There is nothing stopping you buying something on Amazon and relisting it on eBay, or vice versa. You don’t need to buy and sell on the same website. In the same way there is nothing stopping you purchasing your goods on any of the following sites and selling those products on at the online venue that is the most appropriate for that particular item.

But where are these various online venues? This is a list of my personal favourites; and are some of the websites that can be successfully used to source stock to resell for a profit:

b1  I know, I know, I just mentioned that eBay isn’t the be all and end all when it comes to online purchasing, but there’s no denying that it’s one of the best options. This auction style site provides a range of buying options, from straightforward Buy It Now store purchases to old fashioned auctions displayed in a modern manner. eBay is a vast website, with many thousands of professional sellers and individuals looking to shift stock. It’s become the go-to place for anyone wishing to clear out their clutter, and many of the individual sellers will offer items in auctions that suffer from the symptoms that I described in the overview earlier. If you don’t already have an eBay account then this is a great place to start

b2 One of the big retail giants, Amazon might not offer the auction style listings of eBay that allow for last minute purchases at bargain prices, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some great deals to be had. In recent years, Amazon’s Marketplace has expanded drastically meaning more and more individuals and organisations have started selling their own stock through Amazon’s own store interface. Some of these items are offered at a particularly good price, and with various daily Lightning Deals and other offers that Amazon provides for a limited time only you could even find a profit-making deal from the owner of the website itself.

b3  Play.com is another e-commerce website like Amazon but without the Marketplace option for other sellers. Despite that it’s a fantastic site to keep your eyes on because the ‘Deals of the Week’ section can allow you to snap up goods for an incredible price. Remember that many buyers are in a hurry and won’t shop around at the various websites online to find the best price for what they want. Just because you’ve found it cheap on Play doesn’t mean you can’t sell it on for a profit on Amazon where many buyers head directly without a glance at other online venues.

b4 eBid. Don’t be fooled into thinking that eBay is the only auction website around today. Many users prefer some of the other auction sites in existence such as eBid, and there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t buy on eBid to resell to eBay or Amazon buyers. Because eBay is the best known auction site it tends to attract the most traffic. The result of this is that many auctions on eBid and other websites will sell for a much lower price than on the giant itself, eBay. And eBid isn’t the only alternative auction website, you could also have a look at CQOut, Totalbids and even some category specific sites such as the jewellery auction space, Bidz, or Gun Deals UK offering various historical weaponry, if that’s your particular cup of tea!

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 Penny Auctions. You might have seen television adverts for websites such as MadBid.com or BidBeat.com  or   These are technically auction websites but they operate in different ways. On BidBeat, for example, the person who wins the item in question is the person who enters the lowest unique bid. If you happened to be the only person to bid a total of 33p for something and that was the lowest totally unique amount then that’s the price you would pay. It might sound good, but you need to be very careful with websites such as these as you’ll pay for each bid that you put in so you can end up spending significantly more than the finishing price. Penny auction websites are worth a look, but don’t spend too much time trying to win on them as it can be dangerously addictive and potentially expensive.

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b7The popularity of Craigslist in America has started to filter over the pond to us in the UK. These websites allow users to list various pieces of information such as community announcements, housing searches and even job listings. But did you know that there is also a ‘For Sale’ section divided into categories, where individuals can publicise certain goods that they’d like to sell on? It can take a while to filter through this website, and as it’s not an e-commerce site you’ll need to arrange to make a purchase with the user in person, meaning you’ll need to track down your closest Craigslist area. It’s certainly worth having a look to see if this website might be useful to you, but it’s not one to invest serious amounts of time in as searching for goods within it will usually be a manual process.

So, as you can see, there are a multitude of options when it comes to purchasing stock online. Every website that you’ve ever purchased from personally can potentially be a source of stock for your business. I have also written a very detailed manual on this really exciting and fun way to earn an extra income from called “Find it, Flip it, Profit”,  to read more details just click here.