I think that maybe if she does enough research, her current job might look better to her! Selling on ebay seems like a lot of work and hassle to me.

I have to say one ebayer looks like he is making out pretty good selling small printed pamphlets of things like recipes, tarot card reading, positive thinking, etc. They can't be expensive to produce and he consistently puts them up for auction (not 'buy it now' unless he bundles them), one after another starting at $3.50. As soon as one sells, he lists another auction of the same item. I came across it looking for Polish recipes. Those little recipe pamphlets always had bids.

How do you plan to find things to sell? My husband and I did garage sales, estates sales and resold things in our own garage sale. we did it more for fun than to make money. One thing I learned it will require more of your time to find things to sell than a regular job. We had a couple of acquaintances that reselling was their only income and it was a rat race. They had no free time to do anything else.

Years later I did Ebay to sell the rest of my doll collection and our other collectibles. I could never have made a living at it.

I came across an idea when searching for an underwater housing for my camera. The seller charged a starting price $10 above the cost of the product to himself and it could be bid up from there. The seller didn't own the product. When the auction ended with a buyer he just placed the order with the company that had them in stock and mailed it to the buyer.

Nicole, someone was doing that with JCPenney items a long time ago. It didn't work well because when the buyers started getting packages from JCP they realized they could have just ordered from them and saved paying the middleman... the feedback was terrible and I'm sure the seller was out of business quickly because of it.

Sleeperblues, if I knew of something that met the criteria something relatively easy to ship, an item in demand by the consumer, and easily acquirable. I'd have to keep that info to myself! Seriously, I'd be selling it! LOL I used to sell a lot on ebay.. mostly things I'd picked up at garage and rummage sales. I did pretty good on most items.. but I could never have made a living at it.

Good luck to your friend.

Looking at it from a different spin, she could consider catering to foreigners who shop. I'd definitely use her services, and I've seen on the eBay forums where Australians have also requested something similar.

I pay a FORTUNE to have my items shipped to me using a shipping company. If someone would ship them directly to me, I'd save quite a bit. Also, I'm limited when bidding or ordering from eBay sellers because there's no way that I can buy lower priced items from different sellers & pay shipping for each item. If she could gather all the purchases and ship them at once, it would benefit us.

Even doing local shopping. For instance, we buy iTunes cards and pay an extra $5 for each one. If she buys it and sends the code by email, that's $5 in her pocket, no matter what the value of the card is. We buy a lot of cards so that five dollars can add up. So it's like a personal shopper, but she's spending other people's money. And no purchases are made by her until we pay for everything, including shipping. I haven't gone into details but this is the main jist.

(If anyone else decides to set up something similar, let me know.)

I'm sure THIS seller shipped the items to himself, then to the buyer. He listed that shipping took 2 weeks. His feedback was excellent!

I made an assumption about what was going on....:0)

Zeetera, your idea is intriguing. Where are you located, your page says US. Can you explain your idea a little further to me?

I was thinking something along the lines of a classic item, like say a coach purse. Buy new from the outlet and re-sell. If you made a profit of 50.00 on each item that could work. Plus you could include a gift receipt or you would at least a receipt with the price paid blacked out just so the buyer would know you weren't selling fakes.

Sleeperblues, I'm in Bermuda, which is a very high priced country. eg a toy that may cost you $19.99 can easily cost us $89.

It's funny that you should mention the Coach purses because I'm trying to encourage a friend to buy them from Texas and sell them for $100 here. These girls think nothing of paying $700 for wallets/purses and no one sells Coach here. If you don't believe me, take a look at the local second hand sites here and you'll find shirts and shoes going for $625 (second hand too).

The way I buy now is to have my items sent to a company in the US. They in turn deliver it to me at $4.50 per pound, plus other fees including a $19.95 handling fee. So a $2 item can end up costing me over $30.

I would pay someone a retainer of about $200 to catch any expenses that I may miss, or in case they need extra. For each purchase I would PayPal the funds to them for the shipping, packaging, etc. Plus pay them a fee to send it through UPS or USPS, FEDEX, DHL. Either a percentage of the value or one fee per package. They would ship it directly to me in Bermuda. I'm responsible for all import taxes. I can easily have the items shipped to her address and pay for it myself using my credit/debit card. In some cases, such as eBay, for those sellers who only ship to a verified address, I can send her the money and she can purchase it. As you can see there has to be a degree of trust. I'd be doing it for my family too, but everything would go through me (my dad just paid to join a shipping service).

Or if I need a piece of fabric from Walmart, I'll send the money and a picture and she can buy it and ship it.

If she gets 20 clients, it may be worth her while each month.

Hmm, first of all I'm jealous that you live in Bermuda when it is about 1 degree here and we are buried in three feet of snow.

You have an interesting proposition, not sure about the details. So if you have someone from the US purchase an item for you at walmart and ship it to you and it weighs one pound, what would that cost?

And are you suggesting that my friend would have 20 clients who would each pay her 200.00 to shop for them and ship items to them which they have paid for via credit card and shipped to her home? Still not sure if I understand this correctly.

And would you be willing do something like that? and how would she find other clients in Bermuda?

Like I said, it sounds interesting.

Don't be too jealous - it's cold, windy and rainy here with a wicked flu spreading. Ask me how I know, lol.

I personally would put a retainer up front, but most probably won't. It would act as a buffer in case the funds don't get to her on time, or there's additional fees when she goes to the Post Office.

Not sure how much one pound would cost, but the prices should be on the shippers' websites. All expenses would be paid by the buyer, plus any fees that she demands. Eg $20 per package or whatever %. It would be up to her to decide.

I'd do it personally, but I haven't asked around to see if anyone else is interested yet. She could post on the eBay forums that's she's offering this service for people living in other countries (only for eBay sales though). I can't see people not taking advantage.

Oh, meant to give you an example:

Say I want a case of widgets from CVS. I already know the price and a rough idea of the sales tax so I'll send that amount. Once she packages it and figures the shipping cost, I'll pay that amount too, along with her fees. (She has to remember to include any sales slips in the package.) She then sends it to me and that's it, the transaction is done.