Things You'll Need:
- eBay account.
- money to buy items with.
- lots of time
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Step 1
The first step is to decide what to sell. There are 2 general types of eBay resellers. You have scalpers, who buy new items, like playstation3s or sports tickets and resell them, or antiques dealers, who sell old items they have acquired cheaply at flea markets and such.
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Step 2
Now off to scalpers. These people buy lots of new stuff and sell it online, for some amount more than they paid for it. scalping is a risky business because you have to time the market well or you can get stuck with unused product you cannot sell.
The trick to scalping is to find out what is in great demand and low supply. for example when the playstation 3 came out scalpers quickly learned that they could buy all the units in the store and then sell them on ebay for 20 to 30% more than they paid for them. The reason for this is that the customers who wanted one could no longer buy them in stores, because the scalpers had them all. So they had to pay the inflated prices on eBay. but be warned though, customers really hate the people who do this. customers want the lowest price and don't seem to care if it cuts into another's livelihood. -
Step 3
Sports ticket scalper at work.Another great thing to scalp is sports tickets. People often will pay top dollar for sports tickets on eBay because the stadium is sold out. The trick though is to time the market just right. A Ticket is not worth anything after the event it is for is threw, so you have to time your sales just right to cash in on the market. Also the price people are willing to pay goes up the closer to the time of the event is.
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Step 4
Now if you would prefer to sell antiques you can also make good money, however there will be a lot more mental work involved. An antiques dealer will have to be very well educated in the particular form of antiques they deal with in order to spot a deal you can resell for good money. i specialize in antique bottles and sterling silver dinnerware( forks,spoons,etc..) in order to buy bottles i can resell i had to learn just about everything there is to know about conditions, values, age and rarity of bottles. 2 bottles of the same make in two different shades can be worth vastly different amounts of money. it all depends. you have to look up your stuff. I once found a bag of sterling silver flatware, containing over 450$ worth of silver all for only 15$. The person selling it just saw it as a bag of spoons and knives. They did not know the value of the silver. There loss my gain.
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Step 5
Now for a word on buying and selling antiques. once you find your item try to negotiate to buy it for half what you could sell it for on eBay. If you shop swap meets and flea markets this will be easy. The sellers at these places expect people to haggle and price there stuff a little high. A good point to haggle for is to point out any problems or damage an item has when asking for a better price.
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Step 6
When you go to sell it on eBay you want to get maximum profit for your item. What this means is to make sure that you sell it the right way. If you are selling something like sports tickets or an xbox 360, you can price it very low as a starting bid because buyers will fight over it and bring the price up real quick. On things like old bottles or silverware however, you want to start it with a fair price for you, and a 10 day auction. Your item may only get one or 2 bids, and you want to give buyers a long time to find your auction.
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Step 7
Hopefully this guide worked out good for you, if so please rate it. I love feedback on my guides. Now go out and make some Money!
Comments
lildutchgirl56 said
on 7/2/2009 I just started to sell on eBay and this is perfect information on reselling the stuff I buy. Thanks!