WOW What did you sell??? Maybe I have some around my house!
LOL, probably not.
We are a good example that in order to make good money on ebay, you must research what is selling and use your personal knowledge to your best ability.
We sell new and used items for commercial contractors who either are leaving the business or have stock they will not use and cannot warehouse (due to lack of space). We do this part time and it literally pays for all of our 'extra' expenses like remodelling our DDs room, vacations, gifts, etc. We basically earmark our Ebay $ acct for everything that is not in our basic budget of bills, food, gas.
Basically, through word of mouth, my DH gets in contact with contractors who are getting rid of old stock and asks if he can either buy the entire lot outright or sell the items for a 50% profit.
The plus for the contractor is we take everything (even things that will never sell...which is the downside for us). This cleans out their shop and, they don't have to deal with the hassle of listing and shipping (paperwork). They basically make some money on things they would have tossed.
We invoice them every month and pay them 50% of the ending sale $. We end up making aprx 45% after listing, final value and paypal fees.
It is a great thing...but totally hit or miss. Right now we have been working on a lot that we received about 3 months ago. It takes a LONG time to list so many assorted items. There is no guarantee everything will sell. It also depends on who is out there in the position to clean out their stock. And it depends on there being a need for the items we sell. We have had many things go for BIG $ that we thought wouldn't sell...we have also thrown away items that we thought would sell easily, but there just isn't anyone who needs/wants them. Our trick is to start the items at a VERY los price and allow the ebay market to decide the value. The fact that we have no personal attachment makes it easy to do so.
We make NO sale guarantee to our contractors and they know up front they get what they get. We have not had one who had any problem with this because they know they would have just tossed the items anyways.
I cannot stress enough that researching Ebay is the most important thing. My DH has knowledge of these types of items and how much they are worth. He needs that knowledge to be able to sell these items. He needs his contacts to find people interested in selling the items. He needs me to be able to list and ship them.
We all can make great money on Ebay if we learn to focus our energy on a specific corner of the market.
LOL...my post sounds like an infomercial...