Online Auctions - Purchasing Auction Inventory

Make Money With eBay Guide

Free eBay Business Kit >> Learn to Sell on eBay

This article is intended to teach about purchasing inventory for your online auctions. This page is page 1 of 2. Please leave us comments, questions, or success stories so that we can improve this guide.

You will see in each auction instructions on how the winner of the auction is to pay for the item. Almost all eBay members use PayPal; some have their own merchant accounts. Many members will give the winner the option of paying by PayPal, credit card, cashiers check, money order or check.

The obvious drawback to both seller and buyer to using any of the check options is that it takes more time because the check will have to clear before mailing the item. You can choose not to wait until the check clears, but this is a very dangerous option as a bounced check can result in fees and leaves you trying to track down the buyer, who already has the item they want, to get proper payment, which is time consuming at best and costs you money.

PayPal offers certain protections for both seller and buyer and so it is the preferred method of payment for the majority of eBay sellers and buyers.

Finding inventory to sell
There are a number of different locations where you can start looking for inventory to sell on eBay or in you store.  I'm sure I am not the first person to suggest these locations, but here is a good list of places to start.

• Dollar Stores
• Discount club stores
• Garage Sales
• Going out of business sales
• Buying by the case
• Searching eBay
• Selling by consignment
• Joining iAuctionWizard

You may already be familiar with most of these places, but if not, I will explain what some of these stores are.

Discount club stores are places such as Costco and Sam’s Club. These locations offer items in bulk as well as items of high quality at low prices.

Selling by consignment is a great way to sell items and make a profit.  You can start by going to people you know who are not comfortable with eBay and offering to sell their items they can’t sell, for a slice of the pie of course. I offer to sell items for 10 to 20 percent of the final selling price. It just depends on the work it will take to set up the auction and ship the item.

Continue to Purchasing Inventory 2