My Intro to Ebay Selling: A Side Hustle Story
Remember when I wrote about how I made over a thousand bucks without having a side hustle? Let's just say my patience began running out, and I have since started incorporating a couple side hustles as a way to boost my side income. One such hustle I've recently picked up is reselling on Ebay.
I assume everyone knows what Ebay is at this point, but in case you do not, Ebay is one of the largest consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer e-commerce platforms. Users can buy and sell new and used items on the site through auction and fixed price type listings. Although Ebay has seemed to take a back-seat to Amazon in recent years, I've come to learn that Ebay is still a very viable option for buying and selling online.
How I Got Started
I've been buying on Ebay for probably fifteen years now. When I was younger, I used to buy musical instruments, clothes, shoes, and more on Ebay, searching for deals as my young, frugal self. In college, I considered selling on Ebay after some trips to the local thrift shop produced some cheap, trendy clothes, but I never worked up enough motivation to get past creating an account.
Earlier this year, I was doing a bit of spring cleaning (ok, it was actually summer), and figured I'd give Ebay another shot before I took my old clothes down to the nearest Goodwill. I downloaded the app, logged back into my old account, snapped some pictures, and created some listings. I wasn't really quite sure what my price would be best to list, so I stayed safe and kept the prices low.
My First Sale
A few days after my first round of postings, boom - my first item sold. It was a pair of old Jordan basketball shorts that never really quite fit me. They were in pretty good shape, so I figured I'd list them for $11 plus shipping, which was an extra $5 or so. I got a quick offer for $7, and I figured I'd take a $4 haircut to free up some drawer space. After fees and shipping, this would net me around $6. I accepted the offer, waited for payment, and it was time to get the shorts in the mail.
There was just one thing - I didn't even think about how I was going to ship them! I had some old Amazon boxes in the trash, but they were all too big, and the shorts wouldn't quite fit in the larger envelopes I had around. I ended up just waiting until I went to work the next day and grabbed a poly mailer from the supply room to pack it up.
This was my first lesson, though - if I sell something, I need to be prepared to ship it. Knowing I still had plenty of clothes to get rid of, I got on Ebay and ordered myself some shipping supplies.
Within the first couple months after my first sale, I got more and more items listed, and more and more offers started coming in. After a bit of a slow start, my volume started to pick up. From June through August, I had only sold three items, netting me $75. Then I really got serious about listing, and sold 23 items in September alone, netting me $180. My October has been off to a slower start, with only four sales for $17, but that's due to the fact that I'm now running out of things around the house that I want to get rid of. While this is a good thing that I'm ridding myself of junk, part of me wants to just keep selling!
Lessons I've Learned So Far
While selling on Ebay has been an exciting new hobby for me lately, it hasn't all been easy, and I've made a few mistakes along the way. Some of these mistakes have included not knowing the weight of my packages, not researching similar sales, and purchasing inventory that isn't selling. These mistakes, however, have taught me some valuable lessons that have helped me become a better seller.
Lesson #1: Know Your Package Weight.
When I first started selling, I would search for similar items on Ebay and on other retail websites to try and determine my shipping weight, as I did not have a scale at home to weigh my packages. I would then mark it up a few ounces to be safe before purchasing my shipping label, and then send it out. I learned fairly quickly, however, that this was not the best way to approach this.
For one, many websites will include all boxes and packaging in their shipping weight, so often I was way overestimating the weight of my items, and ultimately overpaying for my shipping, eating into my early margins. While this is often small on a per-item basis, it can add up over time if you're moving heavy volume. And second, if you make an error in the opposite direction by underestimating your item weight, you run the risk that the post office will deem your postage insufficient, and you'll have to deal with purchasing additional shipping, and delaying your item's arrival date to the buyer. This is a good way to get bad feedback on your account.
I realized the easiest way around this problem was to buy a scale. In my opinion, a cheap postage or food scale should do the job, as anything over a pound can often be shipping in a flat rate USPS priority mail package fairly cheaply. I personally bought a kitchen scale for under $10 (you can see the one I bought here) and it has done its job perfectly.
Lesson #2: Research Similar Sales
Another issue I was running into was the fact that I didn't always know exactly how I should be pricing an item. When I first started, I would search the item on Ebay, and see what price other sellers had similar items listed, but I couldn't tell how long an item had been sitting on the site waiting to sell, and often wondered if the ones I was finding were overpriced.
After listening to a few podcasts on the subject, I learned to research selling prices by filtering for sold and completed items. This not only showed what price at which items are actually being sold, but also gave me an idea of an item's demand, showing me how often similar items were being bought. As I am getting rid of junk, for the most part, I typically price myself a little under the most recent sales to give myself the best chance of selling.
Lesson #3: If You Buy Inventory, Make Sure You Can Sell It!
After my selling started to pick up, it was my first reaction to try and scale my operation a bit by obtaining more and more items to sell. After a bit of looking, I found myself buying a box of plumbing pipe fittings in hopes I could make a decent return. There were 45 fittings in the box, and I bought it for $12. Worst case scenario, all I had to do was sell each for 27 cents, and I would make a profit. There was no way I could lose on the deal!
There were two problems with my thoughts. One - I know nothing about plumbing and whether anyone would actually want to buy these. And two - I did not take shipping into consideration, and each fitting was relatively heavy. I did a little research, and the same product seemed to be selling at hardware stores for about $3 a piece. Unfortunately, it would cost me about $3 to ship each one of the fittings separately, so I would have to sell each one for more than a hardware store just to break even. Also, I came to find out that it would be an even trickier sell as the two ends of the fitting were threaded for different sized pipes, making it a very specific product. If I knew anything about plumbing, I would have likely just let this one go. But now I've got a two month old listing with zero activity. Luckily, even if none of these ever sell, I made a mistake on a $12 item as opposed to something more expensive.
Parting Advice
With only a few months under my belt, I am learning new things every time I list an item or make a sale. With that said, I'd like to pass along some tips I had gathered from my research early on that helped me get started.
I assume everyone knows what Ebay is at this point, but in case you do not, Ebay is one of the largest consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer e-commerce platforms. Users can buy and sell new and used items on the site through auction and fixed price type listings. Although Ebay has seemed to take a back-seat to Amazon in recent years, I've come to learn that Ebay is still a very viable option for buying and selling online.
How I Got Started
I've been buying on Ebay for probably fifteen years now. When I was younger, I used to buy musical instruments, clothes, shoes, and more on Ebay, searching for deals as my young, frugal self. In college, I considered selling on Ebay after some trips to the local thrift shop produced some cheap, trendy clothes, but I never worked up enough motivation to get past creating an account.
Earlier this year, I was doing a bit of spring cleaning (ok, it was actually summer), and figured I'd give Ebay another shot before I took my old clothes down to the nearest Goodwill. I downloaded the app, logged back into my old account, snapped some pictures, and created some listings. I wasn't really quite sure what my price would be best to list, so I stayed safe and kept the prices low.
My First Sale
A few days after my first round of postings, boom - my first item sold. It was a pair of old Jordan basketball shorts that never really quite fit me. They were in pretty good shape, so I figured I'd list them for $11 plus shipping, which was an extra $5 or so. I got a quick offer for $7, and I figured I'd take a $4 haircut to free up some drawer space. After fees and shipping, this would net me around $6. I accepted the offer, waited for payment, and it was time to get the shorts in the mail.
There was just one thing - I didn't even think about how I was going to ship them! I had some old Amazon boxes in the trash, but they were all too big, and the shorts wouldn't quite fit in the larger envelopes I had around. I ended up just waiting until I went to work the next day and grabbed a poly mailer from the supply room to pack it up.
This was my first lesson, though - if I sell something, I need to be prepared to ship it. Knowing I still had plenty of clothes to get rid of, I got on Ebay and ordered myself some shipping supplies.
Within the first couple months after my first sale, I got more and more items listed, and more and more offers started coming in. After a bit of a slow start, my volume started to pick up. From June through August, I had only sold three items, netting me $75. Then I really got serious about listing, and sold 23 items in September alone, netting me $180. My October has been off to a slower start, with only four sales for $17, but that's due to the fact that I'm now running out of things around the house that I want to get rid of. While this is a good thing that I'm ridding myself of junk, part of me wants to just keep selling!
Lessons I've Learned So Far
While selling on Ebay has been an exciting new hobby for me lately, it hasn't all been easy, and I've made a few mistakes along the way. Some of these mistakes have included not knowing the weight of my packages, not researching similar sales, and purchasing inventory that isn't selling. These mistakes, however, have taught me some valuable lessons that have helped me become a better seller.
Lesson #1: Know Your Package Weight.
When I first started selling, I would search for similar items on Ebay and on other retail websites to try and determine my shipping weight, as I did not have a scale at home to weigh my packages. I would then mark it up a few ounces to be safe before purchasing my shipping label, and then send it out. I learned fairly quickly, however, that this was not the best way to approach this.
For one, many websites will include all boxes and packaging in their shipping weight, so often I was way overestimating the weight of my items, and ultimately overpaying for my shipping, eating into my early margins. While this is often small on a per-item basis, it can add up over time if you're moving heavy volume. And second, if you make an error in the opposite direction by underestimating your item weight, you run the risk that the post office will deem your postage insufficient, and you'll have to deal with purchasing additional shipping, and delaying your item's arrival date to the buyer. This is a good way to get bad feedback on your account.
I realized the easiest way around this problem was to buy a scale. In my opinion, a cheap postage or food scale should do the job, as anything over a pound can often be shipping in a flat rate USPS priority mail package fairly cheaply. I personally bought a kitchen scale for under $10 (you can see the one I bought here) and it has done its job perfectly.
Lesson #2: Research Similar Sales
Another issue I was running into was the fact that I didn't always know exactly how I should be pricing an item. When I first started, I would search the item on Ebay, and see what price other sellers had similar items listed, but I couldn't tell how long an item had been sitting on the site waiting to sell, and often wondered if the ones I was finding were overpriced.
After listening to a few podcasts on the subject, I learned to research selling prices by filtering for sold and completed items. This not only showed what price at which items are actually being sold, but also gave me an idea of an item's demand, showing me how often similar items were being bought. As I am getting rid of junk, for the most part, I typically price myself a little under the most recent sales to give myself the best chance of selling.
Lesson #3: If You Buy Inventory, Make Sure You Can Sell It!
After my selling started to pick up, it was my first reaction to try and scale my operation a bit by obtaining more and more items to sell. After a bit of looking, I found myself buying a box of plumbing pipe fittings in hopes I could make a decent return. There were 45 fittings in the box, and I bought it for $12. Worst case scenario, all I had to do was sell each for 27 cents, and I would make a profit. There was no way I could lose on the deal!
There were two problems with my thoughts. One - I know nothing about plumbing and whether anyone would actually want to buy these. And two - I did not take shipping into consideration, and each fitting was relatively heavy. I did a little research, and the same product seemed to be selling at hardware stores for about $3 a piece. Unfortunately, it would cost me about $3 to ship each one of the fittings separately, so I would have to sell each one for more than a hardware store just to break even. Also, I came to find out that it would be an even trickier sell as the two ends of the fitting were threaded for different sized pipes, making it a very specific product. If I knew anything about plumbing, I would have likely just let this one go. But now I've got a two month old listing with zero activity. Luckily, even if none of these ever sell, I made a mistake on a $12 item as opposed to something more expensive.
Parting Advice
With only a few months under my belt, I am learning new things every time I list an item or make a sale. With that said, I'd like to pass along some tips I had gathered from my research early on that helped me get started.
- Start with junk! Even if you make only a small margin, you'll be cleaning out your closet and gaining valuable feedback.
- If you ship something fragile, make sure you pack it with plenty of bubble wrap and a protective envelope or box. I've heard horror stories about how packages are handled behind the scenes.
- Beware of scams! If you sell electronics, it's best to sell as is with no returns. There are scammers who will buy electronic items, strip out the electronic pieces, and return just the outer pieces.
- Similar to the above tip, keep all communications on the Ebay platform. This way, if there is a dispute, you have all the documentation needed within the site to make your case to Ebay, who seems to typically protect buyers a bit more than sellers.
- Be an honest seller! If your item has defects, make it clear! If ripping someone off doesn't make you feel bad, the negative feedback sure will.
I hope these tips can help you get started if you have been thinking of selling on Ebay, as they have definitely helped me get started as smoothly as possible. If you are an experienced seller and have any more to add, please drop a comment below!
Happy hustle to all!
- FI Anon
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