eBay selling is all about research, patience and more research.
The biggest risk involved in eBay selling is for new sellers who RUSH into things before they know what they are doing.
Taking time to research the market before ordering the first set of profit making products is the key.
Furthermore it is much better to become an expert in one field than to be "jack of all trades" from the start.
In eBay world as soon as you find your niche, research your first product, order it and sell it for profit two things happen.
Firstly you will taste the success and it becomes much easier to believe that by making $, you can make $$$ easily, though we will get to that in later articles on "The techniques to increase sales eBay" or if you are impatient like me you can take a look at my previous blog posts [1].
Secondly it is much easier to duplicate the same strategy over and over for other products when the profit is made; it is only a matter of changing names.
So let's get to business on how to actually realize those steps:

1. Finding your unique niche: Think of the products that you are interested in (yes because you will have to do the research on this too) and read about it.
   Find the blogs, forums and newsletter related to your topic and bookmark them.
   Dedicate a time in the morning or before sleep to go through those.
   Often the best ideas come when you are reading a newspaper or having a conversation at the train station.
   
2. Research the eBay Market: After you find your niche it is now time to do the eBay Market Research.
   There are readily available products like Terapeak [2] that take care of this by giving you the average prices and hot products.
   If you don't have the budget or prefer to do things manually (the way I prefer) go to eBay and start a search on your product.
   Focus on the list of high feedback sellers.
   Look at their feedback and see if they are selling the similar items.
   Focus on your selected products and look closely at their listings and average prices (note these down).
   For any seller you find one month history is good enough to give you a feel of what's going on.
   I recommend the manual research specially for new eBay sellers since you have more control and understanding of the results.
   
3. Finding the Best Wholesalers: This is the tricky part which gives you the advantage over your competition.
   If you find the right wholesalers you can sell high margin and at the same time win over your competition (which brings LIQUIDITY and MORE MONEY FASTER to your account).
   For starters I recommend using one of the available directories that are updated daily.
   Their job is to find the best reliable wholesalers not available to all eBay sellers.
   After all, having a list of reliable experts and focusing on sales is much better than searching for hours and ordering not knowing if you are actually going to receive the products.
   
4. Wholesaler Networking: This is my final word.
   Get personal with your wholesalers and network with them.
   Keep them on your side and even send them greetings and personal messages from time to time.
   This will definitely get you kudos in the long term.
   

These are the steps that I have found work best for me.
Try them out and they should work for you as well.