Ask Tony about being a professional eBay & Amazon seller

[Tony_P]

[ QUOTE ]
i used to be really into baseball cards and sold a zillion lots on ebay a couple years ago.

the thing that pissed me off the most was dealing with all the fees.

between ebay posting fees, ebay selling fees (if your listing sold), shipping fees and paypal fees, it got to the point where it would make me sick to see how much i paid out just to sell something. i guess that is part of doing business without leaving your house.

i know one solution that some sellers use is to charge ridiculous shipping and handling fees, but i think a lot of buyers frown on that for obvious reasons.

ive considered starting to sell stuff on ebay again since i play poker for a living and im home all day and i like to take breaks from poker. my thinking is that instead of using my poker break time jerking off or watching day time talk shows, i could be doing ebay stuff just as easily and bringing in more money.

i have a 750 feedback rating without a nuetral or negative, so that aspect is in order. i have a digi camera, scanner, and all the computer equipment ill need, and my girlfriend LOVES to go garage sale shopping (which would be one way to get stuff to sell), but, man, those fees just cut into the money so much.

tony, do you have some tips on how to cut down on all the fees that sellers are charged? ive thought about only taking money orders (thus, erasing the paypal fees), but my feeling is that 90% of potential buyers dont want to deal with sending a money order and waiting the extra time that paying by this process takes.

what are your thoughts as you read my post?
thx!

[/ QUOTE ]

The fees have to be broken down and added to your handling fee or item price in order to pass the cost on to the buyers. Unnfortunatly, there's not much you can do about it.

There are many successful sellers that only take money orders, but in order to do that and be successful you have to be selling in a niche market with little competition.

While you can't charge a fee for buyers to use paypal, you can up your prices and offer discounts to buyers who pay by money order. Various sellers that I know have have tried this with mixed success. Unfortunatly, paypal is really crappy to sellers in many ways, but they are close to being the only game in town unless you want to drop your prospective customer base by 95%.

I'm starting to do a few listings again, and I'm offering Neteller as a payment option. I wonder if anyone will use it.

[gilbert]

did this get you a lot of pussy?

[Tony_P]

[ QUOTE ]
did this get you a lot of pussy?

[/ QUOTE ]

I was getting laid a lot during this time, but I don't know if correlation = causation in this case.

Also, your avatar is creepy.

[Slider]

How did you survive with the huge fees?

What discount breaks do they offer for mass sellers?

[FortFun]

I use to sell quite a bit on eBay also. I would recommend sticking with Paypal since aomost all buyers like to see it. I agree that the fees for it suck, but it so damn convinent, as long as someone doesn't screw you over. Paypal is heavily weighted in the buyers favor.

As for selling, you need to find something that has a decent size market, something you're interested in and become an expert at it. This is good so you know the market and what things are worth. Additionally people like to buy from you if you've sold something similar to what they are buying and the the person who purchased it had a good experience. For me it was original Nintendo systems, games, and accessories. I would value shop for large lots on eBay and then break them down and sell them. There was a fair amount of work invovled because I would really clean up the games and systems and even would buy broken items and repair them.

You can make it as easy or as hard as you want it, obviously the more work you put into the more you will make.

[Tony_P]

[ QUOTE ]
How did you survive with the huge fees?

What discount breaks do they offer for mass sellers?

[/ QUOTE ]

The fees weren't nearly as bad when I first started.

eBay claims they offer no discounts to mass sellers. I don't know if I beleive it.

[TStoneMBD]

ive come the conclusion that the most prominent way to break into the ebay business is to have a ridiculously high and flawless feedback rating. those who have the highest feedback ratings receive the highest markup on their products and in the ebay game small profit margins are king. why would a wholesaler sell to someone who will sell that product on ebay if they could just sell it on ebay themselves? only reason theyd sell him the product is if he could get more for it then they could.

what size profit margin would you say is gained based on feedback rating? if you had 4k positive feedbacks with no negatives how much more could you sell products for than the average ebay market rate? (ie: 1.x%-5.x%)

is it possible to just accumulate a bajillion feedback rating and just become the main seller of all wholesale products since you essentially get a better profit margin than any other seller? or would you say its impossible to break into the market now because the people who already have bajillions of feedback ratings cant be overturned?

are wholesale dropshippers reliable enough to accumulate a bajillion feedback ratings without getting negatives? how would you go about finding the most reliable wholesale dropshippers? i assume that in order to start selling wholesale dropshipper products you would have to take a loss with each sale as their product price is going to be higher than the average ebay market rate as they are already selling to the sellers with a bajillion feedback. the question then becomes is it worth the investment to take a loss on each sale to accumulate the necessary feedback to become a baller in the game. are there any methods to accumulate a bajillion feedback without taking a loss?

are the people who have a bajillion feedback rating making multiple 6 digits a year? are they mostly run by businesses that hire people to do all the order placing and auction maintenance? is it possible to have everything automated now so that it takes no human work whatsoever other than answering customer support questions?

are there any sellers on ebay that basically have a lock on every wholesale dropshipper known to man? i dont believe ive seen such sellers but it seems that this should be the way the market would evolve.


would you say this is all an accurate assessment?