starting a business using eBay 1

[darnell1]

Can you guys provide me with some feedback (good and bad) if this is a good idea. I'd like to find some distributors and start selling either computer parts, dvd's or videos.

I'd like to hear what you think so I can round out my opinion before jumping in with both feet and maybe forgetting about something

Thanks in advance

 

[chiph]

The problem areas that you will run into are:
1. Paypal.
2. Non-paying bidders.
3. Fraud (see #1).

To protect yourself from Paypal, open a checking account at a different bank than you normally bank at. Set a high-water dollar amount for yourself. If the account goes over the high-water amount, withdraw the excess and move it to your "real" bank. This prevents Paypal from withdrawing money without your consent.

For non-paying bidders, make sure you ship *after* payment clears.

In the case of fraud, Paypal will always take the bidder's side, so you don't want to have any more money in the account than you feel comfortable losing. Note that if you have too little in the account you'll get insufficient-funds fees, so you have to be willing to lose some of it to prevent larger losses from the exorbitant fees that banks & Paypal charge.

Other than that, it's easy money. You get the bidder to pay the packing & shipping costs, and hopefully you have a post-office or UPS store on the way to your day job.

Chip H.


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If you want to get the best response to a question, please read FAQ222-2244 first

 

[DeanConsulting]

Hmm..

I don't know if this is good or bad but I have never had any problems with using PayPal, as of yet. I have been using PayPal for 6+ years. Not a single fraud report, etc.

But, it did happen to my brother-in-law and PayPal did exactally what Chiph said, they take the bidder's side or buyer's side at all costs 100% of the time.

The seperate bank and checking account is a good idea too.

As far as eBay goes, I have never had any success selling items like what you mentioned. Reason, I presume, there are too many people already doing it. No profits!!

If you must try it though, I would suggest getting your feet wet with a few test runs of some of your products. Don't setup a store on eBay UNTIL you know that you are going to have some success.

Also don't stop with eBay. Try out Yahoo's auction site and some of the others that are less saturated than eBay. It might get you more business.

Hope this helps.
Noble


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Noble D. Bell

http://www.noblesoftware.com

http://www.noblebell.com

 

[PennyH]

One way to find out for sure if there are too many other sellers selling your products to be competitive....

Do a search for the products you want to sell, on the left side, there's an option to search completed listings. Sort results by highest and lowest prices, see what the average price sold is, the average number of items unsold, etc.

List a couple as experiments as suggested earlier to see if you meet or exceed the averages that you saw in your search.

If you can't, then you'll know that that item's market is already saturated... and try different items.

I've had a lot of luck selling used books on ebay - but I found that it's nickle and dime money for the most part, while I make about $2-3 per book I sell, the time spent just wasn't worth it.

Good Luck
Penny