eBay "Profits"

Here is a good little store about doing "business" on eBay:

Wife goes to the mall for the day and buys 50 widgets at $10 average($500). Spends 20 hours over the next week taking pictures, making cute graphics and writing descriptions. Lists them all on eBay, sells 40% at $12 average($240). Relists the rest at .99 and sells 40% of them at $8 average($96). Wife calls friend to go for lunch(-$40) to celebrate having grossed $336 on items sold that cost $320. Doesn't occur to her that 15% fees (-$45) have been taken off. Final tally is $500 spent to end up with $251 cash and 18 more dust collecting pieces of junk. Wife tells hubby if she spends $1000 next month she'll do even better. Hubby says, "Yes dear, I'll start going into work on the weekends now too".

The moral of the story. Look at doing business on eBay as a business. Keep track of how much you pay for an item, subtract eBay listing and final value fees, PayPal fees, packing supplies, and postage from the price to find the net profit. Better yet , keep track of all of this in a simple Excel Spreadsheet.