eBay Inventory – Where to find it?

Most of the books written today about selling on eBay are from America, and therefore aimed directly at doing business on eBay USA.  As fabulous as these books are many of the methods they teach and the items that some recommend you sell just don’t work in Australia.  Now this does not mean an eBay business in Australia is any less profitable.  It just means we need to adjust our methods and our product selecti0n to suit the Australian market.

There are many ways to find items to ‘flip’ or re-sell on eBay:-

1. ‘stuff’ currently in your house that you no longer want.  You’d be surprised what you have hanging around that you are keeping for no reason.  I’ve read many times that the average household has about $2,000 worth of un-used and unwanted stuff just waiting to be sold on eBay.
2. eBay Arbitrage – the process of finding items that are listed badly or incorrectly, purchasing them, ‘flipping’ or re-listing them on eBay and selling them for a profit.  (If you would like to learn more here’s my blog post dedicated to eBay Arbitrage – http://onlineauctionresources.com/ebay-arbitrage-what-is-it.html)
3. other online auction sites where you can also find listings that are listed incorrectly, or just sell for a low price.  I do believe this is because most other online auction sites do not get the same amount of traffic and eager buyers that eBay has.
4. at local garage sales where there are always heaps of bargains to be found as people generally want to get rid of stuff cheaply and get a bit of money from it.
5. our local Australian classifieds websites (eg. Craigslist, Trading Post, Gumtree and many others)
6. ‘daily deals’ websites in Australia (Deals Direct, Zazz, Daily Deals, Catch of the Day and many others).
7. second hand shops.  You can always find some designer label clothing, vintage clothing or vintage items that you can resell.
8. retail Stores during the sales periods, find popular items that are massively reduced.  Keep an eye out when stores have 50% or more off items, these can make great items to re-sell.
9. retail stores when they are getting rid of discontinued items.  And sometimes these can be the most mundane household items. eg. filters for a discontinued water filter jug, consumable parts for common household items. You really need to keep your eyes and your mind open here.  These items don’t need to be ‘big name’ expensive electronic items.  You could make a very nice income selling common everyday household items.
10. raffles and competitions that you come across.  Late last year I won a raffle for a $500 sewing machine.  I already had a sewing machine so guess what I did with it??  That was a very nice $350 profit for something that cost me nothing.  Who cares if you don’t want what you win, you can sell it on eBay!

I hope this gets you thinking about places to get inventory for you eBay business and also gives you some new ideas for products that you hadn’t considered before.