Is There Still Room for Business Start Ups on Ebay?

EBay has long been touted as an excellent route to starting your own business and it's easy to see why people would be lured by the chance to start a business from the comfort of their own home. The eBay site is designed to be as user-friendly as possible, meaning that almost anyone can indulge their entrepreneurial longings, regardless of their previous retail experience. However, with more established, national retail brands making the move to eBay is there really any room left for home based businesses and can ordinary people really still find a spot in the marketplace and make money on eBay?

Over the past ten years eBay has no doubt helped many would-be entrepreneurs start a business on a shoe-string. Those who spotted the potential early on have undeniably cashed in and created genuinely successful and massively profitable businesses selling via eBay and with people across the world still joining eBay in their thousands, day after day it would seem there is an almost limitless market available to those who are interested in starting their own business on eBay. Making money should be a piece of cake, right?

However, as with most things that seem to good to be true the answer just isn't that black and white. Yes, the eBay marketplace is vast and offers fantastic potential to reach a huge number of customers with minimal financial commitment. But, equally for every buyer, for every in demand item there seem to be hundreds of sellers already trading. What's more if you look at the business sellers they all seem to be experienced and long-standing traders. So, you have to ask yourself; is there room for anyone else?

The newcomer to eBay faces two main obstacles. The first is history; buyers rely heavily on feedback ratings when deciding where to purchase and are simply more likely to purchase from someone with hundreds or even thousands of happy customers than a seller with only a few prior sales. One of the features so critical to the success of eBay can present a real barrier to your own business success. However, there are ways around this if you are willing to take a longer term view. One idea is to sell as a private eBay member first, build your rating by selling your own household junk - people are far more accepting of eBay newbies in the second-hand market. You can also build up your rating by buying some inexpensive items for yourself, but bear in mind you will need some ratings as a seller also.

The second difficulty faced by those looking to start selling on eBay is how to compete on price with the bigger traders. You don't have to be cheaper than the competition to succeed, but you do need to be in the same ball park, which can be hard to manage with little or no experience of sourcing wholesalers and limited start up capital. Competition is fierce on eBay and many items are sold at very low prices, which are near impossible to match. This is a much more difficult problem to overcome, particularly as big retail outlets are now in on the game, bringing with them a buying power we could hardly hope to match.

Of course it is possible to surmount these hurdle, but it takes persistence and a little creative thinking. Producing goods to sell yourself is a good way to avoid the problems of competing with more established sellers, but not necessarily a practical solution for many people! Avoiding the most competitive categories is another way to successfully enter the eBay marketplace. For example, electronics is the most popular category but consequently one of the hardest to compete in, so your chance of success is slim. You would be better to try and find a smaller niche.

Make eBay Pulse your best friend and really drill down into potential categories to find consistently popular items. If you do thorough research you will get a good feel for what sells and this will help you find an angle of your own. Could you start selling second hand items at auction? There is still a great hunger for good quality second hand items on eBay and if you target this market you will avoid competing with the biggest traders. Selling low priced items, either new or second hand is another idea - buyers are less cautious if they are only spending a few pounds and will be less concerned about your feedback history.

So, in conclusion there are many more difficulties facing the eBay start up in 2009 than there were ten years ago but with a little ingenuity it is definitely still possible to carve your own niche and start a genuinely profitable and rewarding business. For more great hints and tips on how to get your online auction business up and running visit www.auctionbiz.co.uk.