Buying low and selling high. It has been a basic concept of business since the beginning of time. And the concept doesn’t change when moved to the Internet. Most of the sellers on Ebay are making their money doing exactly this. They buy a product at one price and then resell it on Ebay at a higher price. Their profit is the difference.

Buying and selling products online isn’t exactly the easiest way to make a buck online, but it is one of the easier ones to grasp for people not completely “jived in” with the Internet.

The first step is to find a product to sell. This entails doing some research online to find a product people would be willing to buy. You might first start out with a product you produce yourself because this would give you the highest profit margin. But, if you do not have your own product, you would do that research to find your market. You can do this in a few different ways:

1. Keyword research. Use a service like Wordtracker to see what people are searching for. If people are searching it, they’d probably buy it.
2. Use Google Trends to track usage of particular keywords and see the trend of popularity. See a spike? It might be worth a look as a potential market.
3. Tap into social media and see what problems people are having. A site like 43Things might provide you guidance into things people want to accomplish. Could be an idea for a product.

Once you’ve found a market, you either create a product to sell or you buy one. Creating the product is an entire body of knowledge on it’s own. Buying the product means you need to find a supplier.

If you have a specific product in mind, you might try going direct to the manufacturer and seeing if you can buy from them. Another option might be a site like Worldwide Brands which acts as a database for valid resellers and will help you sort through real suppliers and middle men. You don’t want to buy from middle men because all they are doing is jacking up the price you pay.

If you can drop-ship, I would recommend you do so. Drop-shipping means that you make the sale and the supplier will ship directly to your customer directly as if it is coming from you. This means you will not need to maintain inventory – a huge plus.

Lastly, you will need to decide whether to set up shop with your own ecommerce store, on Ebay, or a mix of both.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: