Starting up an eBay entrepreneur business.

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  gmail92 on 09/02/2014 - 08:26

  income seems totally dependent on what you're selling. and how much you can appropriately price it at

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  stevednj48 on 09/02/2014 - 08:37

  i sell a fair bit on ebay and you can make good money from it but you have to take into account fees and postage. i make anywhere from $300 to $1200 very up and down at times of non payers who buy then do not go through with payment is annoying and the trips to the post office always take postage of items into account if you start undercutting postage you can lose a fair bit in this game.

  also be careful what you are selling its no good if 50 others are selling the same thing as everyone will keep dropping prices to be the cheapest you need to find that one product that not many others are selling i have done that with one item and i can keep up with the supply.

  doesnt take long to get started get some items and start listing i spend about about 2 hours a night after work packaging items and listing items.

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    Peace Maker on 09/02/2014 - 11:14

    -6

    Do you save money from not using full stops in your sentences as well? I'm not trying to start a flame war, it just makes your post difficult to read and understand without having to keep re-reading it.

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  Luminary on 09/02/2014 - 08:48

  I don't do it seriously but I feel the biggest thing to be careful of is shipping. It's like $7 for the cheapest parcel and ~14 for anything over 500g. (Sometimes I feel it'd be cheaper if I just personally delivered the parcel to local buyers). So if you are selling a relatively cheap item with low margins, often the shipping makes up a big portion of it and/or someone in China is selling it for cheaper. I think unless you can take advantage of economies of scale or you have a more expensive, niche item with higher margins, it would be a little bit hard. I'm sure there's lots of successful Aussie eBayers, but I think shipping is that main thing of concern.

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  stevednj48 on 09/02/2014 - 09:12

  depending on the size of items i use the eBay flat rate satchels $6.95 for 500g and $11.40 for 3kg but they need to fit in the satchels.i usaully try have free shipping on my listings providing there is still a decent profit margin for me i find free shipping listings sell better than ones that aren't.

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  Astro551 on 09/02/2014 - 22:30

  seems like a lot of effort to make some small change, although i guess nothing comes easy. would probably be more useful than just chucking it in the bank and letting it sit there (providing it doesn't go bust).

  but i guess if it's any help to you, when i buy stuff on ebay - personally free shipping listing is the first thing that catches my eye, although i do compare total prices anyway. so yeh i'd imagine undercutting the China competitors would be one of the ways to get started (although maybe it's different on ebay cause you have less "loyal" customers cause so many are just one off purchases of "i need this" kinda thing).

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  watty on 10/02/2014 - 20:16

  I think you should invest that money else where as eBay/paypal/aus post really eats up into your profits. I've made the mistake of allowing 0 feedback buyers buy from me and never paid as I'm sure it was competition trying to sabotage me (happened twice before I knew you could block buyers like that lol). The other annoying thing is non-paying buyers becomes a huge pain because you need to go through the unpaid item process and eventually recover listing fees. I've had buyers negging my account because I wouldn't reship the item to them for free after they had failed to provide the right address that I had previously asked them to confirm (before I posted the goods) - In the end, paypal ordered me to refund the cost of the item including the postage costs (I lost about 20 bucks because of shipping).

  In terms of selling in general, this was a recent example:
  I bought an item that I regretted after receiving it (impulse buy) and decided to sell it. I bought it for $20 and the market value was about $150. I listed it for $150 plus flat rate shipping Aus wide for $20 (turned out to cost me $30 to ship it with tracking to the Perth buyer because I live in Sydney). So I sold it for $170 (including shipping) but after deducting fees and costs i only ended up with about $80 profit (factoring in ebay and paypal fees). In summary, I sold it for $170 and made $80.

  Overall, my experience on eBay hasn't been the best but I have had good profits. Just had to spend a lot of time and effort solving issues such as the above. Like other comments have pointed out earlier, there are some successful Aussie sellers but I know a lot of people who just felt eBay selling is not worth it.

  I don't know if this is updated for this year but I've been using this to estimate my earnings on particular sales: http://www.newlifeauctions.com/calc.html

  Good luck!