eBay: What Should I Sell?

There is an art to picking profitable products. It's not just what you want to sell but rather what will sell. Unless you pick a product in demand in the marketplace, you will fail. A fundamental principle of the capitalist system is "supply and demand". It represents a delicate balancing act between "what people want" and how much of "it" is available.
Every Christmas, we see one toy that everyone wants. One year is "talking Elmo" and the next year it's something else. But, it never fails to occur. Because everyone wants "it", so "it" is in high demand. If the supply of the product isn't sufficient to meet the customer demand, prices soar, as do profits for the people selling them.
You could hope you pick one of those products and make a lot of money in one season, or you can be smart and have a profitable business all year round. How? Understand trends in our society and how they help you predict the products which are or will be in demand, now and in the future.
Current Trends In American Society
By reading and watching current news, we should be able to spot trends. These trends will have an impact upon people and therefore, the products they need or want. For instance, some current trends in the United States are as follows:
· Americans are fatter than prior generations (particularly children)
· Baby Boomers (a very large potential market) are getting older. Many are in the 50s or 60s.
· More and more people purchase online from the security and comfort of their own home
· Americans are more security conscious since 9/11
· Travel by car or recreational vehicle is up over previous years
· Diabetes is making major inroads into the general population
These are just some of the trends impacting our culture now. We need to take those identified trends and make some assumptions about them. With these assumptions come product decisions, profitable product decisions.
Using a Trend to Pick Profitable Products
Let's choose the Baby Boomer trends upon which to focus. We know that the Baby Boomer Generation represents a large, and very wealth, segment of the current American society. If we choose to focus upon this group of consumers, we know we have a large potential audience. More importantly, we know we have an audience who can pay.
Determining the products we will offer starts with making some assumptions about our targeted market. What does that mean for the Baby Boomers? We need to take what we know about that market segment and then make some assumption based upon that knowledge. Let's try.
What We Know: What We Can Assume:
We know they are getting older. We can assume they don't like that. We know they are fatter than prior We can assume they don't like that generations. and want to do something about it.
Let's just look at those two trends and how they help us choose products. If this generation is fatter than the last generation, we can assume larger size clothes are needed right now. Is that true? At eBay, plus size women's clothing sold for a total of $90,903.37 in the last 30 days! There's a profitable product selection for the present.
If we assume they are fatter and don't like it, they must want to do something about it. What might they do? Exercise or diet. What does this mean for possible products? Exercise equipment or diet pills. Is this true? At eBay, exercise equipment sold for a total of $1,125,144.50 in the last 30 days and weight loss pills sold a total of $130,795.34 in the last 30 days! Two more profitable, "in-demand", products at eBay, right now.
Choosing the right product for a profitable business does not have to be difficult. Just follow the four easy steps; analyze, assume, test, and choose. You simply have to read and watch the world. Look at leading news articles and magazine stories. What appears to be uppermost in the minds of potential consumers? What assumptions can you make about the trend? What product(s) does that translate to? Sell that product and you will earn money. Continue to follow those four steps and you will be profitable for a long time.

Dealers who want to advertise on the net

People are finding out that there is an other site than ebay to sell cars or motors. This is very intersesting for cardealers because prices are much lower than on e-bay.It is www.52marketplace.comIf you place your car on www.52marketplace.com you can state a fixed price or you can give a starting price to start the bidding. Unlike ebay the auction has no timeframe so you decide when to end the auction. Sniper software will also not work on www.52marketplace.com so you don't have to wait until the last 5 minutes to see the bids. Also a nice thing is that if someone has placed a bid higher than the highest bid the person that has been outbid will receive an e-mail with a notice that his bid is no longer the highest bid and that he can place a new bid. Now thats how it should be! Interactive bidding.Furthermore it is possible to place your ad on top of the list again.What is the advantage?Iff people are searching for a specific type of car your ad is shown on top of the list and that is where you want to be. Maximum result, maximum exposure. You can place the ad on top of the list as often as you like.At this time you can place your ads for FREE. Try it and tell your friends. This is a new concept of selling and it is getting more popular.

A New Scam Hits The Web

Virtually anyone with an email account eventually receivesa message running one of the oldest scams in the book.Often referred to as the "Nigerian Letter," this scaminvolves getting a message from someone in a foreigncountry claiming to need a way to get 21.5 million dollarsout of the country (the first country used in this scam wasNigeria, hence the scam's name). He knows that you "are a trustworthy individual" and ifyou'll just send him your bank account information he willdeposit the money in your account and give you 15% of thedeposit. Of course, after you give up your banking information thescammer empties YOUR account.Well a new scam has spawned to take advantage of one of theweb's most successful and widespread activities - onlineauctions. The scammer sends you an email offering to purchase an itemyou're selling through an online auction or in theclassified section of your local paper. They tell you a relative living in the area will pick upthe goods, however, when the check arrives, it's made outfor more than the agreed price (often thousands more). The bidder asks you to refund the difference and keep apercentage for your "trouble."Of course the check is forged and, if you refund thedifference, you can kiss your money goodbye. Moral of the story: free money is only free for the personwho steals it from you!~ The Coming Storm Over DVDs ~If you thought Napster caused a stir over trading music andthe illegal CD-ROMs people made on their computers, waituntil everybody gets a DVD burner! The average price for an excellent DVD burner has droppedwell below $400 and medium to low priced computers nowinclude DVD burners as standard equipment. The only thing holding back the avalanche of DVD copyingseems to be the rather hefty cost of buying blank DVDs. With an average price of $1.50-2.00 each, blank DVDs costfar more than blank CDs, which run around 20 cents each. But, if you look back about 6 years, blank CDs used to costa dollar apiece, so it won't take long for the price ofblank DVDs to drop. When that price drop does come and every home with acomputer can also duplicate full-length movies on DVD,watch for one of the biggest upheavals in the history ofHollywood. It will make the music industry's crackdown on illegalmusic sharing look as mild as a 5 minute "time out" in thelocal pre-school class.~ Yahoo! - Still King! ~In a bid to capture even more of the world's search enginetraffic, search giant Yahoo! recently purchased the web'slargest pay-per-click search engine, Overture.com. In the process (and more importantly), since thecommissions from pay-per-click advertising with Overturerepresent a major source of revenue for most of the othermajor search engines, Yahoo! definitely holds the upperhand.

An Introduction To eBay Consignment

After I started selling on eBay, I was approached by friends without computers who wanted me to sell their items for them. They had heard stories about the outrageous prices items some ebay auctions brought. They knew I could get more money for them on eBay than they could get selling the items themselves. An added incentive to them was I did all the work. All they had to do is say "I don't want this anymore, sell it for me;" and within a few weeks I converted their castoffs into cash.I was already selling on eBay, and I had developed a system for listing and dealing with sales that allowed me to list lots of items in a short time. The chance to make a few dollars without any investment was too much to pass up. I made some good money doing this and because I didn't have to tie up my money buying inventory I was able to use it to grow my train business.Consignment Selling Is The Perfect Way To Start Your Own eBay Business.There are no set up fees or investments. You won't need to risk your own money buying items to resell. You don't need a detailed knowledge of antiques and collectibles. You only need to know how to find the right category, write an adequate description and take some high quality photos.Selling on consignment allows you to learn about antiques and collectibles without risking your own money. By selling other people's items you learn the value of items in the most practical way. By handling them and selling them. No matter how many price guides you read, and antique shows you attend, you will never get the feel for items until you sell them.When you sell on consignment, you provide a service that makes your clients additional money. When most people sell something, they sell to a dealer who needs to mark up the item to make a profit. This is not what happens on eBay.On eBay the END USER is the buyer and will always pay more than a dealer would. Even after paying a consignment fee, the seller makes more money.This is the true benefit of eBay consignment selling. Finding the END USER. Before eBay this was a difficult and daunting process. With eBay, a simple listing placed in the correct category, with a good description and some high quality photos, is enough to get a few END USERS to fight over the item.Things You Need To Succeed With Consignment Sales:1. You need to take possession of the items. When you sell items on consignment you risk your eBay name and reputation. You take these risks when you sell your own items, but you are in complete control of your actions. In order to lower your risks you need to get complete control of the items you are going to be selling. This prevents sellers from changing their minds, and allows you to ship the items as soon as you receive payment.2. You should always have a written contract. One of my friends was sued by a consignor who felt the commission was too high. The consignor agreed to pay 20 percent of the selling price, then when the item sold for $8500, got upset about paying $1700 to someone for doing 30 minutes of work. While my friend won in court, it would never have gotten to court if he had a written contract.3. You'll also need to perfect ways to get items. At first your friends and co-workers will provide you with a good stream of salable items. After a while this stream will dwindle and you will need to go out and find consignors. This is not as difficult as it may seem. Remember, by consigning with you, the seller gets more money than they would otherwise.