Got a popular item to sell on eBay & Amazon? Don’t always expect TOP DOLLAR.

Jason Guarino is the Author of the Part Time Selling series dedicated to helping eBay & Amazon sellers improve their experience on eBay & Amazon. His site and books offers advice for understanding how to source product to resell on eBay & Amazon as well as proper business practices to reach the eBay Top Rated Seller & Amazon Featured Merchant Status. He can be reached at PartTimeSelling.com.  His most popular book can be found at Part Time Selling: 90 Days to Online Success by Selling on eBay & Amazon.

 Got a popular item to sell on eBay & Amazon? Don’t always expect TOP DOLLAR.

Who remembers selling on eBay back in 1998-1999? These were great times to sell online. The Dot Com bust had not happened yet and bidding on something by way of an online auction was cool. So cool that many individuals were actually bidding more than an item was worth on common items. Why? It was new and exciting to tell someone “Hey, I just got this on eBay for $ 150!”. Yet they could walk down the street and pick it up from their local store for $ 125.
Soon many sellers flocked to eBay to give it a shot. But selling for more than retail got old. Sellers were still there trying to sell. Suddenly you have a classic supply and demand situation as there were ( and continue to be ) millions of growing sellers. With many trying to sell the same kinds of items, even with demand, there begins to develop a surplus of product. Too many choices are given to a buyer. When 100 different sellers are all selling the same item and have the same level of customer service, you begin to have a price war. Prices drop and they can drop fast just so one seller can gain an edge over another.

Personally I have been involved in price wars before on both eBay & Amazon. One day over a 12 hour period, I realized I slashed my price by 50% on some XBox 360′s I had. I was stunned when I began to realize what I was doing. I took a moment, collect my thoughts, remove my ego and emotions from the situation, and moved on….after putting my prices back up to where they belonged.
eBay has become a source for discounted merchandise. Unlike in 1999, there is no more WOW factory with buying online. How many times have you walked into a store to buy something, didnt like the price, so you immediately pulled out your phone to see how much they were selling for online? eBay is part of that, as is Amazon. Thanks to their incredible ability to draw in traffic to their respective sites, they have diluted the demand on the market of many kinds of items.

Ever hear of Oakley? Sure you have. Back when I was in the Snowboard Business, I carried Oakley Goggles, Sunglasses, and accessories in my retail store and online. Oakley has a very strict pricing program in place for their dealers. Basically what they tell you to sell something for is the retail price. I could never put an Oakley product on sale or discount it in any way, ever. Oakley products are not cheap either as you can easily drop $ 200 on a pair of sunglasses. They do this to protect the value of the brand and their image. Price usually relates to quality in the eyes of most consumers. Now if you walked into my store and didn’t want to drop $ 200 on those sunglasses, you could try them on, make sure they fit, shake my hand for my time, check them out on eBay & find them for $ 140. Sale lost to eBay and there was nothing I could do about it.

There is an exception to this….hot items that have limited availability. When the Nintendo Wii came out many years ago, there were limited quantities getting imported into the USA. They also released them just before the holiday season, peaking the demand. Anyone who got one at full retail of $ 250 could turn around and sell it on eBay from $ 350-$400. These situations happen all the time but it can be tough to get your hands on the product.

Oakley (nor others) cannot control who sells what on eBay by asking eBay to take down the listing. All they can do is try to figure out how that seller got a hold of their product. eBay is not a retail store, they are a venue. The anonymous nature of selling online means it will get even tougher for Oakley to stop the flow of product to that eBay seller. Since eBay cannot tell the seller what to do, they have indirectly assisted in reducing the value of the Oakley brand name. One tool Oakley does have is the eBay VERO program. If a seller is using Oakleys web images or text instead of their own photos or descriptions, they can force eBay to take a listing down and send a warning to the seller.

For the small and mid sized sellers like myself, there isn’t much of a market for us to even try to buy new current popular items to resell. Aside that they are difficult to get a hold of if you are not an authorized dealer, there are pricing controls and a competitive market with millions of sellers trying to offer the same product. Unless you have access to a very specific market of products with some exclusive nature, then selling the item on eBay many not be profitable. As much as I love selling on eBay & Amazon, I will be the first to admit there is life outside of them. Look to other options such as your own dot com.