How to make money on Ebay, Buy low, sell high

This is a guide, a work in progress on how to make money on ebay.  There are many different opinions on this subject and mine is just another one.  But I do feel I have some good ideas that I will share with you.

How do you buy? I have come to the realization that knowing the right people, business is extremely important.  Here are a couple of ways I have bought items to sell, either on Ebay or to sell in Flea markets:

Auctions: Auctions are very good, I love merchandise auctions and moving or estate auctions.  Recently I went to an auction at a very large flea market in Central florida, this was a wholesaler of novelty type items.  At these auctions you may have to buy in larger quantities but if the item is a good seller buying in larger quantities is something you should want to do anyways.

From other ebayers, this is not usually my first suggestion but you can often find someone selling large lots of items, I found someone selling 5000 stress toys on ebay, where I was able to buy them at $.15 each, and can sell them for over $.30 each, not bad to double your money.

Yard sales is a hit or a miss typle of buying location,  If you get up early and search the sales, typically look for items that you have a knowledge about, or bring a blackberry to search ebay while at the yard sale.

Outlets, especially if you are located in a place where you can buy from a certain outlet where the rest of the world may not be able to so easily.  (see example below)

We are located in Florida, hence the name Florida Connections - HSN or Home Shopping Network is located in Florida.  HSN only has 3 outlets where they sell returns or off the shelf items.  HSN is extremely popular and we who are located near the outlets have a great niche to sell.  Think of your local area is there something near by that maybe the rest of the country doesn't have such good access too. 

Sell what you know....I can't stress that enough.  If you worked in a video store for years. Should you try to sell women's clothing or videos, not only do you know videos you may very well know where you can buy them cheap. 

Another example, again from Florida, I have Disney, Citrus, Universal, and many other popular locations, I can find people selling Disney items cheap... what do you have in your area. 

Now how do I sell it on Ebay... Wow that is a hard topic, changes all the time depending on how the market is going.  Lately I have liked selling items in an Ebay Store, cheap to list, and stays on Ebay longer.  How to price?  Depends if you item will only have a few people looking at it, IE maybe you are selling a rare picture of Howard Hughes, How many people are going to search for that, therefore you need to put a bit higher of a minimum.  Maybe you are selling Titleist golf balls, a very common item, you can list that lower and anticipate that sellers will bring it up to a "normal" selling price. 

How about shipping, I have learned from many hard lessons that I will not sell "breakable" items, too much work, but again if you have a great facility that can pack items exceptionally well, then go for it.