In my reel-scrolling sessions, I see a lot of people making full-time income on eBay reselling pretty much anything.
Over the past few months, I've begun selling various items I've either bought, or been given, to make some extra money.
My strategy is to start small, with things I mostly understand, and equipment that makes the entire process a bit easier at the level I'm at.
Taking advantage of my no-insertion-fee listings
First off, eBay offers 250 no-insertion-fee listings per month.
What this means is that for the first 250 listings I make on eBay, I don't pay anything to list the items, as long as I don't add any features that make the listing cost money. (Things like listing upgrades and promoted listings.)
All of my listings so far are Buy It Now, Good ‘Til Canceled, meaning that they run continuously until I sell the item, or I take the listing down.
This is great, because I can list something once, for free, and it stays until I sell.
The fees only kick in if I sell the items.
It's a great situation to be in. No cost except my time and whatever I've paid for the items I'm selling.
Going easy on equipment and supplies
One mistake I've made in previous ventures is investing too much in equipment at the outset.
This time around, I've gone easy.
- I didn't get 1,000 envelopes to ship things, I got 50. They cost a little more, but I'll get the bigger quantity when I'm sure I'll need them.
- I got a thermal printer, but I'm making do with the starter pack of labels until I need more.
- I had a postal scale from a number of years ago already
- I don't have a storefront. I'm working my way up to listing enough to need one.
I'm looking to demonstrate sales at level 1 before I buy equipment like I'm at level 5.
Now for the eBay items I'm selling …
Cash
When I began selling on eBay again, I started by selling dollars with cool serial numbers.
This was something that I'd been immersed in for quite a while, mainly through my Cool Serial Facebook group.
After doing a bunch of pricing videos on the YouTube channel, and researching prices on eBay, I saw a few deals on eBay that were flipping opportunities.
Most of the listings for cool serial number bills I have up now are ZIP code bills. There is a market for people who collect bills that have serial numbers that are ZIP codes. For example, 00090210 is a ZIP code serial number.
These are the only items I've sold this year. I've sold eleven bills for a total revenue of $130.24. Considering these are all $1 bills that I bought for under $2, that's pretty good.
Catalogs
My hometown was long a place for the manufacture of fine lead crystal art glass.
My father and grandfather were both avid collectors of Steuben art glass, both the older colored pieces (Carder Steuben) and the later clear pieces.
My mother recently offered me a few dozen catalogs that my father and grandfather had collected. Some of these sold for good money on eBay, possibly for their pricing information or just because the pictures were very nice.
I've listed a number of these, but none have sold yet. My pricing might be a bit high, but there's still a lot of room for the price to come down, since the catalogs were gifted to me.
Crafts and Cables
This past week I got a couple of random lots of two kinds of items.
The first was 18 packages of two 1-to-3 fan splitter cables, used for distributing power to multiple cooling fans in desktop computer towers.
The second was 13 packages of ten clear acrylic blanks in the shape of a house. These can be etched for ornaments or keychains.
I've listed these in lots of two packages each. Haven't sold any yet.
Clothing?
Some time ago I received a couple of bags of mostly women's clothing in good shape.
I haven't listed these items yet, but will in the future.
List once and wait for sales
Selling on eBay can certainly be done in spare time.
After the listings go up, they stay there until someone buys or they're taken down.
Notification of a sale is a nice little surprise that can come at any time.
