@mooreincome has inspired me to look into doing some reselling online. I actually have a very decent camera (a Canon DSLR with interchangeable lenses). So all I need to start is sourcing material to sell. I live down the street from a Salvation Army, so I’m going to start there. Also, there are some Goodwill Boutiques in my area as well (higher end Goodwills), so I’m going to take a look at those as well.
My wins for today:
I received a $49 refund check back from Chase. I signed up for a credit card where I had to spend $500 in 3 months in order to get a $250 credit at Starbucks. I did this, and they added the annual fee of $49. I was charged the fee but it was refunded when I cancelled the card. So that was nice. It went back into our checking.
I somehow found (I don’t remember how - it may have been craigslist) a 4 day online focus group about coffee that pays $175. I should receive a check in the mail 5 days or so after the focus group ends on Saturday. So this is exciting! This money is going into one of my Ally savings accounts - I have 6 plus an online Ally checking account. I decided to open up separate accounts through Ally for different wants/needs like vacation, home fund, etc. I’m only contributing like $50 per month towards most of them, but it’s something. And the savings rate is way higher than my local credit union - I think it’s like 1.59% or something like that now.
Speaking of craigslist, I semi-regularly check the gigs and etc./misc. jobs. There are all kinds of things that get posted here, like focus groups. I’ve participated in local and online focus groups, and they pay pretty well.
As a very long time eBay seller myself, just make sure you are checking sold prices before you purchase anything for resale. Far too many times do new(er) sellers find something they think is a good price only to find out it’s selling for $1.00 more than they bought it for. For the most part, things at the GW Boutique are priced too high to resell, but check them to make sure because all GW are different.
Clothing is a very saturated category, so unless you are finding something name brand for very cheap, it’s hard to make money with them. However, if you are going to venture into clothing, concentrate on Plus Size. Plus size sells well, even if they aren’t name brand. A good pattern and style in Plus will sell well and for a good price.
I used to buy coffee mugs with the intent on reselling them. Because I tend to stretch myself too thin, I never listed them. My daughter wanted to do eBay, so we started with the 30+ coffee mugs that I had acquired and she’s sold quite a few of them, some for over $25 that I paid 99 cents for! However, they tend to be slow sellers, so they may sit for awhile before they sell.
Some things to check out at GW tho are board games. They sometimes have very unique and older version of games that will sell. Sometimes, if you get an incomplete game, you can sell the pieces are replacements. I got an incomplete Star Wars Monopoly game, pieced it out and sold off all the properties, money, game board and cards and made a $20 profit.
I hope that info helps and my apologies if you already knew all this
Glad I could be of some inspiration and I look forward to the many more financial wins you will have as you start to resell some stuff!
And remember there are folks like myself and Jeremy above who are more than happy to provide tips and advice to help you out along the way and I look forward to learning from you as well!
@lismox, you had a great day!! Congratulations and thanks for tips about Craigslist and focus groups. I’ve barely given Craigslist any attention in the past, but it sounds like I need to do that!
I have a quick question for Jeremy and/or Jon about ebay. In the past, I’ve only sold my own household items in the hopes of getting rid of things while making some money at the same time. I would like to escalate to selling sourced items. I’m not interested in opening a store on ebay. I realize there are now changes to sales tax in all states, etc that I must allow ebay to take care of for me, and I’ve recently met with my CPA to make sure I comply with current laws regarding same.
My question for you both is this: for things like clothing and electronics, don’t you have to be approved by ebay to sell in a lot of categories? Is that difficult?
@lismox, you had a great day!! Congratulations and thanks for tips about Craigslist and focus groups. I’ve barely given Craigslist any attention in the past, but it sounds like I need to do that!
I have a quick question for Jeremy and/or Jon about ebay. In the past, I’ve only sold my own household items in the hopes of getting rid of things while making some money at the same time. I would like to escalate to selling sourced items. I’m not interested in opening a store on ebay. I realize there are now changes to sales tax in all states, etc that I must allow ebay to take care of for me, and I’ve recently met with my CPA to make sure I comply with current laws regarding same.
My question for you both is this: for things like clothing and electronics, don’t you have to be approved by ebay to sell in a lot of categories? Is that difficult?
You absolutely don’t need a store. eBay gives you 50 free listings per month. However, eBay recently added a Starter level store that is very inexpensive ($8 month) for 100 listings.
As for sales tax, eBay takes care of all states that have passed the Marketplace Facilitator Law. The only tax you would have to worry about is your in state sales. There are still states that haven’t passed or started the MFL, you do not need to worry about those and when you do, eBay is the one who has to collect everything.
eBay requires no approval to sell in any category. However, if you are new, they may limit the amount of listings you can list until you get a decent track record. Amazon ‘gates’ a lot of their categories, which sucks for someone like me. I literally have access to hundreds of thousands of CDs, but can’t sell them on Amazon because they aren’t coming from ‘a legitimate distributor’.
You are always welcome to message me with any other questions. I am always happy to help, give advice and tell you want NOT to do (which on eBay can sometimes be more imporant thatn what to do).
@Jeremy Thank you for sharing that information! I’ve been cruising around in some FB ebay groups, one is definitely for the large inventory sellers or drop shippers. I would just like to make some chump change in retirement. So some of those groups are a bit over my head.
For what you are looking into doing, just your basic account should serve you well and if you want to do a little more you can always upgrade to the $8 monthly plan.
One of the benefits of eBay over Amazon is that they do not gate you like amazon does and you can sell almost anything except if it is specifically on their restricted items.
The main thing to keep in mind is you don’t want to sell knockoff brand items under the original brand name. That is one thing that will get you banned on eBay.
Also, there are some trademarked words, Velcro being one of them that they do not allow you to use in your listings and if you do you could get suspended or banned if it happens continually.
Some of those facebook groups definitely aren’t the best for small resellers.
I find a lot of helpful information on YouTube from people who are also resellers.
One of my favorite channels at the moment is Hairy Tornado on YouTube.
He shares a lot of helpful info about eBay and reselling, which he is doing full time now.
Ok, I must be confusing Amazon with ebay on the gating. Thanks Jeremy and Jon for setting me straight on that!
I was getting all my ducks in a row to reopen my etsy shops and my ebay account last Fall, when I stumbled into the new sales tax mess. I realize ebay and etsy are collecting the sales tax now, but there are still some major issues…the 1099s (which I won’t likely qualify to receive due to slow sales when I restart my shops) are lumping all kinds of fees and taxes together leaving it to the sellers to break out their actual profit and evidently neither ebay nor etsy have gotten up to speed to provide a logical CVS file to help.
So, I’m inhaling FB groups, site specific forums…and now YouTube (thanks, Jon) and Jeremy, thank you for your kind offer to message you with any questions!
I did get an etsy email yesterday with some great questions by sellers with answers provided by some tax experts and here is the link Tax Q&As I hope it will open for you if you are not registered at etsy
There are questions there asked about all marketplace facilitators …ebay, Amazon, Mercari, etc
