This is a simple idea that I'm just starting to implement. Why sell stuff on eBay where they charge commission and earn advertising revenue off your postings? Why not post your items on your own webpage and earn advertising dollars along side of your sales?
The advent of free blog pages and other free web pages makes this possible to do without risking any cash out of your pocket. It becomes only a matter of promoting your webpage or blog sufficiently to get the traffic you need to make sales. Once you have traffic on your page, you can encourage others to post items on your page as you place ads on it. Opening up your page to others is a great way to build content,
traffic, and advertising revenue without any additional effort. This is especially a good idea if you've been wanting to start a blog but don't know what to write about, or if you have a blog but need easy fillers to add in content on a regular basis.
One great way to build traffic to your site is to make a Craigslist posting because you can still place a link in Craigslist ads that point back to a webpage. There are other free online stores that you can also use to build traffic on your own site. Even if you sell on eBay, you can encourage repeat customers to buy directly from your webpage. I do recommend that you focus on selling products that you can keep in stock at all times. For example, I sell used golf balls on one of my blog-pages: http://golfballheaven.blogspot.com/p/golf-balls-for-sale-in-austin-and.html
I get most of my customers from Craigslist and some from Facebook. I can link directly to my blog from both of those sites. When a potential customer contacts me through email, I always send a link to my blog page that has the appropriate products for sale. This builds traffic to my page and gives me a way to keep in touch with my customers and get repeat business. Perhaps they will see another product that they want to buy in one of my ads; I don't mind, the advertising revenue is easy money for me since I don't have to deal with products or customers. I just collect my check from Google adsense every month.
As you begin, you can focus on marketing only to local customers that you can meet in person to make the transactions. Later, you can add your own checkout tools to collect payments with PayPal or Google or Bitcoin.
