Is it really possible to make money on Ebay?

Ninety-nine percent of the time that I hear, “make money on Ebay” it turns out that the person is simply getting rid of stuff they no longer want. I don’t consider that making money, because you lose the possession – one that you likely paid more for in the past. It simply isn’t sustainable. It still serves the purpose cleaning the house and getting a little extra spending cash. Let’s be honest, this way of “making money on Ebay” is not a business.

However, there are a number of people who are making money on Ebay. When I bought coupons on Ebay, I found out that the seller has thousands of coupons for sale. I don’t really know how the person or company does it, but they’ve found a way to charge a fair price for their time and service (clipping the coupons).

It got me thinking, “What kind of business could I start on Ebay?” Like many of the best business ideas, they come when don’t expect them. Let me backtrack and give you the inspiration. My wife often falls asleep at inopportune times. It’s not narcolepsy or anything else that doctors have been able to diagnose. In any case, I often get a little worried when she’s driving late at night. Then I found this caffeine spray. It sounds like a good deal and something that would be handy to have in her purse or car (caffeine always helps her wake up). At $5 it’s about the right price… until you factor in the $6 of shipping to my home – making it a very unfriendly $11 for a single unit. I did an Internet search and found that others felt the same way as I did about shipping. I look around the Internet for some time and couldn’t find the product available cheaper anywhere else (Note: on publishing this article, I noticed that someone added a small quantity of cheap caffeine spray at a cheap price).

So here’s the business idea. Go to Think Geek and buy 1,000 of the sprays for $4,990 plus $121 for shipping (the price for locale may be different than yours). This is a total of $5,111 or 5.11 dollars per unit. If you can find a way to ship a very light item cheaply, you are in business. Of course, it also requires that there’s a demand for caffeine spray – something that I believe to be true. If you can provide it someone for $9 instead of $11, there’s got to be room for you to make a couple of dollars on each sale.

Why don’t I do this myself? Well, I’m Lazy. Physically shipping the item out 1,000 times sounds like work to me (though some of people are doing it, so it can’t be that bad). I don’t want to take the risk of having a 1,000 of these sitting around. I’ve also realized that I’m in the business of producing ideas on this website, not exactly implementing them. That’s a good thing because implementation is often not my strong suit.

So take the idea and run with it… or look run your own Ebay business as a reseller of a unique product. If you do, please leave me a note in the comments.

Photo Credit: Rick and Lynne