posted on December 15, 2000 06:52:32 AM new
Adrian...
Our Ebay sales (gross dollars) are about the same as last year. However, to achieve this, we run twice as many auctions and they close a much much lower price and closing ratio. The net effect is less money in our pocket and more in Ebay's.
Fortunately, I saw this coming two years ago. When I first started selling on Ebay in 1998, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Items I could buy by the dozen at $4.00 were selling for $30 to $40 dollars. It only took about a minute to realize that it wouldn't be long before dozens (if not hundreds) of other people would see this and cut into my profits and sales. And so they did. When you performed a search for my items, you found 3 sellers with multiple items and a total of 75 to 80 available. All with bids. Now there are 50 to 75 sellers, 1000 items, and only 25% closing with bids. (which are now in the $10 range)
When the first couple "new sellers" jumped on the bandwagon, we responded by launching our first ecommerce site. We invested a lot of money in inventory to make sure that our site had more variety than Ebay. At first, when Ebay search results went up to 100 - 125, we had 200 on our site. Then Ebay had 200 - 250 and we increased our inventory to 500 different varieties. Now Ebay has over 1000 and we have 1500 - 2000 and have expanded to over 30 different categories of related items on 4 different ecommerce websites, and ship 100 orders a week. (just a footnote: We have never reduced our website prices in response to lower prices on Ebay)
We have, and always will place links and banners in all of our Ebay auctions and encourage the bidders to go to our website to make a purchase. Our EOA notices include links to our site, and require the completion of our online form to process payment. After they finish, the are redirected to our store. We added a Toll-Free number for ordering last year during Christmas season and have had great results.
Our websites are doing wonderful. Ebay is now only 10% to 20% of our total online sales. The rest comes from our website. We will always run auctions on Ebay because it is the cheapest advertising available on the internet. Where else can you advertise your site for free. (and even make a small profit)
I would have to say that half of our website customers originally discovered us on Ebay and clicked through to our website. I continuously check Ebay to see if some of our best customers are still bidding there, and most are not. Yes, we are taking some of the best bidders away from Ebay and making them our customers. This degrades the category we sell in even further.
Because of our volume, we are now able to wholesale our products at prices even some large retailers cannot get. (we just turned down a deal with QVC because their terms are crap, and it wasn't worth the hassle to make 20k) Our focus for 2001 will be that of a wholesaler and importer and shift our efforts to large quantity deals. We will be publishing a full color catalog ($10,000 plus) and working wholesale trade shows. We expect that within the next two years we will sell our ecommerce sites to one of our wholesale customers. (we are also working on an alternate plan, in case this route doesn't work out)
We could have just as easily done nothing, and been included in the group of sellers whining about fees and wondering why they can't make ends meet anymore. I didn't want to have to go out and get a job again.
The main reason for many Ebay sellers' difficulty, is the failure to ask themselves "what if".
What if 100 other people start selling the same thing for less ???
What if my supplier starts selling on Ebay ???
What if my supplier goes out of business ???
What if Ebay doubles their fees ???
What if the IRS audits me ???
What if the economy slows ???
What if the demand for my product dies ???
And most important...
What if I am successful ??? What will I do with the money I make to insure that I remain successful ???
Not only do you need a Plan B, but you should also be working on C, D, and E.
It is never too late to go back and look at these issues. It is never too late to start over. Take a week off and reflect. Look at the trends. Look at what you did right, and what you could have done better. Make a new plan. Start fresh. Ebay (and other auction sites) is only one way to sell products. Explore other outlets and ideas. And never stop thinking "What If"
posted on December 15, 2000 09:58:10 AM newDoesn't matter if you buy sardines by the piece or the ton; if nobody in town wants to buy 'em, what difference does it make how cheap you got 'em?
BINGO
I list less than 100 items per month, and on average sell 3-4 K per month on eBay. Some months more, some months less. The only thing that's preventing me from making more money is laziness, and stock.
eBay was never started with the idea of turning it into a shopping mall, it was created to sell collectible items. The more unique, the better they sell.
Garage sale mentality? Yes, and no. I list items that range from $10-$2,000. Of course buyers are looking for baragin basement prices on the common easy to find items, but on the "rarer" collectoble items I've consistently gotten top $$ over the past 3 yrs.
Most months I have a few sales that are total shockers, items that end up selling for hundreds of $$$ more than I would have dreamed. [just had one of those last night ] It's not because I don't know the market value of these items, it's because some items are VERY hard to find, even on eBay, and buyers in those areas know this.
Of course, finding unique heavily sought after items is no easy business, but no one said it was going to be easy.
posted on December 15, 2000 10:21:53 AM new
People that list on Yahoo will never sell as many items because Yahoo lets them list at a high price and then relist for free. There is no reason to sell an item when you can keep it online forever at no cost, or until some novice comes along and pays a high price for something. There are not as many novices as there were a year or 2 ago. In my opinion Yahoo will not survive because they will be posting items that hardly ever sell, thus no income for them. They will change their policy sooner or later.
posted on December 15, 2000 10:47:56 AM new
HCQ and Reddeer...you have stated better than I did what I have been trying to say. It doesn't matter how cheap you get something or how cheap you price it..if no one wants what your selling you can't make a profit on it.
MrJim has it right too...you have to plan for the future..you have to try to figure out what it will be like further down the road. And it was not hard to realize that as word of the success of selling on ebay spread more people would come into the market, increasing the competition. This is classic economics.
Twinsoft...if any fault is to be laid at anyone's feet the logical place is with the seller. He controls what he buys, what he prices it at, how he advertises it, where he markets it. He makes the decisions and the business plan. He's the one who has to be aware that if what he is selling is doing well there will soon be strong competition and he is the one who should have predetermined how he was going to handle the inevitable.
He is the one who chooses the marketplace (in this case ebay), the marketplace did not choose him. He is the one who has to figure out how to use the marketplace he chose to his own advantage.
In regards to ebay...IMO ebay is concerned about the sellers and does try to make selling on ebay profitable. BUT..there are what..20 million users? There is no way ebay can satisfy all the users...some will think ebay is not doing enough while others will think ebay is fine and others will think ebay does to much. No matter what ebay does, a large group will be unhappy.
So instead of complaining about ebay, the best thing is for the merchant to find a site which does have those features that are important to him and go there.
posted on December 15, 2000 03:12:02 PM new
...but it's so much more fun to act injured or say "Somebody got to DOOOO something!" ("somebody", of course, never being the speaker).
I'm posting It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. over my worktable. Thanks
posted on December 15, 2000 03:58:04 PM new
twinsoft: eBay NEVER listens!
I do most of my shopping on Yahoo now! eBay has become a real garbage dump IMNSHO!
But I do wish Yahoo would clean up the look of their cluttered pages and improve their search feature a bit. As an example, on eBay you can do a search for an item such as "wall pocket -horse -talavira -bird" etc. then simply add an 's' to search for "wall pockets" using the same list of criteria. On Yahoo you have to type in a whole new search. Little things like that mean a lot to me, as I have a slow internet connection and it takes me so long to go through pages and pages of listings.
But I do think Yahoo is becoming "the" place to shop, as eBay just has too many categories and too much junk, at least that's the way it seems to me.
posted on December 15, 2000 04:13:33 PM newWe will always run auctions on Ebay because it is the cheapest advertising available on the internet. Where else can you advertise your site for free. (and even make a small profit)?
Advertising your site on eBay is a violation of eBay rules. You are allowed to place one non-promotional link in the same font as the rest of the ad. And that's it.
I would suggest that much of your success may come from abuse of eBay's system, and takes sales away from other sellers who are following eBay's rules.
I notified SafeHarbor that a competitor of mine was doing this the other day. They warned the seller. The seller's ad was nothing but an advertisement to divert bidders to his site.
Amy, I agree with you. But I think you may be missing one thing. A seller has an item that sells well for two or three years. During that time, other sellers come in with inferior products, deceptive advertising and slightly lower prices. I think it would be incorrect to simply sum up the problem as "nobody wants it." I've developed many products for eBay and I've seen it happen again and again. In many cases, it's a question of whether a seller wants to continue offering quality products, or join the rest selling cheap knock-off junk. Too often, buyers look only at the price.
Again, I would suggest that placing the blame either with eBay or with the seller is counterproductive. We should be discussing ways to improve our sales, not playing the "blame game."
posted on December 15, 2000 04:42:39 PM new
Newly manufactured collectibles are easier to find but harder to sell.
My small business is similar to reddeer's. Less than 100 items a month usually. Anywhere from around 3K to 9K a month, usually less than 5K (lately). The only reasons I can't do better is finding the merch isn't easy.
I sell mostly vintage stuff with some quality used items now and then to supplement those sales.
[ edited by loosecannon on Dec 15, 2000 04:44 PM ]
posted on December 15, 2000 06:33:32 PM new
With all its flaws, eBay has changed my life for the better. eBay is what you make of it.
I mix my eBay with Yahoo and have fun. Business to be sure, but if it isn't fun forget it.
posted on December 15, 2000 11:21:21 PM new
Goldensands- I am a Yahoo shopper too, and I have had the same complaint about the search engine. I found a really good way around it though- I use AW's universal search feature. It is great because you can search Ebay, Yahoo, & Amazon all at once. Saves so much time!
posted on December 16, 2000 06:04:11 AM new
twinsoft:
Actually, you can place ads for your website and if done properly, is not against the rules. The "text" link specifications you are reffering to is for "third party" ads such as Paypal, Andale, Auction Watch, etc.
The criteria for a link to your own website is:
It must contain additional information about your company or the products that you are offering on Ebay. Ours does.
You cannot offer the same or similar items for less. All of our website prices are much higher than our starting prices on Ebay.
The link or banner cannot advertise that you have additional items for sale. Ours simply advertises that we have a site. No mention is made that the site contains similar items.
You are permitted to place your company's logo in your ads, and that logo can be linked to your site. Without this allowance, no major manufacturers or retailers would use Ebay.
Each time we produce a new banner or logo to use in our auction we submit it to Ebay for approval. We do this by starting an auction and turning ourselves in for advertising violations. Ebay then reviews the auction and either returns an email stating that they found no violations,(in which case we save and print both the ad and the letter as our proof of approval) or they send us (as the seller) an email telling us to revise the ad. In the latter case, we change the banner or logo and reply to them asking for a new ruling. We continue this process until they have approved our ad with banners and links to our site. We then save and print the email and ads.
We have been doing this for over two years, and thus far only two banners were rejected. Both of them really pushed the limits, and I fully expected them to be rejected but I wanted to see just how far I could go. So far we have used over 30 different banner and logos in our ads. Only 2 were rejected.
Yes, we are taking sales away from other sellers. But it is because we have worked harder and smarter, invested more money, and used every tool that Ebay makes available. What we do is within the rules and guidelines of Ebay and are available to everyone. If other sellers choose not to invest in their business and future, then eventually they won't have either.
I notified SafeHarbor that a competitor of mine was doing this the other day.
"Again, I would suggest that placing the blame either with eBay or with the seller is counterproductive. We should be discussing ways to improve our sales, not playing the blame game "
posted on December 16, 2000 02:11:50 PM new
man I really would like to reply to some of these postings but I'm going to keep it in line with the original post.
ebay fees are not the problem, items not selling is the problem, and it's not because it's not priced right, we sell most of our stuff for less than you can walk into a department store and buy it for even with the shipping.
Yahoo:
we list on yahoo, the best sales we have on yahoo is when ebay is down, and on Thursday nights, yes even at 1:00 in the morning pacific time people are wanting to shop, ebay is down for their back up or what ever they say they are doing and the items that close within 24 hours of their time being down get bids.
sales this year are down in December, elections taking too long and people watching TV and not surfing the auctions. People worrying about the recession that they say is coming, the fad may be warring off a bit, saturation, shipping costs, auction hobbyists not returning emails or staying in contact with buyers thereby turning off the buyers to buying on ebay, all this and other reason play a small role in poor sales. You add up all the little things and together it hurts sales. I think the biggest reason sales are down is the bottom feeders that are feeding on ebay. We(the sellers) flush out the buyers only to have the under bidders contacted by the bottom feeders.
I really think this is the number one reason my sales have suffered this year. People that wait for our auctions to end then contact the bidder or under bidders and offer to sell it for less than they paid on the auction. I use to list an item that say I had 6 of, I would sell one repost the ad and right off the bat I would have the person that bid on the 1st one bidding on the new one just listed. the example I'm thinking of was a Department56 item, now if I have several items and I relist an item that had as many as 6 bidders on, and the relisted one gets not one bid. Never really thought about it until this year.
Think about it I am listing a little more this year and the total number of auctions running is about the same as last year but the sales are less than lasts.
how do I know this?
my wife wanted a widget, so I bid on one for her to give her at Christmas. I bid the minimum with an old name I use and forgot about the auction I would have used esnipe but I couldn't access their site. It was priced 20% below my cost, yes we sell this same item ourselves but our vendor has been out of this item for over 2 months, when we have this stuff it sells like hot cakes. I forgot about the auction and forgot to place an esnipe bid on it. I go to check the email for the account that I used and wow I have 2 letters form people offering to sell me the same item for the price I bid, remember at 20% less than I pay for this item wholesale, and the bidding had gone to almost 3x what we pay for it.
if every item that we sell that gets more than one bid, has a bottom feeder contacting the under bidders. How long does it take before it affects our bottom line? About the only thing you can do is list your auctions as "private" auctions so people can't see your bidders.
Please remember: the intent of allowing links to a web site from your Item page has always been to enable you to provide additional information to help you sell that item. The link should not advertise other items or the fact that you may have other items for sale on your web page.
Not having seen your "links" I can't state definititvely, however you yourself wrote,
"We have, and always will place links and banners in all of our Ebay auctions and encourage the bidders to go to our website to make a purchase, etc."
You may have found an eBay rep that is unaware of eBay's policy. That wouldn't be too surprising.
posted on December 16, 2000 08:16:52 PM new
The Advertisement FAQ page also makes it clear that links to your web site must conform to the rules stated on the Advertisements page:
The credit may only contain text (HTML font size 3) OR a logo (88x33 pixels) identifying or crediting the company offering the product or service. It may not contain promotional material or other information about the company.
If I see a competitor taking business away from me by circumventing eBay's rules, yes I will report them to SafeHarbor. I don't consider that working harder or smarter. I consider it cheating.
I don't wish to make this a personal issue, but I also think it's inappropriate to suggest sellers increase sales by adding promotional banners to their auction ads.
posted on December 16, 2000 08:30:55 PM new
Twinsoft I think you are reading something into MRJIMS postings that are not there.
If he sends ebaY a copy of his descriptions and they find no fault with them,then how can be wrong.
The chance of him repeatedly getting the same rep are slim to none.I never do and I have emailed them on the same subject over and over again.
Nor is it his job or responsibility to tell the said representative that they are incorrect.
They represent the company and should be fully aware as to what is acceptable and what is not.Ebay has a responsibility to make sure that all their reprensentatives are fully aware of site requirements.
If they do not then it is only ebaY's fault and not the seller as he is being led to believe by the representative that he is within ebaY guidelines.
I cannot find fault with this seller for what he is doing right or wrong as according to ebaY rep's he is within their guidelines.
posted on December 16, 2000 08:56:11 PM new
Adrian,
If they do not then it is only ebaY's fault and not the seller as he is being led to believe by the representative that he is within ebaY guidelines.
That is a different matter than I am addressing. I am not addressing "fault" or the capability of any eBay rep(s). I am only pointing out that promotional banners are a violation of eBay's policy. And I would hope that information presented in these forums would not tend to encourage sellers to violate eBay's rules.
Personally (and this is just my opinion), I find comments like this one distressing:
"Yes, we are taking some of the best bidders away from Ebay and making them our customers. This degrades the category we sell in even further."
I cannot find fault with this seller for what he is doing right or wrong as according to ebaY rep's he is within their guidelines.
I respectfully disagree with that statement. Of course, I'm no mindreader, but this doesn't seem to be a matter of "ignorance of the law." It looks more like "as much as I can get away with." That opinion is supported by MrJim's criticism of my reporting a seller to SafeHarbor for doing exactly what MrJim is bragging about.
"We will always run auctions on Ebay because it is the cheapest advertising available on the internet. Where else can you advertise your site for free.... I fully expected them to be rejected but I wanted to see just how far I could go."
Excuse me if I don't applaud this business strategy.
posted on December 17, 2000 07:19:14 AM newWe will always run auctions on Ebay because it is the cheapest advertising available on the internet. Where else can you advertise your site for free?
Uhh...Yahoo? A dollar spent on "advertising" on a Yahoo auction will buy FAR more eyeballs than a dollar spent on Ebay "advertising." My experience shows about 10-100 times as many page views per dollar spent on Yahoo.
And I'm only talking about paid feature auctions on Yahoo.
You can also run up to 1,000 free auctions per month on Yahoo.
posted on December 17, 2000 08:30:19 AM new
You can list 1,000 items for "free" and get 10,000 hits, but none of that matters at all if you're not getting the high bids you need to achieve your desired monthly net.
posted on December 17, 2000 08:55:01 AM new
twinsoft:
"The credit may only contain text (HTML font size 3) OR a logo (88x33 pixels) identifying or crediting the company offering the product or service. It may not contain promotional material or other information about the company"
This is in reference to 3rd Party companies only. It does not apply to the seller of the goods. It is to prevent people from filling their ads with banners for PayPal and such.
The only restriction on links and ads for the sellers website is that they must provide additional information about the company or products, and can not be written so as to encourage people to purchase from the site rather than the auction. Provided the items on the site are not priced lower, and the site contains no links to other auction sites, it is permitted.
Many large companies sell on Ebay. One in particular is Sun. Each of their auctions contains their company logo which is linked to their website, which contains an online store from which you can purchase their products. The logo in their auctions far exceeds the 88 by 33 pixel rule and their auctions and links are setup identical to ours. This is nothing new, unusual, or illegal. (by ebay rules) It is standard business practice for most companies that invest money in their logo and image.
Most of the companies running high-profile featured auctions (ebay's bread and butter) contain logos, banners, and links to their websites. (many of which have online stores) This is particularly common in the computer system auctions. Have a look, turn a few in, and watch as each of your emails are returned as having found no violations.
I believe that Ebay's rules are intentional vague in this area, as they know many of the larger sellers and companies would not use their site if they could not build their brand awareness through the use of logos and banners. One of the banners I saw this morning even had "lowest prices on the internet, click here". This was from a seller with a feedback rating in the thousands and over $65,000 in sales in the last two weeks. While browsing the category today, I found several companies with banners that were 600 by 200 pixels.
The advertising restriction policies were only put in place after the acquision of BillPoint, and specifically designed to prevent the promotion of PayPal in people's auctions. Ads and Logos have been in the auction descriptions (including ours) since day one, and will most likely always be there.
My comment about working smarter and harder was in reference to building a website and investing the time, effort, and money into building a customer base and inventory that would support me, rather than relying solely on Ebay and other auction sites which leaves one at the mercy of others. To even imagine that one could operate a long-term business of only selling on auction sites is naive.
Another Christmas season is upon us. This means thousands of computers under the tree. Come January, it will mean thousands of new buyers which in February will become thousands of new sellers. Some selling in your category, and some in mine; and all adding to an over-crowded marketplace with decreasing prices and margins.
By the way, this is how it usually works:
Someone sees one of our auctions. They see our Toll-Free number in big red letters. They call us and ask if we have a website. We give them the URL (wondering why they found the phone number but not the link) And a little while later they call back sounding like a kid on Christmas, excited to have found the largest collection of xxxxxxx they have ever seen in their 25 years of collecting. They spout on for about 3 minutes about how wonderful our site is and how glad they are to have found us. Then they proceed to place an order in the neighborhood of $400 to $600. Two to three days later, when they receive their order, they call back to tell us how wonderful it is and to ask when our next shipment will arrive. Their next order is usually about half the size, and after that, they generally spend about a hundred or two every two to three months. This person's needs could have never been met on Ebay.
Others do click through to our site to make a purchase, but most of them call.
posted on December 17, 2000 09:56:20 AM new
How's business? Not so great this year, certainly compared to last. Fewer page views, bids, etc. Seems enough of a difference that the increased competition alone can't explain it. Must be at least in part the economy.
Ebay has too much market share and is at the beck and call of Wall Street to charge wherever they can possibly get away with. IMO charging for "Buy It Now" is ridiculous.
I probably sound like a broken record, but I think the key is to retrain people to use the multi-auction search engines. I buy quite a lot for my own collection and made this change 5-6 months ago. It takes some effort to change habits, but I've been rewarded in that I've found a lot to buy on Yahoo and usually without bidding competition. I buy more from Yahoo than eBay now.
Maybe rather than PayPal banners we ought to have ones for multi-auction search sites in our listings.
posted on December 17, 2000 10:32:59 AM new
MrJim, since you can't or won't read eBay's Advertisements FAQ page, I'll reproduce it in part for you:
***************************
Q: Does this policy allow me to link to my own web site?
A: Yes, you are allowed to have a link to your web site. Please remember: the intent of allowing links to a web site from your Item page has always been to enable you to provide additional information to help you sell that item. The link should not advertise other items or the fact that you may have other items for sale on your web page. The links to your own web site must comply with the guidelines outlined in the Advertisements policy. Additionally, please follow the linking guidelines, which do not permit:
links to other auction-style trading sites
links to sites offering the same merchandise for the same or lower price
links to sites offering merchandise prohibited on eBay
Example of a permissible link to your web site:
Please visit us at www.mywebsite.com
***************************
Note the above: The links to your own web site must comply with the guidelines outlines in the Advertisements policy. Those guidelines state, a non-promotional text link in size three font, OR s small "button" size 88 x 33 pixels. In other words, links to your web site must follow the same criteria as third-party ads.
You brag about decimating eBay's categories by stealing bidders away, and that you consider eBay "free advertising." Pointing out offenses by other eBay members doesn't change anything. I wonder how a person is able to achieve your level of success, but apparently can't read simple English.
posted on December 17, 2000 07:33:42 PM new
loosecannon has my vote! that is how I do it. Go to local auction or household sale. Use a careful eye. Buy some stuff for a few dollars. I usually spend abot $200. Sell it on ebay by the piece for mega bucks. I make an average of 4 times the money and I don't like to deal with items that sell for less than $10. If you can't gove yourself $10 an hour you are really killing yourself.
If you can't cut $0.75 plus a comission to sell an item you shouldn't be here. What do you think Sears pays for their items on the shelf?? I'd put money on the fact that that $75 die hard battery cos sears less than $30! Run your ebay 1.)for fun 2.) as a second income and 3.) To MAKE money!
posted on December 18, 2000 03:46:03 AM new
I really enjoyed reading the previous 3 pages of this discussion. In particular, I liked MrJim's comments. I wish I only thought of doing this first. Look at any successful business person and they were the one that out-thought, out-maneuvered and out-performed their competitors. The cream always floats to the top.
People should not ridicule this person, but praise him. He is trying to show some of the sellers that had poor sales this year an alternative to whining/complaining. Not only is he following the rules, but he is turning himself into the sheriff before the crime is even committed. How can he be guilty of something after he received a pardon from the president (Ebay)
One thing I hate worse then whiners are snitches. There is no honor in snitching. Look after your only flock of sheep instead of minding your neighbors. One day you might be reported to the Ebay police and will finally know how it feels. And it will probably be for something truly innocent and minor. That won't matter when they end your auctions and suspend your account.
posted on December 18, 2000 05:47:54 AM newThere is no honor in snitching. Look after your only flock of sheep instead of minding your neighbors.
Gee, and here I thought scammers and copyright abusers, not "snitchers," were the bad guys. Silly me for thinking they impugn the reputation of ALL sellers by making bidders leary of risking their $.
I don't think it's "honorable" to protect those whose actions damage MY business by turning a blind eye to their actions. I think it's short-sighted, if not downright cowardly. And I'll continue to turn these characters in whenever I find 'em.
posted on December 18, 2000 09:57:49 PM new
Turning in a scammer, rip-off artist or copyright infringer is one thing. This has some honor in it.
But trying to get someone in trouble by reporting them to the Ebay police for not using the proper font, making their logo one pixel too large or any other minor irritation is pathetic. You should ask yourself the reason for doing this? Maybe you are jealous that the seller in question is making more money and has a broader customer base than you. Or maybe you want them suspended so you will pick up some of their sales??
The only one that wins in this deal is Ebay. They have everyone turning against themselves. If you use your website link to drum up some extra sales, what is the problem with that? Maybe I am missing something here, but once an auction ends, all of the behind the scenes communications is out of Ebay's control. There is no way that they can prevent you from selling another item to the high bidder, no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise.
posted on December 18, 2000 10:54:31 PM new
Making money selling on eBay used to be comparatively easy. For about a year I made nice profits buying books from several Internet resources and selling them at a good profit on eBay. Of course this stopped working when enough other people figured it out and started competing with me. Fortunately I was aware of this going in and always kept my inventory at less than 30 days worth of expected sales. When I got out I was able to do so without loosing a bunch of money on stale inventory.
If you are not highly aware of inventory risk, don't be in a retail business. Selling on eBay is a retail business and has many advantages over traditional retail. However, the big disadvantage is that there is almost no barrier to entry for your competition.
However, I've moved onto other things, most of which don't involve eBay and business is better than ever.
Survival and success require constant adaptation. Those who have latched onto areas where they have special expertise at dealing in truely hard-to-find items with strong buyer demand are doing the right thing. The easy money pickings are pretty much gone.
] It's not because I don't know the market value of these items, it's because some items are VERY hard to find, even on eBay, and buyers in those areas know this.