Recently I decided to attempt to do a little flipping of items. I had no idea how to sell something on eBay but I was able to get my first sale the other day! I was extremely surprised. I had never really used eBay much before; however, I’ve always had this fascination with buying and selling items for profit. I used to play Neopets and Diablo 2 a lot (haha), but I’d play them in an entrepreneurial way in which I’d essentially do retail arbitrage for video game currency. I’d trade or buy items from the marketplace to sell in my own store. I guess I always thought it was fun!
I’ve also been wanting to get rid of items around the house. I’m quite into minimalism, yet there’s so much crap around the place. Having traveled for 2 years with just a carry-on suitcase and a backpack, I know firsthand that we really don’t need that much stuff to live. It makes for a simpler life having less clutter – cause it’s less to think about, care about, and attach to.
Anyway, I decided to do a first test of eBay. It’s easy for me to steer away from projects that require me to learn something completely new, but I decided I should try once because I wanted to familiarize myself with potential income streams for future purposes.
1. Creating an eBay Account
First you’ll need to create an account:
2. Creating my First Listing (Description)
To sell your first listing, you only really need to fill out the following information:
I was surprised because the entire process actually only took about 3 minutes. I took a photo of my toy and put up a title, image, description, and figured out the shipping and pricing settings. For the pricing and description, I looked around at other listings, checked out how much people priced similar products, and emulated how they described them. For the title, I used basic ideas of how I normally would search for those items. I also used the search engine results on eBay to figure out what is most searched.
In terms of shipping, I decided to go with First Class mail and use the recommended settings. I wasn’t very familiar with how to ship things but I figured that this whole process would give me an understanding. Even if I took a loss because I didn’t do it correctly, I would know for the future.
3. Getting a Sale
Lo and behold, someone made an offer on the toy 2 days after, and I decided to accept it. I was very surprised that the product received interest and an offer.
I noticed I had to send an invoice within eBay, so once I did that the buyer sent payment.
4. Shipping the Item
Afterwards I was able to go into eBay and actually print a shipping label. That meant I would pay eBay the shipping cost to be able to print the label. eBay also offers a bit of a discount for ordering your shipping with them. The part I was confused about was what type of mailer I was supposed to use. I’m kind of a newbie when it comes to mailing stuff.
I decided to use first class packaging as I was going to use my own box. Priority Boxes allow flat rate pricing, but you’ll need to get the USPS Priority boxes shipped to you to use, and the flat rate pricing may cost more than the first class mailing. First class packages are normally up to 15.99 oz. I discovered this by talking to someone at the post office, who told me that first class packages are limited only by weight and not by size of the shipping container.
I put the toy into a box and added a little thank you note within the package to let the customer know he was appreciated! In order to weigh your package, you should use a small scale like this ACCUTECK scale. This way you’ll figure out if first class packaging works for you or not.
Summary
The eBay experience got me thinking about attempting to sell a lot of the stuff around the house on eBay, Mercari, Poshmark, and Craigslist. We’ll see how that goes. I also ended up buying some stuff at a garage sale to test the flipping process. They haven’t sold yet but I’ll see how it goes.
So this was a small summary of the basic eBay listing and shipping process. This quick tutorial might be obvious for some. but may be helpful for those who haven’t used eBay. Let me know if you have any feedback in the comments below!
