by Arjun Wadhwa

Created on: March 16, 2008

If you are a regular on ebay then you must have heard the story of one red paper clip. If you haven't heard it I will briefly introduce it and how you can do the same.

A young gentleman called "Kyle Macdonald" started traded on ebay with an aim of buying a house.

He traded a red paper clip for a wooden pen on ebay. Then the pen for some other small items which eventually lead to a trade of a dishwasher, globe with autographs of famous celebrities, role in a movie which was eventually traded for $500k house in the urban area. In a matter of one year Kyle made $500k from an investment of a red paper clip.

What can we as traders learn from this? I saw the quote "One man's garbage is another's goldmine" coming true. We all have items that we don't need, but we still keep them untidy in a place where they don't even belong, or even worse throw it away in trash can. Before you throw those old headphones out, or old coins out, think about the story of Kyle Macdonald and think what you might be able to do if instead of red paper clip you started with something like Ipod which is worth even more than a red clip.

Making $500k is rare and ridiculous amount of money for most of the traders. You don't have to make $500k, but you can make $10k-$50k, which isn't that rare or ridiculous.

Now lets get to the guide of making money:

You have to learn what items to sell on ebay, and what items will people actually buy and trade. One item that many people are selling is video games and gaming systems like Xbox360, Wii, Ps1, Ps2, etc.

When you enter "Wii" in the ebay search bar, you are going to get over thousand items that you can bid on. Most of these people will end up selling their Wii for the cheapest price possible, or not be able to sell it. When there are over 1000 items in one category, it is almost impossible to get the most money out of it.

That is why selling video games and game systems is not recommended because ebay also has its own sponsors selling brand new products and why would anyone buy non-reliable 2nd hand gaming systems. Many times these systems have some faults and the buyer ends up with a broken gaming system which takes $100 more fix it.

A popular item to sell would be rare coins. People are making thousands of dollars with a few Penni's that are hundreds of years old. Rare collect ons like coin collection will sell for a lot.

Many people like collecting old coins, and if you are one of them ebay might be a dream come true for you. You can buy old coins,

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