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Do the Research Up Front

Step 3:
People who are beginning to sell on eBay tend to ask a single predictable question: What’s the best thing to sell on eBay? Every PowerSeller asked that question at one time or another. The difference between PowerSellers and the Rest of Us is simple: The PowerSellers spend the time and energy needed to answer that question for themselves. Don’t sit back and expect to get the answer from another seller or from a book. The answer to the best-thing-to-sell question is different for every individual. And it’s different from one time of year to the next.

Consider Drew Friedman of White Mountain Trading Company, who is profiled in Chapter 3. Drew told me that when he was starting out, he spent a good deal of time researching the best thing to sell. “I spent weeks scouring the Internet, looking at every market and dozens of B2B web sites,” he explained. Think about how much time is involved if you spend every day for two to three weeks looking for wholesale suppliers, checking eBay’s completed auctions to see what fetches consistently high prices, and thinking about what you would like to sell yourself.
In the end, Drew picked something that interested him personally: fountain pens. Even when he had settled on one line of pens, he didn’t rest there. He looked around even more until he found the high-end handcrafted pens he sells now.

Drew was so helpful to me and so generous with advice that I confess I couldn’t resist asking him about where to find wholesale suppliers myself. His response? “‘What do I sell on eBay?’ Nearly every seller or want-to-be seller asks the same thing. The answer I always give is to sell those things which are of interest to you and that you are, or could be, an expert in. It certainly makes the process of dealing with customers easier when you are intimately familiar with the products you sell.” A less polite but just as accurate response might go like this: “I did the work and figured out what was best for me to sell; now you follow my example and do the same for yourself.”