One of the biggest mistakes that we made when we first started on eBay was to establish a thriving business that was based on low-cost products. We thought we were going to amake money on eBay with these low-cost products. Yet along with low-cost came low-profit from each sale. Yes, there was a profit. Even with high volume, that profit just wasn’t enough.

Since we have two households to support, we need a fairly high monthly income. To achieve that level of sales, we had to sell MANY, MANY, MANY of these items! Talk about hard work for low income! Yes, you can amake money on eBay with low-cost products, but the amount of work required is tremendous.

We soon found options that allowed us to continue with our current regular customers and our chosen market niche. These new strategies included bundling the products that we sold. We also added higher-cost products to our offerings. Finally, we expanded the higher-ticket offerings in our eBay store.

• Bundling Products

We began to bundle our products. Rather than selling only one at a time, we began to sell groups of identical products. We also found that we could successfully group like products. Finally we found that we could take complimentary products and group them together into a single auction. While we didn’t get higher individual prices with this strategy, by grouping products, we greatly simplified our total time for a higher return!

• Higher Ticker, Higher Profit Products

We added higher ticket and thus higher profit products. These new products were still within the same market niche. They were also very complementary to our low-cost products. Thus our existing buyers were able to make the transition and began purchasing them. This strategy again helped to provide higher profit per item sold. It also significantly reduced the time require to make that higher profit level.

• eBay Store

We added a large number of higher ticket items to our eBay store. As buyers found these new items in our eBay store, more and more sale began to occur. Soon the sales of these items began to help to offset sales of the lower profit items.

• Establish Minimum price level

All new products that we add to the eBay sales mix are required to have a target auction sales price-level of at least $10.00. Even this may be too low. However, by implementing the tactics outline in this article in combination with this requirement we have been able to greatly increase our average sale and our average profit per sale. We test and make sure that we can achieve that target before adding large numbers of an item to our inventory.

• There are many other strategies that could be used, including totally eliminating the low-cost items from sales.

Starting our eBay business with low-cost, lower profit items impacted the speed of our business growth. Don’t make the same mistake. Be sure that you amake money on eBay by never selling low-cost items. Establish a minimum target sales price level for all items that you purchase for resell.

To Your eBay Success!