Can you make a profit on Ebay? - Page 3

Originally Posted by miked

"Profit begins when you buy not when you sell"

Truer words have never been spoken.

I recently delved into eBay, and I think it's going pretty well. That said, I do see how someone with unrealistic expectations might feel like he was doing all the work to make ebay, paypal, and UPS/USPS/FEDEX/etc rich.

Case in point, and the reason I got into ebay was that I found an auction lot being sold by a town near me. I can only assume that the items in this lot were seized in traffic stops or something, and I'm pretty sure part of it was from a shoplifting ring. Now, why the city didn't return these pilfered items to the retailer I don't know. All I know is that I bought & paid for them legally. One of the items was a very nice Wusthof 18 piece kitchen knife set. Retails for upwards of $400. I've always wanted one, but there's always something else that needed that $400 more than I needed a $400 knife set! So I went & looked at the lot, and hoped I could either return the stuff to the store or sell it on craigslist. Returning stuff didn't go well, not to mention being just a shade left of honest. Craigslist in Dallas-Ft Worth is nothing but a den of idiots. People offering $20 on stuff I was asking $200 for. Seriously, quit wasting my time.

I paid $449 for the lot.

After listing the stuff on ebay, and making sure I was the cheapest on ebay for the items I was selling, I sold everything for a total of 1181.

So if you're just looking at that you're going to count your chickens as making 732 dollars... but that' not going to be the case!!!

Between shipping, ebay, paypal, and charity donations, that ate up almost $400, leaving me with the knife set I really, really wanted and $337 in my pocket.

I was quite happy with the deal overall, but again, if I'd had to buy the lot for very much more, it wouldn't have been worth the risk.


Naysayers gonna naysay, but without ebay, this whole deal would have been thoroughly unfeasible. Craigslist is useless. Ebay put me in touch with MILLIONS of people who could see my items & bid on them. There's no way I would have ever sold those items without it. Sure they take a hefty cut. They earned it. Very well worth it in my eyes.

Congrats on your ebay sales. Now that you have learned it can work I advise not being the lowest priced anything. Why? Lower prices can convey lower value.

If you want to continue with ebay selling work on making your photos the best you can. Making certain to highlight any defects, damage/wear etc. Its harder to complain about a defect if you have a good up close, in focus photo of the defect.

73, Mike

Originally Posted by miked

Congrats on your ebay sales. Now that you have learned it can work I advise not being the lowest priced anything. Why? Lower prices can convey lower value.

If you want to continue with ebay selling work on making your photos the best you can. Making certain to highlight any defects, damage/wear etc. Its harder to complain about a defect if you have a good up close, in focus photo of the defect.

73, Mike

The lower prices were to ensure that I moved all my items rapidly. I needed to get my investment back, plus I wanted to make sure that I got my 10 sales each month, and got good feedback from all the buyers that bothered to leave feedback, so that ebay would raise my selling limit.

Now that ebay has upped my limit to 30 items, I'm pricing things a scoch higher, since I don't really think I'll need to get higher limits any time soon. The things I have listed now, I'm happy to wait for the pricing I want.

Here is my template for a Craigslist ad...

Please do not e-mail (I will never see it). If interested text or call (123)456-7890

Look at my other items- search: t00nces2 <===(this is a marker that will make the search find any ad I have posted because it is unlikely there would be someone else who included this word. Use your own unique word for people to find your ads)

Description of the crap you are selling


Thank you,
Your name


This seems to work very well to filter out much of the people who are looking to pay six cents for a sixty dollar item. It weeds out all the people who just want to contact you for crap. It weeds out the bots that are just looking for a reply to harvest an e-mail addy. The e-mail addy I gave CL is also an addy I rarely check anymore unless I expect an email for a confirmation link or something.

"I joke that the secret to making money is buy low and sell high"

My favorite quote is "Profit begins when you buy NOT when you sell".

I can not tell you how many times I've heard "But do you know what I paid for this?" In my mind I'm thinking likely far too much but what does that have to do with our deal??" I do not say that out loud and try not to convey it on my face. 73, Mike

A quick story to put a 'yes' answer to the title question, and also some numbers to show why it's still very profitable even though it seems someone's always draining you when you sell on Ebay.

About a year ago, I won an auction lot from the municipality just north of me. Six bucks bought me a whole shelving unit full of junk. Most of it was old clipboards, desk junk like staplers & things, a couple of big plastic potted plants... and (what this post is about) ...a box of 50 P/S2 corded mice still in the original manufacturer's shipping box.



Now... when I first started scrapping, I was very scrap-happy, and I cost myself a whole buncha money by just cutting up things and never researching their resale value. I have no doubt that me from 5-6 years ago would've cut the cords off of these things & tossed the rest. So, maybe 3 pounds of LGC which wouldn't even amount to one dollar.

So instead of chopping these up, I researched their resale value on ebay. Seeing as how I had a box of 50 of them, of course I decided to sell it as one lot. I saw that they sell anywhere from $5 apiece on up. Knowing that whoever was going to buy 50 at a chunk would likely be a reseller, I knew I had to leave them enough meat on the bone to make it worth their while, so I listed the box at $250.

No takers. A couple months later I dropped it to 220. No takers. A couple more months 200. No takers. Yesterday I dropped it to 180 and one of the watchers snapped it within 5 minutes of the price change. **YAY**

So.... I got another $180 to spend? Ummmmm... no.

I just looked, paypal took $5.52. So I got 174.48 to spend? Ummmm...no.

I donate 10% of all my ebay sales to Victory Junction Gang Camp , so they got $18. So I got $156.48 to spend? Ummm...no.

Ebay takes 10% of the sale value after the charity donation, so they got $16.20. So I got $140.48 to spend? Still... NO!

Before I listed this item I knew shipping that big heavy box was going to be a booger. I measured & weighed it, and sure enough: $45 and change.

So between charity & ebay & paypal & USPS all dipping into my wallet I'm left with about 95 bucks.


Which is $94 more than I would've got in scrap.

So, yes you can make money on ebay... but don't focus on the SALE price, focus on the NET.

Yes been doing ebay 20 years now. Numerous large scores over the years. Best was 10 server cpus bought for $100 and sold for $20,000. Alot of different tactics, you can grind low value items or do high value items low volume. Higher fees, increased shipping costs, and competition. $100 sale now nets $50 -$70. Back in the 2000's the same $100 sale would net $70-$80. The current ebay environment is very sour for sellers.