With little investment, eBay offers a solid opportunity for people to start their own home based business, but only if they take the time to educate themselves and know what they're doing. Did you know that a Corvette sells on eBay every 46 minutes, a diamond ring every six minutes and a digital camera every 90 seconds.

In the first years of it's existence eBay was not a very competitive place. If you wanted to sell your old LP's on eBay, you could probably rest assured that you were only one of a handful of people doing that. Things have changed and the competition on eBay today is much more fierce. But before you throw your hands in the air and give up you should also note that the buying market has also increased exponentially. Or to put it more simply: even thought the number of sellers increased, so has the number of buyers.

What you decide to sell is up to you, but understand that a bit of planning can go a long way towards making you successful and giving you less headaches.

Depending on your choice for merchandise you may be a low volume seller or a high volume seller. You can make money either way as long as you understand the economics of the situation. Of course you can be a low volume seller and list one or just a few items at any one time, each with high profit margins. You can also be a high volume seller who conducts many auctions at the same time typically more than 10 at any one time, but each sale generally has a lower profit margin.

Before you settle on what you will sell you should know that eBay has some rules on what you can sell. If you violate eBay policies you can have your listing canceled and forfeit listing fees your account may be suspended and you can lose power seller status. On the list are included obvious things like adult material, alcohol, contracts and personal information for example.

You are going to be spending a lot of time finding out about and researching the items you choose, their value, and write descriptions? so you might as well enjoy yourself. If you stick to items that you like it will make your life a lot easier, so sell items you know about. As always, there are exceptions to the rule and we will be discussing these later on.

You may want to go with the crowd and stick with the most popular categories or take the road less traveled used eBay Pulse to view the 10 most popular categories each day. The eBay Pulse is very useful if you need to know what's hot selling-wise on eBay.

You can also make money being a reseller, reselling new items that other businesses could not dispose of. This is how it works: you buy out remainder lots from businesses disposing of unsold inventory, maybe last year's models (some people don't have to own the newest camera or the latest fashions) and you then sell each new item for more than you paid for it.

If you choose to sell your own crafts on eBay then you should do a little math before you start and see how much time and effort it takes you to create your item, list it, ship it if sold and the profit you'll be making. You certainly don't want to be working 5 hours on something to make only $10.00 in profit when all is said and done.

It is important to discover untapped selling opportunities that you can exploit to make money. One of the first places to start by looking at the popular items featured on eBay by page. Go under ?Categories? and drill down into the sub-categories and see what sells. You will notice the bestsellers in various categories such as DVDs and CDs and books.

Another place to look is at Seller Central - your source for the latest seller tips and tools. There are also services, such as Terapeak which give you sell-through rates and information on trends, what's hot and what's not. These services start at around $14.95 or $19.95 per month.

Services like this help you find the categories and merchandise with the best sellthrough rates.

In general, it is recommended to find a niche. This can help differentiate you from other sellers on eBay. This is a good strategy but remember that your niche must have a decent market. In other words, you may find something to sell that nobody else, or very few, are selling on eBay? but if the market is too small it may not be worth your time and effort.

Dropshipping is also a very popular method. With dropshipping you don't actually stock the merchandise. You just sell it and have the manufacturer ship the item directly to the buyer. Some good dropshippers will make it look as if the item came directly from you. I know at first glance this seems great, but remember that everything comes at a price. The profit margin in dropshipping is dramatically lower and sometimes dropshippers may create problems for you, such letting you know after you've sold an item that they actually ran out of it. This doesn't bode well with customers. Still, in some circumstances dropshipping can work.

Always remember to be positive and do your homework. Stick with products you know or you like and most importantly: Get Out There! The only way to learn is by doing.