Hello again, this is my first in a long series of posts to talk to you about how we got started selling on eBay. In the fall of 2003, my wife's employer started laying off some employees, we felt that we should look at other ways to make some money. I had read a few books on selling on eBay, and we were ready to give it a shot. Of course , once we got busy, her job lasted a lot longer than we planned and we were really busy!
So, you probably see all these ebooks and other things out there were people say you can make millions selling on eBay! Well , as you know if they were making millions, then they wouldnt have to sell you something for $5.00 to show you how to right? . The fact is, you can make some money, and in some cases very good money, but like anything else in life, it takes hard work and a lot of research.
The first question that comes to mind is "what the heck do I sell?" . Lets tackle that one in this first selling post. The bottom line , is pretty much anything you can get that people will buy for more than you paid for it! Sounds simple huh? Well.... we started selling things from around the house, DVDs, VHS tapes, and the biggest winners , my hockey collection for our now defunct AHL hockey team that we lost here in the Greater New Haven , CT area. We were able to see how the sales process worked, take in some money, learn about how to do shipping and most importantly , build up feedback on eBay.
I strongly advice that people looking at starting to sell on eBay , start by selling a few small things like we did. It gives you a good feel for things, and helps you become a better seller.
We then turned to finding items at flea markets, tag sales, and even some items from where my wife worked (they make a specialty room decor for kids). We found this worked out well, but looking back on everything, it took us a good year, to really learn the different types of things that sell well, and to seek those out.
In our first three months we became Powersellers and have been so ever since. A powerseller is having sales for three months that average over 1,000 a month. Not great, but not bad for a start. Of course if that is your sales number, you have expenses and cost of product, so you really dont make a killing until you ramp up a little higher.
So lesson one in the learning to sell book, is to sell what you know, what will sell for ok money and that selling on eBay requires some time, a small investment in supplies and equipment, and dont expect to make millions right away!
I will check back in with a list of recommended books for you soon!
1 comment:
Hey there Marty!! The blog is looking fantastic! Nice pics, and I like your weird item of the day idea. :)
Here's how we got started on eBay. About 1 1/2 yrs ago, my husband decided he wanted to sell his childhood GI Joe collection. We knew there was a market for old GI Joes but had been offered really low prices for the collection. So we decided to do it ourselves.
We were terrible amateurs, and made some mistakes, but GI Joes sell themselves and we made a few thousand dollars selling them bit by bit. After that, we were hooked on eBay!
You gave some great advice for starting out. The only thing I would add is to sell small, inexpensive items to start. If we had been more experienced (how to write better auctions, use titles and keywords better, better pics), we could probably have made substantially more on the GI Joes. Don't unload your most valuable stuff until you have at least a little experience. I'm not complaining -- we were thrilled with our GI Joe sales, but if we had been more experienced we probably could have done even better.
Keep up the great work on the blog, Marty!!
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