How does one sell on eBay and make a profit?
I'd enjoy hearing the experiences of others.
In my case, it started 26 years ago, when I picked up a book in a thrift shop about voodoo in West Africa. I paid $1 for the book.
I had just joined eBay.
(I also was fully employed.... turns out that being fully employed can / can be an indispensable prerequisite for online selling.)
There were no other copies of the book listed on eBay. Internet access, relatively new at the time, allowed me to determine that the book itself was also quite rare (a few library holdings).
I decided to be bold and set the price at $200.
Less than a day later a university in south Carolina purchased the book for its library.
I took $150 of the proceeds and reinvested it in more $1 books and some inexpensively priced porcelain I found at the same thrift shop.
I took the remaining $35 or so and bought tape and other supplies (I mailed my books in cardboard for many years; only recently started using poly bags).
Long story short: Since joining eBay I have not invested any money in my endeavor here, other than that which I have made in profits from sales on the platform. I've been a TRS for the last few years, and I am extremely careful about selling in categories that appeal to a wealthier, educated demographic.
I do not purchase ads or eBay promotions and do not borrow money from eBay, their countless offers notwithstanding.
Consequently, my complaints about eBay are minimal; there are moments of frustration but overall the experience has been and remains a good one.
nobody*s_perfect
·2 years agoThat $1 turning into $150 illustrates one of the principles of selling: You make your profit when you buy, not when you sell. If you know the value of items in a specialized category, you can pick up items very reasonably online and at thrift shops, yard sales, Facebook marketplace, etc. Some yard sales are run by people who look up prices online (eBay etc.) and expect to somehow get that much from the handful of customers who wander into their yard sales: When you arrive at a yard sale with such unreasonable pricing, you might want to try out some haggling but if they're not amenable, then just flee.
I started selling on eBay in 1999, but really caught the fever the following September when the whole site crashed for a full day and as compensation eBay had their first "Free listings day." I listed everything on hand, and when I ran out of reasonable things I listed three dozen odd white socks (clean) which my daughters and I had accumulated in a basket, hoping that the mates would show up. They sold! eBay has (well, had) a buyer for everything! And the rest is history.
My own reliable source of free stuff to sell is dead relatives. I come from a large family of near-hoarders (and also married one, now deceased) and somehow I didn't get that gene. One year in May long ago, my listings consisted almost entirely of tuxedo stud sets (back in the day when people dressed up to participate in weddings and proms). My dad, age 104, has just recently moved to assisted living from the house I grew up in which he purchased exactly 70 years ago. It's packed! So this summer will be a big cleanout and I'll have to become an expert on vintage hand tools and fishing gear, etc. My own kids have thanked me multiple times for doing my own cleanout and downsizing in 2007, sparing them this task, before anybody had heard the term "Swedish death cleaning". None of my relatives has ever bought or sold anything on eBay.
I also have a hobby which involves acquiring and appreciating specific valuable collectibles, but I have a "One in, one out" policy and an eBay ID which sells to fellow collectors. I usually make a profit on those, too.
albertabrightalberta
·2 years agoAlthough our kids haven't thanked us yet, I expect that after we're gone, they'll appreciate what we tried to do.
After having cleaned out a close family friend's home, my MIL's home and my father's home after each of their deaths, all of whom were "somewhat" hoarders who'd lived through the depression and didn't like to dispose of much, I vowed that I wouldn't do that to our kids.
Not only is it cathartic to know that all that "junk" you thought you couldn't live without is gone (and not even missed), but knowing where to find what we do need is a lot easier!
toysaver
·2 years agoMany successful sellers hustle. They don't buy blind. You have to know what you can sell it for when you buy it. Use a phone. Use google lens. Expect to scan through dozens to hundreds of items to find one item that costs a couple bucks that can sell for a hundred. It can take hours, more than 40 a week. Find 3 or 5 each day and you have it made.