Express Action Sports

I’m in high school and I play sports all year-round, so it’s hard for me to get a job. I remember seeing an infomercial one time about selling on ebay and people making thousands of dollars a month. Now I’m not looking to make that much money, but I want to know how. What do these people sell that they are profiting from? You can’t just sell your own stuff and make money. So what do I do?

If you want to earn serious money from eBay, you need to have a well-thought out business model. Selling on ebay is getting tougher — just look at the number of auctions that closes without a bid. Go to the boards on ebay and you will hear even oldtimers complaining about how stiffer competition plus higher fees make it so much harder to sell on ebay.

The key success factor is: Sell products that people actually want.

Selling on eBay is not as easy as some portray. In fact, go to eBay and check out the number of auctions that end without a single bid. Competition is getting tough, as more sellers go to eBay; even the big boys are joining in the eBay marketplace. Add to that the increasing listing and final value fees.

eBay has several ways for you to determine exactly what the hot items to sell on their marketplace:

Items In Demand = the most popular items currently within that particular category. To see the In Demand page, go to http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/sellbycategory.html

Hot Items by Category Report = a monthly report that lists the fastest growing categories on eBay for the previous month. Go to http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/whatshot.html and select "Hot Items by Category" from the menu on the left.

eBay Pulse = "a daily snapshot of current trends, hot picks, and cool stuff on eBay". Go to http://pulse.ebay.com/ to see eBay Pulse in action.

Merchandising Calendar = eBay promotes specific categories on its home page each month. Savvy eBayers know that this home page exposure results in more interest in such categories. Go to http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/calendar.html to view the current Merchandising Calendar.

But understand that eBay has a minimum age of 18 policy.

I will be taking it snowboarding and skiing mostly. But need top notch quality. Price range: Below $1000. Thanks

For new, your request has mutually exclusive terms. There is no Professional video (or still) camera anywhere near $1000. You can get by with $2500 +/- Pro-sumer cameras running uncompressed MiniDv.

The consumer, camcorders under $1500 all use the same H264 highly compressed so-called "High-Def" recording format. The term "high-def" is pure marketing. Canon, JVC, Sony…all use the same format, pick one you like (for action, look for the biggest (diameter) lens you can get, Optical Image stabilization, etc)

The data rate says it all: MiniDv= 13 gigs/hour for 720X480 while the highest resolution H264 is 11gigs/hour to record almost twice the pixel information.

True High-Def rings in around $6000. Cameras for production run about the price of a small house.

I have paid $1500 for a used Canon GL-2 and would gladly do so again before I spent $1000 on a H264 camcorder. Similar cameras can easily be found for under $800. I found a like-new Canon XL-2 for less than $1000 several months ago.

Want a $1000 consumer camera, pick a toy any toy. Want video you might be able to sell, hit the auctions/want ads and find the best MiniDv you can get your hands on. JVC, Sony, and my favorite…Canon, all make fine cameras.