When eBay was opened in the late 90's a hand full of "In the knows" or "word of mouth" entrepreneurs jumped on board. Selling ANYTHING under the sun and making mass amounts of money for "anything" listed for sale.
Granny's non-working clock? Hell yea, it sold for $500.00.
All was great until people tried making a "Business" out of eBay! Now share holders worry more about the market than the sellers. People are beating each other down on price, and flooding the market with 340,000 of the same items over and over. Fees keep going up in new, creative ways. All while the buyer for these items is getting smaller and smaller due to the new GIANT!
Introducing Amazon.
Built basically from sellers selling hardback and paper back books at first. Then came Kindle for authors to write and publish their own work. Then comes FBA, and here is the "Business" part of Amazon. Same exact thing as eBay had done, but with a death grip on the market share.
But you see,,Amazon was SMART!
Amazon's approach was to share the platform with sellers so they could get data on "Hot Selling" "Niche Items" and slowly start selling these items themselves and eventually "Restrict" others from selling the products any longer. Or at least, if you did wish to sell the "Hot/Trending" product, you would have to jump through fire hoops. Many people gave up and walked away, as Amazon intended.
The End Result For Most!
I have a close friend (Ex Wal-Mart General Manager) that jumped on the "Drop Shipping Boat"! He made MILLIONS from 2005-2012. Now he is struggling to keep the lights on. With Amazon kicking him from the site numerous times, and vendors restricting places he can sale their items, it leaves little hope left. Squeezing out the "Middle Man" is what I feared and is coming into fruition.
What goes up, must come down!
Why sell my items to you(Middle Man), for $20 so you can make $50? We are seeing this with Goodwill, Salvation Army, Wholesalers, Garage Sales, Etc.
Even, as stated above, Amazon is asking "Why let others sell this product for $50 on our site and we only get $5, when we can contact the supplier and sale it ourselves and make $30-$40? "
This is why it is getting harder and harder for a re-seller to get ahead in 2017, and it will only get worse as more sellers are forced to go back to eBay with their items for sale, as buyers flock over to Amazon.
I am DONE! It is no longer FUN!
Take 3000 mice and place them into a small maze. Then place a grain of cheese at the end of the maze, and that is about what selling on eBay feels like in 2017. The charts do not lie about where shoppers are heading. And as re-sellers get restricted out of Amazon, they only have one other maze to fight over the cheese.
Others will go to smaller known sites. While this "could" work, they will not see even 10% of the results that they had previously seen on the two giants "eBay and Amazon's" websites.
Some will go to "Offer Up and Local Facebook and Craigslist Ads", and be running a inventory delivery service, or opt to have 300 complete strangers show up at your home.
Not for me! I have seen the light and I am walking towards it. Re-selling online is Jurassic Park, and I am looking for the next flying car.
I will post a second part to my "thoughts" on my online venture. Until then, thanks for reading! Please Follow for more.
Also, please leave a comment on your thoughts about this topic. Thanks