With a friend, I’ve recently started importing memory chips in bulk from China, direct from factory. Of course, my first thought was to sell them on eBay. Right away though, I found that the going price on eBay was only $10-15 higher than my cost. At this rate, I would have to move a lot of volume to see any sort of profit.
My friend decided to post them on the Toronto Craigslist forum and within a few days they were all gone, at nearly a 100% markup. If you are thinking of entering the eBay business and you live in a large enough metropolitan area, try Craigslist first — you’ll be surprised how many replies you receive. Your customers will appreciate it as they won’t have to pay shipping fees and will receive the product faster, and you won’t have to pay PayPal fees, eBay auction & final value fees, and won’t have any worries of credit card chargebacks.
A few tips when selling on Craigslist:
Never post your home address or home phone number on the site. Leave an email or cell number where you can be reached.
Meet in a public place. Try a coffee shop or gas station. Bring the item you are selling in a backpack or bag.
Count the cash together to avoid any misunderstandings.
So far, it seems to be working for me. Give Craigslist a try and let me know how it workes out in your city.
Honestly, I was a little reluctant to post this tip simply because it is too good. Without a doubt this one suggestion trippled the number of bids to my auctions on eBay and I used it almost religiously. So what is it?
Use VIDEO in your auctions.
How much easier is it to sell something when you can actually SEE it? Now, this isn’t just limited to selling products. When I was selling web design services on eBay, I recorded myself giving a speech at my desk and then streamed the video directly within my auction text, and it couldn’t have been easier to do. Think about it. How much more effective would your auctions be if visitors could actually see a product being used in action, and watch you describe it. Below is a short clip from a recent trip to Quebec City as an example of video which you can stream. It was recorded on my Canon SD100 digital camera (only 3.2mp, and video @ 640×480).
So what’s the secret? Macromedia Flash MX 2005 or higher. Flash 2005 has a new feature which had not yet been introduced in prior versions: native streaming support.
First, you will need a video to stream. Show off your product being used, or deliver a speech to your audience. Many people are still afraid to purchase over the Internet, and this may be a way for you as a seller to gain their trust. Once you have your video prepared, you will need to use the Flash Video Encoder to convert from .MPG or .AVI to Flash Video (.FLV), which can then be streamed from any HTTP server.
In Flash, create a new project and drag the FLV Playback Player onto your stage. Then set the contentPath to equal the file name of the generated FLV file. Then save your project to a known destination, and afterwards hit SHIFT-F12 to publish your streaming video player.
You’re done! You can now upload the generated HTML and SWF files to your destination server.
Inserting Flash Video into eBay Auctions
Now that you have your streaming files generated, you will need to insert some HTML code into your auction to stream the video. Firstly, make sure that all of the generated SWF files are available on a public server. Next, open up the generated HTML file and view it in Notepad. Copy everything within the object tags. Now in the eBay auction editor, switch to HTML mode, and paste the Flash code in the place you would like the video to appear.
You’re done! Not too painful, was it? And now you just greatly improved your auction.
Last winter I decided to buy myself a new Braun 8595 electric razor. As it wasn’t sold yet in Canada, and thinking that I would probably find the best price on eBay, this is where I headed first. It cost me about 300 dollars and I received it in the mail a week later. The surprising part was that when I received it, it was in a retail bag with the retailer’s sticker on the box.
This got me thinking…. somebody had a great idea! Back in school I would always have my mind active on finding a way to make a bit of money on the side. One way I found might actually be surprising: buy retail, and sell on eBay. I assumed that I would always find the cheapest price on eBay so I never bothered to check sites like bizrate.com to see if it actually was the cheapest out there. I started to assume that others might also make this mistake!
Sure enough, after a few searches on bizrate and eBay, I was able to find a few items which were about 50-60 dollars less than the current market price on eBay. They weren’t cheap though – the ones I can remember now were a Toshiba A30 laptop, and a Nikon CoolPix 5.1MP digital camera. Once I found a product that I liked and found a decent enough profit margin, it would usually sell after about three days and make a couple bucks in the process.
Why don’t I do this often? Simply because it takes too much time searching bizrate and eBay constantly until you find a large enough margin to make it worthwhile. If I ever had a couple hours to spare (unlikely though) I might try it again…
One of the most interesting things I learnt through my eBay experience is that you can sell pretty much anything you like online, including services. Throughout my university days, I would make some extra money by doing web design and web application programming.
The biggest challenge I came across was how to get the word out that I was providing this service. Cold calls worked to a certain extent, however during the days I was usually occupied with class and could maybe work in 2-3 hours of cold calls per week. Of course, this was also only limited to the few businesses in the small university town I was living in at the time for school.
So, I decided to try to sell web design on eBay.
Go search eBay right now for “web design”. You’ll soon see a huge list of design packages appear that others are selling. This isn’t a new idea you’re thinking? Just wait..
The difference between my ads, and my competitiors were I wasn’t selling anything. Think about it. Since when can you “buy” a website as a package. Everything is custom. I only used eBay to advertise myself and nothing more.
Within hours, I was getting calls from across North America asking if I could do changes to this site, redesign that site, could I provide a quote for this, or for that. You get the picture. The best part of all was that none of the transactions I completed as part of this business went through eBay! That means no final value fees!
Since then, I’ve even helped others advertise civil engineering services on eBay. I’m sure you can think of ways to advertise your own business too…
Always do your research before deciding to sell something online. eBay is nothing more than a huge marketplace, no different that what has been around for thousands of years, allowing people to buy and sell from each other in an open and free environment.
Often times however, we forget the laws of supply and demand and must be reminded. As a quick note: before commiting to a new product or service you intend to sell on eBay, do a through search for it first on eBay, then secondly on sites such as bizrate.com and see what others are selling it for, and how many other merchants are in the market (how much competition you will have).
Can you beat their prices? If not, forget the idea and move on. If you can, by how much? Remember, others out there may have larger margins than you and will be able to fight you in a price war.
The last thing you want before you go and invest in 20 new cell phones from Hong Kong, hoping to make a great profit on eBay, is for someone to sell the same phone five dollars less than your cost.
We all know about eBay, we’ve all shopped on eBay and we’ve all probably already sold something on eBay as well. So how can we create a steady income stream from eBay?
There are LOTS of websites out there which claim will make you rich overnight on eBay. “Start a home business, $10k/month” they all claim.
Lesson 1: Stay away from these schemes.I just can’t believe how many people fall for these kinds of things. 99% of these “home business” ideas involve registering with a dropshipper and selling worthless no-name novelty items. Nothing happens overnight and nothing is for free. I think I’m a pretty smart guy, yet I’ve been burnt by this simple fact enough times to learn my lesson.
Lesson 2: Stay away from dropshippers. In case you haven’t heard this term before, a dropshipper is a business which offers items for sale which you can purchase and have shipped directly to your customer without the dropshipper’s label on the box.
Sounds like a good idea, right? I thought so too, and fell for it for a while. Many dropshippers are scam artists. Plain and simple. They will take your money, and not deliver the product to your customer, leaving you in the middle with an angry customer on one end, and money lost on a product not delivered on another.
Now, I’m not saying that all dropshippers are scam artists. In fact, I have dealt with a number of very reputable ones. The problem is this: There are actually many great dropshippers out there, which offer huge discounts on products and will ship directly to your client with your label on the box. The problem is that they charge very high monthly fees (in the hundreds, to thousands) and have very high initiation fees. If you already have the volume, go for it! You will benefit from their services.
But if you’re an everyday guy like me just trying to make a couple bucks on the side, this is not the way to go. Dropshippers which claim to have no hidden fees, or no monthly or initiation fees are not dropshippers. They are only retail sites, and their prices are not very competitive. Watch out, and remember that no one will buy that jet lighter shaped as a tiger you can get for $0.47 from your dropshipper, even if it is a good deal.
Lesson 3: Only sell to Verified users. If you’re going to sell items online to strangers (ie. you don’t have a previous relation with your buyer, and you’re not going to deliver it in person) then only accept payment through PayPal, and only sell to Verified users. I really can’t stress this enough.
The problem is that even though you might think it doesn’t happen, there is credit card fraud on eBay and on PayPal. I personally have lost money because of this and I hope you learn from my lesson. If you sell an item to a user who is not PayPal Verified, and they used a stolen card to make the purchase, PayPal will not reimburse you for your loss.
However, if the user is verified, and if anything goes wrong, you are protected and PayPal will fight for you. Just remeber that next time when your auction closes. You can always decide to sell to someone else. Is it really worth the risk?
All of these lessons, I have learned the hard way over many years. Hopefully it takes you less time to learn them than it did for me…
Throughout my university days, when I wasn’t studying or hanging out with my girlfriend, I usually spent my time thinking how I could make a bit of extra cash on the side. Not much, just a bit to keep me going.
One of the first thoughts that came to mind was eBay. Buy low, sell high, right? Well, it’s not quite that simple.
It took quite a few attempts, and a few years, but I finally figured it out and I’ll share the lessons learned with you here.
First, you will need a video to stream. Show off your product being used, or deliver a speech to your audience. Many people are still afraid to purchase over the Internet, and this may be a way for you as a seller to gain their trust. Once you have your video prepared, you will need to use the Flash Video Encoder to convert from .MPG or .AVI to Flash Video (.FLV), which can then be streamed from any HTTP server.
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