Now that you're registered for eBay and at least somewhat familiar with the website, it's time to sell some items.
Choosing What to Sell
You can sell anything you want on EBay. Start by looking around the house for items you don't want anymore. Think about your hobbies and what interests you. You can sell handmade items (such as items you sell on Etsy) or used items. I've found I've had more luck with used items on eBay because people are looking for a deal.
eBay has a section called Popular Items section where you can see the trends on what is selling. You can sell popular items or find your own niche. To see if an item sells well on eBay, enter the item and then click "Completed Listings". See what percentage of listings sell and how much they sell.
Things that sold for me well are skincare, makeup, media (CDs, DVDs, etcs), samples (especially free makeup samples), eBooks (you have to put them on a CD though and mail them to sell them on eBay) and electronics (even broken ones). Popular brands of anything like makeup, clothes and electronics always sell well even though it also means there is more competition. Electronics and electronic parts are good to make money. Even if they are broken, people will buy the electronics at a reduced price for their parts. Outdated electronics are also good to sell if you have old electronics you don't use.
Items that didn't sell well for me are Beanie Babies, old clothes that have rips or stains and stuffed animals. You might have better luck though! You can try selling anything on eBay since there is somebody somewhere that might want it and there are a large number of visitors on eBay. Sometimes weird items you don't think will sell do well. If you look up "junk drawer", you will see people sell a bunch of unwanted items in their junk drawer. I got a bunch of animal rights CDs for free from the animal rights organized PETA. I had hundreds of extras and was able to sold those on eBay.
When deciding what to sell, also think about how much it will cost to ship. Smaller items cost less to ship and you can use bubble envelopes. Larger and heavier items are more expensive to ship. Even though the buyer pays for shipping, you'll want to keep this in mind. If an item is cheap to ship, you can offer free shipping and calculate the shipping price in to the price you sell your item. If an item costs a lot to ship and the item is cheap, people might not want to pay the extra shipping costs.
You can specialize in one type of item or sell a variety of things. If you're new to eBay, I'd recommend experimenting with different items and seeing what sells the best. You can specialize in one (or a couple) items if they sell really well.
Once you've tried selling items you have, you can ask friends or family if they have any items they want you to sell. You can become a trading assistant where you help sell items for other people, but you have to be an experienced eBay seller. You can also buy items and resell them. You can buy wholesale or liquidation which means you buy a bunch of items in bulk for cheap and sell them individually for a higher price. Here are some places you could consider buying wholesale or discount from:
- Google: Try googling whatever you want to sell and add keywords such as "wholesale", "dropshipping" and "liquidation" at the end.
- Garage sales: Garage sales are good to buy items for cheap and you can negotiate the price. Look on Craigslist or in the newspaper for garage sales in your town.
- Craigslist: Craigslist is a good place to find items and resell them. Look under the "free" section" for items that might sell well on eBay.
- Freebies and Coupons: Save any samples you get from stores or in the mail. Coupons also sell well on eBay, but make sure they are not expired.
-Resale shops: Look at resale shops like Goodwill and Salvation Army.
- Discount clubs and dollar stores: Discount clubs, such as Sam's Club, and dollar stores are other good places to find items for cheap.
- eBay: Buy in bulk on wholesale. Use these keywords when you do your search - liquidation, wholesale, resale, resell, "case of", "case quantity", "lot of", "pallet of", closeout, surplus
- Salehoo: This site has a big list of companies that sell wholesale. You have to pay a one time price of $67, but you get a lot of valuable information and hopefully you will make that money back quickly.
Since it costs money to buy and then resell, I recommend setting a limit to how much you can spend. It might be a good idea to put 50% of whatever sales you make on eBay back in to investing to get new items.
Now that you have some items, it's time to photograph them and get them listed.
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