Reselling

[nuisance26]

~So yesterday I decided to follow through with something I've been thinking about for a long time. Saving for my new house and seeing Judy Dial's posts really gave me the push I needed to try it!
When I'm out thrifting or yard saling, I often see things below the value I think they'd be worth on Ebay. So I started small and invested $2.50 on a selection of nice books and a beanie baby(bag sale!). I was already shopping for things I needed for our family so there was no additional transportation investment. It did take 30 minutes to find things I thought would do well on resale.
My preliminary research says I can profit about $10-20 on these items so I didn't get any major duds. But it will take an additional investment of shipping supplies and about 10 minutes per item to take pictures, list, pack and ship them.
I don't want to spend more than 30 minutes, 6 days a week on this. Today I will spend that 30 minutes taking and uploading pictures. Tomorrow I will list as many as I can. Tuesday I will list again. If I'm able to list them all I will prepare or buy shipping supplies. Etc.
I'd love to work my way up to a profit of $100 a month. I figure this is easier to do by knowing the value and demand of things, which I hope to learn more about over the next few months as I resell on this small scale, than just the amount of time or volume of sales.
Is anyone else a reseller? Any tips?~

[MaryCarney]

I am actually trying to set DD#4 up with an ebay business re-selling textbooks, specifically books for homeschooling and used in online college-level studies.
She's headed to church camp next week, but expect to really get it rolling when she returns. I spent last week setting up our loft area as an office for this venture.

[ladytoysdream]

Buy at low prices so if the item does not sell, you should be able to recoup your money back out of the item.
Buy things you yourself could use or you could use for gifts if they don't sell.
Specialize in a niche. If you have young children, sell children books. This way, your family can read the books, and you can sell them. A win win 2 different ways.

Big things can be sold on craigslist. What doesn't sell on ebay through the winter, have a garage sale in the spring. Get your money back out of the items and free up storage space. Then during the summer, go garage saling again to get fresh inventory to try again in the fall and winter.

[mauimagic]

Impressive. Great advice. For some reason I'm afrard/anxious about selling on ebay - think I just need to do it and then I could be off and running too!!

[khaski]

My advice as a seasoned reseller on ebay for years...start small, go slowly. Also look into how it affects your taxes, it is reportable income and papal DOES report transaction totaling over a certain limit. I myself have done very little reselling this year, but two of my good sales were a Coach wrist I bought for $10, sold for about $30, and a Coach lipstick case for $2, sold for $40+. Love those high end yard sales! Don't forget etsy.com to sell vintage items, especially unique jewelry.

[ladytoysdream]

Impressive. Great advice. For some reason I'm afrard/anxious about selling on ebay - think I just need to do it and then I could be off and running too!!

Anytime you want to start, just post a thread if need be, and I am sure someone would be along shortly to help you if you get stuck on something. Or private PM

The first step is always the biggest one. Once you get it done, you will wonder why you sweated it so bad.

I can use my selling hats as a example. Took me 3 years to decide to conquer that ear flap pattern on my machine. I was making the simple plain hats with no problems. Sat down that morning and said nothing else was going to get done in the house, till I made the hat. Good thing, the first one was a success. Now I can sell them online, or in real life, like at the market.
Heck I even sold one to the neighbor a few weeks ago. I was just showing her what I sold at the market along with the eggs. The hat sold itself

Oh...PS....you can also sell on www.half.com

[Momto5RN]

read read read on ebays sellers boards if you intend to sell on ebay so you can best protect yourself against issues .

and do not see what an item is listed at during research as what it can sell as .

reinvest money you make do not take money from something else under the assumption you can turn a deal into more money

there is a post around here somewhere that i posted a long post with info on re ebay selling . i sold for almost 7 years was a power seller for a while when i was home with my youngest .

i think one can do great things with reselling but also know if you dont know the ins and outs ( and magazines articles dont tell you what other sellers will ) it can end up costing you money and stress .

i will see if i can find that other post for you

[Momto5RN]

But it will take an additional investment of shipping supplies and about 10 minutes per item to take pictures, list, pack and ship them. >>>>

i would allow more than this esp if you are new to it sometimes you need several pix to show no flows etc- have to crop etc .

[mauimagic]

I know that you are so right about pushing through to do it once or twice will take the fear away. Hmmmm what shall I go with first?

[nuisance26]

But it will take an additional investment of shipping supplies and about 10 minutes per item to take pictures, list, pack and ship them. >>>>

i would allow more than this esp if you are new to it sometimes you need several pix to show no flows etc- have to crop etc .

~I'm not new to selling. I've been doing it for 6 years. It's just the buying things with the express intent to resell that's new to me. I sell about 30-50 things a year.
I know that it takes 10 minutes because I timed myself the last time I sold a round of games and dvd's.
The pics today took 70 minutes to take, edit and upload. That was for over 60 items.
It does take longer than that when you're new to it though. It used to take me 30 minutes per item. Practice makes perfect right? ~

[Momto5RN]

okay LOL well then you dont even need that other thread then lol Good luck !! i have a pair of lilly p summer pants and some brand new boys PJS from when i had a store ( closed it a few years back ) i have had sitting here for 2 years that i know i could sell if i listed them- i just dread any aggrevation now that i dont have to do it to make money - work is busy enough - but for some reason i cant just give it away knowing i could sell them lol .

a e-freind recently had bad luck with selling cds unfortunately got a guy claim they were all scratched and wanted to keep them and get his money back - told her she needed to report him or wait for him to do a paypal chargeback and then he would have to return them to win it .

[ladytoysdream]

I know that you are so right about pushing through to do it once or twice will take the fear away. Hmmmm what shall I go with first?

I would start with a few books. That is what I started with.

Use the ISBN. Look it up on Amazon. Then use title and look it up on ebay. I would not start with anything too pricey. Just a few common type books maybe so you can get your feet wet.

When you start the sell process, use the ISBN to bring up a pre filled page on ebay. That will usually get you a picture also if it is a book that is in the ebay system. Then you just need the weight of the book, and what you are going to ship it in, to get the total weight to use that in your listing. Basically ebay does most of the work for you now when it comes to books.

Start with a few craft books maybe that you don't use. Then post here in the buy sell area, after you get them listed. Then we the craft type people can check them out and hopefully make some bids for you

[celina]

the blog apron thrift girl, is all about reselling...very interesting read

[tervsforme]

I resell stuff as well. The biggest thing I tell people about e-bay is research, research. See what is selling and what you want to sell is selling and how much is it for. With the 50 free listings a month, it doesn't hurt to try ebay, it won't cost you anything unless you sell your item.

[nuisance26]

~I made another investment of $12 at Goodwill on things to sell and sold my first item for a profit of $1.50. It's a start. ~