Does anyone know someone sho does this? and how they do it? and if tis profitable? ive a got a lot of time at work doing nothing, and was wondering about the average joe on EBAY who makes a living off it. Supposedly there are 36,000 canadians that do this for a living, and i want to know their story
You can be successful at anything if you put your mind to it and put in enough effort. The best way to make a profit off Ebay is to buy a storefront and sell various kinds of items, most of which are $5-$10(you'd have to have 100's of things to sell). Don't expect to make big sales off every item because the people who browse Ebay are bargain hunters.
Ways I've heard people profit:
-people that can design their own clothing make a killing(the punk anti-establishment market)
-one of a kind country home crafts(middle age women market)
-antique hunters(upperclass male with too much time on his hands market)
-retro toys(you'd have to go all over through flea markets, garage sales etc) and hard to find limited edition merchandise(the fanboy market)
So...unless you can sew, know your antiques or paint gaudy birdhouses or crap then I'd suggest you familiarize yourself with the latest toys and merchandise.
If none of this crap appeals to you I'd suggest not bothering. Ebay is going downhill, and it's much harder to sell things these days than it was 8 years ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dominant Hegemony
you have to keep in mind that ebay has a fee to selling things. and then paypal has a fee as well if you're transfering.
i think you can avoid a lot of the fees by making your product cheap but making your shipping cost insane.
Lol. It's against the rules to have shipping too high. Someone will file a complaint against you and leave negative feedback, killing you pretty fast.
Basically what everyone is saying is right: it's hard to be successful if you're not crooked. But if you have free time on your hands for the next year to try and build up your own business and the financial stability to keep you going then it's worth a shot.
Here's the Pros:
-work your own hours
-be your own boss
-non-taxable income(up until a certain point)
Cons:
-once you get into it, you have to pretty much work all year round
-if you're Canadian, you've just lost a ton of business from the States
-anyone that does buy from the States will ***** about shipping times and possible duty taxes
-anyone idiot can leave you negative feedback, even when things aren't your fault, just because they can't read or is a jerk. To offset negative feedback you have to sell a crapload of more stuff.
-you'd have to inquire about declaring yourself as a business if you make a lot of money
-multiple trips to the post office each day
how do I know all this? My mom got bored and started selling some of her old antiques, then she really got into it. I helped her out with her listings and edited/cleaned up the photo's for her. Sometimes she'd barely break even from one month to the next. I looked into selling things myself but it quickly became too much of a pain in the ass.
Last edited by Blades 0f Steel: 05-31-2008 at 08:51 AM.
I have a friend who quits his job to make a living on eBay. It's been a year now. It's working quite well, but he's always in front of his computer! He must work around 80 hours a week.
I have a friend who quits his job to make a living on eBay. It's been a year now. It's working quite well, but he's always in front of his computer! He must work around 80 hours a week.
interesting, Im trying to get in contact with smoe Chinese manufacturiers of electronics, but supposedly my mandarin is not as good as i thought it would be. Evidently watching Into the Dragon 15 times hasnt really taught me how to speak the language, either that or I may have accidently challenged the receptionist to fight to the death so i could regain my familys honour.
LOL, I shouldn't drink coffee while reading these posts, I nearly choked to death
Another good site to sell things is the Kijiji site. You can advertise for free to most any city in Canada. To buy or sell. All sitting home in front of the 'puter. Jewelry is a big markup item. 300-400% in some cases(diamond rings). They can be sold quickly in places like Fort mcMurray and Victoria
If you find a niche you can make money. I buy some stuff off eBay and I've never been dissatisfied - the idea that it's a bunch of scammers is pretty idiotic, actually.
Yes, there are some. The ratings catch up to them pretty quickly. Don't buy $300 items from people with 5 feedback, ldo. The shipping is right there in the freaking description, and I never buy from people who inflate shipping unreasonably.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that lose money trying to start a huge eBay business without actually trying it out first. Start small, find something to sell, and if it's good value and it makes you money, expand.
Don't expect to import crap from China and resell it (well, you can, but you will be competing with hundreds of Chinese guys doing the same thing directly in Hong Kong and China itself - and their prices are insanely cheap - I got a SATA-IDE converter for $7 including shipping and it sells for $25 in-store here in Canada)... but then again, maybe you can find something unique that has demand.
Anyway, it's just like any other market, it's just that there's a lot more sellers and buyers than a physical one. Consider too that if you sell past a certain amount you end up being considered a business and must report revenue to the government, and must charge GST/QST to Canadians/Quebecois.
Evidently watching Into the Dragon 15 times hasnt really taught me how to speak the language, either that or I may have accidently challenged the receptionist to fight to the death so i could regain my familys honour.
I did exactly that once and got my ass kicked, num chuks right across the freaken knuckles, who knew they kept those under the reception desk.
Here is what I have done. You could call it a success. I deal in only hockey cards. Sports cards are a lot more high tech then they were back in the 90's when you just had the regular cards, rookies and inserts. Now they will buy a game used jersey from NHL players. They will cut up the jersey and put them on the cards. They will also number the cards out of a small number to increase value. For the rookies they will make a smaller print run on them compared to the base cards. The players will also have signature cards as well. Values can now be in the thousands of dollars for real top end cards.
This is what I do. I just search ebay for all hockey cards that are ending the soonest. You will get a whole page of like 25 or so that are going to end within the next ten minutes. All that I do is look for the ones that have slipped through the cracks. I look for the ones that are going for less than the should.
What I have done is open an ebay store. It is another way to sell on ebay. Instead of paying to have an auction that goes on for a week and you see what people bid it up to it works like this. It costs $18 a month to have the store. It only costs seven cents a month to list an item for sale. Eight cents if it has a pic to go along with it. The listing will stay up until you either cancel it or it sells. You then pick the price that you will sell it for and people can counter offer what you are selling it for.
So say a card normally sells for $40. With three minutes left it is selling for $22, I bid $23 and win it. Then I get the card and list it for sale in my store for the $40 that it usually sells for. I may have someone bite and sell it for the $40 or someone may give me an offer of $35. I will accept that $35 even though I do know that I could get that extra $5. That way that same person will come back to buy from me again. Then say after all of the fees that I have to pay I end up getting $32 for it. So if I buy it for $23 and get $35 for it I got a profit of 152%. I don't then cash out that $12 that I made but I will spend it to buy more cards. Keep upping my inventory.
I had started off with about 4-5k worth of cards about three years back and now I have about 15k worth in my ebay store.
It sounds easy but it is a lot of time and work. I can't stress that enough. And yes I do have a full time job, I just work 12 hour shifts and have lots of time off cause of it.
Here is what I have done. You could call it a success. I deal in only hockey cards. Sports cards are a lot more high tech then they were back in the 90's when you just had the regular cards, rookies and inserts. Now they will buy a game used jersey from NHL players. They will cut up the jersey and put them on the cards. They will also number the cards out of a small number to increase value. For the rookies they will make a smaller print run on them compared to the base cards. The players will also have signature cards as well. Values can now be in the thousands of dollars for real top end cards.
This is what I do. I just search ebay for all hockey cards that are ending the soonest. You will get a whole page of like 25 or so that are going to end within the next ten minutes. All that I do is look for the ones that have slipped through the cracks. I look for the ones that are going for less than the should.
What I have done is open an ebay store. It is another way to sell on ebay. Instead of paying to have an auction that goes on for a week and you see what people bid it up to it works like this. It costs $18 a month to have the store. It only costs seven cents a month to list an item for sale. Eight cents if it has a pic to go along with it. The listing will stay up until you either cancel it or it sells. You then pick the price that you will sell it for and people can counter offer what you are selling it for.
So say a card normally sells for $40. With three minutes left it is selling for $22, I bid $23 and win it. Then I get the card and list it for sale in my store for the $40 that it usually sells for. I may have someone bite and sell it for the $40 or someone may give me an offer of $35. I will accept that $35 even though I do know that I could get that extra $5. That way that same person will come back to buy from me again. Then say after all of the fees that I have to pay I end up getting $32 for it. So if I buy it for $23 and get $35 for it I got a profit of 152%. I don't then cash out that $12 that I made but I will spend it to buy more cards. Keep upping my inventory.
I had started off with about 4-5k worth of cards about three years back and now I have about 15k worth in my ebay store.
It sounds easy but it is a lot of time and work. I can't stress that enough. And yes I do have a full time job, I just work 12 hour shifts and have lots of time off cause of it.
So you made $10,000 in 3 years? basically $3000+ a few smoked meat sandwiches a year, for a time consuming, complex plan?
my favorite line of this whole story "It sounds easy but it is a lot of time and work". Ya....Reaaalll easy.
I kind of know someone that makes a living from EBAY...then again, he just finished college and might be selling everything he owns to pay off the debt.
So you made $10,000 in 3 years? basically $3000+ a few smoked meat sandwiches a year, for a time consuming, complex plan?
my favorite line of this whole story "It sounds easy but it is a lot of time and work". Ya....Reaaalll easy.
I see exactly what you are saying but I don't do it as an extra job. I do it more as a hobby. I was not saying that it is easy. I follow cards and actually use hockeys future to help me a lot along the way. Rookie cards sell for the hype around the player and then in a few years time they sell for how the player is. For example.
The top tier guys fetch top dollar(Toews, Gagne, Price, Kane, Backstrom), the the second tier go for a ways under them(Russell, Kennedy, Dubinsky, Staal, J.Johnson, E.Johnson, Hanzal, Cogliano, Mueller, Schremp, Bernier, Tlusty, Rask, Lucic, Setoguchi, Ryan), then the next tier are the guys like(Krejci, Enstrom, Hiller, Pavelec, Perron, Halak, Little, Foligno, Sheppard) then you get your crappy ones(O'Byne, Stewart, Locke, all of the guys who get a cup of coffee or are only a 4th line grinder/6th,7th D man/third string goalie) Think of them as buying stocks. Everyone is huge on Rob Schremp still. People who like cards are always a step behind when it comes to rookies. You could buy one Schremp or three Krejci's. Go buy like five Corey Crawford's for the price of one Halak or Pavelev.
I was just writing that to say that it is possible to just make a living on ebay but I will admit that if I did it full time I may make about 20k per year. That is far from being enough to live off of. I don't intend on doing it full time ever. Who else here has a hobby that makes them money as opposed to spending for it?
It is so exciting to get a package in the mail and open it and see what card is inside. When you are expecting a bunch at a time you just open and look.
Well it certainly sounds fun, and honestly who wouldnt like to have a large package! and you may be on to something that no one else is doing, or very few people are doing and i commend you on that. Especially if its a hobby that you enjoy. I mean, if you are making money doing what you enjoy, its like heaen on earth right there.
anyway, I just thought it was funny, cause I thought you discovered a get-rich-quick scheme, but its more like a have-fun and make some pocket change ploy.
but Im wondering if I should create the next Jesus toast, or say, a Mohammed-shaped french fry, or even a Buddah shaped Matso Ball? I dont know. Any ideas on what could actually sell? id love to hear them, just for the heck of it. Hey who knows, if we get some good ideas, maybe we can actually post it on there and see what happens...Could be a great laught for everyone
I can add a few details on ebay. As my user name shows (vincecarder one of my buyer names on ebay), I've been on ebay pretty early, since 97 to be exact.
If you don't want to bother reading what I have to say (may look long) then take this info with you. eBay is the garage sale of the world. You can find something good but there is a ton of crap as well.You can make money off of eBay but it takes a lot of time and a lot of research.
I've sold everything, from Sports Cards, to muscle cars to professionally graded comic books and toys....done it all.
My best sale was a 1998 SPX Vince Carter Spectrum #15/25 (his jersey number) for a record $33K. Yes, that's one card, a piece of paper of the future Michael Jordan (well that's what he was suppose to be). I believe that card sold again a few years ago for $5K. Vince Carter is a good example of how ebay worked. His Sp authentic card was numbered out of 3500 (that was low then, now everything has to be 100 or 1/1. At his peak I was selling BGS 9.5 Sp authentic Vince Carter's for $3800. They were tough to grade, not like how it is now (a Pristine VC would have hit $15-20K back then). Same Vince Carter card now is like $100-150. It's like the stock market on collectibles and all sorts of things you would think people wouldn't spend their money on.
Now as for a business, I have worked with various consignment stores. That would be people dropping off their items to be sold on ebay and we would take a cut (25% to 20%).
Let's just say after answering all the questions, research, photos, HTML templates, uploading, packing, shipping etc...it was quite difficult to make money.
Would I recommend anyone eBay that you will make a ton of money? Hell no. As a hobby or a part time thing ya you can make a little money but you really have to invest the time. I've just had a knack for selling basically anything and enjoy the sale part of ebay (finding something, selling it, making a profit...repeat).
If anyone has any specific questions (templates, ebay scams, card grading scams with card dealers, shill bidding etc) I can spend some time to explain some stuff.
