Bill Myers

Over the holidays I got involved in a quick and easy eBay related project. My goal was not so much to make money, but mainly to learn if a particular business model could be profitable.

This business model involved trying to sell items on eBay that were available locally at no cost, but might have a high perceived value to buyers not able to travel to this area to collect the free items themselves.

It only took me a few minutes to launch this project. I basically took a photo of the free items, used the free Turbo Lister to create an eBay auction listing, and made the auction live.

After three successful back-to-back auctions I proved that not only would people pay for items they knew I was obtaining at no cost, they were very happy to do so. (All three buyers contacted me and thanked my for making the product available.)

While this wasn't the kind of project one could get rich with, it was the kind of project that was easy to roll out, cost very little (total costs = thirty cents), produced a profit (three times), and allowed me to learn a little bit more about human nature.

I wasn't doing it for the money - mostly for the experience gained from the process.

It's what we product developers call 'on the job training'. Read more about the particulars of this project (and how you can duplicate it) at http://www.bmyers.com/members/558.cfm