calling all ebay store owners and sellers need your input

[cullers]

@lp08ss

@gottaketchumall

Set a budget as with anything else. Put $1,000 in a paypal account and use that as a seed. ($1,000 can be $100 or $100,000, any amount really, whatever you have and are willing to invest in to your side business).

As you buy it goes down. As you sell it goes back up. All business expenses are paid out of it. You can only buy things that you have the balance for. This keeps you from charging credit cards and sinking more and more into inventory and never catching up making any money. It keeps you from improperly accounting for fees or anything silly and from actually losing money when you think you are making money. See where you are at after a couple months and again at a year. See how you like it all. This is how I started back in high school. Actually my seed money was generated at the time selling old video games and other junk I didn’t use anymore. I’ve worked this way for most of my time on eBay. I’ve never really taken a salary from it because I have been lucky to not need it, but I have also only a few times put a small amount more money into it. I haven’t profited in cash per se but most of my inventory was acquired at no cost to me more than my time accumulated working on this since high school. (thousands of hours)

I really like this idea and I think it’s gonna be the route I go as a way to keep my buying/selling in check. I also think I may start fresh with new ebay account to keep it separate from my person account. Or should I just continue using the account I have since I do atleast have some established feedback?

It doesn’t matter, I personally have two accounts. One I primarily buy from, one I sell from. There’s various reasons, it separates feedback, it allows me to purchase without people being hesitant in thinking I’m a reseller (some people look at my items and think I’ll pay more because I have the item listed on my page for more than I offered), you can sell non Pokémon items from the other account, I have power seller status, so if I wanted to sell things without tracking I can through the other account to avoid ruining my power seller metrics.

There’s probably more things I’m missing, but if you don’t care about any of those things, just use your established feedback as a boost for your sales reputation.

[lp08ss]

@nuttun

Here are some pointers that may help you out!

1. I am assuming you’re residing in the United States, because be very aware of shipping costs when shipping to other countries. Remember that you must ship with tracking or else buyers will always win if they send a request for delivery not received. You can take risks and ship letter mail for low cost products, as it will cost less in the long run, but that is a risk-reward situation.

2. Gain some feedback first, especially if you are selling expensive items. Selling expensive items with very low feedback increases your chances of scammers, have less people interested in your listing and ebay will prioritize you less.

3. Make sure this is worth your time. Remember that it takes a lot of time to manage your business finances, time to list and post products, time to package product, and time to ship the product. All these take a while, and if your margins are razor thin this may not be worth your spare time. Don’t forget also that ebay is sort of a hybrid of a variable and fixed cost model, the more you sell, the more time you are spending and eventually you cannot do this all by yourself if you plan to sell in terms of economies of scale. I.e., don’t buy like 1000 products and try to move them all as soon as possible. Take things slowly so you do not get overwhelmed.

4. Not sure if it’s relevant, but there’s a delay between Paypal funds and funds depositing in your account. Do not expect to have the paypal money instantly teleport to your main bank account so that you can pay off your loans/credit cards. It takes a while, which may be important to you in the future.

5.Just because someone bought the item, does not mean they will pay for it. They may ask you to cancel a transaction.

6. Even if you think the buyer is BSing, at the beginning, you cannot really take a negative feedback hit. Think about it; do you buy from an ebayer less than 97-100%? Probably not. Even if 1 transaction goes bad out of 40, your rating drops to 97.5% at that point, some buyers may be wary at purchasing your products.

7. Don’t forget to calculate ebay fees, paypal fees, shipping cost, packaging cost, product cost, gas cost and your time value cost!

8.Sell locally first before taking care of international customers. You may minimize your customer base, but international orders are more challenging to handle due to increase likelihood of scammers and packages being lost in transit.

9. Try to minimize your variety and specialize in category. What I did when I was in my teens is that I specialized in Yugioh cards and understood the meta, so I can predict beforehand the cards value and buy and sold accordingly. Cards that may be worth 30$ last week can jump to $80 due to playability, so it was easy money as a teen.

10. Try shipping smaller stuff. The bigger the item, the more of a pain to ship and the increase in costs. Smaller = easier = better = higher margins

Love this post man I will be sure to take all of it into consideration! You are correct that I reside in the US and I will agree with you that I don’t even want to try to expand into international shipping until I’m ready or if I even get to that point!

[nuttun]

@lp08ss

@nuttun

Love this post man I will be sure to take all of it into consideration! You are correct that I reside in the US and I will agree with you that I don’t even want to try to expand into international shipping until I’m ready or if I even get to that point!

No problem, good luck with your store!

Take your time to make money, and most importantly, enjoy yourself!

[pokemonsyndicate]

@cullers

I like @garyis2000 ’s advice on starting slow. I’ll throw in the advice I got from Rusty when I was starting; don’t be afraid to price your items for what you want to sell for and not what the market goes for.

Only problem with this is it leads to insane inbox death threats and people that start calling you evil reseller.

Like you… your evil. cause your american. like garinson and smpratticoinz.

[smpratte]

@pokemonsyndicate

@cullers

I like @garyis2000 ’s advice on starting slow. I’ll throw in the advice I got from Rusty when I was starting; don’t be afraid to price your items for what you want to sell for and not what the market goes for.

Only problem with this is it leads to insane inbox death threats and people that start calling you evil reseller.

Like you… your evil. cause your american. like garinson and smpratticoinz.

You can’t let irrelevant people on Instagram influence what you do with your cards Benzington!

[kkthxbai]

Don’t forget, being on ebay, doesn’t mean just being on ebay.

There is alot of social media you can use to help branch out to customers as well, youtube, facebook, instagram. Sometimes helps build a nice image, and direct traffic to your ebay store

I’m not super massive, but i have 700+ followers on ebay for a reason, it’s because i try and advertise on other platforms as well.