Making an ebay business full time.

Quote from Mr.Ritz : I am really looking to get into this a bit more as I always did it as a weekend hobby. It's just I don't really know where to start to make a decent amount of money to live off of. I live pretty cheap and my goal for the first few months would only be 300.00 dollars as that would cover my rent. My biggest problem is constant stock of items to sell. I have been told by other ebay powersellers what they do is get a ton of stuff and sell it for only a few dollars of profit on each item. Any ebay powersellers on here that can give me tips on how you work?

Buy storage lockers, sell the easy stuff at garage sales once a month and the hard stuff on ebay. I know a guy that makes 40k extra per year doing this but he also works a regular salary job. Changed his life.

you can buy iphone 5 cases from china and sell them on eBay. I am sure you will get $300 profit per month.

Are you at all crafty? Things like girls hair ribbons and custm painted lunch boxes have HUGE markups and are easy to make

Quote from yescooldude2012 : you can buy iphone 5 cases from china and sell them on eBay. I am sure you will get $300 profit per month.

I hear you have to have the hook up for that and you need to buy a large number of them.


What I was doing was hitting up garage sales and pulling out vintage games then putting them up on ebay. I know how to repair cell phones to an extend. Replace glass screens, lcds, home buttons. Problem I run into there is when the mobo is fried not much worth keeping..

I suppose there is an investment I need to make before I really getting going huh? Buy in lots etc.. I just can't afford to take a 5k burn.

I was running a drop shipping eBay business when I was in med school. Was helping clear piles of hard to find HD-DVD & Blu-Rays for a warehouse. In that setting you are just a middle-man selling other peoples stuff and snagging a commisison off the top. Similar to a consignment store - which was something I had thought of doing before I decided on med school, as a franchise business model. Didn't go through with it though, but that turned into a multi-billion dollar industry a year or two later. Would've been awesome...

Anyways, I had no money out of pocket in that business, all I did was list items all night long, collect my commission, transfer the rest of the money and send them a list of addresses/orders to ship the products out to. Worked very well for a while but I was a one-man show and I couldn't handle it.

Eventually it was just too much work for me but you could def clear well over $300. I think in the 4 months of business I netted a profit of ~$10k, gross revenue was $45k+ (thats what the IRS's love letter said when it reached my parents house).

Quote from 1stbuy : I was running a drop shipping eBay business when I was in med school. Was helping clear piles of hard to find HD-DVD & Blu-Rays for a warehouse. In that setting you are just a middle-man selling other peoples stuff and snagging a commisison off the top. Similar to a consignment store - which was something I had thought of doing before I decided on med school, as a franchise business model. Didn't go through with it though, but that turned into a multi-billion dollar industry a year or two later. Would've been awesome... Anyways, I had no money out of pocket in that business, all I did was list items all night long, collect my commission, transfer the rest of the money and send them a list of addresses/orders to ship the products out to. Worked very well for a while but I was a one-man show and I couldn't handle it. Eventually it was just too much work for me but you could def clear well over $300. I think in the 4 months of business I netted a profit of ~$10k, gross revenue was $45k+ (thats what the IRS's love letter said when it reached my parents house).

Who would I contact to get into that?

Quote from Mr.Ritz : Who would I contact to get into that?

This was many years ago (HD DVDs are now long gone) I wouldn't even know who to contact any more in terms of Blu-Rays.

Was just trying to give you an example of a niche market in which you could work as a middle-man for others who have products to sell and you wouldn't be putting money down yourself.

How do ebay commissions compare with using Amazon's fulfillment services? You can ship items in bulk to Amazon and they deal with the headache of picking items and mailing them out. Your items are available via Super Saver shipping and Prime shipping.

Quote from Mr.Ritz : Who would I contact to get into that?

Anyone that has the answer to a question like that wouldn't give it to you. That's the basics... why would I share my business's secrets with you so you can compete against me?

This is what I've learned about buying and selling stuff.
1) Find products. Figure out what's popular. Figure out what's hard to get. The items that are more popular and are harder to obtain will yield the best margin for you.
2) Find sources. Google, phone book, look online, alibaba, etc.
3) Go up the chain. Find the biggest distributor or get in touch with the manufacturer.
4) Have cash to buy inventory. Nobody turns down a cash deal. The more you can buy, the better the deal.
5) Selling is the easy part.

Fwiw I run a fairly successful eBay operation. $1M+ annual sales @ 15-20% margins.

Quote from hmd123 : How do ebay commissions compare with using Amazon's fulfillment services? You can ship items in bulk to Amazon and they deal with the headache of picking items and mailing them out. Your items are available via Super Saver shipping and Prime shipping.

Amazon's fulfillment service is pretty good but I wouldn't recommend it for small vendors.

It's too easy for stuff to get broken on it's way to Amazon and stuff gets lost in Amazon's warehouses occasionally. I wouldn't be too comfortable with them holding on to a large amount of my inventory. You have to be willing and able to absorb losses when dealing with them.

I had 100 units ($10/ea) of one of my products flagged as Hazmat in their system - couldn't sell the product and couldn't get the product back (they refused to ship it), ultimately the product was destroyed with no reimbursement... I had to write it off as a loss.
$1000 is not a huge deal when you have $200K worth of stuff in their warehouses but for a small vendor that's something that can easily put you out of business.

Quote from mr_rolla : I had 100 units ($10/ea) of one of my products flagged as Hazmat in their system

What were you selling for $10 that could even be considered as being hazmat?!

You couldn't call a human there to discuss with them? Seems unreasonable.

thanks

You might also think about selling parts. Buy used/broken items, part them out & sell them to people who want to repair/build items. Works for phones, computers, bicycles, laptops, etc etc. You almost always make a profit on the parts vs. the whole, but it can take a while & you have to sit on a pile of inventory.