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Happy New Year's Eve!
The Money Fox has great article you don't want to miss. Seven Tips For Getting Started With Your eBay Reselling Business I’ve been reselling second-hand clothes on eBay for almost exactly a year now, and it’s shaped up to be one of my all-time favourite side hustles and ways to make money online. There’s not much that I enjoy more than having a good old rake around in a charity shop or at a car boot sale to find items that I can flip for a big profit, and I’ve earned several thousands of pounds, part-time, in the process. Each and every week is different with reselling. But as a quick snapshot of what my business looks like, my first month saw me doing around £400 in sales, and I’ve slowly but steadily increased that over the year – mostly just thanks to making sure that I’m consistently increasing my listings and finding good stock. This week, I’ve sold 15 items, and those included a pair of shoes for £35 that I bought for £2.99, and a jacket for £20 that I bought for 50p. It also included a dress that I bought for £5 that I finally sold for £7.50, after it hanging around for months. So that one was a bit of a fail. They happen from time to time, like they do in any kind of business, but the wins outweigh them. Though the premise of eBay reselling is pretty simple – you buy stuff for cheap, then sell it on at a higher price. Still though, it pays to have a bit of knowledge under your belt before you get things rolling, so you can maximise your chances of success and increase your profits from day one. Here are seven of my best tips for starting your own eBay reselling business… 1. Declutter your home and start by selling your own stuff Don’t try to run before you can walk. Before you even consider going out and buying any stock, it makes sense to have a thorough declutter in your own home and find items that you’re happy to sell. This is a great starting point because it costs you nothing, it gets you used to the listing and selling process, it clears some space, and it also puts some cash straight into your pocket. You might initially think that you don’t have much to sell, but you’ll probably be surprised. Consider clothes, shoes, toys, electronics… You name it, you can probably sell it. You’ll also quickly realise that one person’s trash really is another person’s treasure. For many people, it’s not unrealistic to sell a few hundred pounds worth of things that you’d long since abandoned, or even forgotten that you owned. 2. Learn how to research items so you know exactly how much they’re worth One of the biggest questions you’re going to have when it comes to reselling is how much you can expect to sell your items for. After all, that’s going to play a big part in the kind of things you look out for, and how much profit you ultimately make. Luckily, eBay makes this part of the process fairly easy. You can search the platform for sold listings, and see exactly how much items similar or exactly the same as yours have sold for in recent months. Armed with the information, you can make informed choices about how much to charge for your item. This function is really easy to use, and you’re going to be using it a lot in your reselling, so make sure that you’re familiar with how it works. It’s also worth checking out the reseller community on YouTube and Instagram. You’ll find tons of inspiration around the kind of brands and items that you should be looking out for to resell. 3. Don’t neglect the art of creating a great listing How you create your listing has a big impact on how many people will see it, and how appealing it’ll be to them. This determines how many sales you make, so don’t rush into anything before creating your own strategy. Here, there are two big things so consider… Firstly, your listing title. Here, you want to be as descriptive as possible and put yourself in the shoes of your potential buyers… What keywords would they be typing into eBay when they were looking for an item like yours? Ditch words like ‘stunning’ and ‘lovely’, which really don’t mean a lot, and aim to include the brand, the size, the colour, and the style. And of course, a picture paints a thousand words. Snap your items in natural lighting, from lots of different angles, and ensure there’s no clutter in the background. I invested my eBay profits into buying a mannequin, which hugely improved my photos. It’s not necessary for getting started, but it’s something you might want to consider if you’ll be selling clothes. You can pick them up for about £25 on eBay. I also like to include measurements in my listings, as this helps people to decide if the item will fit. 4. Make life easier for yourself by choosing a niche You really can sell pretty much anything you can imagine. Sometimes though, the sheer scale of what you could potentially sell makes things a little overwhelming. This is why choosing a niche can really set you up for success. You can’t possibly know about everything… But if you choose just one area to focus on, you quickly learn the ropes. You discover the items you should pick up and the ones you should leave behind, and you realise where the best profits are. I focus on clothes, and though I probably walk past other items every day that could be profitable, I don’t worry about it too much. I just make it my business to know and understand the clothing niche, and I’m building up knowledge and experience all the time. Read the rest here. Another great article find from Mama with a Calling
What it Means to be an Ebay Reseller and Have a Reselling Business When I first started looking into different ways I could make money online, selling things on ebay wasn’t even in my radar. It wasn’t until I saw a course on Udemy about this concept of reselling on ebay. Until that moment, I thought that people only bought collectibles like video games or rare antiques on there, but it turns out that people buy clothes, shoes, toys and more! And if people are buying them that means people can sell them. So what does it mean to be a reseller on ebay and how do they make money? An ebay reseller is someone that buys items (typically used ones from places like thrift stores and yard sales) and sells them for a profit on ebay. While anyone can sell old items they’re getting rid of for some extra cash, the big difference is that ebay resellers intentionally go out and buy (aka source) items with the intention of reselling them. But this still didn’t answer the question of how someone would make this a business. What does it look like to have a reselling business? When you have an ebay business, you have taken your ebay selling beyond that of hobby selling (i.e. putting items for sale randomly as you come across them). This means you are: 1. Setting Revenue Goals Just like with any other business, as an ebay business owner you should have a revenue goal (i.e. how much money do you want to bring in each month?) You might be wondering how you’d even begin to know how many items you’d sell. I mean it’s dependent on someone out there in the world needing or wanting to buy your item. How can you predict that? The general rule I’ve found is that after your store has at least 100 items in it, you will sell as many as you list. So if you list 10 items in a week, you’ll sell about 10 items that week give or take some. This comes in handy when you’re trying to figure out your revenue goals. Once you have an idea of the average selling price of your items, then you can use that to predict the approximate revenue you can expect when you sell a certain number of items. Let’s break that down a bit. So if you’re wanting to sell approximately $5000 a month, then the first thing you’d do is look at your average sales price. If yours is $25, then you can take $5000 / $25 and that will give you the number of items you need to sell in a month. In this case, it would be 200. Divide that up by 4 weeks to give you 50, which is the number of items you should list each week. Of course there are a lot of factors that go into this, such as the quality of items you’re listing, your listing quality, etc, but in general, this has been a general concept that I’ve found to be true. As with anything, you should test it out for yourself. That’s part of being a business owner, right? See which system works for you and creates predictable sales. Bottom line with this one: as a business owner, you will set revenue goals which encompasses listing goals. 2. Running an ebay store Technically, to sell on ebay, you don’t have to open an ebay store, but if you’re a serious seller (aka you’ve got a business), then having an ebay store makes a lot of sense. There are multiple tiers of ebay store subscriptions so you can choose the one that’s right for you. I started with the basic store and then went to premium as my store grew. While having an ebay store does cost money, it will likely cost you more to pay the listing fees outside of having a store. It all depends on how many items you have listed. See their chart to help you decide which store subscription makes sense and when you should upgrade. Other perks of having an ebay store that I find really useful are: markdown manager (i.e. allows you to create sales) and quarterly ebay shipping supplies voucher. Read the rest here We wish you the happiest New Year! The eCommerce Mom has a very detailed article, that can be a huge help to anyone just starting out.
10 Things You Need to Do to Start a Successful Reselling Business If you’re a reselling newbie that wants to turn your hobby into an official reselling business, this is a post you will want to read. You’re going to garage sales and thrift stores. There are so many great deals there. You resell them and realize that this hobby could make at least a part-time income. The part that gets technical is how to turn this into an actual business that makes a profit. And then how do you keep track of your records and all that. You think, “I’ve never run a business before. I can’t do that. I’m not smart enough or educated enough.” YES YOU ARE! It’s not that hard. Here are 10 Things You Need to Do to Start a Successful Reselling Business: 1- Open business accounts for PayPal and banking. From the beginning, set everything up right to save yourself from a huge headache in the future. Any income you make from ebay or other selling platforms is taxable income. Paypal will send you a 1099-MISC form when you make $20,000. Many people think that they do not have to pay taxes unless they get a 1099-MISC and this is simply not true. Tax evasion is a federal crime. Please do not get yourself into trouble because of misinformation. I’m not going to give you specific tax advice because I’m not an accountant. All of the advice I am giving here is just common sense stuff. You need to have your own accountant, a real CPA, not just a tax preparer. Open a business checking account at your local credit union. I always recommend a credit union because they usually have free checking and they have much better customer service than a big bank. You can just open a DBA (doing business as) account. They can help you with this. It’s not hard. Set up a business PayPal account. You can convert your personal account to a business account if you want to. Ebay suggests this so that you are covered under their seller protection policy. Ebay did use PayPal as their primary way to deliver your earnings, but that will change eventually with their new management payment system. Other platforms use direct deposit. Convert your personal ebay account to a business account if you plan on selling there. Have everything set as a business from the start. Ebay should be a part of your reselling strategy, at least in the beginning. 2- Establish accounting and bookkeeping systems. Keeping up with what is coming in and going out is super important. If you put this off, it will be almost impossible to catch up. So what do you need to keep track of? On a basic level, two things- income and expenses. Income = what comes in [gross sales (sale price of an item plus any shipping income)] Expenses= what goes out [shipping expenses, sales fees, paypal fees, supplies, mileage, cost of goods, etc] There are lots of ways that you can track this. For ebay and Etsy, I use GoDaddy Bookkeeping. I use a spreadsheet for any income that is not from ebay & Etsy. GoDaddy Bookkeeping pulls all of my sales and fees from ebay and Etsy. It also separates my sales by state. Since I only have to pay sales tax for a few transactions (most of my sales are out of state), this makes it super easy not to have to sort through every transaction each month. Ebay and Etsy collect them. I just have to pass along that money to my local parish (county) and state. It will also generate a report to give to your CPA at the end of the year. If you file taxes as a Schedule C (sole-proprietorship), it gives you the figures to put on each line of your tax form. GoDaddy does charge a fee, but to me, it is so worth it. It does a lot of work for the price you pay. My time is better spent elsewhere. *Update: Because I am now using ebay’s management payment system and because ebay is not my only income stream, I recently started using Wave. It’s free. GoDaddy and Quickbooks are still also great software to use. I have used both of them. 3-Make a list of places to source. Where can you buy things to resell in your area? Make a list of the types of stores. Add the actual name of the store to your list. Evaluate that list to see what items are available there. Good clothing (not something from Target) is hard to come by here. I cannot find a lot of it because there aren’t that many stores that sell nicer clothing. The same goes for college textbooks. We do have two colleges here but current textbooks are almost impossible to find. I would not base my business model around books or clothing unless I were buying them somewhere else, like in wholesale lots. That pretty much crushes the possibility of a booming Poshmark business :). I’m ok with that. I can sell textbooks and clothing when I find them. Do not dismiss any opportunity to get inventory. It can appear in the most unexpected places. Here are some places you might try: Your own home Friends and family Fellow resellers Flea Markets and Antique Malls Consignment auctions Garage sales Estate Sales Thrift stores Retail store clearance Goodwill outlet stores Pawn shops Local sell apps and Facebook groups Craigslist Church rummage sales Wholesale liquidation companies Ebay Mercari Read the rest here The eCommerce Mom even has a Youtube channel, jump on over and say hi. The eCommerce Mom AllBusiness.com has a great article entitled, Becoming a Reseller: A ‘Getting Started’ 101 for Small Business Owners. I'll be honest, BLT hasn't gotten to a few of the things listed in this article, but we still found it quite informative.
Becoming a Reseller: A ‘Getting Started’ 101 for Small Business Owners By Caron Beesley From beauty products to collectibles to eBay consignments, the opportunities for becoming a reseller are endless. But what exactly is a reseller? A reseller refers to a business or business owner that buys a product from a manufacturer, vendor, or wholesaler at a lower cost and “resells” that product at a higher cost, either online or through traditional offline direct channels. While some companies require you to carry an inventory, others may ship goods directly to the end customer, with you acting as the transactional/order processing interface, which makes reselling a popular startup entrepreneurial opportunity for home-based businesses. The resale business model is almost limitless in its scope and opportunity. Some businesses focus exclusively on resale as their main source of income. Others choose to supplement their existing product and revenue streams with resale goods, either by becoming an affiliate or a channel partner of the manufacturer (a common approach for small technology businesses). There are many channels for reselling goods. Some entrepreneurs resell goods through eBay or via their own websites. Others sell through their stores, or sell directly through B2B or B2C sales channels. Some even buy from eBay and resell through another channel. While it’s somewhat of a misconception to suggest that becoming a reseller requires little upfront risk, training, or skill, becoming a reseller does offer entrepreneurs a great way to get into business. If you are interested in becoming a reseller, here are a few things to understand about how the reseller industry works together, along with some pointers for finding, assessing, and securing the right reseller opportunity for you. Finding the right reselling fit Finding the right fit means starts with finding the right product(s) or even service to resell. This doesn’t mean you have to be a product expert, but you do need to be able to feel and demonstrate the motivation and emotional investment needed to make your resale business a success. To assess the potential success of your chosen product, you will also need to research and understand the market landscape (demand, competition, price points, etc.)—something your supplier or affiliate will hope to see you demonstrate, too. This Market Research online course from the SBA is specifically geared towards small business owners and walks you through each stage of conducting market research. Finding the right opportunity If you are looking to supplement your existing products and services with a resale relationship—for example, you specialize in computer repair services, but want to expand your offerings to include computer hardware and peripherals—you might want to consider a resale opportunity with a known brand manufacturer. On the other hand, if you are a startup and are interested in becoming an Internet reseller, you may need to dig a little deeper. Read “Step One to Becoming an Internet Reseller: Choosing the Right Product,” in which startup expert Erika Wilde offers tips for not only finding the right product to sell, but also how to find and approach the source of that product, whether it’s a manufacturer or Internet wholesaler. Read the rest here
Hustle and Slow has a good video for anyone just starting out.
#ebaybeginner #ebayseller
The Work at Home Woman has a great article entitled, 5 Ways to Make it as a Successful Reseller.
For anyone looking to resell, these are some really good things to keep in mind when thinking of reselling. __________________________ 5 Ways to Make it as a Successful Reseller The Work at Home Woman One of the cheapest businesses to start out of your own home is the business of reselling. Most people begin by selling their items that they no longer want. Once you’ve sold everything in your house except for the family dog, then you’ll need to restock to keep reselling. Fortunately, there are several places to find items to resell without paying too much. Yard sales, thrift stores, auctions, and tag sales are all places that you can find bargains. It’s even possible to find items online to resell online. It sounds crazy, but I do it all the time. If you’re serious about reselling as a full-time job, then there are some key traits that will benefit you in the long-run. I’ve been reselling items for the past ten years casually. It wasn’t until the end of 2014 that I took it to the next level of making it my full-time job. Over the years, I have witnessed how possible it is to make this your full-time job. Anyone can do it if they’re willing to stay dedicated, market their items, and stay focused. Here are some of the most beneficial tips that will help you make it as a reseller: 1. Be Honest Honesty is always the best policy when you’re trying to run any business. The same is true for anyone serious about reselling items as a full-time job. It’s extremely easy to buy a piece that appeared to be flawless. Then, you bring it home, and it is practically worthless because of a hairline crack down the middle. Don’t worry; it’s okay to try and resell it. “Try” is the keyword. Always be 100% upfront about any damages to the items that you are trying to resell. Otherwise, you will earn a fast reputation for being a liar or crook. Nowadays, selling on the internet from your own home is one of the most convenient, low-cost businesses. One negative feedback can ruin your reputation as a seller. Not only can it drain your enthusiasm and confidence, but it can caution future buyers from making any purchases from you. However, you will also have to deal with people who may not be so honest. Be prepared to deal with dishonesty, which leads me to my #2 tip for making it as a reseller. 2. Be Professional If you’re planning on reselling items entirely online, then expect the unexpected. While it’s convenient and easy to earn a living behind the screen of your computer, it’s also easy to act in a way that is unlike the “real” you. You may find yourself conflicted between the devil on one shoulder and the naive angel on the other. If you ever feel like either one of those extreme personalities, then, by all means, take a break. Take advantage of your internet business and step outside for some fresh air to clear your mind. Once you’ve rationalized the situation, whatever it may be, then respond to the buyer appropriately. It’s not often that you should encounter a situation that makes you feel like you need to take a time-out. As long as you’re honest, you shouldn’t have many problems with buyers. Here is a shortlist of do’s and don’ts for professionalism as a reseller: Do: Respond to the buyer in a timely fashion. Use proper language and punctuation at all times. Tell the truth about everything you know in regards to the item for sale. Don’t: Use swear words. There’s a good chance that someone may not understand internet abbreviations. Always spell everything out. Also, don’t abbreviate things that shouldn’t even be shortened. Examples: “Plz, thnx, u” for “Please, thanks, and you.” Read the rest here |
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