Has anyone made money on e-bay?

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I only recently bought some things on e-bay for the first time.

I gather that there are some people who go around to estate sales and flea markets, and then sell their finds on e-bay.

Has anyone here ever thought of making a career (or a sideline) of e-bay?

Sidelines, yeah. If you know what to look for you can turn a good profit buying stuff at thrift stores and selling it on ebay. I know somebody who does, helps pay for college.

yeah i once went to the library and i saw that they had a book sale for 10 cents a book so i bought a bunch of books which i thought would sell, spent a total of $1.10, put them on ebay, and made over $90!!

Good picks.

You'll make more if you get them at charity-shops and thrift stores, library copies with library stamps and stuff on them are worth less.

My family sold a camper (rv) through ebay. It all went really well.

Otherwise, I love buying things from ebay. =]

I use ebay for barter, trading stuff for pay pal balance to get other stuff.

But it IS the easiest way I know of to sell stuff.

For self-employment I recommend at least trying it by selling some old stuff just to get a sense of how much work it is. If you can manage yourself and pay attention to details and everyone is happy with buying stuff from you then you can probably do it well. You'll have to keep track of all your expenses (fees, shipping, buying stuff) and sales (what stuff sold for) at least to know how much the "job" pays.

Attention to details is for at least three things: describing the items both accurately and attractively, keeping track of who bought what and where to send it, and also avoiding scammers that can make you lose more than you get. Since I had only one minor incident with a scammer, I suggest reading a book about ebay and also ebay's rules so you know how to recognize scams.

If I did not spend so much there.

Most important, take good pictures, then I use Photoshop, pictures sell.

Overall the best pictures and description can pull twice the bids.

I trade lots of small items for one large, and then might bid low on ten before I get it.

Thrift store shopping got expensive when gas went up, and more were shopping there.

I look for batches, a case, where I can sell them off one at a time.

Ebay is dead in the summer,

Look first, pick something, watch a lot of them, till you can predict what it will sell for.

To make a living you have to have a regular supply of goods that sell, and are easy shipping.

The best for me is being able to find that new old stock part that would be impossible locally, expensive to order, on ebay for 1/3.

I just ordered some books from Amazon.

Ebay can become quite addictive.

We bought our car on ebay. Granted, we didn't actually buy it through the auction itself, but it went well. We found the car, contacted the dealer, and bought it the old fashioned way.

Well, I've made a few sales.

What I think I will be good at selling is musical instruments--I make a short video of myself playing them, and that tends to set me apart from the competition. Now, if I can find a cheap source for them. I play string instruments--I would be hopeless at trying to sell wind instruments.

One thing I've noticed is that ukuleles tend to sell for a lot. Especially if you have a Martin or Gibson--the bidding will quickly escalate to hundreds or thousands of dollars.

There seems to be a big surplus of violins on the market. Apparently, about 100 years ago, a lot of people played the violin. So, there were a lot of violins imported from Germany at that time. Now, playing the violin is rare--and generally frowned upon by many sectors of society. So, you can get a 100 year old violin for between $50 and $100.

I actually lost money on one sale--the shipping came to more than I had anticipated. I won't try to sell paintings any more.

Having watched things for a while, I've come to the conclusion that it is best to try to have your auctions end on a Sunday afternoon/early evening, when lots of people are shopping.

When shopping, the better bargains tend to be had when the auction ends on say on a Thursday morning. Not quite as many people shopping and trying to outbid you.

When my aunt's kids were really young, she was at home with them (then she went back to college for her master's) so she had this thing going where she'd watch for trends in toys. She made a killing with things like furbies and video game systems that were in short supply because she'd buy them all up and sell them on ebay. She made about as much as a real job.

Well, I've bought some mandolins, guitars and violins. Now, I'm going to make an attempt to learn how to fix them and make them playable. Then, resell ones that I don't want to keep. I've done a bit of internet research--I bought some xylene to clean the instruments. Next, I have to figure out where to get "hide glue" for gluing fingerboards into place, etc.

I think that I will be able to make one old mandolin playable by sanding down the bridge. For one guitar, I need to figure out how to shim up the bridge a bit.

I discovered another way to make money from ebay. My wife sells Arbonne products. We can actually buy Arbonne products on Ebay for less than what we would have to pay if we bought from the Company itself, even with her Consultant's discount. Her customers don't know the difference.

I'm suspecting that Arbonne must be selling products itself on Ebay--and covering the fact that it is selling its products on Ebay.

In particular, this Powerseller, NSRUSA, who sells nothing but Arbonne products.

http://myworld.ebay.com/nsrusa/

I think when I ordered something from this seller, the product was shipped to me from Indiana, where Arbonne has a distributing center. But, there was nothing on the packing to suggest that this was shipped from the Arbonne company.

My husband and I were full-time ebay Powersellers for years selling antique furniture and collectibles (mostly Mid Century Modern/Danish Modern).

You can make a full time living at it, but it can be a lot of work. We sold lots of large furniture (especially sofas) so we spent more of our time packing and crating things for freight shipping as well as visiting thrift shops and garage sales for more inventory than we did photographing and listing them.

If we were planning to go to a particular area/state to hit the thrift shops, sometimes we timed our visit to coincide our visit with an item delivery so we could charge for shipping and keep the money for ourselves (to pay for gas, etc.).

Fun, but the hours were long and one day blended into another, so it was as much a lifestyle as a business and you have to be pretty organized.

Obviously, selling larger items can be more lucrative than selling smaller items (like CDs, electronic parts, and books) but smaller items take far less time/materials to pack and can make money if you sell a large volume of them.

This would tend to explain, at least in part, why things in thrift shops seem a lot more picked over and higher priced than in years past.