The Life and Times of an eBay Seller

You can sell in bulk on eBay in “Wholesale lots.” There are a couple requirements: Good strong back muscles and a storage room on the same floor you live so you don’t have haul the boxes up and down fifty million times.

Okay, I digress.

I buy books in bulk.

Let’s say you take one book up to someone who is having a garage sale. The price is $1. Well, that’s a pretty good price. But let’s say there are 100 books at that garage sale. Instead of buying one book, you put all of them into a box, and offer them $25 dollars for the box. They accept, and you’ve paid 25 cents for that book instead of $1. Now, you’re probably saying, “Why would I buy 100 books and pay $25 and throw away 99 books just to keep one book for 25 cents?” You wouldn’t, of course. This is only if you want the other 99 books. Obviously, it would be cheaper to buy one book for $1, than to pay $30 and throw away $29.75 and 99 books. But wait! Sometimes you don’t have to throw them away. Let’s say you wanted only one book in a group of 100. You buy the whole group for $30 and turn around and sell 99 books on eBay for a profit. How much of a profit? Well, it depends on the books and the buyers on eBay at the time you list the books.
Let’s say you like reading thrillers, so you buy them in bulk hundreds at a time.
For example: You buy 100 books for $30. You take out 10 books and sell 90 on eBay for about $35, now the extra $5 dollars is what you’ll pay eBay in commissions, so you basically break even on the books, except that your able to keep of 10 of them for free.
To me, that’s a pretty good profit. Being able to pay for books you want to read for pleasure. Of course that’s not always the “profit” of buying in bulk. Sometimes you can sell the books individually and make enough profit on one book to cover the entire purchase, then you can either sell the rest separately or in bulk on eBay for a profit.
Good Tip: If you’re going to sell the books in bulk, it’s a good idea to fit them into a box before listing them rather than waiting for them to sell and trying to find a box they will fit in once they sell. This will save you a lot of time and aggravation!

As I said above, selling in bulk requires a lot of heavy lifting and good organization.

Good tip: For two years the books I kept in my basement were totally disorganized. Kids books were mixed with hardcover thrillers; nonfiction books were mixed with romances and so on. Every time I wanted to sell one author, or one group of books I had to go through all of the boxes. Don’t let this happen to you! Keep groups of mysteries, romances, nonfiction, and kids books all separate from each other, that way, if you need an author or a group, you know exactly where to find them.
Good tip: Keep the books on shelves. Don’t keep them in boxes. By keeping them on shelves you will be able to see them and to find the book you want without digging through the boxes every time you want one book. And keeping the books on the shelves keeps them in better condition!
Of course,these tips don’t apply to only books, you can sell: clothing, accessories, electronics, CDs, or antiques in bulk.

At garage sales, my eyes wander across the tables. My radar clicks when it passes over something factory sealed. Now, I’d like to state that not everything factory sealed is saleable (I learned this the hard way). However, there is a better chance of selling something sealed than selling something that’s used. However, this particular item was factory sealed. It was a Snoopy (the dog from the Peanuts comic strip) Christmas Puzzle.
At garage sales, I’ve found some people will bargain, and some people want to get rid of stuff so badly they will practically pay you to take it! Even though they could have gotten more for it on eBay. Other people hold onto the stuff as if it were actually worth something! Some people even have eBay prices listed above their products. I stay away from those sales.
Here’s my story about someone who could have made more money on eBay:

I’m looking at the Snoopy puzzle. It’s factory sealed. The lady running the garage sale says to me, “You know the creator of that comic strip is dead; why don’t you try looking it up on eBay and see if it’s worth something?”
My mouth fell open. Was she serious?
“Take it–get it out of here, maybe you’ll make a profit.” I was dumbfounded. This woman was selling me a puzzle for fifty cents and encouraging me to sell it on eBay and make a profit. What was she thinking? Why didn’t she take the money herself?
A lot of people don’t want to take the time to set up an account, list an item, package it up and then ship it out. It’s just not worth it to them. Taking the fifty-cents from a garage sale did her more good because then the item was gone. No hassles, no chance of it getting lost in the mail or the chance of a customer wanting a refund. She probably had a full time job and didn’t need the money eBay would give. She wanted to save time.
This is good, because if everybody would do it. I’d be out of a job.
Now, I paid fifty cents for this puzzle and took it home. I looked it up on eBay and saw the same puzzle had bids for $15 with a couple of hours to go. I put mine on as a Buy It Now, with a Bid. I made the Bid the same price it was currently going for and the Buy It Now for about ten dollars more. Within an hour,  the puzzle was gone at the Buy It Now price ($25)! I was speechless and afraid I would collapse from the shock. The other puzzle was still going strong at it’s $15 bid from an hour before.
What a good feeling that was!

Be sure to pick up and hold onto anything that’s factory sealed and anything that you want to buy (either personally or for the business). There have
been so many things I’ve missed because I’ve let them sit there while I was looking at other things and someone else bought it right out from under my nose. Didn’t they know I wanted to buy that? Apparently not, because I wasn’t holding it. Hold onto everything until you’re done looking then go over any criteria you use to decide if you want to buy something at the end. That way, nobody has a chance to buy something you want while you’re thinking about one item. You can always put something back if you change your mind, and sometimes you’ll make somebody very happy who said. “Oh, shoot! I missed that item and I really wanted it. I’m so glad they put it back.” Actually, that will probably be me.
You know I’ve come to the conclusion that people who are having garage sales should provide shopping carts for the convenience of their customers…

It was a warm and sunny summer afternoon. I was equipped with a cold bottle of water and small bills. That’s what I needed on this mission, the people I was about to deal with would not be able to break a twenty. I checked the map and then the house number. I knew this was the place. This was where it was going down. It was a small house, in a nice neighborhood, there was a welcome sign on the door, toys scattered on the manicured front lawn, and a dog on the front porch who was too busy enjoying the summer afternoon to even bother growling at a visitor. Of course, this was all a front, the real action happened in the alley around back. With cryptically marked signs that read “Garage Sale Today,” I was about to blow the lid off their operation. You see…I’m undercover. People mistake me for your “Average Bargain Hunter,” but, in reality, I’m not. I buy things at garage sales at rock bottom prices that people think are worthless and then turn around and sell them for a profit online. I’m what some people might call a “trader”!

You can do it too! It’s easy, all you need is the right equipment, a sharp eye, an eBay account and to read my blog. It’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it.
On this blog I’ll tell you some of my garage saleing tips, packing and shipping tips, what items to be on the look out for, what items to stay away from, some funny and some not so funny anecdotes of my first hand garage saleing and eBay selling experiences. I’ll also share strategies and some inside tips I wish I’d known when I first started selling on eBay.