Back in the late 1990s, when I was still in grad school, I found eBay. I realized quickly there was a simple formula involved; find used things people want and sell it for a price there willing to pay. In my case it was used motorcycle parts. There was a market, I had a great supply living in a flat town with a lot of two wheel fans and former fans burying treasures in their garages, and the expectations for offloading was low. The biggest challenge was really the post office, still being picky at the time about packaging rules. Fortunately, the eBay tidal wave overwhelmed that problem pretty quick. 

Now, 1997 was a long time ago, some 28 years ago to be somewhat exact. Yet here I am today, still selling on eBay when a bit of cash comes in handy or when I need to get rid of stuff that's never going to find a use again in my home. The same model works, just this time with a different market demand. Now, I farm charity stores and Goodwill outlets for books, mainly IT tech books to be exact. Then I pick the good ones that I know have an audience, I compare the charity store's price versus eBay with my phone and, if there's a good market up opportunity, I buy and resell. It's not going to make me a millionaire by any means, but the extra cash does come in handy for re-investment. For example, my last few sales allowed me to buy a few shares of Intel (INTC) before it took off this week (up 22+%). 

EBay was never quite a great model, however. Between the rising costs of fees and shipping, and then the squeeze in markets with more and more competitors on an international level, the platform by the 2000s began to lose its shine. It quickly was warping towards small business platforms selling brand new cheap stuff to mainly U.S. customers, with sellers hoping for margin profits on pennies. It didn't help then when UPS, the main usable shipper at the time started jacking up shipping costs, leaving the post office of all options as the cheaper choice. 

I started up again after years of chasing other channels, and the book selling has been somewhat successful. I mean you can't call it a failure when you're selling product at 300 to 400% over cost. Unfortunately, the frequency of sales could use some improvement. Interestingly, however, I've gotten the added benefit of building quite a library of tech books, which is definitely a bonus. See, back in the day, books were quite common in IT topics and software package sales. Then, around 2010, tech sources got cheap and started telling everyone to go to the Internet to read what they needed. Lame. Books were gems. 

So, now I get everything from COBOL guides to C++ and Javascript manuals including ASP.net and AJAX or Django as well as 20 other topics in between and they are on average $1-2 each. Crazy.

As for eBay, well, sales happen at interesting times. Fortunately, shipping has gotten a lot more reasonable again too, at least for anything book-size. Beyond the standard USPS priority mail box, it just gets awefully expensive, and international shipping is pretty much out of the question. It's literally highway robbery using any kind of courier or postal service for that. Everything in the international arena is geared for freight shipping and large volume cost savings.

The other thing about eBay is that it's not really affected by the economy. When times are good, people buy and spend on it. When times are bad, people buy more looking for bargains versus buying retail. Either way, if you have the right used product and can sell it without losing money to fees and shipping, you're doing good.

I'm a bit shocked eBay lasted as long as it did, but the model doesn't seem to have any reason to quit any time soon. Maybe.