A young friend of mine, who is a trained and experienced carpenter and joiner, just asked me "Can you think of anything I can make out of wood that I can sell on eBay?" He has access to offcuts of quality timber and often makes small wooden knick-knacks at home as a kind of hobby.
Not having immediate access to my files and notes on the subject of eBay ideas, and while giving due thought to eBay sellers' principles of items needing to be fairly small, more or less unbreakable, easy to pack into a parcel, and light enough to be cheap to post, I couldn't actually come up with anything on the spur of the moment.
All I could suggest was that he spend some time looking round gift shops, cheap shops, pet shops, hardware and homeware stores, for wooden items that are already on sale.
If he sees an article made of wood that he thinks he could make himself, he should consider how he could improve on the design, personalise it for individuals, ie., with a persons name or a witty slogan etc., or combine it with another idea to bring something new to the marketplace.
He began to get very enthusiastic about building up a home business making wooden craft items and selling them online. Together we came up with a few ideas such as house name boards, bird feeders, pet boxes and hutches, toy furniture, wooden toys, cooking utensils and storage boxes, dolls houses, specially designed picture frames, small book shelves, CD/DVD racks, nursery furniture and equipment, novelty clock faces ... we went on and on.
When I came away he had a new sparkle in his eyes and was talking about making a range of wooden gift items to offer to local shops on a wholesale basis as well as selling them online. I think the Internet has found another online entrepreneur! I wish him luck!
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