I’ve seen a lot of comments here where the posters are younger and don’t have a job yet, so I wanted to do a series on how I make money in my free time. I have always been good at making money in unconventional ways and know what it is like to be young without a job and needing money. Take in mind that the way I’m going to teach you here, like everything, takes a while to master, but if its done right you can make a living off of it, as many people do online.
The way I want to talk about here is flipping things on ebay, what I flip how I flip it and the inner workings of how to get the most profit back. I want to make a checklist and talk a bit about expectations before I get started so you know exactly what you will getting into.
Checklist
You need a starting cash stack, but it really depends on the amount you are going to buy. $300 would probably be a good start but more of less is fine too. Keep in mind the items you buy can take a while to sell so you need to have patience and not expect the money you put in to buy the items, to be taken out any time soon.
It is very heavily recommended that you have a smart phone with the ebay app so you can search prices when you are on the go
The key is making profit in bulk, not off one or two items
Run buying and selling like a corporation would be run. Sometimes you might feel bad lowballing someone and having them accept it, but someone else is going to do it if you don’t. You can be nice sometimes if you feel like it but just remember every dollar extra you pay is a dollar off your profit. If you are buying things in bulk it adds up.
Have fun! Seriously though, this becomes a game and actually turns into a fun job
Part 1 Where Do I Buy Stuff To Sell?
There are basically three places I buy my items to flip, each can be profitable, but some are not as profitable as others. The important thing you can do on each site is HAGGLE, and this is extremely important to making profit. Haggling someone down a dollar is still a dollar more profit that you will get when you sell an item. Here are the main places I get my items.
Garage Sales- By far the most profitable place to acquire items. Many times sellers don’t know what they have and are willing to sell them very cheap, BUT still bargain anyway because you will increase your profit.
Swap Meets/Flea Markets- also has the ability to find really good things cheap, however there are many resellers there that are selling things for ebay prices so you need to watch out for them. If you see someone with 100 vintage NES games its most likely too good to be true.
Craigslist- you can find really good things on craigslist if you search for a while, but you have to factor in the cost of driving out to all these people. I would only recommend doing it when you are buying expensive items or a lot
Ebay- It is possible to buy and sell off Ebay but its hard, very hard. If you are going to do this, you will want to buy full collections and then sell them individually over time. It will take a long time, can be daunting and sometimes not worth it. At first stick to the first 3.
What Items Do I Buy?
The main items I buy are below, some are more liquid than other (meaning you can sell them faster) and some aren’t and can take a long time. As an average I would say you want to pay around half of what they are selling for on Ebay. Basically I buy anything that might be in that guys room from the picture above.
Pokemon/Magic the gathering cards- I mostly buy full collections with 2000 or so cards and then search through them. The profit margin on these can be very low so get ready to list a lot of them and sell a lot of them to even make a small amount of money. For Pokemon cards look for the older sets and look for the holos. Condition is important as well, because if a card is worse than lightly played many people won’t even want to buy it. You are selling to collectors when you buy these cards. For magic its a lot harder. Get to know some of the cards that are worth decent amounts and memorize them. Magic cards typically can sell for A LOT more than Pokemon cards so if you get a great score you can make hundreds of dollars, but it is risky.
Retro Video games- Self explanatory, however there are some games that aren’t even worth buying unless the price is really good. Ps2 is sometimes a good buy, but ps3, 360, xbox one and ps4 are not worth looking at usually. People tend to think their own personal collections are worth what they paid for them so you might upset some people with offers. Nintendo games have a huge market so if you can score some cheap it is usually a good deal, First person titles like Mario games are worth a pretty penny as well. Look at some of the prices for gamecube games these days and how much they can go for.
DVDs/Blurays- DvDs/Blurays can get you money if you buy them cheaaaap and im talking about real cheap, 25 to 50 cents a movie. If you buy them in bulk you can make a decent amount but expect a lot of competition and to wait a long time for them to sell.
Toys- Toys or just retro toys can be worth a lot to collectors, but you have to know what to look for. If you are unfamiliar look it up on ebay, but sometimes it can be a gamble. The good thing with toys is people usually don’t know what they have so you can score a decent deal.
How To Sell The Items
You want to first setup an account on ebay and paypal because that is the only processor you can be paid with. If you don’t have an ebay account you might want to buy a few cheap things so you get your rating up and people will trust you. Ebay will usually give you 50 free listings a month so use those and don’t pay to list the items. They take a 10% cut of your profits and paypal takes a 3% + 40 cents cut to process it. That is already a hefty amount so you want to avoid paying anymore. If you want more free listings you can open a store for 25 dollars a month which will give you 250 free listings. This can be very useful if you are selling in large amounts. Here are some tips to sell your items quicker.
Take actual photos don’t use stock images- Users hate stock images, they want to see the exact item they are getting. This goes with every item I listed.
Base the prices off what the item sold for- When you look up an item you want to go to the checklist on the sidebar and click “sold listings” to make sure that you see only the items that sold. People could be listing them for much more than they will actually sell for.
Put them on a 30 day fixed price auction with best offer- this is purely so you can list them for free. You don’t want to use up all your free listings on auctions that you have to put up again in a week, so use 30 days fixed pricing. Also remember to use best offer so people can offer you prices. If you are still making a decent profit on the item accept the offer or if you want to haggle, give them a counter offer.
Use the correct categories- this one is an easy one, if you list in the wrong area you won’t sell your items easy as that.
How To Ship Your Item
This is possibly the most important part as shipping will take up a large part of your budget. With paypal you always want to make sure you have tracking so you won’t get scammed and can prove it was delivered. Most things come with tracking these days though so its not a big deal. Here are the ways you want to ship below.
Try and ship everything media mail- it is cheaper than regular mail and it comes with tracking. Youre only supposed to ship media this way but I ship a lot of things this way because they cant tell.
Ship in envelopes/parcels, if you can avoid boxes- Boxes cost a lot to ship. Avoid them at all costs. It would be cheaper to use a massive bubble envelope than a box any day
Ship cards under $10 in a regular envelope with a stamp- Cards are usually inexpensive so between ebay taking a cut and the 40 cent paypal fee, profit becomes very low. You open yourself up to getting scammed by just sending the cards in an envelope but if the buyer has a good rating its ok to take the chance. You will probably get scammed 5% of the time over a long period. Take that in mind.
These are the basics for what I buy and how I sell them on ebay. Everything to get started is pretty much here, but this isn’t the best way. The best way will be figuring it out for yourself and seeing what works for you. This has worked for me and this is what I do. You learn as you go when you are buying and especially at garage sales and swap meets knowledge is power. The 2 minutes is takes you to search an item online means that it could be gone. If you have any questions you can put them in the comments and ill try to respond to everyone. Happy selling!
-Calaber24p
Great post. Yup a great way to succeed starting with next to nothing. I have experimented with the clothing side of it, and definitely lowers any overheads you would pay for a retail shop.
Yeah I tend to avoid clothing just because honestly I don't know enough about it. If you stick to things you know you can make a lot of money. Also you can make a lot on niche things that there is a buyer for, but might take a very long time to sell.
also market trends, if you can find small merch that pairs with a trend that can make a ton also.
Great post with good information and advice! Between that business and your activities here you're a great example of carving out a nice living while having fun and keeping your freedom!mwell done!
Thanks! Yeah I do many things at once because its not so hard to just put stuff up on ebay and then wait. I dont have too much stuff up right now because I havent had the time to go to the flea market near me.
That's a great idea to use the app as a price checker while out and about. I've sold a few things on Ebay here and there, but hadn't thought much about flipping things. Thanks for the great article!
Thanks! Yeah depending on where you are, you can find really great things at swap meets and garage sales, especially in the summer. If you act fast and show up right when they open you get first pick.
I used to sell a lot of items on ebay. But, they charging too much on fee nowadays and it's not working out for me. Great post.
Yeah the fees are outrageous and they are only going to get worse according to what ive read. To key is to get the items really cheap or else you basically wont make anything.
Nice writeup. I tried flipping used industrial automation equipment on eBay a couple years back, but you can't usually find that stuff at garage sales. I mostly just ended up buying and reselling on eBay, and you just lose way too much in fees that way.
Part 5 of my Game Theory series is up!
great post buddy thanks for sharing your experience. i am also thinking to start a dropshipping on ebay
Very interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing.
great post..
only 28 minutes you've got $ 781.76
upvove for you.. ^^
Good for you that still working out.
One could also go on wholesale websites such as alibaba and dhgate. I order from those all the time and never have problems!
Great. Thanks for the tips.
Nice post @calaber24p
Could "Flipping" MTG cards be profitable? because usually these huge collections that you could buy are usually full of crapy cards and sorting and reselling would take so much of your free time that would no be worth it.
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Good advice. I've done alright in the past on antique toys and collectable pottery. Another trick to keep costs down with USPS shipping (for heavy stuff) is to use flat-rate boxes which are free from the post office - and never buy a heavy item for resale if it's too big to fit in one of these.