eBay

Lady Rae

Does anyone here have an eBay business? Since we are cleaning up our house ect I have a lot of things like tea cups and books I don't want anymore and things we cleaned out of our tea shop. I have plenty what I love and plenty to sell. If I put stuff at a yard sale they would go for nothing and the Antique stores where put out of business by Covid. Your thoughts?

Mercury

Hi,

I've sold well over 250,000 items on ebay in the last 27 years. I started selling on Ebay in 1997......I was the 117th person on ebay to have 10,000 feedbacks. 😀

Ebay is great........BUT..........it is a declining market for many things. Younger people don't buy "stuff" like the older people used to.

Here is how to figure out if you can make money selling xxxxx:

1. Find the exact items on ebay, and click "sold" to see what it sold for. Ignore the items that are listed, but not sold. They don't matter.
2. Subtract 20% for fees and returns. Weigh the item and get an approximate cost of shipping. Things that require special packing, are super delicate, etc aren't worth shipping most of the time, unless it is big money. Only sell internationally when ebay ships it, the postage overseas is NUTS now. Thanks, USPS!
3. Do the math, and see if it is worth bothering with. What I started selling on ebay 25 years ago is completely different now. It is hard to keep up, but things change.
4. Often, you'll see hundreds of items for sale where people are literally breaking even, or losing money. The last figures I saw for Amazon said that 40% of people are losing money selling there, and I'm pretty sure ebay is similar.
5. Most people VASTLY underestimate the amount of time it takes to list and pack items. I know tons of people making less than $10/hr, after all is said and done......

Good luck! Online selling is much more difficult these days than in the past. 😕

Merc

scooterdriver

I sold a couple dozen items recently. Couple thoughts to add to the great post by @Mercury…

-Low dollar items (under $30) really aren’t worth the time to photograph, list, monitor, pack, ship, and give eBay their cut.

-Name brands sell. Items with defects don’t

-Take high quality pics

-Find similar items and use their verbiage…need searches to locate your items.

Ditch-Runner

@ mercury has it covered very well in his post as well as @scooterdriver all good points to keep in mind

its been a few years since l sold any thing for me but I have a pile ( as room full ) of stuff to list also I keep dragging my feet on doing it my oldest son still sells mostly RR books and slides

I stared on eaby when it was just getting off the ground I use to buy and flip a lot of items it on ebay people would list as BIN and not realize what it was truly worth oit was like cherry picking for sure , that was way early and now not so much is that going to happen and I hit up flea markets and garage sales gun shows it was a fun hobby.

early on it was like the wild west they allowed so much stuff to be sold I cant even post about but "dirty laundry "was one no not me but just a example. of how open it was on selling

ebey it shows my start date as 1998 but I stared much earlier I was kicked off a few times over selling gun parts ( go figure ) like a folding stock or a magazine that was over 10 rounds or m1a part all the so called Evel parts LOL that were legal but Kalifornia had different laws

still the best game when selling but nothing like it use to be

its easy to get set up and going but shipping cost selling and listing fees and dealing with the dishonest people make it not so much fun any more

I sure miss the days of cheap shipping rates

stop by any goodwill or thrift shop I will wager 80 to 90% of the people in there buying are looking to flip either in there own store of the internet.

good luck

will add I am just under 7k feedback all positive on ebay and years ago yahoo even started a site as well as the gun auction sites I was selling on three + ebey I have always used the same user name ditch-runner

Brookwood

E Bay is a competing site to GB so......