EBay and Christmas time goes together like a hand and a glove. EBay is perfect for finding great gift ideas for your family and for your friends and it's even better for selling that knitted sweatshirt your auntie bought for you. The truth is you can buy and sell anything you want on eBay and you could potentially do all of your Christmas shopping and "post Christmas" selling using only the world's greatest online auction site.



What many people don't know however is that you can also use eBay to raise a tidy sum to fund your Christmas spending extravaganza. Christmas is a fantastic time of year, and while money does not make or break Christmas, it sure can help reduce stress in the run-up. This article plans to provide you with as many ways as possible to raise some extra Christmas money so you can buy that great gift for your son, your daughter or your wife.

Raising money for Christmas using eBay - Method #1

This is perhaps the easiest and most obvious way, yet many people forget to use this method when they need a little extra cash to see them through a stressful time.

All it involves is selling your unwanted items that you have at home. It's a method I have personally used on many occasions. It is estimated that each homeowner has at least $1000 worth of unwanted items at home that they could sell, but I'm sure if you dig a little deeper then you could find thousands of dollars worth of items.

You could sell that TV that no one uses, that PlayStation 2 that your son got bored of after just a week, all those PlayStation games that are never used, those antiques that simply sit in a cupboard being no good to anyone and just collecting dust, those DVD's that you've seen 1000 times before and are sick to death of. If you walk around your house now and took stock of everything you could potentially sell, I'm sure you could easily do without at least $1000 worth of items.

Find those items, sell them on eBay and spend the profits on your loved ones.

Raising money for Christmas using eBay - Method #2

The above method is probably the easiest method of money raising for Christmas, however this one comes close. It's a method I am currently using to great effect. All it involves is selling other people's stuff and keeping a per cent of the profits. To do this you need to team up with a friend or family member, or you could pursue this on a wider scale by teaming up with a local business.

If you have any technophobes in your family who can't even find the "On" button on their PC, then they are the perfect people to team up with. (It also helps if they have a lot of great stuff to sell as well.) All you have to do is ask them if they have anything they could do without or would like to sell and if they do, would they like you to sell the items for them in exchange for a commission. If they agree, then negotiate the commission, sell their items, send their items to the winning buyers, give them their money and take your commission.

Teaming up with local businesses is also a great way to profit from consignment selling on eBay. I'm sure there are plenty of local businesses struggling to sell their stock and would love to be able to sell it online but just don't know how to. Contact these business owners and offer them the perfect solution: you sell all the stock they would be unable to sell without your help, they take the majority of the money, still make a profit on their items and do absolutely no work!

Raising money for Christmas using eBay - Method #3

Despite what many say, selling eBooks on eBay still can be a profitable business if it's done in a creative way. This method involves you selling a package of eBooks at a high price or small and cheap reports for a small price but for backend profits.

To sell a package of eBooks at a high price, you first need to locate high quality eBooks and software. If you are like me then you probably have hundreds of megabytes of eProducts on your computer somewhere. What you need to do is find a number of products in the same "niche" that are of a high quality, bundle them together and write a sales letter.

For example, you could create a package about adsense. For this you could add a few eBooks about making money with adsense, include some software to make adsense websites, include some private label articles to use as adsense content, include some website templates to add the content to and you could also include some ready made adsense websites.

Once all of that is done, create a sales page outlining exactly what the customer will receive and how it will benefit them and list it on eBay. Sell it for $10 to $50 depending on the quality and if you just sell five or six a week, then you have created a nice bit of extra money to fund your Christmas adventures :)

The second method of making money using eBooks and eBay is to create a short 8-12 page mini-eBook which you sell on eBay for $0.01 to $1 and then follow up with your buyer about a related affiliate product.

All you have to do is find a niche affiliate product you would like to promote, write a short report related to that affiliate product, include affiliate links in the report and sell it on eBay very cheaply.

This way there is a chance that a customer who buys the report for $1, then goes onto buy the affiliate product and you take a commission, usually around $30. You could easily sell 50-250 reports per week on eBay (depending on the price) and if only 2% of people buy the affiliate product, that is 1-5 affiliate sales.

Raising money for Christmas using eBay - Method #4

This method probably involves the most work and you really only need to do it if you are desperate for cash. It involves selling your skills. You list an eBay auction saying something like "I will write a unique 500 word article for the winning buyer for $X"

You could also write eBooks for customers, create graphics for customers, design websites and there are many more services you can sell. You will need to work hard for this method but it is excellent if you are severely strapped for cash.

Raising money for Christmas using eBay - Method #5

This is certainly the most creative idea and the only one I have not yet done. For this method you need to use your imagination and not everyone will be able to perform this activity. It involves taking advantage of the Christmas season and is perfect for our objective and I imagine really good fun in the process.

You could do one of two things (or both).

You could create a mystery auction where you wrap up something of value into a gift and then list it on eBay, not revealing what is wrapped up inside. These types of auctions create great interest and the bidding usually soars, you could easily take advantage of that.

Method two involves writing custom Santa letters. You simply list an item on eBay explaining that you will write a custom letter from Santa and send it to the buyer. You could sell this for $20 a time and you would probably be flooded with buyers at this stage in the year. All you have to do is create a well designed letter, fill it with the winning buyers chosen words and send it to their chosen address. It's an excellent gift for their kids and many people would be prepared to pay for this service.