Its simple: Find a good product that sells on eBay (A good way to do this other than research is to get started and learn from experience), figure out a source for that product that's significantly less than what you can sell it for, and then with your experience combined with a good source start listing and shipping.
I would not recommend drop shipping if you are new. I would recommend learning how to package and ship (its a good skill to have anyway.)
There are lots of popular categories, but here are item's I'd avoid:
Used home decor that isn't collectible, like the stuff you buy from Wall-mart and the dollar store. I would recommend avoiding this category entirely unless you had some experience and knowledge of identifying these type of items:
- Books with large amounts sold, and big release titles of movies and vhs. I would recommend selling these in lots by genre or year if they don't sell well individually.
Anything in poor shaped that's cracked or cannot be cleaned. Unless its a big ticket item (like an ipod) and can be sold for parts.
Cheapo appliances, unless they're almost brand new or so old its considered vintage (70's, 60's, or older.). Again, with some knowledge of high-dollar brands, and if you know how to clean or repair said items, you can do well in this category.
Small, individual items that wont sell well. I would recommend taking lots of similar items. For example, one army patch by iteself itsn't worth a whole lot and is too much of a hassle to ship by itself. If you got 100, however, and sell them in one big lot for 30-50 bucks and make at least 25 cents off of each patch after all the fees and cost. Making 25 cents on an individual listing is simply too time consuming, but if you can make 100x that in one listing its much easier.
Anything really big that would be a hassle to ship. Anything really heavy that can't fit into a flat rate box.
Of course anything against eBay's policies.
There's plenty more, but you get the jest of it. If its a big, heavy item that's still worth a lot of money (like a 50 dollar wooden trunk that would cost 50 dollars to ship) then sell it on Craigslist for 50 dollars. The thinking is that if someone is willing to pay 100 dollars (shipping+price of item) on eBay for it, someone should be willing to pick it up for half that on Craigslist. Plus no fees means you get all of that revenue minus overhead only.) If you sold it on eBay, not only would you have to ship it, you would probably only make 30-40 bucks.
Oh, and be sure before you even think about listing to figure out the rough selling price of the item (by looking it up on eBay, and looking in the "completed listing" section, to calculate shipping, and how much your fee's will be before even thinking of listing. Heres a handy calculating tool:
http://salecalc.com/- Here's a list of sources I can think of off the top of my head:
Manufactures, whole sellers, and distributors. There are many levels that can occur in between getting the Manufacturers product to the customer. The close you get to the Manufacturer, the cheap you'll get the item, but the harder it is to get the deal. Most Manufacturers like to deal with people who will move a lot of their inventory. I haven't done any business with a manufacturer directly yet, but you can still get decent deals from those who do.
Clarence sales, liquidations sales, left over pallets, and other attempts at businesses to move a large number of product quickly for what ever reason they have (the business is closing, they need more space to get newer items, items taking up too much warehouse space and costing too much money to keep etc.)
Estate sells, yard sales, flea markets, and thrift store are your best bet at getting individual items for rock bottom prices. This is probably the least riskiest, but least dependable, source to use. Get started with this, though, and gain experience. You can make a great living off these sources if you know what to look for. A item that cost a quarter could land you with 10 bucks after an hours worth of effort. Not a bad return if you're working minimum wage and your only making 7.50 (though its not really comparable, since you are doing this to learn and getting paid 10 bucks an hour to become more educated is a pretty sweet deal.). There is also the off chance once you gain some experience you can find a big item that can net you several hundred in profit. Also, look out for boxes of similar items. For example, a box of car parts, where you can sell these items individually but all in one ad. Minimizing your efforts and spreading out your risk.
Amazon, eBay, craigslist and other online site: Some savvy people can buy items on one site and sell it on either another or on another site or on that same one! If you have knowledge of the product, and can find it cheap enough, you can do this from the comfort of your house. But it takes a lot of searching and experience. Since so many others are doing it, there's not much market inefficient. Your best bet is buying on craigslist then selling on either of the other two places. There's been many times where I find a great deal on craigslist and did well selling on amazon. I just recently bought a Nintendo 64 plus 8 games and 2 controllers for 55 bucks, and another one for 50 bucks that had 8 games and 4 controllers. The games by themselves net me 60 bucks in profit once they sold on amazon. I am now sitting on one of the consoles waiting for it to sell, and keeping the other one. All in all, about 4 hours worth of labor between buying, testing, cleaning, listing, and shipping items. 15 bucks an hour before tax is a pretty decent deal, considering the fact that I love video games and found the entire process to be fun. Plus I got a console I've been looking to get anyway, that would have cost at least 50 bucks had I bought it on eBay with 4 controllers.
Another deal I did was that I bought 8000 books from someone on craigslist for 400 dollars. I started to list these on amazon. I got about 600 books currently listed and 84 sold after going through all of them. It took 3 months, and about 240 hours I estimate total. I've made about 800 dollars now, so about 400 in profit. It may seem like I'm wasting my time, but I have about 600 books I'm still waiting to sell that I estimate is wroth 4-5 thousand. Almost all the work is already done, and shipping is a breeze for me since I got a nice set up in my office. All of my extra books will be sold here and there at yard sales or flea markets. I also gained a lot of knowledge on book pricing, and I can now effectively scout out books to resell. This is defiantly a long-term strategy, but it pays off in the end.
Community Forum
Topic: ebay (Read 2806 times)
December 14, 2012, 10:41:56 am
