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Problems to Avoid When Seeking Profitable Arbitrage Opportunities on eBay
You probably already know that in marketing terms arbitrage means to buy a product below market value then resell it at its correct market value or hopefully much higher.
There are countless ways to achieve this objective, by purchasing items going cheap on Amazon, for example, or at flea markets and boot sales, then reselling them in another marketplace, in our case on eBay.
Buying goods inexpensively on eBay and reselling them also on eBay is another very profitable option that can generate profits way exceeding two or three hundred or even several thousand per cent profit each time.
You do it by locating listings with spelling mistakes or incorrect descriptions for products, or you purchase items in bulk on eBay and relist those items separately. The latter works well where lazier sellers bundle everything into one listing and somehow they manage to include a product with high resale value which you spot and buy and subsequently isolate from the bundle and relist it separately on eBay.
All those options, and others, work incredibly well and you really could spend your entire working life buying items inexpensively on eBay and reselling them on eBay for much higher profits.
But that’s only if you check other people’s listings properly, it’s only if you don’t get greedy, it’s only if you pay close attention to words used by other people in their titles and listings and you never assume a valuable product is slipping through another person’s fingers and set to make incredible profits for you.
The fact is, no matter how hard you try, there are ways to innocently pay pennies for items you think are worth a fortune only to subsequently discover they’re little short of worthless.
One way this often happens is where the potential buyer reads something into titles and descriptions which isn’t actually there, often because some everyday words have different meanings to different people.
For instance, an ‘old’ doll can be an antique doll, or it could be one bought yesterday which is now being sold second hand. So ‘old’ can mean vintage, it can mean cast off!
As an example, a few years ago I spotted the title ‘Old Album of Titanic Postcards’ going for £105 Buy It Now.
I read ‘old’ as meaning the album and postcards were antique, collected round about the time of the Titanic disaster almost one hundred years ago. So I was very disappointed when my package arrived and I discovered the album definitely was old, but the postcards were not. The postcards were worthless and two years old at most. Very sad, because Titanic postcards from just before or just after the disaster can fetch two or three hundred pounds each on eBay.
I know the seller was scamming people by using ‘old’ to lead buyers to think both album and cards were from the time of the Titanic disaster; he’d done pretty much the same for other items such as a ‘Book 1912 and postcards’ where the book was almost one hundred years old but the postcards were recent reproductions.
But I can’t prove the seller was scamming people, he didn’t actually say only part of his products are old, he was just playing to people’s greed, and that included me.
That isn’t the only time I’ve personally ended up losing money due to having misunderstood titles and descriptions on eBay, also in Internet and offline auction catalogues, even in conversations with fellow sellers at antiques fairs and flea markets.
And that’s why, if I make such costly mistakes after many years of arbitrage experience, we might expect less experienced sellers to make many more costly mistakes.
Which brings me to point out the most likely areas where misunderstandings are common, being where descriptions contain words like ‘old’, ‘dated’ and ‘signed’, but there are many more.
We’ve talked about ‘old’, so now let us consider:
* Dated – as in ‘book dated 1900’. Does that mean the book was published in 1900 and this is an original copy or could it be the book has been recently republished and 1900 is the date of the original publication? It could mean either.
It’s a potential problem for our readers who create products from the public domain and must make it clear their goods are modern and not original specimens. For example, imagine you create reproductions of Louis Wain’s cat postcards from the early 1900s, consider whether this title is okay for your eBay listing:
LOUIS WAIN Postcard. ‘Title’. 1900.
What does that say to you? Well to me it suggests the postcard was created in 1900 and may even bear a Victorian stamp and be postmarked 1900. But that’s not what you actually said, and you might mean 1900 was the year Wain painted the image. So your title is factual, but in the event also misleading, and it should be amended by including information about your product being a reproduction.
* Signed – as in ‘Photograph signed ‘Laurel and Hardy’. Lovely item’. Does that mean Laurel and Hardy personally signed the photograph, or did someone else write the words ‘Laurel and Hardy’ on the photograph to identify the people later? Like the book example it could mean either.
Compare that to ‘photograph signed by Laurel and Hardy’ where ‘by’ suggests it is a personal signature.
It’s very important to read the words in their entirety, especially when you’re considering buying goods to resell, and you should assess every word to the nth degree before parting with your cash.
That’s because, if the listing is correct, but ambiguous, the seller is not always obliged to refund your money.
And that’s not the best way to make money on eBay is it?
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Avril Harper Titles
Make Money Tearing Up Old Books and Magazines and Selling Them on eBay
Bank Big Profits Selling Vintage Topographical View Postcards on eBay
The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an eBay Trading Assistant
The Ultimate Dropshipping Report
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