What is eBay?
eBay: an online auction and shopping website, where people buy and sell goods and services worldwide. Now, eBay has more than 114 million users, 430,000 full time self-employed eBay entrepreneurs, and 150,000 online eBay stores. As one of the fastest growing companies in the world, eBay has expanded into 28 countries and last year 28 billion dollars in goods were exchanged on eBay.
Did you miss the boat?
Not at all! In fact, the market is growing so fast that only 4% of the global market for eBay has been tapped. There are nearly one billion people on the Internet with another six billion coming over the next ten years.
How to earn from eBay?
Many choices.
1.selling your own products by creating your own eBay online store.
2.selling items for others as a "transaction assistant".
3.creating an eBay drop-off center.
4.becoming a certified eBay trainer.
5.many other new eBay-related businesses popping up all the time.
Some instructive materials about eBay:
eBay learning center: http://pages.eBay.com/education/
eBay wiki http://www.ebaywiki.com/
Seller resources: http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/resources.html
Become an Authorized eBay Trainer: http://pages.ebay.com/esp/
eBay Trading Assistants Program http://pages.ebay.com/tahub/index.html
The eBay Certified Provider Program
The Certified Provider designation helps members of the eBay community feel more comfortable with hiring providers to grow
their eBay businesses. Certified Providers are carefully screened to ensure that they can provide eBay members with services
and solutions to grow their eBay businesses. Among other criteria, participants must have extensive experience with eBay,
pass a strict certification exam and provide a number of proven customer references that are checked by eBay.
http://developer.ebay.com/programs/certifiedprovider/catalog/
Beware some eBay-related scams existing on internet, so stick with eBay certified services.
Example selling strategy:
You can scout for product sources that charge less, and resell these items yourself for a profit. For example, if you see
that Dutch ovens are selling steadily for over $70 each, and you find that your local discount store or an online product
sourcing business has them for $35, you can buy one or more and see what profit you can realize by reselling it. If
successful, you use your profits to buy 2 Dutch ovens and sell them, build your business capital,
and reputation, and customer base, one step at a time.
Successful examples:
1.What's your trash may be another man's treasure.
One of the early items sold on eBay was Omidyar's broken laser pointer for
$13.83. Astonished, he contacted the winning bidder and asked if he
understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the
buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."
2.JJ Sport owner Shane Johnson started by selling one bat on EBay, and sprouted a 1,000 website affiliates program and expanded into five new product lines in five years.
Shane Johnson, the high school janitor in Montpelier, Idaho, posted a photo of a baseball bat on eBay. He wrote a description and set the number of days for the auction. When it sold, he used his profits to buy more bats, and soon created his own web site such that each time he posted a bat on eBay, he included a link to his new web site. This worked to drive traffic to his web site and eventually he discontinued using eBay. Shane started an "affiliates program" whereby he offered a ten percent commission to any web site owner who would post a graphical hyperlink button to his site. Affiliate program software allowed Shane to easily keep track of what purchases were initiated by customers clicking on his graphical button from over 700 affiliate web sites. This allows Shane to automate sending commission checks as an incentive to all his affiliates. This model has become very common because it works so well. Shane keeps a mailing list and sends out print catalogs to thousands of former customers.
About tax:
Under current U.S. law, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, making deals more
attractive to buyers.