My experience with Ebay

I remember when I was first introduced to Ebay, an ex-boss was a bit of an addict and got me interested and now I look at my account, I see that it was set up on 30th of October 2001 …. seems like a long time ago. Because it is I guess !

I originally started off just using ebay to buy things and got a bit hooked, I was a bit intimidated about selling at first because I didn’t really know where to start.

Eventually I did get started and I have cycled through many phases of listing items on Ebay, in fact I’m not even certain what my first listings were or in what order but here’s what I can drag out of my memory.

I reckon the first things would have been ebooks available as a download, bought en mass with PLR rights and hosted on my own server. I recall dropping all the pre-made HTML sales pages into turbo lister and sending all the download links out after I got the paypal payments. When Ebay banned downloads and insisted on burning CDs I didn’t survive the policy change … I’m sure I still have a million PLR ebooks n an old hard drive … somewhere !

Then there were the affiliate websites built from templates ooh yeah, they were good. Attractive websites, wholesale pricing for me and monthly hosting fees baby … throw in some internet marketing ebooks as a bonus and we’re cookin on gas ! This would have been around 2003 I guess and I recall going into the office where I worked on a Saturday afternoon to build websites for the coming weeks auctions. I just checked the supplier on the internet archive, made me feel all nostalgic. You can see them here.

I also did a phase of trying dropship suppliers back in the day, can’t even remember which ones but I’ll update this post if I remember. I do recall getting a bit spooked by some technical questions on a camera I’d listed and wasn’t too sure how to handle being the middle man so I didn’t really get too far with this idea. I did however have a bit more luck dropshipping software on CD ROM and DVD and that went well for a while until I had feedback saying my supplier had sent some unlicensed products so I stopped dealing with them at that point.

DOMAINS ….. How could I forget, I have traded my way through hundreds of them over the years and I still have loads that I’ll turn into websites …… someday !

Actually reviewing my ebay feedback while I write this article is bringing back all the old memories !!!

Then there was my most recent effort a couple of years ago … Ebay/Amazon arbitrage.

I originally heard about this at a seminar by Adam Ginsburg but it popped up on my radar again after I noticed an interesting email in my spam of all places ! That was from Ann Sieg at Ecommerce business school.

For those of you who don’t know what this is, basically it’s all about listing things on Ebay for a higher price than you are paying to buy them on Amazon. You list the items and when you get a buyer, you purchase the item from amazon and ship it straight to the buyer and pocket the difference.

I did ok with this but it chewed up a lot of my time so I started looking at automation, after reviewing a few software products I decided to use a platform called SKUgrid.

This was a pretty good setup, it would basically monitor the prices on Amazon and adjust my listings so I wouldn’t get stung on price changes. Like all the other things, this kinda ticked over ok with a few sales but nothing groundbreaking, I eventually sold somebody a drill and they returned it because it broke. That presented me with the challenge of returning it to amazon and eventually I decided that doing this was not really worth the time and attention I was giving it. Having said that I’m still interested in revisiting this with a slightly different approach to see how it could work… when I get time of course !

I’d love to hear any feedback on this, each of these topics deserves it’s own blog post so please let me know if you want to hear more about any of these things.