This week we discuss the ins and outs of selling on eBay, breaking down the process of deciding whether or not it is worth it to try to sell something on this platform. We talk through the organization of profit and fees and touch a little on Amazon and how its selling experience compares to eBay’s.
Ruthie: Today we’re going to be talking about eBay. Bekkah has been working with eBay for a long time now. I’m more new to that. I’ve had some successes and some not-so-successes so we’re going to talk about some things that I have questions about and hopefully, there are some things that you can learn from this.
How Do You Decide If Something Is Worth Selling On eBay?
Bekkah: First of all it has to be something that is the right price point. I think that’s part of it. Size matters! I’ve been looking a lot at things that are smaller than say the size of a shoebox. I think that’s important unless you’re selling in bulk because when you have something smaller it’s gonna weigh less and it’s gonna be easier to ship. That is where I usually start. What is its size and then what is it worth? That’s where I start with that. Also if I see something that might be valuable, I’ll look at it and look on eBay. I have the eBay app on my phone and I’ll search whatever it is, the actual model number on eBay to see if I can find it already for sale. I then filter by “sold items”.
The reason I do that is because a lot of people will say, “Oh, well, my grandmother gave me this clarinet and on eBay of selling for $400.” When you actually filter by how many have sold you’ll see that maybe the last one that sold was like two years ago, like 2018 or 2015. And then you realize, “Yeah, this is not actually selling.” And when it did sell it sold for like $7.99 or something. The frequency of selling is another thing to know. I do all of this even before I pick it up and I’m like, “Yep, I’m gonna go buy this.” This is all stuff I do while I’m just standing there looking at an item. Whether it’s a garage sale or a thrift store. Maybe I’m at the actual store in the clearance section. Whatever it is I’m looking at that first even before I pick up the item because I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it, in terms of, does it actually sell?
How to Figure Out if An Item Has Regular Sales On eBay?
When you find the item if you can see that a couple of them have sold within the last few days or within the week you know that there’s pretty good movement on the item. Now eBay doesn’t show you every sale that’s happened because obviously that would be proprietary information, but they’ll probably give you a smattering of, “This is what’s been selling!” It’ll give you the sold price or it’ll say, “This person had an offer.” So it was lower than whatever it was listed for, but they won’t tell you what lower meant.
You kind of have to look in between the lines of what the price point is. Then you have to say, “Okay, I know for sure there were a couple of these that sold for around let’s say 20 bucks, and right now you can buy that item for let’s say ten dollars.” If you’re buying it for ten and you’re selling it for twenty is it worth it? Now it depends on how much those people sold it for, with the shipping. Did they pay shipping themselves or did they have free shipping?
How to Factor in Your Shipping Costs for eBay Sales
If you’re paying to ship you can expect to pay at least three to eight dollars an item depending on what it is, the weight of it, and how fast it’s going to get there. That’s another thing you need to think about. Is this something that’s gonna give me a good return on investment? A general rule of thumb for me is if I can see three of those items that have sold within like the last week and a half two weeks I’m like, “Okay, that’s moving pretty fast.” And if I can take it and double the money on it. If I buy it for five dollars and I could sell it for ten dollars with the buyer paying for the shipping, then I know that the eBay fees are not going to destroy my entire profit margin. Now, that would be only probably after you get your eBay fees and your Paypal fees, maybe $3.00 profit, $2.00. Which is a pretty low markup if you’re thinking about, “Oh, I want to package all of this myself and sell it!” Because then you have to think about your packing tape, your printing costs for your package labels, as well as your receipt inside – your packing slip. I probably spend fifty dollars in ink for my printer every couple, not every couple of months because I do eBay on and off, but you really have to factor those things in, too, to see if two dollars is really worth it for you. Those are all the things that I factor in at the very beginning even before I pick something up off the shelf.
How Do You Make Sure Your Item Gets Viewed / Visibility on eBay?
Ruthie: Okay once you have something listed, say you went through that process and you figured out what would be worth it, once you have something listed, when do you decide to make changes to the listing? How long do you wait before you decide, “Oh, I should lower the price because it’s been sitting here for too long.”
Bekkah: The very first thing you should do even before lowering your price is to look at the sold category.
You should never list a similar item if you just found it on eBay. “Oh, yep, there’s one. I’m going to list one too.” You should always create a listing duplicate, basically, of a sold item. You go into the sold item, you view it, and then you say “sell similar product.”
You basically duplicate that listing and upload your own images, as well as tweak the categories. Maybe they sold it in it was a blue one and yours is green or whatever. You make sure that all the item description looks correct. Was it new versus used for there’s? All that kind of stuff. I always try to test out different keyword models first even before changing my price because if you don’t have the right keyword in place, you’re missing a lot of traffic. I had something listed that was electronics-based and I was looking at “Okay this is what someone’s selling it for,” but if it’s a pretty well-known name brand product you’re just gonna use the name brand within there. That also usually means it’s going to be a lot of competition.
If it’s that kind of product where there is a lot of competition, it really is going to come down to price and your overall seller rating. The more you do with eBay, the more you’re getting reviews, and people are saying, “Yep, this is a good quality seller. ” The better off you are going to be.
How to Get Good Seller Reviews on eBay
If you’re doing your shipping right away, eBay actually gives you two to three days for processing time once someone has purchased something. But if you have someone buy something and you ship it out within a day or two people, really like that and you get a lot of good reviews. Having good customer service is important in it to get you higher. That’s actually going to help you not have to finagle with price way more than it is to just be doing competition on price. That’s how a lot of people will get an advantage over you – the keywords as well as their seller rating.
When Should I Lower The Price on My eBay Listing?
When I finally look at the price, because price is the ultimate last thing I want to look at after everything else. That’s basically eating my profit margin. When I finally look at that, I’m looking at, “What is everyone else selling for? What is the difference between quality, if there is any. Is my new versus used? What are they selling?” If it’s really just they’re the exact same product. They’re both brand new. Then I start looking at can I drop it by a few pennies. Or is there a way that I can alter this by saying, “I’m going to do a cheaper selling point but I’m gonna charge more for shipping.” There are multiple filters within eBay. You can also jack up your price, and then give free shipping. Which a lot of people do and are very successful because a ton of people search eBay by “free shipping only.”
Because they don’t want to pay for shipping, but actually I mean when you talk about who’s making a ton of money on eBay it’s PayPal, eBay, and the shipping company. I would say the shipping company is making the most money out of everybody. Unless you’re selling a really high-end product, where you’re getting a good return on investment and you got it for a really good deal for it to begin with. If anyone ever started as a small shipping company just for the Midwest or a different region of the United States, I think Spee-Dee Delivery totally has it down right now. They’re so much cheaper than US Postal Service, but they only ship to the Midwest so that’s kind of a bummer. Anyways shipping is a serious market for making money.
What’s the Difference Between Selling on eBay and Amazon?
Ruthie: What other selling sites have you used? How does eBay compare to those other selling sites?
Bekkah: Amazon has a seller number that you can see this category, this item is selling for this seller rank. I think this is in our resources section on the tools and tips page of our website, as well. There’s this tool by Jungle Scout that you can use to copy that seller rank number for the category and then see how many units of that are selling on average per month. You can see if this actually selling.
I like that eBay has that functionality within it. I’ve done a little bit with like Mercari and a couple of other used item platforms. What I like about eBay is now they have the feature where you can take a picture of your item and it actually will help you superimpose a background like a white backgroundless image to make it a little more professional. I really like that. They’re doing a lot of upgraded features to help you look more professional. If you are just selling it from your house or something. I think that probably because eBay is so big the claim usually always goes to the customer. They’re gonna credit the customer, and they can just straight take your money back out of your PayPal account and refund the customer. Even if the customers lying. That’s kind of a bummer, but I do like that you can set your package size and weight and everything within eBay. Whereas Amazon you can do that too but usually Amazon’s standard shipping fee is like $3.99 for books and stuff. I don’t know if I like that entirely.
I also don’t like that Amazon updated some categories where they make you pay like a 99 cent listing fee if your item sells. Whereas, if you’re not doing the special descriptions and everything within eBay you can list for free. They are just taking their straight commission which is around 15% plus PayPal. Both Amazon and eBay have commission fees that they charge. They’re about the same amount, but I like that Amazon auto deposits to a bank account. Whereas, eBay you have to use a go-between so you use PayPal to go between it.
How Do You Keep Track of The Items that You Sell in eBay?
Ruthie: How do you keep track of the items that you are selling? How do you stay organized with that? Your payments, buying, and selling, what’s making a profit, and what’s not. What ways do you stay organized?
Bekkah: There are reports within eBay that show you how much you paid for shipping. How much you paid for like your fees and stuff. You just need to record personally what you buy your item for because eBay doesn’t know that. Tracking that I bought these things. I store all my stuff in one place that I’m selling so that I can keep track of, “I bought this at a thrift store for $2. I sold it for $15.” But with the fee is that I can backtrack that and say, “This is how much I actually made.” I usually do that on like a monthly basis because eBay will let you get paid straight away into your PayPal account.
Then on a monthly basis, eBay you an invoice for all of the things that you’ve sold online and you have to pay their fees for selling. So never take your money out of PayPal until you get your invoice from eBay to make sure you get that paid for before you go out and spend whatever money because some of it’s theirs and you haven’t paid for it yet. In the transfer process, PayPal takes their cut right away so you don’t have to worry about that which is nice. Doing that on a monthly basis is good.
