Well, I went to IKEA the other day, bought some way cool stuff. checked out ebay and the same items were selling for way more. so i started thinking… “If I bought from there and sold on ebay, they would bid on mine as well” Well, anyone who has seen an IKEA knows how big it is… I’ll need some direction on what to buy. What are the hot items that you think that I should sell.
This doesn’t have to be limited to ikea…feel free to pass on thoughts or advice someone who wants to start selling
Were you looking to debate what you should buy off E-bay?
I’ll move this to IMHO for you.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
The question is what should I buy in the real world to sell in cyberworld?
What are the hot items that will pull in more on ebay than they’re bought for?
In my experience, this is a very hard thing to do, since there’s a ton of people across the country who have the same idea and are doing the same thing. That makes the profit on each piece so small that its not worth the headache doing it.
There are exceptions, of course. I’m a bit of a cell phone nerd, always wanting the newest and best phone. I check howardforums.com, and they clued me into a sale on a new phone a few months back. No one could explain why, but this video/camera/dual color screen phone was selling for $150 with no contract. This is a phone people expected Verizon to sell at closer to $400 with no contract. A lot of people bought 3 and 4 of them and sold them on eBay for $200 or $250. Sometimes Radio Shack will start selling new phones before Verizon corporate stores, and people will flock to Radio Shack to buy them just to sell them on eBay to people who don’t know better.
That was a weird tangent, but keeping your ear to the ground and getting things in advance seems to be the way to “cheat the system”. Going to IKEA and reselling seems like a lot of work for not a lot of profit.
The only thing I can suggest is to check Ikea.com, and see what they have for sale. If people can just order directly from Ikea, they might not want to waste time with the hassle of eBay and the risk of a third-party seller. However, if you can get stuff on sale and offer a better shipping rate than Ikea (who I hear has very expensive shipping if you order from them online), I say give it a chance.
I would say your main obstacle will be the shipping charge that your eBay customers will have to pay you to ship any items to them. You will have to price the items so that the total price+shipping is lower than IKEA or IKEA+shipping. Of course, you will have the occasional buyer who will pay more than an item’s worth, but the market will take over and it’s unlikely you can make consistent profits selling that way. Also, anyone who can buy on eBay can also get to ikea.com with one click.
I don’t know if you are joking or not. If you are serious, you should be aware that most individuals fail trying to sell on Ebay. You may see products that you bought, but that doesn’t mean that anyone is actually buying them. You also need to sell massive quanities (100’s of items per week) to make any noticable income.
You need to find unusual niche products that you can sell, that are hard to find else, but “sell themselves” when viewed on ebay. You should make sure to have a well done and descriptive product page that extolls the value and nature of the product using selling words.
If you are not experienced in marketing and owning your own business I strongly recommend that you find a good online book that you can purchase that will teach you the basics of doing business on ebay. It would be your first step to being successful.