Making money on eBay is not as easy as it used to be but it can still be done. If you have a bunch of stuff to sell then it will obviously make the process a whole lot easier than if you are trying to buy merchandise and then resell it for a profit.
Reselling stuff that you buy for profit is extremely difficult on ebay. If you look at the selling fees and the cost of shipping, some of the sellers on eBay are actually losing money by selling stuff because their profit margins are too low. They are spending more in selling fees than what they are making and thus they are losing money. Obviously you do not want to do this.
One solution to this problem is to do your homework and do a ton of product research on eBay and find products that have naturally higher profit margins. This will be hard to do because the Ebay market is fairly large and efficient so you are not going to be finding huge gaps or holes in what people are buying stuff for. In other words, the market is generally large enough that most items get bid up to their true value, and sometimes just a bit higher.
If you understand the psychology of this then you might be able to find products that take advantage of this emotional element. The fact is that some people will pay more in an auction format than what they would at the store, simply because they are in an auction and they want to win. The auction is a game and they want to win the game, and they will do something stupid at times to win. This is crazy but it happens to very smart people.
So say they are bidding on a used iPod that normally sells for about $230 brand new and they seem to be going for slightly less than that when they are used but in good condition. Well if you watch some of these auctions end then you will see that people really do get swept up emotionally in the auction format, because many of these used devices go for very close to the new price and in some cases even higher! Now obviously this does not make financial sense, but it makes perfect emotional sense, as these people are not just trying to buy an ipod, but they trying to win a game as well.
If you can understand this emotional factor and find products that leverage this, then you can overcome the razor thin profit margins on eBay and make good money at it.