How to Find Unique Products for Your eBay Business

People often ask me for ideas for starting a really unusual business or unique line of products on eBay, hence the reason this month I’ve compiled a selection of those ideas I really do think have huge potential for our readers. None of these ideas look to be over-used on eBay and I’m quite certain anyone can profit from them. As always do your due diligence before spending time, money and effort on any business. Select one or more of these ideas, research other eBayers selling similar items on eBay.com and other eBay sites and learn what you can from people already making money in these areas.

Two important warnings:

* Just because no one is running similar ventures does not mean this is a market wide open for you to profit from fast. It could be someone has already tried and abandoned similar ventures as unprofitable or because they involve a dirty four letter word spelled ‘W - O - R - K’. Test before spending too much time or money on the venture and if it’s unprofitable, look to tweek it a bit, test ways to increase unit profits by even a tiny amount which overall may add many dollars to your bottom line. If the idea has already been tried and abandoned on grounds of hard work, at least check it out, see what’s involved, act like a true entrepreneur and work to get the idea up and running, then delegate the task and move onto another idea.

* Be aware that, any time someone comes up with a good business idea that’s not been tried before, the lazy amongst us will jump on the bandwagon and copy the idea completely unchanged. Days afterwards hundreds of people could be running the exact same business, sharing the profits, and not making money. You must be different, you must rise above the crowd, give this a try:

- Target a different customer base from that featured in the idea. So, for example, our first idea, about selling baby equipment and toys located at Mother and Toddler’s Groups, could be targeted instead at gardeners’ allotment groups (plants and garden ornaments), neighbours (unwanted household and personal goods), and so on.

- Target a different eBay country site. ‘Free Stuff to Sell’, mentioned later, could involve collecting free guides and maps for places in the UK or USA which have similar place names in the other country and would interest buyers on eBay. For starters try Washington, York, Norfolk, Birmingham, Dover, and many more. I keyed ‘places + with + same + names + in + uk + and + america’ into Google this morning and found hundreds of sites containing all the information you need to copy this idea.