First of all, sell what you have. Go through your house and take items that you think might be valuable and look them up on Ebay. It is more effective to do an advanced search and click the completed listings box, this will allow you to see all of the completed listings for your search criteria in the last 15 days.
After you have made some sort of pile of items you would like to get rid of, and researched them, there is a good chance that some won't be worth selling. But going through this process will give you good practice with Ebay and a basic idea of what actually sells and what does not.
Once you have sold all of the things in your house: used clothing, DVDs, books, electronics, Christmas gifts you never returned, weird glass bottles, skiing equipment, etc… it is time for you to start looking elsewhere for products.
This is the part where you start selling what you know, or what you are interested in. For example, I was lucky enough to befriend an Ebay seller who makes her own all natural home-made soap. Now, she has a great product of which she fully understands the intricacies. She sells bars of soap as a business at farmers markets and on her website, but she also extends her selling potential by creating auctions on Ebay for her oddly shaped and extra bars. Her seller name is Sacred Organics. She sells what she knows and does a fair job of it.
She also introduced me to expanding horizontally by selling several different types of products. For example she also sells used clothing to supplement her business’s income.
You can sell anything you put time into learning about, be it related to your other auctions, or not.There is another important lesson to learn in the selling of used clothing, and that is to
sell something with name recognition. For example, while searching through piles of clothing looking for something to sell it would be a good idea to pick a pair of
Gap or Old Navy Jeans, because the companies have tons of TV commercials and advertise like crazy to have recognizable name brands. It would not be a good idea to pick a pair of
Costco’s Kirkland Jeans, something that nobody really wants to buy second hand, as it is not trendy, or well advertised.
When finding items to sell, make your job easy by selling something that is popular and has name brand recognition.
Now that you have an idea about what you want to sell, and you have researched how this thing sells on the completed listings, you just have to find products. There are a lot of different places to look, and the reason you did your research was so that when you are out in the field scouting for products you know which items are popular and the price you will be able to resell them.
It would be helpful to get a journal to keep ideas of what you want to sell, and prices these things have sold for on Ebay.
Places to start looking:
- Estate Sales – be early!
- Garage Sales – be early!
- Church and Rummage sales – be early!
- Goodwill and other places that sell used goods
- Physical Auctions As well as Goodwill Auctions
- Craig’s List
- Freecycle – upon signing up you will receive a lot of spam in your email, but there is often good stuff to find that you only have to drive to pick up.
- Antique Shops
- Wholesalers and Overstock Liquidation - I will go in future posts
This should get you started with knowing what to sell and where to find it. But you should also
tell your friends and co-workers that you now sell goods on Ebay. I have received boxes of books, and pairs of new J.Crew pants from friends who just wanted to get rid of their stuff but did not have a reason to donate it.
Good luck hunting, there are people out there waiting to buy what you have to sell!
