You’ll remember that we discussed this earlier in the section on Other Reasons For Multiple Accounts, but it is worth revisiting this topic. You’ve spent time Brainstorming and believe you have some great ideas.
You might believe you’ve found the perfect niche product. Not much competition on eBay and a look at the Google Ad Words keyword indicates there isn’t much competition. Is this a niche market, or something that is just too good to be true? Let’s take a look at a very real experience of someone I know. This individual determined that they had a good source for obtaining cigars at wholesale. They went to all the trouble of setting up a website to sell imported cigars. If they had spent 15 minutes reviewing the eBay Rules and Policies page, they would have found that eBay would not be an outlet for an auction of cigars nor would they allow the individual to setup an eBay Store site. When one searches the eBay Rules and Policies page, they’ll notice that the sale of cigars is clearly prohibited on eBay. What’s worse is that Google Ad Words won’t allow you to advertise cigars (although you can submit a site for indexing) so you only means of advertising will be Site Positioning on the various search engines (very hard to get in top 20), and you’ll be competing against the big boys who have been selling cigars for years and are well established. You won’t have the eBay market advantage which is all important for the business owner who typically doesn’t have the advertising and search engine placement dollars and staff. Had this individual been able to successfully list an auction on eBay for Cigars, they would have found auction shut down promptly by eBay staff. They learned the hard way by not doing the leg work up front.