This is a rare success story, but if you're really looking to make decent money without having to do much work, this is the way to do it.



My philosophy for years in pricing has always been to be competitive with the price compared to others selling the same items and market it better than anyone else. It has always worked for me.

My friend, we'll call Tom, uses a philosophy I call "the worst thing they can say is no." Charge the most you can with everything you sell and the worst thing that can happen is the customers says no. Eventually you'll find a sucker. If you don't then you lower the price. Tom was an Ebay seller, pushing gaudy fashion jewelry that wasn't selling well. He's also an Elvis fan. Looks like him, sings like him, and loves his Elvis rings. Tom felt that other Elvis fans would love his Elvis replica rings and he was right. What Tom did was send a picture of the Elvis ring to a China manufacturer and have them make a copy of it. It took a few tries before the company got the design just right, but once they did, Tom was ready to put his blockbuster product on Ebay.

The Elvis ring is a big gaudy 14k gold-plated brass ring with "////////" written in fake diamonds. The ring cost Tom $9 each. In my book, which now has a new chapter because of Tom, a ring for $9 would first be priced at $49.95 to see how it does. Well, Tom put the ring on Ebay and started the bidding at $400! WHAT!!! I thought his Elvis wig was too tight on his head for coming up with that price, but yet hundreds of people looked at the ring. His description for the ring was very detailed and made it sound like the ring was a one of kind authentic replica. The bidding ended in seven days. Final price: $695!

To make a long story short, Tom lowered the bidding time to 3 days and posted the ring for the same price. Each time one sold, the next day he posted another one. The final sales price declined a little each week, but each week Tom sold two rings and averaged $400 profit each for two and a half years. He made $105,000 profit in two and a half years, working only four hours a week. That's Tom's story.

The lessons learned here are many. Any time you get into the area of collectibles, the sales price of the product could be WAY higher than the production cost. I could never sell a $10 ring for $500. But if it's an "Elvis replica collectible ring" I guess $500 is a steal! I've seen paintings from famous artists that if you put the painting next to a nine year old kids painting, I HONESTLY couldn't tell you which one was worth $2 and which one was worth $2,000,000! To me they're both worth $2 because I'm not a collector. I don't care.

Here are the Ebay tips learned from Tom:

1.) Focus on selling collectible items. What's worth $10 to you could be worth $500 to a collector.

2.) Sell unique products. One of a kind products with little competition.

3.) No matter what you sell, try to sell it for as much as you can first. You can always lower the price later.

4.) Really hype up the product and give great detail in your descriptions. This seems to do better no matter what you're selling.

5.) Don't compete against yourself. Put your items up one at a time. If people only see one, it looks more valuable and they'll bid more. Plus it creates a sense of urgency. If they see five posted at the same time, the item is no longer special and the urgency to buy it before someone else does is no longer there. Then know they can get one next week or whenever, maybe for a lower price.

6.) Be sure to ship promptly and build good feedback. If you ruin that, no one is going to buy anything from you.