Wanting to make money from ebay.

crovax85

Hi Guys

I'm having difficulty making money on ebay. Is there somewhere I can learn more about how to do it properly?

My auctions arent selling well. Could i be doing something wrong with my listings?

Thanks for you help

marleyboy

http://www.amazon.com/eBay-Dummies-Fourth-Marsha-Collier/dp/0764556541

cyberbob

It depends on a lot of things the quality of your listings your start prices. Your margins, the products you sell and what your competitors are selling

HeidiHi123

Photos are really important. People simply don't pay good money for anything with a poor photo.

Also, I don't think that there are really the opportunities to make "big money" on ebay. The days of that are long gone. now you're lucky to make enough to cover the free P&P, the paypal fees and the ebay fees.

TurkishDelight

HeidiHi123 wrote: »

Also, I don't think that there are really the opportunities to make "big money" on ebay. The days of that are long gone. now you're lucky to make enough to cover the free P&P, the paypal fees and the ebay fees.

Well, we're making enough to live on so.... yeah. :cool:
Fees aren't that bad, you just have to be aware of them.

Hintza

Look at how your successful competitors are selling and use that as a template and the personalise it.

On the other hand you might be selling the wrong thing.

crovax85

Thanks for the link. Marleyboy. will give it a look.

Photos are really important. People simply don't pay good money for anything with a poor photo.

Also, I don't think that there are really the opportunities to make "big money" on ebay. The days of that are long gone. now you're lucky to make enough to cover the free P&P, the paypal fees and the ebay fees.

Thanks for the advice. Will make sure my pictures are top notch quality when i sell.

Now imho, no point calling ppl spammers and jumping to conclusions. Either way i'll give that Matt and Amanda thing a look.

Thanks all for your quick replies and advice!

steven_garner

I started in business in Sept09 – Stated with £30 (didn’t really want to loose any money) And now have almost £8000 worth of stock, selling ~10 - 20 items per day and 3.2K turnover last month.

When I first stated (seems like so long ago but was only few months back) I was buying from eBay and re-selling on eBay and that gave me enough money to buy higher volume stock.
You could look into drop shipping, im not a big fan of drop shipping as you’re not in control of your own stock – when I researched it I found the best site (I use them as a supplier but not drop ship) is a company called 5tech – Whatever you do stay away from theselect.co.uk

If you’re starting from scratch I would start selling small low value items, for me it was ipod cables and iphone styluses that I was buying from China, sell things for £2-3 and grow your feedback.

Customer service is key with eBay – I always include a letter with my sales thanking them for the business and stating my returns policy and what to do if they are not happy – make sure all messages get responded to quickly and in a professional manor.

Most importantly do your research – What products sell well? how much do they sell for? What’s the cheapest you can source them for?

I wouldn’t worry about the paperwork side of things – you can download Open office for free and make a simple spreadsheet to keep track of your purchases and sales.

Registering self employed online is easy, im yet to do a tax return but im sure it will be easy enough to complete.

steven_garner

Just an example –

I purchased a new printer last week and was looking for cheap ink – on eBay I can buy 1 cartridge for about £6~7 but also on eBay I can buy exact same 28 cartridges for £45.

That’s a buying cost of ~£1.28 per cartridge, re-sell them at £5.50 and undercut the competition. And make a couple of £ on each sale.

Out of habit I had a little look into it and the individual cartridges seem pretty good sellers.

Matteeboy

Okay, sorry if I lost it a bit there... my toys are now back in my pram.

What's funny is that in all my time selling on ebay, I never once took the bite when a customer was rude to me, so I guess this was me making up for it!

Anyway, the advice from Steve Garner is correct. Build up your feedback. There are loads of ways to do it. And yes, low price items will do it. There are also ways to just sell knowledge without having a physical product. E-books, mp3s - there are do's and don'ts for that that I learned along the way, too.

Good luck!

Humf_2

You dont need to go round building up your feedback to sell on ebay, it is just on how you present your listings, its not all about feedback and how much you have, we all start of from somewhere.