Starting an online store?

3 replies
Here's my story:
I may a little extra income buying cheaply priced clothes books and other items at local thrift stores and selling them online for a profit. Problem is use amazon and ebay for this, and losing between 12-15% of my sales it's really starting to eat profits making even some markups of 1000% unreasonable to do due to time it takes to list ship ect.
To solve the problem I want to create a website that sells the items and only deal with paypals fees which by themselfs will be much more reasonable. I have no qualms in creating a website buying hosting and such, but i do run into a few problems.
My stock of items is only around 30-40 items, i work and go to school full time, money is short and I really lack the funds and space to hold on to any more items. I fell the chances of someone coming to my site and seeing something they genuinely want is slim to none. In that lies the second problem. Ebay and amazon work because they get so much targeted traffic searching for my specific items, but having my own site, even if someone is searching for clothes i sell, my selection is so limited I don't feel like I'll be getting enough sells to be able to cover the cost of hosting and still make a profit. Basically it comes down to not having enough of what people are going to want. Why buy from some unknown dealer who has only a few random items when you can go to a well known respected site and find much more variety at competitive prices?
I did some thinking and have come up with a few ideas to get this off the ground. I'm going to start my site as more of a marketing approach aimed at instructing people on how to resell items from thrift stores for a profit. I'll probably include a cheap ebook I'll put together that elaborates further on the topics discussed on the site itself. Then on a seperate page on the site list my items for sale. That way i'm bringing in the revenue from the site while adding on the extras to make a little extra. As i profit from ads and the ebook on the site ill be able to afford more stock and hopefully at this point be drawing in a larger customer base who trust me. I also plan to start building a list off the site alerting people to when I have new items posted for sale.

Does this sound like a feasible plan? Granted I still have to do some keyword research, but assuming that it all check out as good is this a decent plan or should i just suck it up and stick with the fees?
#online #starting #store
  • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
    I think either approach is probably going to work if you put the time and resources into it.

    the keywords to rank for if you are selling the ebook/howto do it will be the thing. Generally the "make money online" niche is incredibly competitive, but don't let me stop you trying because I always say that someone has to rank #1.

    I know you can't sell digital items on ebay, but what about selling the ebook on a CD via ebay? (Not sure if this is allowed since it's been years since I have done it).

    The other option is if you are doing ok selling on ebay and amazon, why not try and expand it a bit.

    What about finding people local in your area where you sell stuff on commission. e.g. No sale, no commission. You would still be up for the cost of listing the items, but you probably know what will and wont sell.

    Maybe you could give people 50% of whatever the final profit is (after taking out all fees, etc).

    Many people would love to make some money on items they were probably going to throw away if they dont have to do any work.

    And what about doing a deal with the thrift shops where you can buy in bulk at a discount (when you can afford it).

    I think doing some local promotion in your area selling items for other people and only paying if they sell could be what you are looking for.

    Best of luck with it all!
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    • Profile picture of the author Silas Hart
      I generally try to get people off of eBay and onto their own website, however this might not be the best option for you because you don't have multiple quantities of the same inventory.

      You could open a basic site and list your items, but it could takes months or even years to get 1 specific item to sell, and with your low amount of inventory, your selling model really revolves selling each individual item rather than getting the most out of a bulk amount of the same items.

      I recommend doing as much as you can to scale up your eBay business. Once you become a Top Rated Seller, fees are less of a profit killer and you can slowly transition to selling in larger volume. Try going as long as you can without drawing any money from your profit, and try finding many small items that will resell at a price that is just enough to cover your overhead.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tcalp
    Starting a website of any kind and delivering targeted traffic to said site is a lot of work. I would just suck it up and deal with the fees, you'll spend a lot more time and money otherwise.
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