Anyone buy+sell on ebay?

[karl210]

Ive had a bit of an idea to do a bit of buying in bulk and selling on ebay, worked out it can be a nice little side earner for me. Just wondering if anyone does it on here and how its gone for them? is there charges when you start selling often etc? Also i have my own account with about 180 feedback on 100% im not sure weather to use that account or set up a new one just for this, any comments would help.

[Tamiyoman]

You would need to register as a business seller (When you start selling regularly, Ebay will "advise" you to do this as if your selling over a certain amount you will benefit from being a business seller), you will pay to list each and every item (unless you have a featured shop which costs £50pm and allows you to list 1200 item per month free of charge, or a Basic shop which lets you list 200pm), you will then pay between 5-11% of the value of the item (As well as a 5-11% charge on the postage cost that you charge) and you will also pay paypal 3.5% of the total to receive payments so factor that in to your sales price. Ebay fees can be found here for the various categories:-

Business sellers         http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/businessfees.html

Private sellers           http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/sell/fees.html


I have feedback of 33,000 across several accounts and have encountered most of the types of fraud on Ebay such as:- Non receipt claims, Item damaged claims (Using a picture of a damaged item to claim the one you sent was damaged and get a refund), chargeback claims (they contact their credit card company to claim it was not them who made this transaction), address change claims (They pay with one address then email you asking for you to send to another address, DO NOT do it as Ebay/Paypal will just give them their money back as you shipped to an address that was not in the transaction, the fact that the buyer asked this means nothing!, only post to address on Paypal payment)

What you also need to be aware of is the amount of fraud on ebay (People buy something pay for it and then when they receive it say they have not had it and paypal/Ebay will refund them if YOU cannot prove its been delivered), so if you are posting things always try to use registered mail (Recorded or special delivery for UK mail and either International signed for service or Airsure for overseas).

Having a Separate account for your business is a better idea as someone is bound to ruin your 100% feedback due to them having a bad day at work  

Getting negative feedback on Ebay is par for the course at some point as some buyers just don't have a clue, buyer will buy an item and it is thw wrong item he needs (Even tho he bought the wrong item) some will leave negative feedback lol.

Make sure you are VERY clear about the item your selling (Good descriptions and excellent pictures) and make sure your VERY clear about how you will post items and when, buyers on ebay tend to expect items to arrive the next day unless your very clear on spelling out to them what to expect.

We operate a 1 day shipping policy, on Ebay this means we will ship within 1 working day for items paid upto 3pm, so a buyer buys at 2pm on a Monday we will ship it on Tuesday at the LATEST (usually ship on Monday), if someone buys at 4pm it will ship next working day, also make sure you state which postal service it being used and also state expected delivery times (1st class is 1-3 WORKING days, 2nd class is 2-5 days but can take upto 7 days!).

Other than the problems you get from the minority (2-3%) its a reasonable place to sell.

[karl210]

Thanks a lot for that detailed post 
Obviously I will be starting off small, with very little knowledge. The items i will be buying and selling are very small and light so will go into the smallest of jiffy bags and i was thinking about buying stamps in bulk off ebay to save that extra bit and get profits up, but like you mention it with all the scammers out there it might be well worth cutting a bit of the profit and not cutting corners on postage.
I will look into that business account and scour ebays help pages for as much info as i can find, i need to work out ebay fees and paypal fees so i can calculate what sort of profits i will be looking at. Will be starting off just buying 1 item in a bulk of 50, once they have sold i will buy 2 different items in bulks of 50 each, once those batches have gone i will move onto 3 different items, then i will buy in bigger bulk to raise the profits even more. Hopefully by then i will have a bit of an idea whats what and move onto more profitable items.

The items im looking at are when bought in bulk around £1 each and ive seen sellers selling about 10 of these items per day at £4.00. Im not expecting to compete with these and shift as many, i would be happy with selling half of that in a day. Still early stages of working things out at the moment, hoping to buy a batch of 25 tommorrow, throw myself in there and see how it goes. Doing as much research as i can today 

[MattPoss]

I've thought of doing this before but what would be the best thing to buy and sell?!

When we were at school one of my mates used to do it with fishing floats but obviously on a smaller scale. I've got plenty of storage space for much bigger things so that wouldn't be an issue

[karl210]

Absoloutly no-one will tell you that haha, ive choose something to do with cars because i know about it well and i know car stuff sells like crazy on ebay. Ive choose something small and light for postage reasons because its bloody expensive and also storage reasons. Literally 50% of what ive spent on the items will be spent in postage and packaging, so make sure you research that first. I scoured through ebay and checked how often the items were selling at certain prices. eg: 2 identical products, one was being sold for £4 and he was selling roughly 2 a day, the other seller listed it for £3.50 but was selling roughly 8 a day. These guys are buying in mega bulk compared to what i will be buying at so will be getting a much better profit, I will still sell at £3.50 but will have to accept low profit per item but in the long run it will work out.