I have £1,000 to spend on Ebay - Help needed!

Since you are now out of work I would recommend you spend $0 (other than listing fees).

Look into drop shipping where you will be paid first then you order the item for less and get it sent direct to the buyer.

I started the route you are talking about but if I would have gone the second route I would have made more money quicker without carrying stock.

Peter

Hi,

You didn't say what country you're in but as you mentioned £'s I'll assume the UK.

This is a slight twist - i.e buying outside Ebay to sell on Ebay. The opposite to what many people do.

It depends on whether you go for higher value, low volume, or low value, high volume.

For example if you wanted to make quick sales of fewer products you could pick something of high value (in relation to your budget) and start to quickly turn a profit and build your pot.

i.e You could buy a 1kg silver bar for £606.31 - here: Guernsey Mint - 1 Kilo 999 Metalor Silver Bar

And sell on Ebay for between £700 and £800

That's one way to make 30% profit in a single trade on Ebay - but I'm sure you can get more creative and do better.

Andy

I used to dabble with ebay about 2-3 years ago, and as Andy said it really isn't worth spending £1000 on ebay itself, for that sort of money you are best investing it elsewhwere to obtain stock! you need to ask yourself "if people are selling stuff cheap on ebay for others to buy and profit from, then why don't they just sell it themselves?" its hardly hard work putting items for sale!

If you are looking to strike a little goldmine, then you need to dig deep! think about what will always sell, and who will always buy? think about collectables but in quite a unique niche, once you found it spend some time researching where and how you can pick these items up for cheap! think of core principles of business - buy low sell high!

As I found out, ebay takes work and won't ever make you rich quick! if you've lost your job, do NOT rely on ebay as your income as it can take a while to master! and consider all the hoops ebay make you jump through thrown in with their fees and ebay fees! your profit soon dwindles!!!

Hi Mark, eBay is now called feebay. They are the only winners here. I would recommend it if you were clearing household stuff you don't need in order to make some money but otherwise the profits after feebay's share is peanuts. I'm not sure about the rest of the world but it's tough to sell stuff on the UK site for a good profit

Hi,

I run a successful ebay business, drop me a line or post any questions on here.

Bob

Don't spend the $1000 in one go! Spend maybe $50 MAX in testing some products. What you don't want is blowing the grand and then haveto look for a job!

My advice to you is... don't even go there, selling on eBay is incredibly hard nowadays.

first you have to find a niche that has not been found by anyone else or very little people (Incredibly hard)

Then you have to find a reliable drop shipper/wholesaler which again is very hard. If you choose to do drop shipping you'll find it almost impossible to find a reliable one anywhere.

If you choose to buy wholesale, you've got hundreds maybe thousands of item you've got to find somewhere to store, then there's the daily trips to the post office with a massive bag of parcels which takes AGES to processes.

And then you've got the constant stream of buyers asking 'where's my item' 'my items damaged'

Trust me you DO NOT want to go there I've tried it, and hated it almost instantly. Other forms of internet marketing are soo much easier.

I would say offline is the easiest, it gets you the fastest money and you get a lot of it aswell.

This might not be the post you are looking for, but Im going to tell you how to get started right on eBay with no hassle, and no risk. In exchange for no hassle and no risk, your profits won't be incredibly high. In fact, I bet you could probably make a profit of around £200, turning your £1000 into £1200 a month. The good thing is that you can reinvest that money every month and before you know it, you've got £3000 in circulation/inventory and you can rely on £600 coming in every month. I personally would get to a level where you could pay someone to work for you part time handling most of your eBay dealings and shipping while you focus on purchasing and finding new products.

What you want to do is find some sort of market where you have a little expertise in. You will eventually gravitate away from it to find more profitable niches, and that's alright. I sell stuff daily that I didn't even know existed.

I'm going to use this as an example, because it's an excerpt of an older post I made. I'm talking about the U.S. market but you would actually use where ever you live. In fact, I know someone that is applying this to eBay Germany and he's doing really well, and hes never gone on beyond this stage because hes really satisfied with it.

This has it's pros and cons. One of the biggest cons is that most Chinese/Hong Kong sellers won't combine shipping, it sometimes take a month to receive all of your items. Some of the pros are that with this method, you know what sells, you know how many to buy to resell within a 30 day time frame, and you don't have to invest that much to get started. You could start testing this out with $5 if you really wanted. Of course, Chinese/Hong Kong sellers are usually the cheapest prices for most items.

You are profiting from people who simply don't want to buy the item from someone in China, and this is one of the main reasons I do this within the childrens market on items such as toys and school supplies such as backpacks. There is usually a time-limit more anticipated so people dont want to wait a month if Timmys birthday is only 16 days away. This allows you to charge a couple dollars more per item. Think about the selling model of a typical gas station or 7/11. These stores usually sell a commodity such as gas, but they make a lot of money from offering convenience which is really the core of this stage of eBay selling. Most people know they could go to Walmart to buy a candy bar or a soda for $1.20, but if you don't want the hassle of waiting or any other reason that someone wouldn't want the cheap prices of Walmart, then they don't think much about paying $1.80 for the same candy bar or soda from the local 7/11.

For example:

Here is a Bowser Plush doll (From Super Mario, which I assume you know what that is) sold from a U.S. Seller within the past 30 days.
Super Mario Brothers 10 inch Bowser plush | eBay

It sold for $21.98

Here is the same exact Bowser Plush doll sold from a Chinese seller within the past 30 days.
New super mario bros bowser 10"plush toy doll Gift-MT85 | eBay


It sold for $9.50

So, say you buy 1 of these from that same seller, he sends it to you, you put it up on eBay you should be able to sell it for $19.99 (you just undercut the market by 10%, which means eBay is pushing your listing towards the top and you are more likely to get your items purchased first), it sells to someone within the U.S. and you ship it out for $2.90 for USPS First Class Mail (because if you are making your own shipping labels through Stamps or PayPal Shipping Labels, the default pricing goes off of weight, and this is a little stuffed animal), after all of your fees which look like:



So, it's pretty simple. You essentially invested $9.50 and made it back plus a profit of $4.91. Now all you need to do is two things, Scale it up, and do Inventory Planning. (sorry if you read this thinking you were going to make thousands of dollars a week or something.)

Because you are just starting out, you DO NOT want your money held for more than 1 month. You want to be able to invest in inventory, and walk away with your profit and be able to reinvest again, but more. To do this, you dont want to buy 50 Bowser Plush dolls, because there is a good chance only 20 will sell within 30 days, and you don't want $285 just sitting in inventory on a shelf so you need to figure out a really good estimate on how many you can sell each month.

To do this, you are going to go to eBay Search: Advanced Search (eBays Advance Search Tool)

Type in "Bowser Plush"

Click on "Completed Listings"

- You only want to see what has been sold within the past 30 days, you dont want to see what people are currently trying to sell things for. Completed Listings show up in Green. Red means it didn't sell.

Next, click on "Only Show Items: Located in "UNITED STATES" (or where ever you live)

Now a bunch of listings are going to show up in either red or green, and again Green means it Sold, so you are only going to count those. I counted it, and 5 showed up as being sold within the past 30 days. I recommend you only buy about 75% of the amount of that shows up because you want to have everything sold off within 30 days so you can evaluate how much you made and then reinvest. So, in this case, you will be buying 4 for a total of $38, and should get a return of $19.64. The key is to do this with as many items as you can within your budget, so if you have $100, spend it on this stuff you KNOW will sell. When you go to reinvest, you wont be buying 8 Bowser Plush (two months inventory) - instead you want to expand to different items of the same niche. If you go on eBay and you type in "Bowser Plush" - you will see right under the search bar some "related searches" and what popped up for me was "yoshi plush, wiggler plush, koopa plush, peach plush, donkey kong plush, mario plush, goomba plush, wario plush, 12 bowser plush"

So, now you are going to want to redo the same process on Yoshi, Wiggler, Koopa, Peach, Donkey Kong, Mario, Goomba, and Wario, and when you are comfortable in your selection of items (say you have all of the mario related plush stuff in your inventory) - you will want to go to the next level which is increasing inventory from a 1 month inventory to a 2 month inventory. Say you are selling 4 of the Bowser items a month, you will then want to buy 8. This is because of the work involved in constantly ordering more stuff each month only you want to be a dick like me and constantly make your postal carrier deliver big boxes to your house every morning, and because if you buy 8 Bowsers from the same seller, they might drop each individual price from $9.50 to $9.00. This allows more profit for you.

What I recommend is people make a spreadsheet that shows the data for the most profitable item being the items you fit within your budget, and the items that do not or offer lower amounts of profit can be what you reinvest in.

And after that... thats when you can start buying from China. At that stage, there is no point in paying near retail prices for stuff when you are buying in such bulk, so you can hit me up, or find some sources in China that will allow you to purchase 40 Bowser Plush items for $2.00 a piece, lower your prices, destroy competition, etc...., and at about this stage is when you want to start drawing from your business and start actually paying yourself unless you plan to expand further. If you are determined/disciplined enough not to draw from the money you've built up, it won't be long at all until you've got $1000 invested, and at that rate based on the example item above, $1000 = $500 a month. Hold on to it, and you can actually make $2,000 a month and have someone with TRS (top rated seller status) handle your business for you and you just cut them in on your profits. (of course, not telling them that your wide selection of crap from China is purchased right on eBay)


...and heres a tool you can use to calculate fees.

eBay and PayPal Fee Calculator

u can buy a motorcycle on my country with $1000.....
nice to heard advice from the others.....
need $500 more for me to buy a new motorcycle...^^
it come from my real job wage or my online side job?
which first? i will wait it....^^

Sign up to WorldWideBrands and see what they to offer. Don't depend on Doba or MegaGoods to sell anything. You'll wind up spending more a product that you can find at the local Walmart at a lower cost.

Ive always had a hard time trying to make any money with ebay. Dropshippers pricing now seems so competitive and close to the actual cost unless you are really buying in bulk orders. I would say you would have better luck in finding useful things on craigslist or backpage under the free section and try to sell them on ebay this will do 2 things.

A- wont eat away your $1000 savings

B- Helps your ebay seller reputation and may give you a better understanding on how to make more money.

Hope this helps

People really hate when I say this, but eBay does not like dropshipping. PayPal and eBay are now doing inventory verification to sell beyond x amount of items or make more than x amount each month. Because eBay is a volume based business in most categories, you'll probably need to sell more than a couple things each month to really make it worth while.

I had a DVD didn't sell I clicked relist and some new buyerprotection BS poped up to put a credit card, I did then denied. I took a quick look they wanted 2K. I guess the small fees is not enough. I just didn't relist I think I'll donate it to good will.

It's tough to say because I don't exactly know your experience, what you're good at, etc. First focus on reading threads here in the warrior forum to learn as much as you can. Then make sure to take action.

Not sure whether the OP has already delved into ebay or changed his mind. A lot of advice has been posted already. Silas has even gone an extra mile and posted some examples. I can't post an example, but I would personally never do something like this ---> In fact, I bet you could probably make a profit of around £200, turning your £1000 into £1200 a month.

In order to make £200 I only need to invest £40 - £50.I have found several niches like that where you buy for 40 pence and sell for £2 or £3. This is a lot of hassle of course because it requires an ebay store and listing thousands of items for sale.

Be careful with the spending. I would suggest some niche sites with adsense but to each his own.
A few good resources are already mentioned, so I think you can do quite well with them.

The best products that sell on eBay are electronics especially phones, I suggest finding a supplier in china, or US or wherever, buy wholesale and sell them at resonable prices, I did it and it did produce good results, eBay is good place to start,

Finally don't spend any money until you you have planned and strategiesd otherwise you'll be frustrated,

Take it easy