Personal account or Business account?

GSTAR

Hi all,

I've had a eBay account since 2001, I've only ever used it for purchasing and I have a feedback score of 338 (100%).

I'm looking to start selling stuff on eBay (as a reseller) and I'm just trying to figure out how best to go about this. Should I convert my account to a business account, or should I create a brand new business account?

At first, I thought it might be a good idea to convert my account to a business account, because that way I already have some feedback attached to it, which should give off a better impression. However, I understand that once I convert to a business account, I can't revert it back to a personal account - this could be an issue if I decide to stop selling.

Alternatively, if I create a brand new business account, it will have zero feedback. Does that mean I should initially use that account to make several (low value) purchases, in order to gain some feedback?

soolin

Personally I would do your first suggestion, convert your current account to the business account as buyers like to see a seller with history, feedback is almost immaterial for a buyer. So open a new account for buying. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

If you don't intent to use your existing account to sell anything privately then using that makes sense, you can still purchase personal stuff via that account and if the venture doesn't work out then the account will remain active any way. 

Have a look at the fees, they are all + VAT for business sellers and whilst you can sell a bit here and a bit there the upfront listing or shop fees mean ideally you want a steady flow of sales. 

dinosaur66

before you register as a business account stay private and list 20 items you think will definatley sell and then see 1 if they sell / 2 how long they take to sell / 3 work out your profit margin that you are making to see if it is worth it /  before registering as a business seller and registering with HMRC for something that might not work out.

to make money on ebay you need IMO to have a mid size shop the £92 a month one and 2000 items for sale with a hope to selling 10% of them a month-you need a spare bedroom in property for your stock or outbuildings.

unless you have a very niche product that you can undercut all other business sellers on then the £28 i think it is now .

a quick break down of fees you have to pay as a busiess seller-10% of sale price average /20% vat on top/36p every item sells includes the vat /shop fee £1 a day to £3 day depending size of shop /lost post and returns (as a busines seller you wll not get compensation without a receipt for full selling price )

ie buy in a charity shop for £2 sell it on ebay for £20 compensation you would get is £2 plus stamps for postage ./stationary fees /postage fees /price paid for item /hmrc income tax /class 4 national insurance tax /small regulatiory operating fee and vat .

and then as a business you are competing against all the small time sellers and private sellers who pay no fees .

RFW

dinosaur66 said:

to make money on ebay you need IMO to have a mid size shop the £92 a month one and 2000 items for sale with a hope to selling 10% of them a month-you need a spare bedroom in property for your stock or outbuildings.

unless you have a very niche product that you can undercut all other business sellers on then the £28 i think it is now .

a quick break down of fees you have to pay as a busiess seller-10% of sale price average /20% vat on top/36p every item sells includes the vat /shop fee £1 a day to £3 day depending size of shop /lost post and returns (as a busines seller you wll not get compensation without a receipt for full selling price )

ie buy in a charity shop for £2 sell it on ebay for £20 compensation you would get is £2 plus stamps for postage ./stationary fees /postage fees /price paid for item /hmrc income tax /class 4 national insurance tax /small regulatiory operating fee and vat .

and then as a business you are competing against all the small time sellers and private sellers who pay no fees .

I think you're over complicating it. You certainly don't need to have 2000 items for sale to make money. I'm not sure if you mean 2000 of one item or 2000 different items. Either way you need to do a lot of work and learning to get to that level. I've been selling for centuries now and I don't have more than 200 SKUs. If you can get to a core set of items that sell really well then you can start to make good money.
Your comment seems to relate to low value items, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to turn a profit.

soolin

dinosaur66 said:

before you register as a business account stay private and list 20 items you think will definatley sell and then see 1 if they sell / 2 how long they take to sell / 3 work out your profit margin that you are making to see if it is worth it /  before registering as a business seller and registering with HMRC for something that might not work out.

to make money on ebay you need IMO to have a mid size shop the £92 a month one and 2000 items for sale with a hope to selling 10% of them a month-you need a spare bedroom in property for your stock or outbuildings.

unless you have a very niche product that you can undercut all other business sellers on then the £28 i think it is now .

a quick break down of fees you have to pay as a busiess seller-10% of sale price average /20% vat on top/36p every item sells includes the vat /shop fee £1 a day to £3 day depending size of shop /lost post and returns (as a busines seller you wll not get compensation without a receipt for full selling price )

ie buy in a charity shop for £2 sell it on ebay for £20 compensation you would get is £2 plus stamps for postage ./stationary fees /postage fees /price paid for item /hmrc income tax /class 4 national insurance tax /small regulatiory operating fee and vat .

and then as a business you are competing against all the small time sellers and private sellers who pay no fees .

When my business was at it's most successful I used a standard shop with some MVLs and single items, I never had more than around 250 lines going at once. I didn't do it full time, only an hour or two here and there and it was quite successful.

I would suggest that for someone just starting out and testing the waters not to go in to hard. I see too many people spend thousands on stock just as a market moves, best start off slowly, work out where your niche is, follow trends but don't sell exactly the same as everyone else and get into a price war. 

dinosaur66

RFW said:

dinosaur66 said:

to make money on ebay you need IMO to have a mid size shop the £92 a month one and 2000 items for sale with a hope to selling 10% of them a month-you need a spare bedroom in property for your stock or outbuildings.

unless you have a very niche product that you can undercut all other business sellers on then the £28 i think it is now .

a quick break down of fees you have to pay as a busiess seller-10% of sale price average /20% vat on top/36p every item sells includes the vat /shop fee £1 a day to £3 day depending size of shop /lost post and returns (as a busines seller you wll not get compensation without a receipt for full selling price )

ie buy in a charity shop for £2 sell it on ebay for £20 compensation you would get is £2 plus stamps for postage ./stationary fees /postage fees /price paid for item /hmrc income tax /class 4 national insurance tax /small regulatiory operating fee and vat .

and then as a business you are competing against all the small time sellers and private sellers who pay no fees .

I think you're over complicating it. You certainly don't need to have 2000 items for sale to make money. I'm not sure if you mean 2000 of one item or 2000 different items. Either way you need to do a lot of work and learning to get to that level. I've been selling for centuries now and I don't have more than 200 SKUs. If you can get to a core set of items that sell really well then you can start to make good money.
Your comment seems to relate to low value items, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to turn a profit.

as i said if you have a niche product then the smaller shop is possible /

but it is very very hard to corner a market on ebay there is so much competition /

yes i agree the £3 to £6 lines are completely worthless because of postage and fees.

dinosaur66

soolin said:

dinosaur66 said:

before you register as a business account stay private and list 20 items you think will definatley sell and then see 1 if they sell / 2 how long they take to sell / 3 work out your profit margin that you are making to see if it is worth it /  before registering as a business seller and registering with HMRC for something that might not work out.

to make money on ebay you need IMO to have a mid size shop the £92 a month one and 2000 items for sale with a hope to selling 10% of them a month-you need a spare bedroom in property for your stock or outbuildings.

unless you have a very niche product that you can undercut all other business sellers on then the £28 i think it is now .

a quick break down of fees you have to pay as a busiess seller-10% of sale price average /20% vat on top/36p every item sells includes the vat /shop fee £1 a day to £3 day depending size of shop /lost post and returns (as a busines seller you wll not get compensation without a receipt for full selling price )

ie buy in a charity shop for £2 sell it on ebay for £20 compensation you would get is £2 plus stamps for postage ./stationary fees /postage fees /price paid for item /hmrc income tax /class 4 national insurance tax /small regulatiory operating fee and vat .

and then as a business you are competing against all the small time sellers and private sellers who pay no fees .

When my business was at it's most successful I used a standard shop with some MVLs and single items, I never had more than around 250 lines going at once. I didn't do it full time, only an hour or two here and there and it was quite successful.

I would suggest that for someone just starting out and testing the waters not to go in to hard. I see too many people spend thousands on stock just as a market moves, best start off slowly, work out where your niche is, follow trends but don't sell exactly the same as everyone else and get into a price war. 

i agree

i do smile to myself when i see all the mobiles scanning everything that moves at every bootsale/charity shop i go to when i see them scanning something that is worthless.

its risky as you say to bulk buy until you see how your sales go.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

When I was running my previous business the most listings was about 3000, I was in a fortunate position to be able to have an order come in and get next day delivery from the distributor so didn't have to stock all this stuff but found that 90% of sales came from 10% of listings, at some point eBay starting noting listings that hadn't had a sale in 16 months (do they still do this?) and I was surprised how many there was and starting cutting out as many as possible to bring the number of listings down to whatever was included free with the middle level shop. 

I guess without listing the lot you'd not know which products to focus on (unless you have expert knowledge but even then what sold, or rather didn't, on eBay could for example sell on Amazon), the trick then was to focus on the popular items and ask for a better price on x units and actually hold the stock. 

There was very little competition back then and slowly sales were eroded away as bigger and bigger companies come along listing 10s if not 100s of thousands of products, some of which were wholesalers, where it got to the point the low volume (on low margin) simply didn't justify the time.  

How people start up nowadays I don't know, if you want to enter a market where the product is already being sold the established businesses will have the benefit of scale, whether that's the product, the packing materials, the courier rates plus possibly other avenues to sell through. 

The fees have gone up and up, the cost of postage has gone up and up and all these companies now want you to advertise to get the exposure you used to get for free which is another fee on top, eBay promoted standard isn't bad but pay per click is bonkers to me and the idea you can spend £5 a day to advertise on Google (didn't eBay used to do that for free?) is even more bonkers, especially given every single time I Google a product and click an eBay link from the shopping result the listing has ended... 

If you just want beer money I guess that is still doable but if you want to make £20-30,000 a year I think you have either got your work cut out for you or have stumbled upon something unique which begs the question of whether you will be copied when some bright spark notices what you are doing. 

I think if you want to sell an off the shelf item you need volume, if you want to sell stuff that gets discontinued you need knowledge or if you want to sell something else you need to find a way to add value and the greater the skill required, or the higher the start up cost, the less competition there will be. 

I now sell "handmade" stuff and it's very difficult, there is mass produced from China to compete with, large sellers that buy their components in vast QTY and hobby sellers who clearly don't value their time (or produce a load of poor quality rubbish either lacking any skill and/or having no love for what they do).

My eBay account has less than a dozen listings (am I fool for having a business account?), Etsy ticks over OK, I don't really have much time to push it more at the moment so it is kind of a hobby (a tax declared hobby obviously).

One (useful) thing I will add is, when looking around I saw a lot of ideas where listings had 50 sold, 200 sold, 1523 sold, eBay used to let you see the purchase history but took it away, however the page still exists:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/bin/purchaseHistory?item=xxxxx

(replace xxxxx with item number) and you might be surprised to see despite a very large amount sold, it's simply that the listing has been there for a very long time and sales in the last couple of months may not be that much at all. 

dinosaur66

i agree / near impossible for new seller to corner a market that is not tapped and that does not have a big player that can undercut you.

do not know if these new gpsr rules will effect the chinese sellers / hope it does / i do not sell there lines but they undercut uk sellers trying to earn a living.

when i was selling vhs video tapes on ebay in 2001 about 10% of all the titles listed on ebay uk were mine and a first class parcel cost £1.15 to post a vhs video / i took a break of about 18 years when i just wholesaled dvds/cds and sold on my market stalls  and now with dvds about 0.0000001 are mine on ebay and a dvd sent large letter first class is £3.50 when most dvds are worth 10p

soolin

dinosaur66 said:

i agree / near impossible for new seller to corner a market that is not tapped and that does not have a big player that can undercut you.

do not know if these new gpsr rules will effect the chinese sellers / hope it does / i do not sell there lines but they undercut uk sellers trying to earn a living.

when i was selling vhs video tapes on ebay in 2001 about 10% of all the titles listed on ebay uk were mine and a first class parcel cost £1.15 to post a vhs video / i took a break of about 18 years when i just wholesaled dvds/cds and sold on my market stalls  and now with dvds about 0.0000001 are mine on ebay and a dvd sent large letter first class is £3.50 when most dvds are worth 10p

My big ‘market dying’ crash was books. I’ve always sold on eBay but it was small time and mainly stuff I picked up in auctions when I was scouting for books. My main line though was books which I sold on Amazon, I’d buy by the crate or yard from auction houses, and had an arrangement with a charity shop to buy unsorted donated books for as little as £1 a bag. 50% of the books were donated back immediately to different charity shops, 30% might be listed for £30 or more with a few being listed at over £200 at the height. The remaining stock I used just keep keep the volume up selling at a minimum profit of £5. I even sold some of the unwanted books in bulk at my door for £5 a fruit box. 

Over time the £100+ books became rarer and my large turnover stock dropped to minimum profit of £4 or even £3 and I went from easily selling 300+  books a month with no effort to less than 100 then in 2010 it literally died over night. I looked at my stock of over 3000 books and realised the profit element had gone , the market had disappeared entirely. I was then stuck with thousands of books that absolutely no one wanted, by that point not even charity shops would take them. I retained some , and do occasionally still sell one of two at £50 or more but on eBay as I gave up my Amazon account when they wouldn’t accept my verification .

I managed to find new markets for eBay quite easily, but they wax and wane and I never kept too much stock so as soon as I saw a market dying I moved on to something else.