Take the case of those intrepid individuals who spend their spare time scouring around car boot sales and charity shops searching for bargains to sell online. By the time they have calculated their travelling expenses, time spent looking for items, listing and photographing the profit in the end can be pretty small.

It must be similar to being on a treadmill forever chasing the next product, the next bargain. Unless you are dealing in high ticket items any eBay business that relies on selling individual products is going to be labour intensive.

The obvious answer is to buy items in bulk so that you can sell a large quantity of one product and yet only write one listing and take one photograph. Selling multiple items also makes the packing and shipping a lot easier.

The first problem for any would be eBay entrepreneur is to find a suitable source of products. The 5 options, manufacturers, wholesalers, dropshippers, offline auctions and eBay wholesale category.

Manufacturers. Most manufacturers will only supply large companies direct but there might be opportunities if you deal with smaller manufacturers.

Wholesalers: These days it is quite easy to find wholesalers by going onto Google and typing in the product your interested in + “wholesaler” (i.e beauty products + wholesaler).

Dropshippers. A dropshipping is a method by which you advertise the product without actually purchasing it. The dropshipper will ship it out for you when you make a sale and pay him. Your profit is the difference between what you pay the dropshipper and what you charge your customer.

Offline Auctions. Most major towns have an offline auction house and some specialise in bankrupt and liquidated stock . It can be worth getting on their catalogue list.

eBay Wholesale category. It is always worth browsing through the wholesale sections of eBay. I have found quite a few lots there that could be broken down into individual items.

In the coming months we are going to look at all 5 of these options in detail so make sure you visit UKAuctionline regularly.