Selling on Ebay?

PersianKitty94

Hey. Does anyone here sell items on Ebay for profit? How much do you make? How did you get started? Any tips?

Timshel_

I do it as a side job, buying stuff, refurbing, then selling. Best month for me was a couple thousand, but really I do about $500 a month in knick-knacks. I know a few who do it full time and have pushed $10k a month.

PersianKitty94

Timshel_ wrote: »

I do it as a side job, buying stuff, refurbing, then selling. Best month for me was a couple thousand, but really I do about $500 a month in knick-knacks. I know a few who do it full time and have pushed $10k a month.

Wow. What kind of merchandise do you sell? I was thinking of starting with shoes like Nike etc.

Timshel_

I buy a lot of things at yard sales and such. Mostly things that fit in USPS Priority boxes. So can be shoes, clothes, and all kinds of stuff.

$500 is average after fees and such. It isn't every month at the moment with work taking up time, but I still throw up a few things to keep moving stuff.

Locked_On_Target

I sell on eBay full time and it's my full time job. My wife and I have been doing it since 1999. You can make a lot of money selling on eBay but the key to success is sourcing your inventory at the lowest possible price.

Locked_On_Target

We have an eBay store, 5 years ago 80% of our listings were auction format for 7 day listings. Now things have changed, currently about 95% of our listings are GTC fixed price listings. Currently we make more profit with fixed price listings with immediate buy-it-nows. We don't really ever have to relist an item, its all automated, A GTC listing is a "Good till Cancelled" listing. If it doesn't sell after 30 days it automatically relists. With an ebay store, that only costs 0.05 every 30 days when it relists so not much at all.

Locked_On_Target

A lot of it also depends on what you are selling. What works for one item doesn't necessarily work for another.

SueSueDio

In for tips - thanks for starting the thread, this is timely for me! We've been sorting out a lot of old stuff and trying to declutter, and I'm sure I should be able to sell some things. I'm just not quite sure of the best way to go about it!

@Locked_On_Target What's the easiest way to figure out shipping costs, and do you need to have costs handy for everything from local to overseas?

Locked_On_Target

I agree, clothes are so time consuming, really hard to make money selling them. I would recommend finding a niche market, something that you think is fun or cool that you would have a passion selling. We sell all comic/science fiction/pop culture related items mostly in the form of action figures/statues. Not all genres are the same but in ours newly released product has very low profit margins. Items no longer available at retail however sell for a premium on eBay. There's many other ways to make a lot of eBay, even attending estate auction sales can find hidden treasures that will sell for a ton on eBay. There's no easy way to figure out what sells for a ton other than looking up completed item sales. It's time consuming but the payoff can be great.

PersianKitty94

I want to start selling a few things around the house to see if it will actually work out. I have a few Calvin Klein dresses that I bought for 2 bucks. I might put those up. The only thing I don't really want to deal with is returns. Can you have your account set up in a way so that no returns are accepted? How do returns work??? Does the seller have to pay for return shipping?