For a while I made a decent profit buying and selling business opportunities on eBay.

The process was pretty simple; I researched popular biz opps and then kept an eye on listings for those particular opps appearing on eBay. If they looked like they were going to go for a song, I would set up a sniping program to place a last minute bid.

In a lot of cases I could get a home study course which usually sold for £300+ for as little as £15!

All I would do then is list the item with a good description and title and place it on eBay with a Buy It Now (BIN) price of £100 or so – sometimes I could get at least half price on these second hand goods.

Usually it would take a few weeks to sell meaning I would have to relist it a couple of times but every package would sell eventually for a good profit.

The secret was to never drop the price.

Every time you relist the item, leave the price the same.

I guess that someone who is interested in your item will keep watching, hoping you will drop your price. After the third or fourth time seeing you list it for the same amount, they tend to lose patience and will bite.

If you weaken your stance and keep on lowering the price they will keep on watching until you lower it to a silly price.

It pays to be patient.

What happened with my little money maker is that one particular seller decided to muscle in on the territory. He bought one course and then copied it lots of times, selling the copies on for £30 or so.

He didn’t seem bothered that he was risking legal problems by selling illegal copies of the product… And, unfortunately, there’s very little you can do when somebody wants to undercut you with dodgy practises.

Although I don’t tend to sell much on eBay anymore, I do keep an eye on the courses that I used to sell. And recently, there have been a number of sellers all copying and selling DVDs of a trading seminar with a £2k+ ticket price.

They are whipping out these illegal copies for next to nothing, tempting fate and a very expensive court appearance!

It made me chuckle when I saw one particular bootlegger put the following in his “Return Policy” field on eBay:

“Due to a number of people ordering DVD’s (sic) from me, receiving them, and then immediately asking for a refund (I would suspect after copying them), I cannot continue to offer this return policy as part of the service.

I hope you understand.”

So, this fella is illegally copying someone else’s intellectual property and selling it for next to nothing.

Then, he is complaining that the people who he is selling to may well be conning him! Very sad…

You break the law and then whinge and whine when somebody asks for a refund on the dodgy goods 🙂

Moral of the story?

Well first of all, don’t sell copied material on eBay – you don’t know who is watching.

Think about this for a moment:

The copyright owner could easily have a friend buy the goods from you, pay by cheque (so they get your name and address) and then they have evidence that you are illegally copying and selling their work.

The primary evidence would be the bootlegged material that you sent to their friend!

Secondly, if you do sell copied stuff then you should expect to have lots of dodgy customers. It stands to reason. Dodgy people look for shortcuts, scams and ways to cheat people out of money. If you offer them a shortcut (cheap knock-offs) then you can’t be surprised when they shortcut you.

eBay is great for bargains, but it isn’t the place where you go to sell information products for a premium – that’s just plain common sense.

If you want to learn how to use eBay to make money (but certainly not in the way you imagined), check out Alex Jeffrey’s superb course at:

http://www.AuctionLoophole.com.

And, just one final word of advice, if you get the rights to some home study courses e.g. DVD courses from well-known UK marketers who I won’t mention here, don’t go selling them on eBay for £39.

Get a decent sales letter put together, put some work in and sell them for the high price they can achieve.

Remember, get your customers into your marketing funnel with a small product then up-sell them with a more expensive course.

This is the way it’s been done for years by the big, successful information publishers and you’ll make much more money than trying to shift volume on eBay.