eBay Arbitrage: The Best Way to Guaranteed Profits on eBay - By Avril Harper

Arbitrage means to buy an item in one market for the purpose of reselling it soon after for profit. Although the concept traditionally means reselling in a separate market to that from which the product was acquired, the term also commonly applies to buying something on eBay with the purpose of reselling it quickly, also on eBay, for an almost guaranteed profit. This buying on and reselling later on eBay is also called ‘Flipping’, sometimes ‘Leveraging’.

Understanding Arbitrage

Arbitrage begins with one or more of the following basic steps:

* Buy online to resell online

* Buy offline to resell online

* Buy online to resell offline

* Buy offline to resell offline.

As eBay sellers, it’s the first two that concern us most, so let’s see how to make easy money from ‘Arbitrage’ or what’s traditionally known as the ‘Buy Low, Sell High’ technique.

Arbitrage Techniques

Your profit might be based on personal knowledge, for example, where you discover items selling on eBay.com which you know will sell at higher prices on other eBay country sites, good examples being viewcards, books and other souvenirs of overseas geographical locations which almost invariably sell better on their own country site. The same goes for overseas collectibles selling in say, the UK, which you think might fetch higher prices on eBay.com or another eBay country site.

For example, at a local antiques fair I bought eight large photographs of men and machines felling giant Redwood trees in Eureka, California, dated 1880.

These fascinating old pictures had been hanging around in the seller’s box for months, finding no buyers among local visitors to the fairs he attended in Gateshead and Hexham. They were hogging space, in danger of being damaged, so he offered to reduce the price by twenty per cent if I bought all of these items, total nine, pre-discount price £125. So I paid the £100, uploaded them all to eBay’s UK site, priced £39.99 each, total almost £320. One eager buyer, living in Eureka, offered £300 to take the whole lot of my hands, which I accepted and made an almost instant £200 on the deal. I may have reached an even bigger market of Eureka and California Redwood tree collectors and made more money by listing these items on eBay.com but I’m keen on fast turnover and prefer to list items in one sitting, on one eBay site. More than this I’ve never found listing on ebay.com in preference to ebay.co.uk, or vice versa, makes any real difference to my takings.

* Research is another way to find items worth very little in one area and potentially a great deal more elsewhere, either between eBay country sites, or on different eBay categories, even within the same category on which they originally appeared.

* Then there’s the old chestnut of just buying whatever you can, on or off the Internet, which you know presents virtual guaranteed profits on eBay.

There are many ways of using arbitrage for really big rewards especially for anyone prepared to spend time researching ebay for current best selling items and looking elsewhere to buy those very same items sufficiently below eBay's prices to turn a handsome profit on every deal.

Avril Harper is a UK based writer and PowerSeller. Learn more about eBay arbitrage at http://www.publishingcircles.com/arbitrage.htm or download a free guide ‘103 PowerSeller Tips’ at http://www.toppco.com.