It’s getting harder and harder to sell for profit on eBay. Over the years eBay has been increasing their fees very steadily, both their insertion fees and final value fees have been increasing. On top of that, the competition is getting fiercer as sellers continually try to lower their prices in an effort to compete and increase sales. Overall, vendor expenses are rising, prices are falling, and margins continue to shrink. These price wars benefit no one, not even the buyer.
Why wouldn’t a price war even benefit the buyer? Because sellers try to make up for a reduced sales price by inflating their shipping and handling charges and hoping buyers don’t notice. And many times they don’t.
A reasonable alternative to this spiral is to buy a product once and then sell it many times.
These are known as resale rights products and some people have made a lot of money from them. eBay changed their rules regarding these resale rights products. This rule change created additional expense but greatly reduced competition.
Simply put, the best items to sell on eBay are still information products, but now we have to do it a little differently. Instead of the autopilot system we once used, we now have to spend a bit on supplies like blank DVDs or CDs, envelopes, and postage. In general, you can spend around $2.00 on product supplies for which you can receive up to $27 or more. This, combined with reduced competition, makes eBay, once again, a profitable little marketplace.