog) and I wasn’t impressed. It took a while to figure out how to use Google Adsense and even longer to get out of the search engine’s sandbox. Thankfully, I became friends with some people who were a little more dot com savvy (you might even call them moguls), and Beyond the Rhetoric has matured and developed quite nicely. Traffic boosting contests certainly don’t hurt either.
So, getting back on topic, if you want to make money with an eBay store, you need to understand the process and get your hands on the tools of the trade. I haven’t really tried selling anything on eBay other than some used video games, and that was never for profit. It was just so that I could get my hands on some cash to spend on more video games. For the time being, I’m fairly content with working on my freelance writing business and growing this blog, but you’re not much of a writer, fret not, because there is still money to be made online.
Thankfully, for any budding online store owners, there is a free eBay selling kit that will help get you started. It comes with a bunch of useful tips and tricks that will help maximize your profits, minimize your costs, and ultimately help you make money on eBay. With this toolkit, the developers promise that your eBay business will “take off” in just 14 days. PowerSeller status awaits you. Who knows? You may achieve dot com mogul status yet.
The biggest challenge to continue your business on eBay is maintain the inventory… That takes a lot of trips to the yard sales 🙂
I can’t maintain inventory at all.
I never sell anything through eBay.. People said that have to be cautious when dealing with anyone from the african country – please, no offence. That’s what people are saying. While I would love to try my hands on doing this, for the time being too occupied with other things – winning the USB TV tuner for example 😈
And what’s the buzz on their current fees? I used to sellstuff on Ebay back in the late 90s a lot and it was easy, inexpensive, etc. I started to get all of my daughter’s used boutique clothing together to sell and the fee structure is insane now.
Koss DVD is run by some 20+ year old and does over a million a year through ebay. Not too shabby!
http://stores.ebay.com/Koss-DVD