How to Make Money Selling on Ebay

Several years ago I was taken aback when a friend of mine informed me that she had actually sold her used bra on EBay! I could not believe it! The buyer went so far as to ask her to wear it to the gym and sweat in it before shipping it to him! Ridiculous, I know, but it it the truth! As ludicrous as this may sound, it just goes to show you that you can sell just about anything on EBay and make a profit. I once saw an ad for someone selling their belly button lint! Another for the longest french fry in the entire world! The possibilities are endless and this hub hopes to provide you with the basics on how you, too, can foster your entrepreneurial spirit and make money selling on EBay!

First Things First

First and foremost, prior to posting ads on EBay, you have to actually sign up to become a seller. This is quite simple by just navigating to the home page at www.ebay.com. You will see a button at the top of the page that directs you to EBay's registration page. This is where you will want to click to start. EBay will ask you to create a user name and password. It is best to associate your user name with whatever it is you are thinking of selling. For example, if I were selling lingerie, I would not pick a user name like toolgirl123, I would pick something that told buyers that I sold lingerie, like LingerieAffair1 or LingerieClub1 or something that clued my prospective buyer in to what I was selling. After you pick a user name, EBay will ask you for all of your personal details. A credit card is required to sign up and they will ask you if you want to automatically have your EBay fees deducted. I always indicate no in this area, as I like to have control over my bank account, but whatever is easiest for you will work. As soon as you are finished with registration, you are ready to start selling.

At the top of the page, once again, you will see a little button that says "Sell". This is where you will begin. At this point, EBay uses a very simple template and you will enter information about the item that you are going to sell on the template page. Further down the line, when you are selling many products, you may want to download EBay's "Turbo Lister" which is a bulk up-loader and makes the process much faster. But that will come later. For now, you are better off just using regular EBay to create listings.

What to Sell on EBay

I forgot who said "One man's junk is another man's treasure", but this is certainly true when it comes to selling on EBay. Finding things to sell that have been cluttering up your garage or extra room is a great way to start. This can actually be an excellent source of income for a very long time if you have a lot of stuff! You can also elicit your family and friends to donate their junk to you! Hauling it away for them for free is a great incentive!

The first thing that I ever sold on EBay was an down-feathered ski jacket that I hardly ever wore. I remember how excited I was when I got my first bid, and then even more excited when I actually sold it to the highest bidder! After that, I sold a lot of my old clothes and could not believe that people would buy them, but they did. I also sold old books, nick-naks, dishes and many other items as well. Once I was finished selling things from around the house, however, it was time to expand to other avenues to further expand my revenue earning potential!

Garage sales are an excellent resource for finding great items to sell. Again, one man's junk.....I would get up really early on Saturday's and hit all the local sales around my area. I remember one particular day I hit "pay-dirt" when I visited this old couple that had a lot of antique kitchen items for sale. I literally bought everything that they had, as I saw money, money money in the making with those items. I went home, took pictures of the items and uploaded the ads to EBay and was amazed at how great those items did. I sold an old cheese grater for something like $35 that I paid only $1 for! This is the great thing about EBay. Sometimes you don't even know that you have a hot item till you post it.

At this point, I really wanted to begin to target selling new items and have my own retail store. Subsequently, I registered for EBay stores and started to sell beaded purses and women's clothing. Wow, what a great market this was. Make sure to read on for more tips on how to find wholesale items. Prior to buying wholesale, however, you should purchase a sellers permit, as this allows you to purchase wholesale items "tax free" in your state. You can purchase these permits from the State Board of Equilization.

Reasearching your product will ensure that you do not overpay for wholesale items. It can also can be most beneficial in finding hot marketplace trends.

Researching Your Product

EBay makes this part really easy for you by going to the "What's Hot" page. You can access this section from the site map. This information will give you current marketplace trends for many items on EBay and tell you which item is hot, hotter and hottest, so to speak! Doing a little research prior to deciding what to sell can be time consuming, but well worth the effort. It will also reduce the amount of headaches you might encounter by being stuck with items that you cannot sell.

Where to Buy Wholesale

Whether you buy merchandise in the wholesale marketplace in person or online, again, you will want to make sure you have that seller's permit handy as they will ask you for the seller's permit number when making purchases.

My favorite place to buy wholesale is the garment district in downtown Los Angeles. With a little bit of business savvy and some bartering skills, you can find some really good deals there. It is a great place to build relationships with vendors as well. Once you establish yourself with them, many will offer you a substantial discount on items purchased in bulk.

Many individuals sell wholesale lists of products on EBay or in other marketplaces. Be mindful to scrutinize carefully here, as some of the lists are absolutely worthless. Make sure whoever you buy the list from offers some sort of satisfaction guarantee or if not, make sure you check their feedback score. Most marketplaces offer some sort of feedback data for buyers to review before making purchases. If it is an online list, hopefully all of their links will work. Many of the lists are fairly inexpensive, so if you do get burned, it won't be for much, but being smart about who you are buying from and asking a lot of questions will help you weed out the schemers.

Establish relationships with other sellers and see if they will tell you where they buy there merchandise from. Most won't tell but you may get lucky. The farthest I have ever gone was to actually purchase a plus sized top from this really hot seller on EBay. When I got the shirt, I simply looked at the tag and then researched the manufacturer to find out where she bought her shirts from. Maybe a little sneaky, yes, but business is business and all is fare in love and war, right?

Posting a Great Selling Ad

So, you have your item and it is so hot to sell that you can hardly hold it in your hands! Now, you are ready to enter all of this information in the EBay template to create your ad.

The most important thing about your ad is writing a great title that will persuade buyers to look at your ad. Review other seller's title's to get an idea of where to start. A good title will give the buyer no choice but to look at your product. It will compel them to so so. Use relative keywords in your title so that your search will come up on search engines as well. EBay optimizes the site for you, but you have to find the right keywords. Don't use all capitol letters in your ad title. Alternate caps and small text in one title. For example, "HoW tO SeLL pRoDuCTs oN EbAy" will capture more attention than "HOW TO SELL PRODUCTS ON EBAY". Use captivating words like Sale, Now, Hot, Won't Last. EBay has a lot of tips in the seller marketplace on how to write and post great sounding ads. Use unusual punctuation marks like W@W , S@le or L@@K N@W! Again, you want to captivate your audience to buy your product.

You can use EBay's pre-made templates or invest in a HTML for Idiots book and make your own. Once you know HTML coding, you can create unique, great looking ads that will blow your competition away. Another thing to consider is to do a search on EBay for templates of the item that you are selling. Many artists sell templates at very low prices, most below $10 and this creates a look of professionalism in your auction. They are very easy to use and do not require any HTML experience.

Make sure that you take a great picture of your item with a high-quality, digital camera. It is also a good investment to purchase some sort photo lighting to heighten the quality of the image. Poor lighting leads to poor picture quality leads to less sales. If you are selling clothes, consider purchasing a mannequin to place them on. If you are selling purses, then a nice stand to hang the purse on makes for a better picture. Hang a piece of felt or sheet for a background. Or use an image editor to delete the background. There is nothing worse than a poor quality image if you are trying to sell products online.

Describe your item in DETAIL. Tell your audience all the features and benefits of buying your product. If you are selling clothes, make sure you list the measurements that your sizes fit. Your audience needs to know why they should purchase your product. Make it easy for them by making your ad as richly detailed as possible. Invite questions before bidding to decrease non-paying bidders.

Bells and Whistles; How to Market your Ad

EBay makes this really easy for you as well, however, it can get quite expensive. If you want people to see your ad, however, the bottom line is, you have to pay for it. If you do not invest in promotional features to showcase your product, you risk not selling it at all.

I always feature list my products on EBay. This means, let's say I am selling 10 different styles of women's plus sized tops. I will pick the best top out of the bunch that I think will be the hottest seller and FEATURE it on EBay. This means that that particular ad will be on top of all the other listings on the page, before all of the other ads. In the featured listing, I place links to all of my other EBay ads so that once they click on the featured listings, if they don't like that particular item, they can click on another. This saves me money actually in the long run. Although it is expensive to feature an item, $19.95, in my opinion it is well worth the cost and will drive traffic to all of your listings.

You can also choose to use bold, highlight, underline, etc. when you create your listings. Just remember, there is a charge for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you do on EBay. For the best bang for your buck, choose the featured listing!

There are many other bells and whistles you can add to market your ad. The EBay marketplace wants you to choose these items because the more you sell, the more they make, so they make it very simple for you to choose these features in each listing.

You Made your First Sale, Now About Shipping

Congratulations, you have made your first sale. Now, a word about shipping. Shipping costs can be very expensive if you don't know what you are doing. Make sure that you charge enough shipping and handling to cover all of these costs. But, what is really cool is, when you cut down on shipping costs, part of your shipping and handling fees can go into your pocket.

You can purchase wholesale shipping supplies actually right on EBay. Boxes, bubble wrap, peanuts, you name it they sell it there for relatively cheap.

If you use priority mail, however, the post office will send you FREE boxes and shipping supplies, like labels and packing tape! I always ship priority mail and just charge the customer a little more. Most of the time, the customer wants the item fast, so they do not mind paying a little more for shipping.

Make sure you get delivery confirmation with every shipment. Many buyers pay with a paypal account. Consequently, if you do not have proof that you shipped it, and the item gets lost, you may end up having to give the buyer back all of their money, including what you forked out for shipping!

If you establilsh a paypal account, you can create online labels and track your shipping through them. It is a free service and you only pay for the actual shipping. Or, better yet, you can design online labels right here at www.usps.com.

Make sure you ship your item in a timely manner and place your shipping time-frame in the details of your ad. Buyers are going to be giving you feedback and negative feedback can result if you wait to long to ship.

What, the End Already!

There is a wealth of information available about EBay on the site itself and in the Amazon marketplace. This hub is meant to only touch upon the absolute basics and hopefully point you in the right direction. For more information make sure you visit my well-targeted ads on this page. They can help provide you with a treasurechest of tools in your pocket to help you in getting started. Feel free to post comments or ask questions. I will be happy to assist you along the way, if I can. Until then, happy Ebaying!