How to Find Products For Your eBay Business

If you are looking for a business opportunity why not consider an eBay store. You get a ready made shop front and all your advertising for only a few percent of your turnover. All you have to do is find something to sell. Seems like an ideal business to start. Finding a few products to sell on eBay is easy. Finding lots of products to keep selling over and over again is much more difficult. At the start, I hunted through my house and garage for items to sell and I am sure you have done the same. Then you will have listed them on eBay to make a bit of money. It is great fun and watching the end of an auction can be exciting. However, we are hoping to set up more than just a hobby business. It might only ever amount to a part time income or it may replace your day job. Either way, you are going to have to source a reliable ongoing supplier of whatever products you want to sell. So deciding what you want to sell is the first and biggest challenge.

Firstly I wanted to see if I could find items that could be processed easily for sending out by mail. I did not want to pack and cart bulky items to the post office in the next town several times a week, fighting with cardboard and tape. I wanted to slip the item into a small envelope, apply a pre-determined postage stamp and address sticker and pop them in the post box at the end of the road. Then I worked out if I could get say fifteen to twenty sales every day bringing a gross profit of about $10 each, I would make $50,000 every year. What could I sell that was small, neat, obtainable and was capable of generating $10 every sale? You can see how difficult it is! I tried a number of different products. First I looked at comics and graphic novels. They can be conveniently packed, and carrying a pile of twenty or so every day down to the post would be quick and easy. If I could find a regular source of rare comics I could get the level of profits, otherwise buying from a dealer would give too low a margin. So I looked at stamps and then coins. Again I met the same difficulty, rare items command substantial prices, but buying supplies at the right price is a problem for somebody without detailed knowledge of the product.

In fact you can see that with all three of these items it would be necessary to be an expert in the product and you would have to understand their values in order to obtain them from suppliers at the right price. If you have an expertise as a collector of something, then sourcing eBay supplies in your chosen field is a very good option. The next course of action might be to consider sourcing goods from a foreign supplier. If you import directly from manufacturing countries such as India or China it is possible to buy goods that you can mark up three, four, five or even more times.

This is achieved by buying in bulk direct from the manufacturer. Consider a widget that you buy for $3 at your local hardware store. It may only have cost 10 cents or so to manufacture, but the importer will have purchased in bulk and made a significant margin on the price before distributing it to the shop. But I did not want to import a container full of goods. 200,000 widgets would cost $20,000 and there was not enough room in my garage, spare bedroom and study combined to store them! So I tried fishing flies from Africa. I found a supplier that would send 500 dozen per shipment at $2 per dozen. Good quality artificial fishing flies go for around a dollar a piece, more for special patterns. This seemed like a good idea until the realization sunk in that I needed to spend hours every evening sorting and labeling hundreds of tiny items sometimes worth only a few cents each. It was not the route to riches. If you are successful in finding a good source of items to sell on eBay, your competitors will take note very quickly. As soon as they see you selling a lot they will try to copy you. As a result your sales numbers or selling price will soon drop resulting in lower revenue. Therefore, you must be continually adapting your merchandise for change, coming up with new ideas and sourcing new products.

I have an eBay shop that I operate under a pseudonym. I do not want to tell you exactly what I am selling, but it does fit the bill for a sustainable eBay business:

- It is small, light and packs easily
- It is sufficiently valuable to make each trade worth while
- There are lots of different versions (e.g. sizes, shapes and colors) to attract new customers
- I get a good price from the supplier (even if I do have to buy a lot)
- This product will be affected by competition but is such that I can keep adding to the range

Mark Jenner