Ebay in Ireland

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I would like to work from home buying and selling wholesale items on the net as many people in the UK do on ebay.

Does anyone know why there's no ebay.ie? Or what happened to ebid which was launched with such fanfare - there doesn't seem to be much going on on that site.

I understand that ebay have their head office in Dublin and am disappointed that they don't have a site for Irish traders only. Anyone know if there's anything in the pipeline?
 
eBid.ie seems to have just died of 'natural causes' - I guess there just isn't a big enough market for an Irish-only site. But then why restrict your customer base to Ireland, particularly if you're selling small/lightweight, easily posted items? - which is where eBay is strongest, I guess.

It's easy enough (and quite instructive!) to see how many Irish-based sellers there are - and what kind of stuff they're selling. Just do an advanced search with the 'keyword or item number' field left blank and, under location, select Ireland. I've just done it [broken link removed]and got 6715 items, which break down as follows:
Music (795)
CDs (200)
Music Memorabilia (167)
Records (143)
more ...
Collectables (780)
Breweriana (103)
Phone Cards (83)
Postcards (59)
more ...
Coins (660)
Banknotes (266)
Coins (109)
Bullion/ Bars (8)

Lots of sets of Irish Euro coins / genuine Oirish shillelaghs / Guinness beer towels / 'Limerick' lace / Belleek, etc. - presumably for our American friends...?

Have often thought about doing a bit of reselling myself, but to turn a profit you're going to have to specialise in something that you can (a) source cheaply in Ireland - and from a reliable supplier - and (b) sell and post abroad at a competitive price. That rules out - for example - most of the smaller 'consumer electronics' items that sell in such huge volumes on eBay...

[broken link removed], maybe...?
 
source cheaply in Ireland
Click to expand...

You don't have to even source it in Ireland if you buy in bulk. I bought 1000 of a (light, low postage) item and got a good bargain. Allow for customs rip-off on import.
 
That's interesting, umop3p!sdn - did you manage to 'move' enough of them to make the venture worthwhile?

I recently got curious enough to price a small 'consumer electronics' item in bulk (from a HK supplier), and for an order of 100 units it was working out at just under e80 each (delivered), whereas I reckon they'd easily fetch twice that in Ireland. You'd figure a 100% markup over cost should be more than enough of a margin to cover Excise duty, eBay fees and other overheads...(?)

But then again, I know a guy in Kildare who started doing this with job lots of DVDs, and a year later couldn't get into his garage anymore for all the unsold stock...!
 
I once bought some tail lights for a BMW I once had, the seller who was from the US had the items sent from a factory in Hong Kong. The factory actually enclosed a list of all their other items and contact details for orders.



I ended up contacting them and sold quite a few products from their location on Ebay, it was slow but profitable. Just being lazy now but i will go back and sell when i have located the right products.
Obviously the electrical equipment in one of the best or designer products but you would be surprised at how the most inane objects can make excellent turnover.
 
AFAIK EBAY Ireland is on the way.

A friend of a friend is employed by ebay working on the start-up.
 
Great news TarfHead! Thanks for that.

Extopia - it's not a dedicated site -
'eBay is excited at being able to offer Ireland's users access to the World's Online Marketplace. At this time we can't provide you with a dedicated site, however we think this is a very good compromise.'
 
It won't make much difference in practice. Who wants to limit the market to Ireland anyway?
 
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