You can make a few hundred to even a few thousand dollars a month on Ebay selling your old stuff and specialized hobby items. Please know, this is not easy money and will take alot of time, practice, patience, and intuition to really master. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.
Some people can and do make a very decent full time living buying and selling stuff on Ebay. It's best to start small and just sell junk around your house FIRST! Do NOT going buying a bunch of stuff from the Dollar Store and then try and flip it on Ebay and make good money, it just doesn't work quite like that.
Best thing you can do starting out is spend a few days just going through Ebay and start to become familiar with how it works, what sells well, what doesn't, and why. You want to know these things FOR SURE before starting out!
A) What is My Cost?
If it's junk from your garage, you have nothing to lose but time, go for it.
B) What is this item selling for on Ebay?
If this item only sells for $5, it simply may not be worth your time if you get them for $4 and it takes you 4 hours to list it on Ebay.
C) How Much TIME Will This Item Take Me?
These are the things you should be doing for each item... just imagine how much time it takes to do all this. Keep an eye on the dollar to hour ratio, is this worth your time? ...Oh, and by the way, however much time you thinks it takes to do all these things, times that by 10 and that's REALLY how long it takes!
- Research the item
- Get it, find it, buy it
- Clean it, fix it, paint it
- Take pictures
- Resize pictures
- Make video for it
- Edit video for it
- Produce video for it
- Write description for it
- Have other items up at the same time to
cross link to
- Think through all the right search words
needed and title and subtitle
- Put it all together
- Upload it all to Ebay
- Wait for Saturday to start the auction
- Babysit the item all week, make sure you
listed it all right and people are bidding on it
- Once it sells, box it up
- Print out the shipping label
- Go the Post Office, stand in line, get
jerked around.
- Follow up and make sure your buyer is
happy.
- Leave your buyer good feedback.
- Oh, and do you have your next items ready
for this Saturday auction yet???
See, this all takes SO MUCH time to do right. Skip anything above and your profits will suffer greatly. Do it right, get a system down, and you can make money from junk! You are gonna be so surprised to see items you get for free or a few bucks sell for $10-200! That's what hooks you into it!
- You must be a PRO in your field! RC guys, buy and sell RC stuff, Guitar guys, buy and sell Guitar stuff.
- Do a pre-search on whatever items you want to sell. See what its already going for on Ebay and what the demand is.
- You will find that there are only a few items in your field that re-sell for a high profit. Now its about you getting a good line on those and then flipping them on Ebay.
2) Maximize the Search Words and Categories!
- Take the time and do the details right. List your item with all the right search words and put it in the correct category of Ebay.
3) Make Your Thumbnail Really Good!
- Your search words and having your item labeled correctly in the right category will get your item to come up, but having a good thumbnail is what will have people CLICK on your item!
- Make your thumbnail, big, clear, helpful, but not overly professional!
4) Your Items are Worth More in Parts!
- If you have a package of say a plane, radio, servos, motors, battery, etc, you want to sell these all as separate auctions all at the same time. Most people want just one or two of your items and not the rest. Selling them separately will increase your views and bids.
6) Using Videos in Your Auctions!
- First of all this will give you EBAY DOMINANCE over the competition. People like people and want to buy from someone they are comfortable with. Furthermore, we as humans are afraid of the unknown. So, if you have a video up on your auction, even if you are a weird-o, people are more likely to buy from you than from someone else they cannot see or hear.
- Second, use Ebay as practice for your future video blogging and such. Most people are not comfortable with the camera and it takes time to become more natural at it. The catch is, you can only do this by being in front of the camera! Ebay provides the perfect practice platform for you. Do your weekly Ebay auctions, make videos for them that increase your selling, make a fool of yourself as you are learning, get it over with as we all have to go through it, and move on.
- Remember, my first 100 or so videos I ever done have been taken down and erased because they are so embracing! Don't belie me?! There are still some hidden in HERE. (just scroll down the page to see a few videos).
7) Combine Shipping
If you are selling 8-10 similar items at a time that are all linking to each other and all experiencing about at the same time on Saturday or Sunday evening, you also NEED to let your bidders know that they can combine items and save on shipping.
Meaning, if I'm selling 9 RC items (motor, ESC, servo, battery, etc) and Earl from Missour' wants to just get the servo and battery he is then going to ask, "Can you take the shipping cost off one item and put them both in the same box?"
You need to let people know you will do just this! Remember, people buy on Ebay to GET A DEAL! Do everything you can to make this the best, simplest, clearest, easiest, well labeled, nicest pictured, informative Ebay deal they have ever seen!
8) Reverse Engineer Successful People on Ebay
Like anything else, put on your intuition hat and go though Ebay and just figure it out and make it work! Its going to be hard and take alot of time and many mistakes to get it dialed in real good. Its just the way it is, we all have to go through it. Go through Ebay and ask yourself, "Why do I like this auction or this picture or description. The people who are good at Ebay are good because of all the little things they do right. You can see all these just by slowing down and thinking though how they did it.
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