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"What to Sell on eBay in 2012"

© Avril Harper, Chartered MCIPD, Dip PM

Happy New Year and I hope you all had an enjoyable break and you’re fired with ideas for making 2012 your most profitable year ever!

Now on to the most important New Year thought I want to share with you, and it concerns what I believe is the best possible resolution for any business owner to make, being to:

Stop Flogging Dead Horses in 2012

It’s an unpleasant sounding resolution but its implications can help turn a failing business or one that’s just breaking even, into a major money maker for the new year ahead.

In my chosen context ‘stop flogging dead horses’ means to avoid doing things or selling products that just didn’t make money in the past, or which caused more trouble than they were worth.

A much better definition of 'flogging dead horses', from Wikipedia, goes like this:

‘To continue in any endeavour (physical, mental, etc.) is a waste of time as the outcome is already decided.’  The outcome in our case being that there’s every chance of that product or income stream continuing to cause problems in future! 

So why not identify your dead horses now and view the new year as a chance to cast off regular problems and live a more relaxed lifestyle?

That means as eBay sellers in particular and Internet marketers in general we need to avoid focusing on products that made very little money for us in 2011 and give up on income streams involving way more time and effort, also capital investment and frustration, than they returned in income.

Sort out the bad, focus more extensively on the good, look for more eBay products and more income streams to test for profitability in 2012, and you’re on the way to making the kind of money you only ever dreamed about.

So what are the horses you’d do best to let rest in peace?  For me it’s any product that took a day to source and which over the year made less than two or three hundred pounds pure profit on eBay; it’s any website that took a day to create and generates less than twenty-five pounds a month in AdSense revenue; it’s any eBook I spent a week writing that doesn’t make at least £1,000 in ClickBank income in its first twelve months online; it’s any business or income stream that caused more unhappiness or hassle compared to any other I could have established in its place.

The latter point is especially important to me, and to some of our readers also, and it’s based on the fact I am not in business to make money at any cost, I am personally in business to support my family as well as to live a quiet hassle-free life.  So if selling a specific product makes money and I’m happy selling it, that product will stay in my 2012 inventory.  Compare that to an item, or income stream, that causes misery or major disappointments which, even if it is hugely profitable, is one I’d rather dispense with than allow it to cause more pain in the new year ahead.

Now it’s up to you to spend a day or so looking at your business in 2011 and deciding which parts of it to repeat and which to dispose of to make way for new income streams in 2012.