A person can make money on ebay, you just have to do some research, as there are a lot of fees and they seriously eat up profits. All last summer I went to estate sales and bought mainly fine china/porcelain (after researching pottery marks so I had an idea of their age). I did pretty well. It is very time consuming, going to sales takes a lot of time, the good part is...you can take your baby with you. Listing takes a lot of time, you HAVE to have decent pictures. I never bought anything that I didn't think I could sell for AT LEAST double...because of all the fees.
One way to save a little on fees is to wait until you have a stash of stuff to sell (20 or more, the more the better), and open a store. It only costs like 5 cents to list an item in a store versus $1 or more via auction. The only thing is...you have to have a few things as auctions to get traffic to your store. Do some research via ended auction searches for pricing ideas.
The store is free for the first 30 days, then it's like $15/month which is easily saved in fees as long as you keep the store stocked.
I have found fine porcelain from the 1800s for $2...the people had no idea what they had. One lady was moving across country and selling of her parents "misc stuff" so she didn't have to store it. One piece was a cedar chest purchased from Macy's (or some other big dept store)in 1950, it looked like new and had the reciept taped to the inside...sold it for $50 (I was sick that it sold before I got there) The other piece, I did get, it was the bowl from a wash set (pitcher and basin) from 1903, got it for $4, sold it for $50. Once got a crystal liquor decanter set for $50 and sold it for $600! Old quilts and needlwork do very well on ebay too.
Another thing you must be careful of when doing that is you have to consider how you can ship it...big items or odd shapes. You don't want to waste money on packing supplies if you don't have to.
All in all, it is really time consuming and you have to now what you are looking at when buying, which takes a while to catch on but it can be done. Other ebay options are buying beauty items wholesale. I used to buy from powderpuffgals in bulk and then re sell on ebay, did fine with that too.
Cleaning houses....a great way to make extra money. The business ones charge like $25+/hr, you can easily undercut them and charge $10/hr cash and do well. If you can get in with a builder, construction clean up pays very well...they just go in and get the house ready to show after it's built.
I would pay someone to do my ironing, in fact...Im asking my cleaning lady if she's interested tomorrow.
Run an ad in the local paper or put up a flyer at the store, odds and end jobs....errands like pick up drop off dry cleaning, if you have a mini van you can run kids to and from school or practices, weeding flower beds...there are 2 ladies in my town who do this...they will plant too but their main thing is weeding you landscaping for you.
Of course, it all depends on how much time/energy you have left after your own daily duties as well as where you live.
Best of luck!
edited to add.....have a garage sale! Do a serious cleanout...if you haven't used it in 6 months...it goes. I did this same thing and priced the stuff at basically give away (which Im not suggesting you do) just to get it out of my house and made $600 in ONE day from stuff I would have just thrown out! It's amazing what people will buy!
another thought.....do garage sale for other people....I have a ton of stuff left from my estate sales that I need to garage sale but I don't want to go thru the hassle of the sale...again...would give someone a cut if they wanted to do it.
