I am giving you my eBay training worth $300 for FREE on Steemit in my blog posts!!
I pretty much stumbled upon a way to make money easily on eBay with limited spare time by playing around with a few things and accidentally discovering the easiest way ever to scan for products. This combined with being familiar with some big wholesale companies made it relatively easy for me to start selling quickly on eBay.
While my training mostly consists of videos in my paid group, I will break down the beginning steps for you in this blog post, and will continue to post more training for you. So don't forget to follow!
So i'll start off by blasting the method I DON'T like to use and think is very time consuming and not worthwhile so you can avoid doing that from the start...
Reselling / Retail Arbitrage / what most people think of when they think "eBay selling".
I liked the idea of "finding a bargain" when I started eBay and got inspired by a few people I saw flipping old crap they had in the house or buying things from markets etc. The biggest problem I have with that on a big scale is that it is all as the title suggests... (Reselling). So you are buying job lots for x amount and sifting through everything and listing them all manually on eBay which takes a stupid amount of time to do!
With that being said, if someone offered me a job lot of 500 new-rarely used books for say £200, id more than likely take it and spend the time looking through them if I could look at some of the books first and see the value of them online and it made business sense to buy the job lot (a bit like what I did with a Beatles Job Lot that DIDN'T SELL).
I listed some items worth around £100-125 that I bought for just £20 from a lady that lives by me, and none of them sold at all. This is why I do not like the idea of buying stuff FIRST. This to me is just an unnecessary risk and a lot of effort. One of the books alone is technically worth £70-100, but to who? Who is buying this stuff? Now I know that someone out there will be interested in it, and if you can find something in-demand then you're winning, but you can't just stumble upon rare items or trending items every day.
It took me quite a while to take good photos of the Beatles stuff, then to list them all manually, find the value of the items before I bought the job lot, arranged with the seller to buy the job lot and barter with the price, then collect the items, etc etc. It was just a hassle overall and iv'e not received anything for it.
I liked the idea also of going to bargain stores like B&M and Pound shops etc and scanning products on Amazon / eBay to find things that sell consistently. This would also apply to people in the USA who could go to Target and dollar stores, flea markets etc.
So buying an item for £1 that sells for £3 on eBay all the time, then buying 100 of those items, hoping to make a £300 return.
Again, the issue I have with this is that you have to store 100 items at your house, list the item, and when someone buys just 1 of these things, you have to package it, print/write the address on a label, buy postage stamps, and either post the item in a post box, or go to the sorting office/post office every single time in order to keep up with fast delivery.
All of this just to make a total of £300 back, but that doesn't include your postage costs and the rest of it, so really you might earn £100 profit overall for a stupid amount of work.
This is what a LOT of people consider "eBay selling". This to me is just ludicrous and makes no sense whatsoever.
What does make sense is buying something for say £200 that you know is worth around £800 and selling that one item. You don't HAVE to sell loads of cheap things and most people don't have the capital to buy 100 items worth £100 each to flip them even if they're worth £1000 each!
Imagine buying a job lot of 1000 Lego Figurines for £300? What a bargain, right? well if they all sell for £1-2 each, that's anice total of £1000/£2000 for all of those items and it only cost you £300?
Wrong. Imagine the amount of money it would cost to buy 1000 stamps, 1000 packages, 1000 labels, etc etc. How much time it would take you to post 1000 items. To me this just seems stupid even if eventually it made me over £1000 profit! Taking 1000 trips to the post box 5 minutes away is a lot of time wasted and in the UK the weather sucks and I wouldn't be a huge fan of walking or even driving to a post box half of the time. Short trips waste more fuel also. I know it might sound like I am being ridiculous with what I am saying but to me the "reselling method" is just old unless you are doing what Gary Vaynerchuck said and going to markets or garage sales and buying something on the weekend to flip it, that is actually an amazing idea. But to do this on a huge scale, buying a LOT of items and listing them all etc, to make a small profit most likely, is a bit pointless.
Don't get me wrong, maybe if someone offered a guitar or something that was worth £150 but I could buy it off them for £25, id bite their hand off and list it on eBay as soon as possible. But again, i'm £25 out of pocket FIRST and I don't know for sure if this will actually sell? Of course with it being valued at £150 you'd like to assume it would sell for a least £100, but I'd have to look and see on eBay and i'd bet that there were guitars almost identical to that one selling for £50-75. Unless you find something rare that is in demand (Rare Pokemon cards or something), I just don't see the point in doing this at all. Individual items that are rare are surprisingly hard to come by because they are... rare!
The method I use to sell is called Dropshipping. It takes out all of that hassle and I act as a middle man and list items I do not physically own. I will find an item that sells on eBay regularly for less money online from a wholesaler or even amazon sometimes, then I will list it for the average eBay price. Say something costs me £50, and it sells on ebay for £99, I will list it for £97 or something and it will sell. Once someone buys it, I then just buy it from the retailer for £50 and get it shipped to their address as a gift, take off the eBay and PayPal fees and pocket the difference. No physical storing of the item, no postage costs, no trips to and from the post office in the rain and no hassle!
I will post more training for you soon so don't forget to follow!
I hope this helped you!
Profit Master
