Starting an online Ebay / Amazon feeder business

gamma

Hi,

I'm looking into starting a business selling people's things on Ebay, Amazon, Ebid and so on and wondering if anyone has any experience in doing this sort of thing.

I would collect people's things, take photo's and list it and take a commission off the final selling price. Alot of people have loads of things they want to sell but can't because they haven't the time or exerience with online selling.

I would have to advertise in my local publications just now, what about the local radio station?
Do you think the newspaper might not run such ads (might take away business from their own classifieds section).

I'm also setting up a quite advanced website application where you can check the status of your item, the payment process and so on, get email / text updates and relist etc.

I'm also going to integrate a shopping cart where you can purchase a pre paid envelope to be sent to you so you can post your item and details back to be listed ( This way targeting further afield also)

What do you guys think?

soolin

In the US it used to be very common to see shops that offered this service, unfortunately most went bust and now are Starbucks outlets (try asking on the ebay Google groups for more info).

The main problem that I can see is that people who are not familiar with ebay often have an inflated idea of the items worth, so you may struggle to make sales if you are stuck with sellers expecting too much. You would have to somehow have your fees upfront so that you don't lose.

There are also lots of other people doing this already, a Google search turned up several thousand an example being here:
http://www.stuffusell.co.uk/
plus ebay themselves obviously have their assistant programme which does exactly the same thing but actually matches potential sellers with people offering to act as a trading assistant...so if you were going to do this independently you would need to find something unique that sets you apart from the ebay scheme.

Lastly, and more importantly (and I assume you are an experienced ebay seller already) how will you build in personal insurance against paypal chargebacks several months after the event ...the ones with the fraudulent card used ? I realise they are rare but any business plan should have a built in policy for dealing with this potential loss and if you are using your own existing ebay and paypal ids then you will be the one to take the loss.

Soo

gamma

Yes it makes a big difference if you are based in London, but where I am (Scotland) we have a small town 10 000 people including surrounds and most people (elderly) are not clued up so it can work.

Only problem I see is that it will work in the short term but people's things to sell will dry up. Therefore I need to make sure that we can have some sort of longevity.

Thanks for that website , I am now more confident that I can make it better partly because of a more involved website etc.

patwa_2

Hello.

I too live in Scotland (just south of Aberdeen) and I think that given time and patience it can work for you. As said above the main thing will be getting people to understand exactly what they can expect from your service. For example, say someone gives you a picture frame. Pretty ordinary but they may think it worth a fair bit. You look on eBay or Amazon and find that other people are selling the same item for less than half what the original seller was wanting. You will need to ensure that people understand that this is a marketplace, not a shop. Prices cannot be fixed and expect guarenteed (well OK, they can but for some items it'll decrease the chance of it selling) and that a bit of flexibility is needed. This is often hard to get one's head around as it rarely happens on the high street.

An idea that someone locally did was to hold a sort of demonstration at the local church/village hall. They posted a few notices in the town's magazine and in local shops, and when people arrived at the demo, they went through the process of going through a typical transaction from customer to business to buyer and back to the customer. There was a question and answer session at which people could pose questions and get things clarified, they were given a bit of time to think about things and then the business started. It was successful as the town was small, and therefore because of that it was not easy to find shops that would trade in items, and selling in local papers was impractical.

I think you could go far with this, and it even has the potential to expand to other neighbouring towns and villages. You are guarenteed a small markup, as people expect that and in a town like that everybody has something they want to get rid of. The advantages of earning money by selling items, freeing up space and having some to take care of it all who is local and whom they can call round to if there's something they're not sure of or if there's a problem will appeal to many people, and you never know, it might even become somewhat of a weekly ritual where you are, where people show up at your door on a Saturday morning with their wares, and come back the next saturday for their payments.

Hope that's helped, and do forgive the slightly rambling description. Just trying to 'set the scene' as you might say.

Cheers and take care.

Hussein.

gamma

Thanks for a good post - its all about local here and people trust you if they know where you live! not that that is sucha good thing!

patwa_2

gamma wrote:

Thanks for a good post - its all about local here and people trust you if they know where you live! not that that is sucha good thing!

LOL! I quite agree, I quite agree!

lozza21_2

luup is a great way to send money person to person...perfect for this kind of thing. It's free to send money P2P....they only charge companies that accept their it as a form of payment for goods. check it out at https://www.luup.com (you also get £2 for opening an account!)

Astaroth

The one bit that I dont understand about your business outline is the fact you are offering a service to target people who are not web savvy so that they can sell items on Ebay but you are saying yours will stand out from the croud because you will have such an advanced website.

Are customers who arent comfortable enough with technology to use ebay going to be comfortable enough to use your website? Seems you have a mismatch on this a little.

gamma

Alot of people here are fine with using the web and so on but don't have time with dealing with paypal, feedback, online creditcards and the rest of ebay / online selling pitfalls.

So yes those that do not have time or know how on how to use the net can receive text message updates.