When you begin finding items for same, I first recommedscouring your house with a fine toothed comb, looking for anything that you feel you don’t want any longer, but could be some value. Unwanted presents are wonderful in this instance, things like overstock of crockery; doubles of DVDs/CDs/Books that you have been given that you already had-there is muchfund to be had clearing out a lot of stuff that really just clutters up the house. Dig deep into those cupboards, looking for that star item that could really make you up a little more money.
Now, you will habe to put in some effort to obtain items worthy of selling. You will have to carefully organize where you will obtain these items, and generally go to a lot of sales and auctions before you start turning a decent profit and getting into the swing of things.
There are many different ways to get items for auction and one of the best is what we call the wholesaling option. This is the most common method for making money on eBay, but also the most monotonous-and more often than not the one with the lowest profit margin. However, it is a much safer bet than some of the more unreliable ways of making money-for instance, if you were to go the auction house way of selling, you may find that one weeek they don’t have much that you feel would sell, and hence you won’t be able to buy anything to sell that week. With wholesalers however, you can feel safe and assured that your product supply will remain fairly constant. Wholesaling can also be an expensive option for those with very litle capital to play with, but not all is lost. There is nother method of wholesaling, known as dropshippling-which does not require much in the way of start-up fees, and basically involves filling a more traditional role in selling goods. We’ll explore this later in more detail.
Some people like to buy knick-knacks on eBay. Some people like to buy a lot of knick-knacks on eBay. And somepeople function like astronomical black holes of knick knackery, acquiring so many metric tons of ceramic gnomes and “glass art” that their homes develop their own fields of gravity and exert a small but measurable pull on the moon.
There are many different ways of obtaining money through eBay-about half of them involve what I like to call hunting. Hunting can be fun, and I highly recommend it as a test of your intestinal fortitude-as you can extend this to such extremes that you may want to invest in a truck for hauling furniture. But one of the easier alternatives for starting off your eBay hunting frenzy is going out to garage sales.
Garage sales are great way of whiling away your weekend. The beauty of garage sales is that they are consistently held every weekend. I guarantee you that if you open up your local paper on Saturday morning, you will find advertisements for at least one, usually three or more in your local area. These sorts of sales vary wildly in quality, but it’s best if you get there as early as humanly possible to scour for the best quality offerings your money can buy. Getting there soon after the sale opens is a good way of getting access to any bargains, but don’t arrive earlier than the advertised starting time. It also helps if you make general chitchat with the people holding the sale, as this can help your status when the inevitable haggling starts. You will be tempted to buy utter trash-resist the temptation and be careful to note what condition the items are in. For instance, if you believe you have found a collectable board game, ensure all the pieces are intact and the set is complete.
On the upside, Garage Sales are not your only alternative. Another alternative is the magicof the opportunity shop.
You may think that it is immoral to be buying things at an opportunity shop for sale. Hell, you may not even know exactly what I mean by an “opportunity” shop, as this term seems to be fading away. An opportunity shop is an establishment that relies on donations for its stock, and it’s profit are usually and allegedly given to charity. In my humble opinion, this is not as pure as it sounds-as the prices in these shops (which were once low, and aimed at the lower class as means of obtaining cheap clothing, furniture, etc) have begun rising at an alarming rate, to the point that where is more aimed at themiddle class than the original market they once were aimed at. This doesn’t mean that they are not worth perusing, as their prices are indeed still low-it just means that you will find some of these shops are extremely pricey, while others are affordable.
The most affordable in even the priciest of these establishments is their range of furniture. While their prices are still high by comparison to what they used to be-they are still cheap for the price of your average piece of furniture. You can pick up some of wear and tear-but don’t just pick up any old junk. Aim for really fancy looking antique stuff, and then haggle with thepeople at the dest to get a better price on the more exciting looking items. Anything with intricate designs, good lathe work (described by my late grandfather as ‘in and out bits’ lathe work refers to anything with even dips and curves by a lathing tool) and well conditioned upholstery if applicable. But what I’m saying here is antique furniture is really all you will be able to sell on eBay out of the range these stores offer, unless you are lucky enough to find for example some new-ish lounge suites that have been donated from a deceased estate or something similar (more on deceased estates later).
Now, what I have stated is a slight exaggeration. There are some special items of clothing that you may be able to snaffle up, or perhaps some old vinyl records that have somehow gotten lost among large boxes of vinyl donated to the store (you’d really have to be a music expert). Other things that you should keep an eye out for in these establishments are collectabke toys, especially items like vintage Disney items or golliwogs. Actually, I really must stress that real golliwog memorabilia, old blaxploitation and similar Amiricana material goes for mint on eBay, provided it is actually genuine. Among the rubble you may also find old videos that might earn you some cash. For instance, I found a rare ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ video starring Rik Mayall, which I bought for $2.50 at the op shop, andsold on eBay for $25.50-that’s over ten times the initial investment. Of course, finding those nuggests of quality requires you to be constantly alert, noticing items that hold a special intrinsic value. Finally, op shops sometimes have a glass cabinet where they keep the ‘special’ items. This is usually jewelerly, but sometimes they can have some really interesting goods in there-keep an eye out in these cabinets for a great price.
Keep an eye out for places in your local area that are going out of business. Especially discount stores and the like, as they are no doubt desperate to shift stock, so you will be able to well and truly reap the benefits with the bulk discounts you will receive from them. For instance, if you found a local Manchester store that is going out of business, you could search through their stock for a range of truly spectacular items, and ask if you could get a group discount on the items. They will usually agree to fairly hefty discount to offload the stock, and you can then resell it on eBay and end up getting a near, but not quite an exact, recommeded retail price for it from your buyers. In the end, you will probably receive about 150 percent of your investment back-so it is best to get quite a hefty order of good stuff so that you can negotiate a better initial price, making these sorts if arrangements worth your while.
Finally, one of my favorite ways to make money is hard junk. Often people will leave their bulkier ‘rubbish’ out on the sidewalk, which can be anything from junky pieces of broken furniture to something fairly valuable that the property owner is replacing. Half the time ‘junked’ electronic items like fridges, heaters, computers, and even TVs can be found in various types of condition-but often they work! All they may need is a little spit and polish, and while not as good as many new-still quite nice and often ready for sale. Now, I’m not saying you should collect every piece of junk you encounter on the sidewalk on the off chance that it still works-but if it looks to be in reasonably good condition, there’s a good chance it can be revived.
A lot of people seem to think when there is even slightest thing wrong with any chosen piece of expensive technology that the best policy is to buy a new one. Often, particularly in the circumstance of hi-fi gear or computer hardware, all it needs is a little bit of work. If you wish to take this avenue of selling, this can be exploited to great effect. A Playstation 2 games console that I once pick upoff of the side of the street is a good example. The casing just needed to be opened up and cleared of dust. It then sold for $170. That’s $170 gained with no cash outlay whatsoever.
Now we’ve gone through the basic option of making money on eBay, let’s get into the finer details in the Chapter Two.
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