What Do You Guys Know About Selling On eBay and Amazon?

[Brankles]

I've decided to start doing some business on the side while I'm off at school for my last semester. I'm looking into opening an internet shop either on eBay or Amazon and eventually work up into using my own website to sell items (I bought a domain name today).

Right now I'm in the process of getting deals with Nike, adidas and some other companies for factory-priced goods. I was just wondering what you guys here on OS shop for online, as you all would be in my target market, and see what kind of products (shirts, shorts, shoes, jerseys, team memorabilia) that you would be most interested in buying online, and how much per item you'd spend.


If you don't mind copy and pasting below a short survey that could help me out, and maybe give me a few tips or ideas to help my business take off.


Age:
Amount Spent Shopping Online Per Month
3 Most Recent Online Purchases
What Is The Price Range You Would Pay For A -
T-Shirt:
Pair of Shoes:
Pair of Shorts
Jersey (And Sport):
Would You Be More Likely to buy from eBay or Amazon and Why:

Where Do You Usually Shop Online?

And any additional comments:



Thanks for your help fellas. Once I get this thing going, I may be able to hook you all up with some cheap gear

[The Chef]

Re: What Do You Guys Know About Selling On eBay and Amazon?

You will have little to no success using ebay as your primary tool for selling things, it just isnt worth the hassle. People on ebay now are just trying to get the best deal, and there is nothing wrong with that, but you are going to eat listing fees over and over again while trying to sell things that dont end up selling.

One thing, assuming you get a business license and all the proper paperwork in order, get a corporate account with UPS or something similar since they can cut you deals and this can save you a ton of money. Amazon is alright but they wont let sellers sell in every catagory so make sure and do research and verify that whatever you want to sell can be sold on Amazon.

The biggest difficulty for me was trying to get the traffic, and to be honest I ran out of funds before I could even get it going. Check out articles about tricks to get your store listed higher in generic Google searches, figure out interesting ways to market people to your website and dont be afraid to spam the hell out of certain websites but be prepared for them to ban you if you do so, dont do this at OS obviously. Go to ebay, list a bunch of small junk and try and sneak in links to your website, if ebay catches this they will either erase it, force you to erase it or delete your listing so be prepared.

Lastly, I dont know how you are getting your foot in the door with Nike since they are very particular about who they do business with and normally they dont deal with anyone unless they are willing to open a really large account with them, but best of luck to you and I hope it works out.

EDIT- To elaborate on this further, I would avoid ebay like the plague when selling apparel, its not worth your time once Paypal and Ebay take their fees, its not worth it at all. Another idea and it might be too much to take on initially, but what seems to be the craze here in Oregon is these stores where you can trade in your clothes towards store credit, you might want to consider allowing trade-ins of sports apparel only, its a complete cash cow and that stuff is what you could use to market on ebay while linking to your actual store. Follow the setup for Gamestop, give an average amount for things, guarantee they spend their money in your store by giving them store credit and then sell the traded in items for a higher profit margin. Like I said, it might be a little too much for just starting out but atleast its an idea for in the future.