I was looking at making a little extra on the side, and was wondering if you can seriously make money flipping things on ebay. A friend of mine recommended it but I was wondering, whats a realistic figure that I might be able to make?
Honestly, ebay's fees will eat a lot of your profit unless you have desirable high line items and a good marketing strategy.
Asking this question means that you are still not ready to handle this complex and calculus full method. Start smaller with some affiliate selling where the good doesn't pass your hands instead of buying and selling something yourself.
on Ebay I use to make 5-10k$ Monthly and paid about 1-3k$ in fee's monthly and then TAX 40% yearly so f@#k ebay P.S. was flipping used smart-phones from local ads. to there ends up 100-150$ profit from each but after fee's all that profit when back to ebay owners
You have to look beyond just flipping but buying and selling on eBay is a big business though like every venture, it requires some learning ropes.
ebay is difficult to do full time, I do it as a hobby flipping electronics, I make around 50 to 100% profit on each item, if I buy a ps2 for $10 and sell it for $40, after fee's I will have a good $20 profit.
Depends on what you are selling. I've found some things that were pretty lucrative, but profit on each sale was only 50 cents. However I could buy hundreds of these products for $20-50 buying them used. Half the time I would buy the products on Ebay, just by looking for poorly listed lots of the stuff, or someone who clearly doesn't have the time to inventory their entire collection. It was trading cards actually, something that people really don't have time to get to know or bother to find values. I decided I mind as well since it wasn't overly saturated with sellers and there seemed to be enough buyers. The only problem is doing what I did took a lot of patience. I basically was only making $20 a month for like 6 months, and once my limits were raised to over 1,000 products a month or 10,000 USD, I actually started making money doing this. I would literally have 40 listings end every night, and made a nice profit of $100-200 a day. However the amount of effort it took to find the lots to buy, then inventory them, research them, price them properly, take pictures of them, create a description and listing, crop the photo, post the photo, package the product, and send it out,......... it almost wasn't worth it. So basically the point of my story is you need to consider how many sales you think you can handle, and how much you want to make off each sale. I picked something that was cheap to buy and cheap to sell, but I was doing higher volume of sales so I was making enough money, BUT IT WAS A LOT OF WORK. And I sometimes wished I was just selling more valuable items to make larger profits. The problem with that is it's harder to find reliable sources of more valuable things, like electronics, or clothing. And customers are a lot pickier when spending that much money. My customers were spending around $5.00 an order(I encouraged spending at least 5 because they would be qualified for free shipping after). But doing that 40 times a day made it worth it, since each item cost me around $0.10 to buy sometimes they only cost a penny. However, since I had such a high volume I was subject to more risk from being burned by detailed seller ratings. more sales means more seller ratings. Seller ratings are your enemy on Ebay, whether they be good or bad, I would rather my buyers not leave any rating. Most people have unrealistic expectations for what they're paying for, and end up giving you maybe a 4/5 instead of 5/5. Believe me a 4/5 could be the end of your account if you get enough of them. I had one prick buy 10 cards off me for a whopping total of $8.00, he decided to give me a bad rating for all 10, coupled with two other buyers who were unhappy with my shipping time, and I was restricted from selling. Regardless of my thousands of otherwise satisfied customers. People do not leave feedback generally when they are satisfied because it is tedious and boring to do so for the most part. But if you are upset, or at least feel, it took too long to ship, or the seller didn't communicate well, or whatever, you will leave feedback. It may not be negative, but the odd time you get that 3/5, and enough of those can burn you. So basically; - decided how much time you want to put into packaging and shipping and listing - don't ever ask for feedback from your sellers, and list clearly, do not leave a single detail left unsaid, or you will eventually get burned by some moron buyer
The wind will change direction, that's a given. You need to be able to change your sails and ride the direction of the wind. Selling on eBay can be a lot of hard work but it depends on what you're selling, the profit from each sale and the amount of legwork involved for each sale. What you must do is ensure that you have a large number of visitors to the items you're selling and that is key. It's also pretty damn easy too. Here's some help....http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...sales-faster-than-getting-herpes-5-whore.html Shez
Yes. If you can network and manage both people and your own affairs you could make well over $100k per year. However you will need to find a clique or something that isn't well known, but is incredibly wanted by buyers. I can't give personal specifics nor am I saying I make less/more of what I previously mentioned.
You can make money BUT I have to say I think it's a pain in the ass. Been selling on eBay for years but at this point I'm looking at writing and selling eBooks because I'd much rather do something I enjoy even though it'll probably be a massive pay cut. I just don't like eBay's customer base but if you can handle customer support then it's decent money... Profit fluctuates quite a bit but I rarely profit less than $20/hr and around tax refund time I've pulled in $200/hr (christmas is dead, no one buys used things for gifts) but I just want to blow my f*king head off when it comes to customer support. My only problem is so far the book sales suck but if it picks up then I don't mind giving my sources to someone in Southern California; quite frankly they can have my warehouse of stuff too as it's easier to give someone the entire business than transport everything to be disposed. If you're in a different location any info from me wouldn't help as the sources are really the only thing that makes money on eBay. You don't make money on eBay by selling stuff, you make the money buying things at a good price.
I looked into Ebay but I would personally use Amazon or try looking into similar sites as they usually have affiliate programs such as Etsy which could work better for you depending again on what you are wanting to sell.
Something for UK user to think about is importing from outside EU is there is import tax that is included so that takes a large chunk of profit. I once brought a product from the US and the tax costed more then the item.
