3 eBay Product Sourcing Models

It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced eBay seller. All levels of experience must follow three basic product sourcing models to sell on eBay.

First, you could sell for other people as an eBay Trading Assistant. An eBay Trading Assistant is someone who sells products on behalf of other people in the community. You earn a commission on the products you sell, and if people know that you’ll sell their stuff on eBay, there will be no end of products for you.

The second model is to sell many unique or one-of-a-kind items. For example, you might specialize in selling rare antiques. If you do, every item is unique, and every item needs a new picture and description. There are a few benefits to choosing this second model. First, you’ll hopefully get a group of potential customers who can’t wait to see what you’ll list next. You can quickly build a following easily. For example, if you sold Native American hand-carved figurines, there might be people who are collectors. These collectors would watch you like a hawk to see what you’ll list next. If you list items at auction, then the collectors will be excited to compete and bid for your item.

One of the disadvantages of selling one-of-a-kind items is that it is more time consuming than some other methods of listing items. For example, you’ll never be able to take advantage of buying multiple quantities. You’ll need to become really efficient at listing products, because that’s where you can get bogged down. You’ll juggle your time between finding the products to sell and actually listing the products that you’ve found.

Now, let’s consider the third model. This is the model that I feel works the best. What is this model? It’s to buy inventory in bulk. Why do I (and thousands of other sellers) choose this model? Well, the main reason is you’re going to save a lot of time. You save time in creating the listings because you take the pictures and write the listing once. After that, you’re done! You could sell hundreds or thousands of identical items just by making one listing. You get paid multiple times for the work you do once. Sounds great, doesn’t it? The disadvantage of this model is that you might be in a highly competitive category to do it. Usually items that sell well in bulk have a healthy level of competition for those items. Yet, if you learn how to sell on eBay properly, you’ll hold your own. You’ll be making money on eBay in no time.

Jesse Holmes is an eBay PowerSeller and Entrepreneur who has been making money on eBay for more than 3 years. Before you start to sell on eBay, you need to check out his excellent free eBay Business Start Up Kit, showing you step by step how to learn to sell on eBay.