After my husband abandoned our family, the first thing I did was start selling on eBay full time to make money fast. I had already been selling on eBay for many years, back before eBay was even called eBay, but not full time.
My goal was simply to STAY a stay-at-home-mom with a work from home job.
It turned out to be great money and something that would teach me a lot of valuable business principles. It was how I supported my family for many years and today, I’m opening up for the first time on what I sold!
7 Tips to Making a Living on eBay
When I first became a SINGLE SAHM, the most important thing for me was continuing to be home with my kids. I wouldn’t let anything, even a divorce stand in my way. My solution was eBay. I could make a killing on eBay, good profits, ship when I wanted to, and still be there for every second of my children’s lives. It was the best of both worlds. Although I’ve been selling on eBay for 27 years, I created a very successful, stable income for myself and my kids in a year and a half. No teacher was telling me what I should or should not do. It was all trial and error. After all, the best secrets of how to make a living on eBay are secret, right?
Not today, my friends. Not today!
Here are 7 tips to making a living on eBay you won’t hear from anyone else…
1) Start out selling whatever
When you first start your eBay account, you just want to sell whatever you have lying around the house. A pile of clutter now becomes inventory be surprised at what goes for good money on eBay, especially if you break parts up. Let’s say your vacuum just bit the dust (pun intended) and you replaced it with a new one. You can make just as much money selling those parts off your old, mildly crusty vacuum as your NEW VACUUM COST! Not kidding! Someone else may not have the money to go out and buy a new vacuum, so they buy the parts off eBay and it saves them money. They are happy. You are happy because collectively for a few parts, they just bought you a new vacuum! It’s like the largest garage sale platform… only online!
2) Watch your fees
It generally costs about $10-$20 to send a box of something, depending on the contents. For example, that snow globe you thought was worthless just sold for $30. By the time eBay is done with you, you will have only profited $7. It’ll cost 16% in eBay/PayPal fees, about $10-$13 to ship it, and another few bucks in miscellaneous supplies (if you have to buy packaging.)
Here are a couple of solutions:
- Try to always ship items that you can fit in a First Class bubble envelope. You have 13 oz to work with. It’ll save you a ton of money in shipping. Skip this thought if you are shipping a snow globe.
- Make the buyer pay the shipping costs in addition to the selling price (either way, you can’t ask for more than your competitor’s buying price plus shipping price, so you’re still pretty limited there.)
- Purchase shipping from home. Use your computer to print your labels. You will save about 20% over the retail pricing they charge you at your local USPS. For this, you’ll need a scale. I personally love WeightMax scales.
- Get your packing materials for free. I like to get my bubble wrap and peanuts from Craigslist. l would be amazed at how many businesses give GOOD stuff away for free in the Freebie section. I also like to save the packing materials I receive from purchases. Recycle it all.
3) Open an eBay store
Success lies in your credibility on eBay. If success is what you seek, you might need to consider opening a store. There are so many perks to having a store and the number one is that eBay promotes your store on search engines. You’re getting a lot more visibility and in turn, traffic to your site. This leads to more sales. Another perk is that it automatically gives you credibility. Do you know how many cases are opened with eBay by fly-by-the-night scammers?
People want to order from someone who has great feedback and has a store. Customers know you take this seriously and you have a reputation to protect. This means that if anything goes wrong, you’ll stand by them. They feel more protected and safe, so you can literally CHARGE MORE than your competitors, up to 20% more, depending on what you’re selling. If you have 100% positive feedback with over 50 feedbacks and a store, I’d say go for 20%. You’ll get sales over others who don’t have a store or 100% positive feedback.
4) Find things dirt cheap to sell
So, you cleaned out the closets, the attic, and the basement. If you are still running low on your own personal inventory or if you are a little low on extra income, look at the Freebie section on Craigslist or local Facebook groups. You can easily get yard sale leftovers, curb alerts, and free stuff all the time! Sell what’s worth money, and give away or throw away what’s not. Think it’s not worth it? This is how I made my living the entire first six months after I started eBay. What really went well for me was clothes. Sometimes, I’d even resell the clothes back on Craigslist separated by sizes.
Say someone has 500 pieces of clothing, and nothing is separated into sizes; you break up the lot, sell it by size and make a lot of money. There were times when I’d even pay $15-$20 for a huge lot and make back $200. Same thing with eBay. If you have a mannequin, you could start selling them piece by piece and get a lot more than that. It just depends on how much time you have.
Yard sales are great to find things, especially books and jeans. I’d get lucky and find a pair of Lucky Brand jeans for $1. Sell on eBay for $100. Keep your eyes peeled, and do your research. After a while, you’ll know exactly what goes and for what. If you keep your cell phone with you, never let them see you looking up something and then trying to buy the item. You just told them it’s worth something, and you’ll never score it for a good deal now.
Related: How to Start a Home Business When You Have No Money
5) Have great customer service skills
As an eBay seller, you absolutely have to be available for questions at all times. The general rule of thumb is that you want to respond to questions within one hour. I know it seems harsh, but if you call a company, do you want them to call you back next week? Or do you want help now? Because I guarantee you, they’ll just go somewhere else, buy from someone else, and you lost the sale. Likewise, always be professional and polite. There are times when you’ll wanna slap someone.
I had a lady the other day who ordered something twice. I contacted her to ask her if she meant to do that, and she said no. I canceled the transaction. She said nevermind, I’ll just buy two. I shipped out two, then now she’s saying she only received one even though USPS says it was delivered. Don’t skip out on package tracking. Sometimes you’ll just have those customers who have nothing better to do than make trouble and drama for everyone else. It’s part of the job. You HAVE to be polite. Just know that you are protected in cases like that, and it’s just a matter of time before eBay decides in your favor, but if you’re rude and mean, customers, CAN slap you with a harassment case. If you’re found guilty, you can be kicked off. Even little snarky remarks are considered harassment, so always practice fantastic customer service skills.
6) Sell weird stuff
The more oddball your stuff is, the weirder, or rare it is, the better it’ll sell. This is exactly the opposite if you sell on Amazon With eBay, the rarer the items are, the more money you’ll get, the faster they’ll sell, and the more bidders will bid. Speaking of bidding, I never hold bidding auctions. I do buy-it-now with payment required now. Just save yourself the hassle of all the thousands of non-paying bidders out there wasting your time and setting your items for buy-it-now. You can do the best offer, but in my opinion, it’s a waste of time. I always only got super lowball offers, like 10% of what I’m fairly asking and the ones that want to ask for less, don’t need the best offer to do so, they email you anyway.
7) Find your niche
After a while of selling, you’ll start to find your groove. You’ll start to know what people want to buy, what they like, and what sells well for you. What do you like? What are you most knowledgeable in? You want to sell those types of things. For me, it’s Littlest Pet Shops. They make over 3,000 different pets and they are considered collector’s items since you can’t just go and buy what you want in the stores. Kids and parents alike go crazy over them and there’s an entire underground world of LPS. Another great thing to sell on eBay that is highly sought after and profitable at the moment is Squishmallows. These soft, squishy, stuffed friends are reminiscent of the Beanie Babies of yesteryear and are fairly new, so they could fade out in time. But for now, a quick search and a sort to show highest to lowest should be enough to prove my point.
I hope that I have inspired you to get started selling on eBay and see the huge potential in making a fantastic living on eBay. It’ll take some time for you to get established to the point that you are steadily selling. I had over 600 LPS ads in my store and well over 5,000 LPS items when I was selling them full-time. You’ll want a large selection if you want continual sales, enough to make a great living from eBay, but most people don’t need THAT much.
You can find more information on how to make a living on eBay as well as other sources of how to make a living from home on my blog. I have been fortunate to be able to be a single stay-at-home mom, and I wish all the best to you as well in your endeavor to work from home. In our economy and with the increases in expenses, this will become more and more possible as the years go on. There are so many things you can do to work from home and earn legitimate money to help your family. eBay is but one way.
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