How many of you all have sold and bought on ebay? I came up with another of my "great ideas." We have an Amish friend who makes beautiful handcrafted items. I brought a couple things home, took pictures of them[one was a bird house that looks just like a amish buggy, the other is a lazy susan, and the third is a wood shelf carved that has horses on it.] He told me his price and I put it up for that and any money that goes over would be mine. Are there any other auction sites to list hand made items beside ebay? His only stipulation is they cant be sold on Sunday. Technically they wont be as long as I dont receive payment on a Sunday. He is so handy but has limmited resources to sell. What do you think? Will this work?

-- tracy (murfette@stargate.net), January 18, 2002

Answers

Go to ebay and look up similar items, then click on the "show completed items" link on the left side of the page. That will show you if items like yours are selling and at what prices. This will let you know if it's worth your time.

Good luck,

-- Chuck (woah@mission4me.com), January 18, 2002.

Yes, but...

Will the final action price be worth your while? Say you pay him $15 and it is sold for $20. Out of that comes your listing fee and commission on sale. If it doesn't get a bid, you are still responsible for the listing fee. Plus, you have to make arrangements with the buyer for payment, you have to box it up, you have to take it to a shipping point and you would be responsible for damage in route unless insured. I wouldn't do it unless I was pretty sure it would sell for at least twice what you pay him.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), January 18, 2002.

Supply and demand. What is the demand for your supply. Can you make enough money to justify the brokering of his items. There are listing fee's regardless if you sell. SHipping and most important YOUR TIME to handle all the work needed to put them on and ship.

If your worried about saturday sales then a 5 day auction is an option.

I have sold and bought hundreds of items. The right item sells. the wrong one doesnt at any price.

-- Gary (gws@columbus.rr.com), January 18, 2002.

We have tried several different items without any great success. We have even tried to copycat what different people said had worked for them and seemed we just couldn't get it to work for us. Either it didn't sell or it didn't sell for a price that was worth the effort. So that ideal has kind of fizzled out for us.

However, I have made some great buys on ebay. I, like a lot of other people, am always looking for a bargain.

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), January 18, 2002.

It's worth a try. There's alot of Amish items on Ebay now but there's also a fair bit of demand. Amish quilts bring a good price. Kitchen items have good bids. Maybe you could market some of those things as kitchen related. I've noticed furniture doesn't move well on there, though there's a local store near me that makes a very healthy profit selling it. Make sure it's worth your time like Ken said.

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), January 18, 2002.

I've never sold anything on Ebay but have bought a couple dozen things over time. I did hear that effective January 31 the sales commission for selling on Ebay is going to increase. You might want to research that a little bit. If there isn't a listing fee I'd suggest going ahead and taking photos of some of his crafts and listing them for sale BEFORE you buy them. Just make sure he holds them for you through the end of your auction. It's worth a shot. I hope this helps.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), January 18, 2002.

I am not buying them. He set his price and anything above that is for me. The only gamble would be if they wouldnt sell because of the dollar something listing fee. I did raise the price by $2.00 to cover the fee but if there are no bids that is when I would lose.Here is an example Item # 1692131751 on ebay.com

-- tracy (murfette@stargate.net), January 18, 2002.

Hi Tracy,

We just started selling some of our farm products on ebay. It is easy to make sure they don't sell on a sunday simply by setting the auction to not end on sunday. People who use credit card transactions tend to do them right away. If folks use checks or money orders you won't get them on a Sunday.

Don't be discouraged if you don't get a bid the first day, I've noticed things don't really heat up until the last day. One trick is to make sure you have important key words in your heading so when people are doing a search it will show up.

WE have been pleasently suprized with the success of the few things we have sold. The commission is much less than putting them in a shop and we have been able to sell farm products we never had a market for before. I hope this work for you and your friend. Good luck. Kim

-- kim (fleece@eritter.net), January 18, 2002.

Hello Tracy,

I have been buying and selling on Ebay for years. You may or may not have success on selling items on Ebay depending on the demand for the items. I suggest that you go to Ebay, register and look around at the going prices of similar items that you plan to sell. If it looks like others are making a worthwile profit on thos items I would definitely start doing the same.

Build a good reputation with all your customers and accumulate as much positive feedback that you can. A positive profile goes pretty far with most people. Get a PayPal or other similar account. If you get the basic one you will discover that when people pay with credit cards, that it may not accept payments in this matter. If you think that you will do well in this line of business, it would pay you to have a higher grade of PayPal or other sinilar account that does accept credit cards.

Also, Ebay also offer a simple webpage that is call ABOUT ME, that you can set up for potential customers and customers to view information that might help you sell even more items, even off line. Advertise yourself on ABOUT ME. It will show up as an icon next to your username and the number of feedbacks that introduce you as the seller at the beginning of each auction. The buyer will click on the ABOUT ME icon and be switched over to the webpage to view more stuff about you. I think it is a great option and I believe it sometimes makes a difference to the buyer when he can know more about the seller than just a number on the screen.

Wish you the best of luck and I think you will be very excited to start this kind of business on Ebay.

sincerely,

Ernest

-- http://communities.msn.com/livingoffthelandintheozarks (espresso42@hotmail.com), January 18, 2002.

Update, put 4 items up and 2 alredy have bids. I am doing this as fun right now but who knows, maybe turn into a side line business.

-- tracy (murfette@stargate.net), January 19, 2002.

We have a website that we are just putting the finishing touches on that caters to homecrafters. The URL is www.thenaturalsoul.com.

-- Scott & Donna Root (theroots@thenaturalsoul.com), January 21, 2002.

Yahoo auctions has free listing day tomorrow, Jan 24.

http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/contest.html

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), January 23, 2002.