ShoeMoney did a review this week of an ebay turnkey script called Build A Niche Store. Basically, for $97 you get a script which lets you create an ebay like store in under 30 minutes.
After reading shoes review I decided to give it a try and paid for the script. The script is extremely straight forward and I was very pleased with the documenation which came with it which explained how the script worked. Was it worth $97? I won't know for a few months. If I break even with the script I'll be more than happy as with these type of things I'm just looking to test something new. I created two sites very quickly, MP3 Player Mayhem and Console Cage. I made a point in not spending much time with them – I really dont want to spend a lot of time til I see how it performs (perhaps something I'll later regret).
This script reminds me very much like the AWS Amazon CGI script which was out a few years ago. That script let you create an Amazon store very quickly and it proved to work well, I personally didn't get make a lot of money but the sites got traffic and I sold over a dozen of them for a nice little bonus. Infact, the last site I had which used it was MP3 Player Mayhem. I had been redirecting it to a domain parking since last year because it had traffic so hopefully since already it will make a few commissions from ebay quickly.
My gut feeling is that I wont make much from this script but if I create a few I'll at least be able to sell them on at a low price and make my money back.
I do think that if done right, these kind of sites can be very successful. There's probably more to be made from the ads which compliment the ebay listings than the money you make from ebay itself. A great site which does this is Wii Pre Order. Wii's are currently out of stock in most stores in the UK in the run up to christmas with most wii's selling on ebay for 50%-100% markup. All Wii Pre Order does is show what sites have wii's in stock but all links have affiliate links encoded in them. I have no doubt that the guy who made this is making a packet from it!! It just goes to show, not all sites need a great site to be successful, if your site helps people in some way then people are going to use it.
Related link : Build A Niche Store