EBay Inventory | Online Auction Resources

Researching items to sell on eBay on the run!

Have you ever been out somewhere and found that perfect item to sell on eBay?

What do you ususally do when this happens? Do you:-

take the risk and buy it right then and there?
Or
write down all the details and then go home and do you research first?

Ultimately you should do the latter. Research is the most important aspect of selling on eBay. You may think something will do really well when in reality there may be no profit involved.

So how can you save yourself time and research items ‘on the run’?

There are two options that are available.

1. You can haul your laptop computer and mobile internet connection around with you and look up eBay completed listings and other third party sites such as Terapeak.

2. Or you can look up eBay completed listings and Terapeak using your mobile phone! Most up to date mobile phones have internet access and if you are like me you may have an iPhone. Now I am an iPhone groupie! I just love my iPhone and I never leave home without it. The benefit of iPhones to anyone running an eBay business is that you have access to the iPhone applications for both eBay and Terapeak.
If you don’t have an iPhone but still have a web-enabled phone you can still look up these sites and do your research, it may just take slightly longer and be a bit more fiddly to navigate through the sites, but it is still possible.

eBay Inventory – Where to find it?

Most of the books written today about selling on eBay are from America, and therefore aimed directly at doing business on eBay USA. As fabulous as these books are many of the methods they teach and the items that some recommend you sell just don’t work in Australia. Now this does not mean an eBay business in Australia is any less profitable. It just means we need to adjust our methods and our product selecti0n to suit the Australian market.

There are many ways to find items to ‘flip’ or re-sell on eBay:-

‘stuff’ currently in your house that you no longer want. You’d be surprised what you have hanging around that you are keeping for no reason. I’ve read many times that the average household has about $2,000 worth of un-used and unwanted stuff just waiting to be sold on eBay.
eBay Arbitrage – the process of finding items that are listed badly or incorrectly, purchasing them, ‘flipping’ or re-listing them on eBay and selling them for a profit. (If you would like to learn more here’s my blog post dedicated to eBay Arbitrage – http://onlineauctionresources.com/ebay-arbitrage-what-is-it.html)
other online auction sites where you can also find listings that are listed incorrectly, or just sell for a low price. I do believe this is because most other online auction sites do not get the same amount of traffic and eager buyers that eBay has.
at local garage sales where there are always heaps of bargains to be found as people generally want to get rid of stuff cheaply and get a bit of money from it.
our local Australian classifieds websites (eg. Craigslist, Trading Post, Gumtree and many others)
‘daily deals’ websites in Australia (Deals Direct, Zazz, Daily Deals, Catch of the Day and many others).
second hand shops. You can always find some designer label clothing, vintage clothing or vintage items that you can resell.
retail Stores during the sales periods, find popular items that are massively reduced. Keep an eye out when stores have 50% or more off items, these can make great items to re-sell.
retail stores when they are getting rid of discontinued items. And sometimes these can be the most mundane household items. eg. filters for a discontinued water filter jug, consumable parts for common household items. You really need to keep your eyes and your mind open here. These items don’t need to be ‘big name’ expensive electronic items. You could make a very nice income selling common everyday household items.
raffles and competitions that you come across. Late last year I won a raffle for a $500 sewing machine. I already had a sewing machine so guess what I did with it?? That was a very nice $350 profit for something that cost me nothing. Who cares if you don’t want what you win, you can sell it on eBay!

I hope this gets you thinking about places to get inventory for you eBay business and also gives you some new ideas for products that you hadn’t considered before.

eBay Inventory – 250% & 390% profit made on ‘flipped’ items!

Today’s post is about some inventory items I purchased from my local ‘Spotlight’ store with the idea I would ‘flip’ them and sell them on eBay. Now people in Australia would know that Spotlight is a large craft and haberdashery shop.

There have been some fabulous clearance sales there lately in their craft section. They have been getting rid of embroidery, cross stitch and crochet pattern leaflets for $1.00.

They have been getting rid of some great baby and scrapbooking items too but I haven’t got around to listing them yet. Stay tuned, if they go well I’ll add an article about that future success.

Now I do particularly love cross stitch so I’m always trying to sell things that I know about and things I love to do myself. Isn’t it every eBayer’s dream to sell what they love?

I placed these items on eBay initially as auction listings with a starting prices of $2.50 with a flat rate, Australia-wide postage cost of $1.10.

One or two things sold but the majority of the stock I had did not. Now that is fine as on average some things need to be listed more than once before they sell. You also need to get known by sellers as a reputable seller in a niche market so you get return buyers or buyers tell others about your eBay listings.

So I listed the remaining items again, but this time I placed them as ‘Buy It Now’ and put the starting prices at $5.00 with FREE postage throughout Australia. The advantage here is that I’m making a bigger profit per item even though I’m offering free postage. The listings also last for 30 days instead of 3, 5, 7 or 10 days as in an auction (I have an eBay store so I get ‘Buy It Now listings for 30 days for a 40 cent list fee).

Would you believe it they are selling very nicely? So far it’s one item every 2 – 3 days, although on Friday night (12 March, 2010) I sold 2 items to one buyer so more savings to me as I can combine my free postage costs!!

It just shows that “Buy It Now’ with a higher sale price to cover postage costs then offering free postage works well.

I have done this with many items recently and in some cases, where I have multiples of the one item, I have placed 2 listings, one as an auction for a low starting price where the buyer pays the postage and the other as ‘Buy It Now’ with a much higher price and free postage. I have also connected the listings by placing the following text in the auction listing of:-

In a rush? Can’t wait for this auction to end?

Check my eBay store to buy this item now.

This way I am directing people to the higher priced ‘Buy It Now’ listing. This gives the buyer the benefit of not having to wait and get in to a bidding war with others and gives them free postage.