Want to Sell iPods, Gaming Consoles & Other Popular Consumer Electronics on eBay?

I often get emails from people asking about wholesale suppliers for xBox, Playstation, Apple iPads etc. so they can sell them on eBay. They may be a popular product…but they are the LAST thing you want to try and sell on eBay…plus it’s virtually impossible to find a legitimate Australian wholesaler of them who will sell to eBay sellers.

Basically, if an Australian wholesaler is offering to sell these products to eBay sellers….there is something very dodgy going on…it’s either a scam or the products are fake/stolen.

Here’s the reply I wrote to one of the emails I received, explaining things in a bit more detail.

I hate to say it, but from personal experience I would probably stay away from selling many of the popular consumer electronics you mentioned on eBay. On your own website you should be able to do ok with those type of products, but on eBay it’s a completely different market.

The consumer electronics products like GPSs, Ipods, game consoles etc. are very popular consumer items, but they are also very competitive markets to sell in on eBay. As there’s so much competition from other sellers, the first thing to suffer has been the sale price of those products – with many of them, there’s not much of a margin between the wholesale price & the eBay sale price.

Also with the gaming consoles, the Australian wholesale market for them is pretty tightly sewn up, with distribution of them heavily restricted. The authorised Australian distributors of the gaming consoles are very fussy about who they’ll sell to (definitely no eBay sellers), which is why there aren’t any suppliers of gaming consoles listed in the guide as they’re next to useless for most people who purchase it.

The market’s restricted like this to protect the retail price they can achieve for the consoles. If the market was opened up & anyone was allowed to buy from the wholesalers, they’d lose the control they currently have over the retail price of the products.

Once they started being sold on eBay, it wouldn’t take long for the sale price to drop to not much above the wholesale price. The traditional (street store) retailers then wouldn’t sell any consoles as everyone would be buying them on eBay. The wholesalers would then be forced to lower their wholesale price so the retail stores (like BigW, Target, Kmart etc.) could still make a profit. This would then keep happening in a vicious cycle until the brand went out of business as there were no more profits left. Obviously this is something they don’t want to happen!

Most of the gaming consoles being sold on eBay at the moment are being sourced from overseas.

However, that’s not to say you can’t make good money in the consumer electronics category. What you need to do, is look for a niche market within that category that isn’t so hugely popular – this is where the real profits can be made.

It might be a particular consumer electronics item that isn’t being sold in large amounts, or you might be able to try sourcing some liquidation stock/seconds/refurbished products (I know of someone who’s making a pretty good living selling secondhand/ex-lease computers).

Another option, is to have a look at the Terapeak site – www.terapeak.com. Terapeak is an eBay market research company that provides some very good insights into the eBay marketplace. Alternatively, eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com.au) gives some good indications of products that are gaining popularity, sale prices & more.