How do businesses selling stock through eBay make a profit?

  • Thread starter Thread starter G.T
  • 3 comments
  • 436 views
G.T

G.T

Messages
11,462
United Kingdom
U.K
Messages
Paganisterr
Messages
Ak Paganister
Yep, another money-related thread. This time I'm really baffled.

As most of you know, you can get a big discount on products if you buy from eBay. I'll give you two examples I've been looking at:

There is this game called Star Trek Legacy I've been wanting for a month or two now since release, but it's been too expensive to buy for £40 (£50 retail). I went onto eBay randomly the other day to see if they were cheap, and luckily enough, they selling for around £20-£25 after the bidding had finished. I decided to have a go bidding on a copy from this business who sells many, many games through eBay, and after some time I managed to get the game for £22.99 after P&P. How on earth do they make a profit? Most places now the game is £40, and on Play it's £30. There's still quite a significant difference...

Now, comes the even bigger discounts. On Play and Amazon, 2GB Pro Duo memory for the PSP ranges from around £30-£50 for the Sony sticks, and £33 for the Sandisc one. On eBay, they were selling dirt cheap for around £12-£18 after P&P, even the "buy it now ones". I managed to get the Sandisc one for £14.02 in the end, but I still cannot believe how they make a profit from it. The seller was selling at least 50 others, all bid-able.

I understand that quite a few come from Hong Kong, so you can buy stuff from there cheap, but even stuff coming from the UK was around the same price (just posting costs were much lower, but the actual bids were higher), like the Sandisc I purchased.

Anyone care to explain? I'm all baffled here...
 
I thought you were talking about literal 'stock', man would that revolutionize the stock market.

Um, there's always the possibility of stolen goods. Other than that, when a distributor buys in bulk they can receive a big discount.
 
Correct, it's also very handy for getting rid of stock you arn't shifting in the shop, say you have copies of a game left that people have stopped buying. Stick it on e-bay for half proce and your more likely for someone to buy it. Selling on e-bay is opening up your customer base dramatically so you can cut your profits per individual item and still make the same or more profit overall.

I once got a box of 500 bluetooth headsets from Hong Kong, all legitimate, straight from the manufacturer, £500. That's £2 per headset, I charged people £10 on top of thier phone if they wanted a Blue tooth headset thrown into the deal, which was far cheaper than the headset cost in the shops. I also from time to time threw the headsets in for free if the customer wans sure about taking out the contract. Sure I'd lose the £2 the headset cost me, but what I'd made in the contract sale made up for it. Sometimes companies will lose money in one aera to try and lure the customer in to use them again. But also markups are often big, especially for technology.
 
I see... I forgot to mention I was comparing it to Amazon's Marketplace, where products do stay at a very high price compared to eBay, even used. The stock may not move as quickly as eBay, but it's still considerably quick (for examples, it takes an average of 1-3 days to sell a game, depending on popularity), so I would have though it would be cheaper there like eBay.

It makes sense though. 20-30 Pro Duos are selling every half an hour or so, so the stock does move quickly. And that Star Trek game isn't too popular.
 
Back