I started back on Ebay back in 2000, when I bought some things for my kids. I then started out selling my late father's model train collection (with Mom's permission). They sold like hotcakes, some traincars going as high as $250. It was nice to make a little extra money, so I ventured to try and make Ebay a consisent income. It has been off and on and I've tried selling different items - children's clothing, vintage postcards, US drugstore goods to the UK and Europe. I acted as a kind of trading assistant for an online friend who wasn't able to have an Ebay account. I also started selling hot toys at Christmas time, although this last season I kind of fizzled out on that venue. I even made a killing selling Today contraceptive sponges last summer. They were discontinued and my local Rite Aid stores still had stock - I bought out all of the Rite Aid stores within a 35 mi. radius of my town. That was a fun and profitable time.
Through a lot of research, I was able to land two dropshipping accounts with a major toy manufacturer (Kidkraft) and a high end children's retailer (Olive Kids). Although the competition is tough, I am still able to get some good sales. Both companies have great dropshipping programs. They ship quickly, keep excellent stock records, and my order process is very easy. So I'm pretty happy with where I am with my Ebay store, I just need to get it stocked. The beauty of having a dropship account is that I can list quite a bit, but since I don't keep an inventory, my costs are very low. For me to have about 500 items listed would probably cost about $60 a month for listing fees, which would easily pay for itself with 4-5 sales per month.
If you are considering selling on Ebay I highly recommend reading a newsletter put out by Skip McGrath . He is an Ebay Powerseller, too, and has great information, both in his free newsletter and his information for sale. I bought his Ebook about selling books on Amazon and it was well worth the price. (I sold on Amazon, too.)
Anyway, I hope you didn't mind the detour from REI. :)
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I rather enjoyed this detour! I've worked online auctions (back in the Yahoo auction days) to make money for Christmas gifts and it worked really well. I've only sold a few random things on eBay but eventually this would be a great additional supplemental income to eventually focus on if I can find a great dropshipper and can streamline it so it doesn't take much time away from real estate investing since there are only so many free hours in a day while working full time with kids! Dropshipping would be a MUST because I would hate to deal with the shipping or holding inventory. Thanks for the tips and recommendations!
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