While I may have a full time job as a consultant, I moonlight in many different professions. From podcasting, to blogging, to running a financial literacy course, to one you might not know much about - selling on eBay.
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E-commerce has become the topic of conversation for many different reasons - both good and bad. It's the subject of many internet scams and "get rich quick" gurus, but I'm neither here nor there. My purpose in writing this article is to explain my own approach to creating consistent income with eBay and how getting started is the easiest part.
My Approach
Step 1
The hardest part about selling on eBay is finding what you should sell. However, my approach has always been to look no further than my own apartment. Whenever, I'm running low on items to sell or whenever I was first getting started I would just start listing all of the household tech, clothing, and items that I no longer used. Looking in my closet for new items to sell is always the easiest approach to getting started.
Step 2
Once you rally together a pile of items you want to sell, the next step is to take pictures of your items - and while this may seem like an insignificant part - this is actually the most important step in ensuring success in selling your items. The #1 thing that buyers on eBay look for is an abundance of high-quality pictures. So, take out that new iPhone and get to snapping plenty of pictures of each item.
Step 3
List your items on eBay. The best approach to listing your items is to search for the product that you are trying to sell by typing in the product name or barcode number in the eBay search box. If you find a similar or identical product then click on "sell one like this" and edit the pre populated information to match the accurate description of your item.
Extra Tip: When you get to the portion of details where you choose the price of your item, ensure that you enable "auction" for 7 days and "allow offers" for the best results. However, bear in mind that some offers may be too good to be true and that if a user ever sends you an offer and request you to pay them outside of eBay's platform (e.g. PayPal) then it's a scam and you should report that user.
Step 4
After 7 days you will hopefully have sold a few products and it's now time to package and ship. Whenever an item sells you will be notified by eBay once the buyer has paid. Ensure that you never ship an item prior to a buyer having paid through the eBay platform. However, once the money shows up as paid in your eBay account, it's as easy as clicking on "print shipping label", printing the label, and taping it to the box or bubble mailer that you placed your item in. The last step is to drop it off at your local USPS, UPS, or FedEx location.
That's it. You've sold your first eBay item and are on your way to building a successful eBay store.
What's Next?
Selling your first item is the easy part, but sustaining the sale of items is the hard part. More than likely, you will have items that don't sell during their first auction. My recommendation is to set your eBay account to automatically relist items that don't sell.
After that it's time to figure out where your next items will come from. One approach I use to gather more inventory to list on my store is to clean out family member's garages and offer to sell their old items. Sometimes I need to offer them a portion of the sale and sometimes they'll let me keep all of the sale price to just get it off their hands.
Another method to gaining more items for your eBay store is to go thrifting and utilize the income from your previous sales to purchase other items that you expect can sell for more.
Common and Best Selling Items on eBay (from my experience)
Technology
Clothes
Jewelry
Beauty Supplies
Final Thoughts
It's definitely no reason to quit my full time job, but helps provide a supplemental form of income. Starting an eBay business or even just using it as an online garage sale can be a valuable and easy way for most people to pocket some extra cash as they head into the new year.
Vin
Sources: eBay
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