Auction Power Guide

Also, what do I do about my income tax? Do I turn in the income from Ebay or just my regular Job? Thanks!

Trust me; you want no part of the “wholesaler” game. What once was a great idea has now spread so everyone and their mother is doing it. Margins are razor thin at best and I suspect non-existent when you factor in most drop shippers "Membership fees" along with eBay and PayPal’s cut.

Clothing is a BIG business on eBay. Try shopping a discounter like TJ Maxx, Ross for Less, Marshalls or whatever it is called in your area for women’s clothes from designers like Ralph Lauren, BCBG or Tommy Hilfiger. Often times you can find, for example, a woman’s shirt that sells in the mall for $50 on sale for $10. Odds are if you put it on eBay for $25, you’d sell it. The customer thinks they saved $25 and you made $15. 🙂 Now multiply it by 100 sales and you’re in business. I do about $2K a month in sales and I profit about $500 and that’s from just working part time. It’s not "easy money", you do have to work at it, but if you’re willing to invest the time and effort, you can do it.

Regarding your taxes – Find yourself a good CPA – I managed to write down all of my eBay profit and actually showed a “loss” once I factored in expenses. If you are running your auctions as a business, you may write off a portion of your mortgage/rent, utilities, mileage, internet, paypal fees, postal supplies etc. In addition, if you did any shopping while on vacation you may write off a portion of your hotel bills, your food bills and your mileage there as well.

If you make money what are you selling and where do you get it for cheaper than you sell it? Give me some tips please. Thanks for being so sweet!!

Julie,

The real goal behind making money on Ebay is to find/sell those ‘items’ that a large consumer market are always ‘buying’, regardless of the market.

To find the ‘hot items’, for a lack of better words, that are sold month-after-month, check out these two (2) Ebay references:

* http://pulse.ebay.com

Here, you can find a LOT of GOOD information, such as what ‘categories’ on Ebay are hot and/or what the hot selling ‘items’ are as well.

* http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

This second resource is a MONTHLY PDF File, composed and maintained by Ebay, which will tell you what categories/items have been consistent ‘hot items’ from month to month. While the PDF file will change with each passing month, the URL above WILL NOT! So, bookmark it and continue to review it every month.

The next thing to consider is finding ‘drop-shippers’ of some of these products. The benefit to having a ‘drop-shipper’ is that when your auction is over, you send the request to the drop-shipper, they then take over the ‘customer experience’ and will handle everything from shipping the product to the customer, dealing with charge-backs and most everything else you can think of that would be common place in any type of transaction.

Another key to being highly effective/successful with Ebay Auctions is understanding all the different types of ‘auctions’ there are and how each one can help increase your sales.

A great resource that I recently came across which outlines everything there is to know about ebay auctions and making money is found in an ebook I came across not to long ago and you can get a copy if you’re interested in taking your auctions from ‘somewhat profitable’ to ‘hugely profitable’. The link is here:

http://fhurl.com/b663

Remember though, nothing is ‘easy’ when it comes to making money on ebay. If it was, then everyone would be selling on ebay, but since we know that’s not happening, you CAN profit from these techniques!

Hope this helps?

Cheers,

Jack G.

Yeah, I know you sell items and hopefully make a profit. However, I was looking for more information on legitimate wholesalers, if it’s smart to only use dropshipping wholesalers, or to just drive around and hopefully find goods that are popular on sale or clearance and resell them using ebay.

Thanks so much, just trying to get started.

It is difficult to make any money by buying wholesale and reselling on eBay because so many other people are already buying things from the same wholesalers. It is very competitive so you have to keep your prices low to sell so there is usually a very low profit margin on each item sold.

Drop shippers can be kind of scary because you have no control. You can’t see the product before it is shipped and you need to depend on them to ship the item promptly. If things ship slow or arrive damaged it hurts your seller feedback and you get negatives. It can also be a mess to deal with returns of damaged items since you have to deal with the drop shipper. I have used a few drop shippers, but only those that I have tested several times by making purchases and have the items shipped to me to make sure they are dependable.

People who make the most on eBay are the ones who search estate sales, garage sales, swap meets, liquidators, quitting business sales, Craig’s list, etc. for items that are being sold at well below their value and re-sell them. Of course you need to become knowledgeable about the value of the items you see and spend most of your spare time looking for items to sell.

My goal is to be a ebay powerseller. I searched online for items of what to sell on Ebay all I come up with is Garage sales. Does anyone have any tips on finding drop shippers or wholesalers or know items i can buy on craigslist and resale on Ebay? or just tips in general? my ebay user ID is "shema60619" any advice or leads will be appreciated.

You need to build your feedback. You need to have a certain amount of feedback first.

Sell more things around the house and keep your feedback up.

You can look for dropshippers but there’s a reason people don’t use them. Sell what you know. I sell used and vintage clothing and I’m an ebay powerseller.

Be registered with eBay for at least 90 days.
Have an account in good standing.
Maintain a positive Feedback of 98% or higher over the past 12 months.
Follow all eBay policies.
Have a minimum of 100 transactions and $3,000 in sales with US buyers over the past 12 months.
Receive at least a 4.60 average from US buyers across all 4 detailed seller ratings (DSRs).
For all transactions with US buyers, have no more than 1.00% of transactions with low DSRs (1s or 2s) on item as described, and a maximum of 2.00% of low DSRs on communication, shipping time, and shipping and handling charges.
For all transactions with US buyers, have no more than 1.00% of transactions result in opened eBay Buyer Protection and PayPal Buyer Protection cases, and no more than 0.30% of transactions result in closed cases without seller resolution.