AlidiaAbney28

Online Auctions - Do Your Sums Before you begin

Online auctions might appear initially to be an ideal chance to make some extra money in these stricken financial periods. Sine eBay was launched in 1995 a lot of the "gurus" have highlighted eBay as an ideal moneymaking opportunity. A few years previously this was true and it's also possible that more eBay millionaires are actually created than from every other business opportunity. However, times and the markets have changed and moved on in recent times and it is now far harder to succeed as an eBay seller than it was once.

The case of Tony a2z an eBay power vendor is typical. He started selling on the online auction site around 5 years back. His method of operation was to purchase job lots of tiny electrical items, toys and other suitable items and offer them as individual items on eBay. At the time it was a sound and successful enterprize model. The trouble that they found was that on a number of occasions he was presented seven day suspension requests by eBay for promoting items the manufactures had prohibited being sold on any online public sale sites. Tony found this particularly annoying as he ran into dozens of competitors selling the same items on eBay with no restriction.

Eventually he decided to start out concentrating on selling "as beneficial as new" paper back again books on eBay. He found a supplier who could offer pallets of iPhoneat a very favourable rate that meant he was only paying some pence per book. This gave him the chance to sell the guides for considerable gross earnings

Tony eventually had more than 1400 titles listed about eBay and was making sales in the area 300 to 400 book a month. At first glance it'd seem to indicate he had been successful but his accounts showed a different picture. Although his sales had been high so were the expenses, eBay listing, final valuation fees as well as Paypal charges significantly eat into his profit margins. He eventually calculated that these charges plus the money necessary for the books was getting a huge 75% of his or her income. In real terms for those his work and effort he was only making around £150 per month..