Ebay is the easiest site to sell on, it has millions visiting it everyday. While Bidville, Craigslist, Ubid, etc, are all growing they still are not of the same magnitude of Ebay.
It is enjoyable, exciting work, and you are your own boss.
There is no real hard work (until after you sell the item) with the marketing, especially if you sell through Ebay. You don't have to lay out money for marketing to get traffic to your auctions as Ebay constantly sends a feed to Google. Many of our items ranked high on Google searches because we were selling them on Ebay!
Ebay is one of the largest sites on the internet with a PR 9, and almost everybody goes there to at least check out what there is to buy or even just for price comparison.
This is how we started to make money on the internet 8 years ago and we had over 12,000 positive feed back in that period.

Selling on Auctions is an excellent way to learn the fundamentals of selling and marketing on the internet! Here you have your own little business selling items on auctions and now you have to market, create ads, send invoices, receive payments, ship, and chase down delinquent payers.
It is the basis of all businesses! You have to deal with typical business problems and successes! But for the most part it is fun!
Even though you may spend more time in front of the computer, or shopping, or shipping then you would at a real job, it is fun! It is like watching a child grow up - you are dealing with minor crises morning and night! Through out the life of this lens I will tell you how to source your product. How to write your ad for the auction search engines. How to market your auctions. What are the benefits of store, etc.
This is an excellent book. eBay Powerseller Secrets:Insider Tips from eBay's Most Successful Sellers Many of the authors writing about making money on auctions, actually don't sell on auctions. They do some research and apply MBA school business models. We were powersellers and we know all the hard work it was - the purchasing, the writing up of the titles, doing the ad descriptions, invoices, the shipping, etc. It was hard work! But it was worth it! If you want to make money selling on auctions imitiate those who are successful.

This is another excellent book. Skip McGrath has been a Powerseller since 1998! The Book - Titanium eBay:: A Tactical Guide to Becoming a Millionaire PowerSeller is a book that will definetely have rabbit ears
Check out on these items brought to you about Ebay

Use UsFreeAds.com to buy, sell or advertise anything! That is right! I was reading about Bum Marketing and I came across this site several times. I said, Ok, I will try it. They have a three day free trial for their premium membership (which is a measly 9.99 a month). So, I put up four items from our Fun Cool Collectibles Store, and was totally impressed as a pair of TUK shoes received over 20 views within 24 hours! The pair of shoes was listed in Google within 24 hours! Talk about Google Juice - UsFreeAds.com is juiced to the bone! I have spent the last few days listing stuff over at UsFreeAds. I have also been listing my Amazon stuff. I like the layout of their Product catalog - it is similar to the Ebay Store Layout! this is very nice! The traffic at UsFreeAds.com .

We find most of stuff in clearance bins of chain stores. This is a lot of hard work, going from store to store, but it is fun! I was never much into shopping before, but now it is a challenge to find what will sell! We have found a niche with punk and alternative clothing, Disney stuff, and other collectibles. We have never purchased stuff from garage sales (only because our niche is for new stuff!) but this is definitely a good alternative. We have heard stories about people making killings with stuff from garage sales - people just wanting to get rid of stuff and letting it go for cheap. We have always discussed this alternative under a different username, but We NEVER HAD THE TIME! One username Utradesports consumed most of our time. Also, pick a good username. While Utradesports was good when we sold sports trading cards, I think it sucks for selling what we sell now.
Dropshipping? I personally wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole. Too many people are selling the same items on Ebay, I do not know how anybody is making money with dropshipping. Getting the product to the customer is also out of your hands. What if the drop shipper doesn't sell it anymore? What if it breaks before it gets to the dropshipper? What if it is backorder? Too many variables are out of your hands. One of our selling points was the fast shipping! Check our feedback, this comes up all the time! We would ship within 24 to 48 hours (during the Christmas crunch it was 12 to 36 hours sometimes even 4 hours!), I do not think that you will find that many drop shippers that do that! We had a 99.8 % feedback rating - we sold quality stuff and shipped it fast!
It is important that when you purchase your product to take good pictures and try to get as many as you can. We used to just use the stock photos from the sites that we purchased from, but then we would take two or three more just to give a good representation of the item that we sold. We would give as good description of the item - minor flaws, or whatever - we would try to be truthful with our advertising!

This is the major reasons that stuff sells! When people go to a store they can feel the item, they can touch it, and they can see it. If you are going to set up an auction selling business, you need a decent camera and/or scanner. I would suggest that you make your camera no smaller than 4.0 megapixels. I would also suggest that you invest in a back drop, ie, a colored sheet or white wall. We have a tent table for our smaller items. This gives a nice backdrop for your photos.
We also used a scanner. This can be used for flatter items. But I believe that you need pictures for your auctions. We basically wouldn't put up anything unless we had a picture for it. We have also used 3 different pictures from three different angles for many items - especially shoes!
Canon PowerShot SD850 IS 8.0 MP Digital Elph Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom
Canon PowerShot A560 7.1MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom for 133.99! This is an excellent deal!
Canon PowerShot A640 10MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom will handle any photo situation!

Make selling internationally on auctions a part of your marketing mix. This will help you to sell more product on the internet, and that is the name of the game! Getting more product exposure. Many of the items - close to 40% - that we sold on auctions went internationally, and we don't even have a brick and mortar store! Some of the product that we sell on Ecrater also go internationally. We would never have this much sales if we were just a brick and mortar in the middle of New York! Selling on auctions have added another dimension to our marketing mix! We ship internationally, so our sales are quite good! This was part of niche, as many people selling on Ebay would not ship internationally. Sure, the odd item went "missing", but we chalked this up as part of doing business. Many international customers could not get the product, and therefore would pay a premium for it. We sold many items at the "Buy it now" price to international customer. We thought of this as part of our niche marketing. We charged a reasonable amount for shipping and handling for international customers and they flocked to our auctions! We have carried this over to our Ecrater Store

We had a store at ebay and we used a domain name so that people would find us easier. This is part of your branding! If you have a brick and mortar store, use the name of your store for the domain name - it will be part of your branding. If you do not have a brick and mortar business, then it should take you a little longer to think of a domain name - it should be keyword rich. I discuss this in greater detail at my The Search Engine Directory Squidoo Lens. It is imperative the keyword that you use has a high search level. Once you have figured out your keyword rich name then you will want to register on ebay, and purchase your domain name - your username and the domain name should be the same! Do not use your real name or the name of your pet, unless your name is really popular like Tom Cruise or Britney Spears but these domain names are already taken. Now you can purchase your store and start to populate it with the items that you want to sell - but remember the username and the domain name are the start of your branding!

You better be ready for Christmas NOW! If you are selling for the International market, You should have all of product by September 30th, because this is when they start to buy! They buy early because of the uncertainty of the mail service - we have seen a package take 3 months to get to the Netherlands - long after Christmas! 40% of our Christmas business was International, so we were ready by October the first every year. We purchased rolls of bubble wrap, and made sure that we had lots of boxes, and labeling materials. We would have lots of ink for the printer on hand and paper - reams and reams of paper. And product! We would max out every line of credit that we could, overdraft, loans from friends, credit cards - but only low interest cards - at 27% per annum it wouldn't take long for this interest to eat up any profit. And the two of us would put up product til we fell asleep at the computer! It was alot of hard work - putting up items at the computer and shipping them! It was time consuming but all and all we enjoyed it because it was our business.