Missing-Auctions.com Blog

I know this is going to sound arrogant but I didn’t think that there was anything that anyone could teach me about eBay Arbitrage.  After all, I’ve written an eBook about it which has been downloaded by more than 2,500 people !

But recently Missing-Auctions.com user Pete Bruckshaw got in contact to tell me about a new eBay Arbitrage guide that he’s written that he wanted me to take a look at.

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Unlike buying items wholesale to list and sell on eBay, drop shipping on eBay requires zero investment in stock.  Whilst this seems like an attractive proposition is it a good long term business model for eBay ?  Or is it only suitable for short-term experiments ?

On eBay sellers normally buy items wholesale from a supplier, apply a profit margin, list them on eBay, take care of the shipping and then sit back and watch the money roll in !  The problem with this approach is that it requires a certain investment in stock which may or may not sell at the price that you need in order to get the profit that you want.  If you’re just starting out selling on eBay you need to be particularly careful that the product that you’re going to sell is actually in demand otherwise you could end up out of business before you even start !

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If you’re reading this then there’s an excellent chance that you’re an experienced eBay seller.  Whether it’s selling items that you have laying around the house, have bought from yard sales, maybe sourced from wholesalers, made yourself or even misspelled ebay items that you’ve found and purchased using Missing-Auctions.com you’re pretty unusual.

Why ?  Because for every seller on eBay there are tens, maybe hundreds, of other people that either don’t use it at all or they only buy.  Just think of your own family and friends – how many of them use eBay to buy and how many of those also sell on eBay ?  Very few, I’ll bet.  That’s where eBay Trading Assistants can help – they sell other peoples items for a commission of the final sale price and it can be a lucrative business to be in, if done correctly.

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In the past I’ve posted about how to really annoy a buyer on eBay but the other day I received an email from someone who had bought four packets of genuine Canon ink cartridges from me that really wound me up.  The silly thing is that it’s not specifically the content of the email that annoyed me, more the way in which it was written which just goes to show how important the written word can be in business.  Here’s the email that the buyer sent to me after they’d clicked the Buy It Now button but before they (eventually) paid for the items despite immediate payment being required.

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If you have children who play computer games then you’ll be familiar with the cycle of wanting the latest game, playing it to death for a while and then losing all interest in it.  If this sounds familiar and you’re looking at what to sell on eBay then you could be sitting on a gold mine!  With a variety of computer consoles out on the market including Playstation, Wii, Nintendo, Xbox and GameCube and the price of new game constantly edging upwards, there’s a huge market of potential customers who want to get their hands on the latest games but don’t want to pay the high prices charged when they are first released.  Sure you can trade in the used games at a variety of high street stores but none will give you the price that you could by selling the used computer games on eBay.

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My wife recently replaced her trusty mountain bike with a newer shinier model (hope she doesn’t do that to me!) and it seemed obvious to list the old one on eBay.  What could be simpler ?  Well actually, even as a seasoned eBay user I nearly failed.  Twice !  I spent over one and a half hours doing battle with eBay until I eventually triumphed.  What was the problem ?  I bet you’ll never guess . . . read on to find out what tripped me up

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Ebays’ feedback system is at the heart of the way that the site works.  Without it there would be absolutely no way of knowing who you could trust and who you should avoid which is why it is crucial that buyers leave honest feedback for sellers that they’ve dealt with.

This was highlighted for me recently when a seller suggested that I rate them highly to avoid them losing their Top-Rated Seller status rather than rating them on their service.

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