Secrets of the eBay

60 Secrets of the eBay Millionaires
“It’s Still Dynamic, It’s Still Exciting”
At age 45, Drew Friedman has been selling on eBay for nearly six years.
Making sales still excites him. So does being his own boss. “I walked away
from my job after six weeks. Six years later it’s still dynamic, it’s still exciting.”
For his first six months as a self-employed eBay seller, he maintained an
office outside of his Baltimore-area home. But then he moved his office into
his house. “I get up early, try to clear my desk by 7 a.m. when my son wakes
up. He sees me working at my computer at home all the time. He says,
‘I don’t want to go to preschool, I want to stay in my pajamas, like dad.’”
PowerSeller Round Table: Unique Versus Everyday Merchandise?
It’s one of the questions that is frequently asked by eBay sellers when they are just starting
out: “What’s the best thing to sell on eBay?” If you ask 10 different PowerSellers this
question, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. Or you might not get any answer at
all: some sellers are just plain reluctant to give out the secrets they’ve worked so hard to
discover.
In general, though, the answer falls into two categories of sales merchandise: everyday
merchandise you buy from a wholesaler, and merchandise that’s either hard to find or
totally unique. There are pros and cons to either approach: wholesale merchandise is easy
to obtain (once you find a reputable wholesaler, at least), and you can purchase large
quantities at once, so you can have a steady supply of things to sell on eBay. Collectibles
and other hard-to-find items are, well, hard to find. But they’re sure to be in demand, and
you’ll have less competition for those old pieces of pottery, antique postcards, or exotic
brands of coffee you want to sell online (though it often seems like, for everything you try
to sell on eBay, there’s always a handful of other sellers who are offering the same thing).
The two sellers profiled in this chapter, Drew Friedman and Lisa Vanasco, primarily
sell items that are hard to find. That doesn’t mean the items are antiques, of course: Drew’s
pens are brand new. But it does mean they appeal to people who are collecting and eagerly
searching eBay to find just the kinds of things they want. Not all sellers focus on collectibles,
however.
Robert Zanger (User ID: lucky86), who is profiled in Chapter 5, started out selling stuffed
animals such as Scooby Doo figures and comic books before settling on men’s suits he could
obtain at wholesale. “You sell this, you sell that; you need to see what works,” he says.
Alan Warshauer (User ID: aleegold), who appears in Chapter 4, also sold many
different things before hitting on charms imported from China, cell phone batteries, and
screen protectors for handheld devices.