The internet auction site eBay has provided millions of people from across the globe with the opportunity to start their own business from home.

So why has it become so popular?

There are many reasons, the two main ones are:

1. Starting a business on eBay carries very little risk.

2. You don’t need much money to get started. Little investment is required because essentially you don’t need anything more than some money for some initial stock and a little to pay eBay fees. Compare that to a typical offline business or even an online one where you might incur significant costs in building an e-commerce presence and expensive marketing campaigns.

Why is eBay ideal?

eBay provides the ideal starting ground for newbie entrepreneurs because it makes everything easy. There’s no need to worry about things such as setting up an online store, building a website or getting customers – it’s all there for you on eBay.

This is not to say that eBay businesses can’t expand outside of eBay. As they grow, many of them do just that.

Despite eBay making lots of things easy you also need to bear in mind that the eBay marketplace is extremely competitive. This wasn’t always the case, but today even if you’re selling niche items you’re likely to find that you have lots of competitors vying for your customers. This doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed though – where there is healthy competition there are usually plenty of customers and if you can make yourself the seller of choice it’s possible to become very successful indeed.

One of the other real beauties of eBay is that it is very transparent. You can openly see what other sellers are doing and it’s extremely easy to “spy” on the competition and assess what’s selling, the best tactics to use and information to help you make good business decisions.

So what are the keys to success on eBay?

Well things are not too dissimilar to any other business.

You need to find a market that has plenty of customers and from which you can make a profit. That means buying the right goods, at the right price, and then placing them in front of eBayers at the right time. If you can do that and you provide good customer service at all times then you could be on a very successful road.

I will cover all of this and more in the coming weeks.