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I just can't make any money doing this
 

My first problem is that I really don't have that much money to invest. I mean, I may have a few thousand dollars to spend on stuff to buy, but in order to get a good deal, you have to buy a massive amount of the same item. I spent 3k on 1,500 of a specific item. Sure, I'll make a few bucks each on them. But it'll take me forever to sell them all! In the mean time, I hardly have any money to spend on anything else!...not like I would be able to find anything else to sell anyway.

It's SO hard for me to find people to buy from too. I have a few people that I've come across that can supply me a little every month, but not near enough for me to make any decent kind of income. I've tried to contact tons of people over the past few years, and I really haven't come up with anyone that can/will sell to me in quantities where I can make any kind of substantial money.

It just seem like I work way too hard to often times break even, lose money, or not make much at all. I enjoy Ebay for the most part. I just wish I had the means to sell more. I know, I know...I'm sure tons of people feel this way.

I've tried to sell locally through Craigslist, but that's just a pain in the butt and I rarely get any sales.

Any words of wisdom from you successful veterans? I'd sure be happy to hear anything you guys have to say.

3000 is more then enough, I can turn 300$ into 1500$..

You have to find a niche, do your homework.
Browse wholesale websites and see how much the item averages per sell on eBay.

The best words of wisdom I can give you is selling online is not for everyone. You may not like that answer but it is the only true words of wisdom you will get with this loaded question.

The obvious problem you are having is with your business plan as a whole: your products, your suppliers, and your business practices. The only possible answers that could help you are people's trade secrets which you will never obtain.

So your choices are to completely reinvent your online business or to accept the fact that this is not for you.

Finding profitable niches is hard, and it takes a lot of time. About half of my time is spent on researching new products to sell and on stealth. Of that time, stealth occupies maybe 10% and the other 90% is research.

Some people buy one-off's - stuff they find online that is under-priced and that they can re-sell at a nice profit.

Others make their own things and sell them. Etsy has a few VERY creative sellers that have some nice stuff. One guy sells LED lit signs and sculptures (if sculpture is the correct word) and he has been doing it for years. I'm sure he makes a nice profit and I love his stuff!

And then, some sellers find products to sell that are new to the market and they try to sell as many as they can, as fast as they can - before everyone else and their brother joins in, driving down the price.

However, very few are making money by trying to sell the most popular items - especially electronics - that have notoriously low profit margins. For example, my resources are limited. If I decide to sell big screen TV's, I'm competing with other companies that are moving 5,000 sets a month, or even 5,000 sets a week. I cannot compete with Newegg, TigerDirect and Amazon - they can sell their products at a lower cost than I could buy them for.

Ideally, you need to find a niche that has good profit margins and little competition, or at least a reasonable amount of competition. Granted, this is easier said than done. Out of every 100 products I investigate, I am lucky if I end up with 2 or 3 that work out for me. I check sale histories, competitors, find wholesale pricing, etc. That can take 15-20 minutes per product or more. So it is also not a fast process.

Everyone wants to work form home or supplement their income. So, they constantly look for the "secret sources" of $150 iPhones or $3 DVD's. But those do not exist. Don't pay for wholesale lists and other garbage. You have to do your own homework. Nobody will give you a niche and nobody will share a truly great wholesaler they found. Why would they?

My advice is for you to look at what you know extremely well or what you do best and feed off of that.

Do not do what others are doing. Do what you know.

If you know about tools, then find a wholesale source for tools.

If you know about auto parts, then buy junk cars and go from there.

If you know about construction items, sports items or whatever go with what you are comfortable with and start with that.

Do not over buy 1 to 2 items. If you bomb you lose all money.

Diversity is a key, spread your money out over several things that you know a lot about.

New, old or whatever you have to start with that.

I am sending you a pm with an idea that might help you out a bit.

Good luck.

"Some people buy one-off's - stuff they find online that is under-priced and that they can re-sell at a nice profit."

I do that a little bit, but I figure most people do. So it's tough to get many good deals where your purchase price is low enough where you can resell it, and pay for fees and shipping. I've noticed though that a huge video game seller has bought at least a dozen lots of my games and I would assume sells them elsewhere, because it's not at a low enough cost to resell on ebay.

I know the video game market incredibly well, and am going to continue in that direction. But maybe it's time that I start researching different kinds of products. I'm happy to sell anything that I can make some money on.

I only buy a ton of one item if I know I can liquidate it if need be. I would be way too scared to invest much money into something that I couldn't get my money back out of quickly if I needed to.

I'd like to diversify more, but it's so stinkin hard to find people to buy from.

I appreciate the response, and I'll be sure to go check out that pm.

I feel your pain. Truth is: finding wholesale stuff to sale is pretty easy. That's pretty much the problem right there. Now you have a bunch of people selling the same stuff.

Like Jeffweico said, for some people, it's all about speed. Finding a nitche before it gets ran to the ground.

If you really know what you are doing this is a good market. I got a 100 pcs original white wii nunchuck I need to get rid of asap..

Think of things people need everyday and will need everyday this works for me , obviously not all will work but research the items Along these lines u think

There are some very profitable niches. When I started on eBay back in 2009-2010, I was buying luxury wallets for $20 and selling them for $58, even after fees I was making decent money. I sold about 70 or 80 of those in the first month and that was a perfect start. Wallets were generic Chinese brands, means they were legit items. People here are selling replicas, now when you move on to replicas its just too easy to double or even triple with each sale.

As for original items are concerned look into liquidation websites for overstock items. I believe much of stock on eBay being run down are overstock items.

There you go.

The magic words.