Singing Pig

Hello everyone

First post here - I'll get straight to the point.

I've been trading successfully on ebay primarily reselling dell computers for a couple of years now, but over the last few months my health has taken a turn for the worse, so I've put the business on hold and lost my powerseller status.

The benefits of such a business are:

- reliable supplier (dell themselves! not some far east wholesaler/dropshipper who may give you the runaround)
- all-year-long demand (i.e. not a fad, you don't have to be constantly chasing the next best thing)
- no-loss situation - you can always see the price of completed auctions before you commit to a purchase
- minimal aftercare (dell will honour the warranty which is fully transferable)
- scalaeble to a certain extent (i.e. you can make £50 profit on 1 computer - if you buy and sell 50 then it's £2500)

Profits are variable depending on cost and also the time and effort you're willing to put in. In my best month working full-time, I've grossed £9,000 profit - all I did was buy the computers, receive them from dell, take some pictures, set up the ebay auction, accept payment and send them on.

This business is especially suitable  for people in the uk who wish to work from home and have reasonable storage space (depending on how many computers you are buying to sell).

I've no intention of re-entering this market, but am mulling over the idea of writing an ebook with the exact blueprint of my business including:

- where to source the computers
- how to get the cheapest price
- which cheap and reliable courier to use
- how to pack the boxes to save even more cost while preserving insurance cover
- auction layout
- best time to list for highest views & price.

Before I go ahead and spend 1 week writing the ebook, I wonder if there is any interest at all? I'm also considering limiting it to 10 copies to prevent oversaturation.

If you have any doubts as to what I'm offering, here is my ebay feedback http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=canyonsiege&iid=

You can contact me through ebay to verify.

Regards
canyonsiege

On a similar note an ex colleague of mine runs a PC supply and repair shop (small unit) Until recently he was quite busy but in the last year he has suffered enormously with the onset of better anti virus software (90% of repairs were simply viruses) His biggest earner was custom build but Dell are so aggressive both on price and payment terms his business has reduced to a mere trickle. Recently he also purchased Dell systems and remarkably sold them in his shop with a reasonable mark up (without the 17" flat screen monitor which he sold seperately for a tidy profit) Do your customes know they are Dell machines? I was wondering how anyone would not simply go to Dell direct. I am not disputing what you say as I know there are some people who are just happy to think they are getting a deal. My friend has been looking to get away from the shop as he spends hours sometimes doing nothing so maybe your E-bay idea would be a winner for him.

There are quite a few people on ebay selling Dell.

The reasoon why people buy off ebay as opposed to Dell Direct is because ebay is cheaper. I bought a Dell laptop for £1k from ebay (brand new, unopened). The same laptop would be £1500 through Dell!

How and when? Dell only sell direct to consumer. You get an awful lot of laptop for 1500 pounds.

If you go on ebay now and search for 'dell', then then filter it to new laptops there are currently 429 for sale on ebay from the UK only.

Click Here

I bought mine in January 2006 from 'thechef01.'

I've done a fair amount of Ebay IT sales and the Dell sellers are buying excess stock / cancelled orders / rework either via the Dell Outlet or direct in serious bulk.

A lot of the high-spec stuff is via the Outlet - write a VB app to scrape the site for new units at suitable prices / specs and grab them within a couple of seconds of appearing - then just resell on Ebay for instant profit. Easy as that (except for the humping around of boxes / fraudulent buyers etc)

See www.outletbargains.co.uk for the full story (apart from apps - discussing these is banned on that site)

 

 

Canyon,

I'm a gadget freak and so this would be ideal for me. I am close to getting 500 positive feedbacks (no negatives) as a result of buying gizmos playing with them and then selling them.

I've been toying with the idea of a sideline income stream for a long time now and this would be ideal.