Home eBay Buisness?

[Eeyore]

why not make a page on Facebook gather interest then see if its going to be worth while do all payments via Paypal or cash on collection or something that doesnt involve any expenditure then once you have got enough interest to make a business out of it you already theoretically have a customer base. if that makes sense

selling on Facebook pages is always a nightmare and looks so cheap its untrue! D: Its a social media thing not a shopping centre!

Tom I can set you up a website with ecommerce on it easily enough i think. its wordpress and a plugin. The problem is you wont get much traffic on a new website thats poorly advertised and selling so little so.... yeh. Its difficult either way!

[lolsteve]

i don't think your figures are quite right mate tbh . .

Give or take a quid then

[Ruan]

Genuinely if you got hold of stuff like DECENT Nitrile gloves, cheap ass brake cleaner, good quality sprays, lubricants, blue roll etc and sold them, I'd be definitely buying them. Just general garage stuff, stuff that everyone needs, stuff like cable ties, another good one is parts bins - ALWAYS useful to have around, cleaning stuff up in blah blah - all really cheap to buy in bulk and easy to get rid of.

Same goes for stuff like car cleaning products - buy in bulk, buy your own bottles and resell with good markups, you can make quite a lot of money out of it!

Great example is stuff like "Rapid Detailer" - essentially all it is is nicely fragranced wax free shampoo diluted with water, work out a good combination and mix up your own - people buy it like no tomorrow, market it well and sell on...

I think Black Diamond do the same infact - basically buy in bulk, work out what's best, resell - it's a great business model, it doesn't require a massive amount of capital and near enough from the word go you're making money.

HOWEVER - as others have said, if it's going to keep you in your room all day not interacting with people, it's going to send your situation worse - it's a great idea of getting you doing things, if you've got the space to do it and the time, you're sorted, but you CANNOT see it as the end all solution to making things better - it's much harder than that!

[Niall]

Genuinely if you got hold of stuff like DECENT Nitrile gloves, cheap ass brake cleaner, good quality sprays, lubricants, blue roll etc and sold them, I'd be definitely buying them. Just general garage stuff, stuff that everyone needs, stuff like cable ties, another good one is parts bins - ALWAYS useful to have around, cleaning stuff up in blah blah - all really cheap to buy in bulk and easy to get rid of.

This is sort of what i was saying. You could make up garage kits to sell. Like a hygiene kit. Proper hand cleaner, gloves, blue roll, disposable face masks etc.

[Toms306]

Hmm.....conflicting posts in here now lol......damn, makes thing a little harder!

With going out - I can't afford fuel anymore so will only go out for stuff that I'm getting paid for (i.e. taxiing my Nans about or doing stuff for them). Which essentially means that for 4 of 7 days (on average) I'll be staying home now anyway. So I thought better to spend some time selling stuff online than sit on my arse all day. Ok so in reality I can't be doing 'nothing' so always find something to do even if it's just cutting the grass or cleaning the windows (or trolling the forum )....but I'm obviously not getting any money out of that. And I know it's not an end to things - atm I don't know where I'm going at all (except backwards!), as I'm genuinely at a point where I can't see me being in a normal job at any point, or ever having the money to move out, which is a real downer. I'm basically up the creek without a canoe, let alone a paddle, lol.

I know the fee's take up a lot. The wheels I sold recently for example, they sold for £265. £23.50 was taken by ebay. £30 for the courier. £5 for the bubblewrap and palletwrap. Then paypal fees are something like 2% iirc, so that's another £5. But it still leaves me with over £200 for them which isn't a bad lump!

Ruan and Niall definitely seem to be on the right track with this, and that's the kind of thing I was thinking about. Not had much luck finding any wholesalers round here so far though.

[lewisdmz]

You will get final selling fee reductions as you start to sell more.

Yes the fee's seem like a lot on the face of it but then that and packaging are your only overheads. The other way to look at is that eBay puts your products in front of millions of customers worldwide, try setting up an e-commerce site, then doing the hours of SEO and marketing to get customers onto your site and the 10% selling fee's start to seem more reasonable.

Transaction fee's so you can get paid are also almost unavoidable, regardless if you are selling through eBay or your own website.

Final thing to watch out for is many couriers will not take liquids/compressed stuff unless you get a licence so watch out for that.

[Toms306]

Right, not sure if its been covered yet, but say I was to buy a few items in bulk (less than £100 worth) and resell on ebay, would I need to do anything for legalities or tax or anything like that? Just to see how it'd go for a few weeks. Don't want to be doing anything illegal!

[silverzx]

Buy a load of KWP's

[Jonny b]

Just keep a record, tax allowance is nearly 10 grand now is it not?

[Ruan]

^^ Yeah something like that!

You just need to read up a little on the matters and you'll be fine!

And yeah, if you get doing your website after you've kinda got a bit of backing off the Ebay sales, you are well on your way!

[Toms306]

Just keep a record, tax allowance is nearly 10 grand now is it not?

Oh, I should be alright there then!

^^ Yeah something like that!

You just need to read up a little on the matters and you'll be fine!

And yeah, if you get doing your website after you've kinda got a bit of backing off the Ebay sales, you are well on your way!

The thing that'd worry me about an individual site is that I don't buy from them, I tend to buy everything from eBay, and if I'm like that I wonder how many others are.

[Toms306]

Well.....I've been trying to start this in the small amount of spare time I get........honestly don't know where the days go considering I do 'nothing'.

And I can't see it being viable.

There don't seem to be any independent wholesalers in Ipswich.

So I moved on to looking for small job lots on ebay instead, but it just wouldn't be worth it. I looked at things like these - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261205186241?s...1438.l2649

Which seem really cheap.....but after adding P&P and making sure to sell below the RRP (otherwise people might as well just go to the dealer anyway) you'd only get like a quid of profit on each one....and assume you only sell two thirds....

Looked at a few other items but all with the same conclusion. So that's another idea out then.

[bigcheez2k3]

http://www.baycrazy.com/

Try that Tom, can find stuff local that you is going cheap then flip it.

[4WayDiablo]

I have just over 100 of these....
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-TRUE-U...1018784371

Just over 20 of these....
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewite...5468677487

And around 10 of these
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewite...8076679364

The catch is... 90% of them need batteries
Some do work fine but others its a simple case of swapping out batteries

Looking on eBay IIRC it was something like £15-20 for batteries

If you wanna make me an offer on them be my guest
I can get you more precise numbers and pictures if you want

[Dum-Dum]

Tom you say theres no money to be made out of ebay job lots but you need ot look at anything you know a little bit about and just go for the really cheap stuff

This one currently is guranteed to make you some money
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JOB-LOT-OF-CAR...4ac4236bb3

This could be good, haynes manual
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Job-lot-of-hay...232997eccf

As many tyres as you can carry for 99p - get 306 sizes and the upgrades like 205/40R17 and youll make money.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PART-WORN-TYRE...41728542ae



There is loads of bargains if you type job lot in and just look through catergories where you know what stuff is worth and if youve got storage space youll do well mate.

[Toms306]

http://www.baycrazy.com/

Try that Tom, can find stuff local that you is going cheap then flip it.

I'll give that a go cheers Sam.

I have just over 100 of these....
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-TRUE-U...1018784371

Just over 20 of these....
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewite...5468677487

And around 10 of these
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewite...8076679364

The catch is... 90% of them need batteries
Some do work fine but others its a simple case of swapping out batteries

Looking on eBay IIRC it was something like £15-20 for batteries

If you wanna make me an offer on them be my guest
I can get you more precise numbers and pictures if you want

I appreciate the offer Phil, but I can't really see anyone buying those, let alone making profit on them? Especially after postage and batteries as well.

Tom you say theres no money to be made out of ebay job lots but you need ot look at anything you know a little bit about and just go for the really cheap stuff

This one currently is guranteed to make you some money
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JOB-LOT-OF-CAR...4ac4236bb3

This could be good, haynes manual
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Job-lot-of-hay...232997eccf

As many tyres as you can carry for 99p - get 306 sizes and the upgrades like 205/40R17 and youll make money.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PART-WORN-TYRE...41728542ae



There is loads of bargains if you type job lot in and just look through catergories where you know what stuff is worth and if youve got storage space youll do well mate.

But the problem with those is they're collection only Chris...

And the collection only bargains like that aren't usually in Ipswich.

[Toms306]

http://www.baycrazy.com/

Try that Tom, can find stuff local that you is going cheap then flip it.

Just been looking through this site......that's how eBay should be tbh!!

Gives you a proper location rather than a half arsed 'some miles as the crow flies' like eBay does itself!

[bigcheez2k3]

Using that site I found a load of 2010 Meriva parts a couple miles away, I didn't win as I forgot but went for £51 in the end. Was driveshafts, calipers, etc and for a current model car you're bound to make money, just got to look for them.