Becoming an Ebay Seller
I’ve been on ebay for a number of years, mostly as a buyer, and occasionally dabbled in selling but last year I really concentrated on becoming an ebay seller and I had some pretty good results.
The hardest thing was really deciding what to sell on ebay in the first place. Instead of getting analysis paralysis I just dove in and started selling CD’s. I had no money to start with so I went on Gumtree and started searching for free CD’s and found a lot of stock.
Eventually I got enough money up from sales to afford to buy a large lot of Jazz and Blues CD’s and I am still selling these consistently on ebay with two sales yesterday.
So what does it take to become an ebay seller? Ebay makes it pretty easy to start. You don’t have to have a store. The only requirement I think is a minimum of 10 feedback or transactions. I will doing a series on this all through 2020 with the $1.00 flipping challenge where I will be using my other account that only has one feedback, to start a selling business on ebay.
There are fees involved and you have to factor those into your bottom line in terms of your profit margins. eBay has final value fees which is the percentage they charge on what the final cost of your sale is, including postage charges. I usually charge for shipping as most people accept this now and I justify it by telling the customer that it gives us both tracking of the item which most people want. I also like to cover myself from false claims etc by being able to track my item.
You can try to compete with other sellers and offer free shipping, but you have to factor this into your profit on an item and in Australia with high postage costs, it makes your profit margin really slim.
There are some items I don’t charge shipping on like CD’s because they fit into an envelope and only cost me $2.20 as of 2020 to post so I absorb that cost into my profit. Everything else has shipping charged on top. Books can be tricky because in Australia at least they usually cost $8.95 to ship so it’s difficult to compete with larger sellers who have free shipping and do large volumes to earn their profits. I concentrate on vintage or collectible books where buyers are more happy to pay for the shipping.
Paypal also have fees on transactions and most transactions go through this gateway on eBay. So they charge 2.9% processing fee plus 0.30c for each transaction. Ebay fees start at around 13%. These vary on the category in which you’re selling etc so I usually just work on 13% (even with a store subscription).
I made myself a quick and easy excel sheet so I could quickly work out my profit margins. For example if I buy something for $1.00 and I sell it for $10.00 my profit is $7.38 including the cost of goods.
So if you’re thinking about becoming an ebay seller you need to decide on what is a reasonable profit margin for you. I’m working right down at the low end. If I make $5.00 on anything I’m selling it. Gradually over my first year, I’ve been able to really boost my returns by learning more about collectibles and ephemera and I think I will be continuing down this path.
The absolute key to be successful as an ebay seller is to list everyday. At the very least refresh some of your listing everyday if you can’t list. This keeps your items at the top of the list and more able to be seen my shoppers. I’ve done my own tests on this and every time I’m disciplined and do this it results in more sales.
The $1.00 Challenge
This was an idea I got from Gary Vaynerchuk who said in one of his videos it would be interesting to see this documented. So the idea is to buy something for a $1.00 and flip it with profit and then take those profits and flip it again and see how quickly I can get to $10,000.
For the $1.00 challenge I will be buying vintage and/or whatever I can find that I can flip into $10.00 or more every time.
Becoming an ebay seller is a fun hobby but you can also use it to leverage some extra money which is what I’m doing. It’s something I can easily incorporate into my day to day life and gives me a fun little thrill when something sells. I enjoy seeing my collectible and vintage items find the right homes.
You can stay up to date with the $1.00 flipping challenge on Youtube.
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