Ask Me Anything About Ebay

[cantbeatluck]

I own an Ebay Consignment shop that does millions in sales for a nice nut of the total sale. Ask me anything about selling, buying, owning a business etc.

[_brady_]

How often does someone bail on payment?

What types of interesting scams to people try to pull a lot?

['Chair]

how much income do you generate / month (pre-tax)

[cantbeatluck]

Generally my no pay % is around 7% of the items I sell, which can be tough, and hopefully Ebay will improve this, id love to see them qualify buyers but that will never happen. As for scams best one we see is about 100 phishing for our password emails a week.

[cantbeatluck]

My company which features myself, my wife, and one part time shipper generates around 120k a month profit after wages, expense, ebay fees etc...we pay the shipper 8 bucks an hour and wife and I take 1,000-3500 a week depending on what we need etc.

[AvivaSimplex]

What do you sell? Where do you buy it?

[RacersEdge]

What edge or core compentency do you have that let's you make a profit or prevents anyone from selling the exact things for the exact price that you sell? Do you just have a lock on the supply/manufacture of your product?

How about a link to your ad on ebay?

['Chair]

[ QUOTE ]
What edge or core compentency do you have that let's you make a profit or prevents anyone from selling the exact things for the exact price that you sell? Do you just have a lock on the supply/manufacture of your product?

How about a link to your ad on ebay?

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe they mainly sell other peoples junk for a percentage of the final sale.

There are a lot of ppl who have stuff they want to sell but don't really know or want to create an ebay/paypal account etc.

please correct me if I'm wrong...


edit: core compentency/edge = high seller rating, experience and market valuation skills. I did not get the impression from any of OP's wording that he is an authorized dealer for any products.

consignment = a shipment of goods under an agreement whereby the receiving party undertakes to sell them as an agent for the shipper. The shipper retains title to the goods until they are sold.

I believe being an authorized dealer, you have to establish a line of credit w/ the company and actually purchase the products that you are going to sell.

[z28dreams]

I'm very interested in ecommerce as a whole, and would love to chat with you sometime.

The obvious question everyone wants to know is - what do you buy&sell?

Some more interesting questions I'd like to know:

- strategies on getting the best price (good times to bid, bad times to bid, days to avoid, etc)

- optimizing shipping cost to get the most bids

- general page layouts/copy that seem to work

- which merchant account do you use to accept payment?

[[Phill]]

Im thinking about getting into Ebay (and other online) selling as a serious business come the summer - im also an Ebay newb having never used it before - which means you have come at the right time for me [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Is there any money left in drop shipping, or do you have to be handling stock to see any profits in the modern market?

Do you run a storefront outside of your (dutch?) auctions (my guess is yes but gotta cover bases)? How easy is it to maintain on the Ebay network?

Do you take credit card payments? Is there any particular 3rd party processing company you recommend or do you have a merchant account at your bank?

To give us an idea of your company, what do you sell (or a link to it, im sure the mods wont mind).

Assume ive decided on a company - i have a name, the money is there, ive got some stock on hand and my suppliers are ready when i run low - what do i need to do to get started on Ebay? Is there still a minimum number of successful auctions you need to do before you can run dutch auctions? How easy is it setting up an Ebay storefront - can i use a simple HTMl editor like Frontpage or is it worth slipping some uni guy a couple of bills to do it professionally?

By which i mean simple and classy. Not with thousands of colours and moving objects and other such stupidness.

When it comes to marketing, do you go all out on fancy auctions stickied at top, or do you go for the less than premium ones with less bells and whistles - or is it simple normal listings you do? Do you have any recommendations on keywords to be used in auctions so they are found by searching (other than making sure the words are spelt corretly)?

Is repeat business a big thing in Ebay-land or is it simply a case of the product sells the product?

What is best - picking an area of expertise and building confidence in it, or selling a series of seemingly unrelated 'hot products' and thus follow market trends?

Yes, a few questions i guess. If i think of more ill be back in the thread later [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]