How To Sell On eBay For Beginners (Step By Step Guide)
Transcribe of “How To Sell On eBay For Beginners (Step By Step Guide)”
This week’s video is about how to sell on eBay for beginners and it’s for anybody who’s thinking about selling on eBay. Selling on eBay can be a rewarding venture for beginners, as it provides a platform to reach a wide audience and turn your unwanted items into cash. I’ll cover the most important things that you need to be aware of, as well as what you need to be doing and the things that you should not be doing.
If anybody is new to this channel, my name’s Neil Waterhouse and I’ve been selling on eBay for 24 years. I’m the author of “Million Dollar eBay Business From Home” and creator of Dropship Formula. So let’s launch straight into it. The number one question I get from eBay beginners is asking how they should start. Should they sell used items or new items, or should they dropship?
What is dropshipping? Should they source products locally from places like retailers, wholesalers, thrift stores, Facebook Marketplaces, Gumtree, and garage sales? Or should they import from countries like China using sites like AliExpress or Alibaba? So this week’s video is all about narrowing it down for you so you can get clarity and start your online journey doing the strategy that suits you, your personality, and your circumstances, and not waste time like so many people do learning the wrong strategy. Everybody’s different with different goals. Some people want to build a hobby-sized business that makes less than the award wage.
Other people want to replace their full-time income. Some people like driving around to garage sales, thrift stores, et cetera, whereas other people prefer to never leave the comfort and safety of their own home. There’s no right or wrong answer. Everybody’s different and with different goals. I, like most full-time eBay sellers, started part-time and built the business up until it replaced my income.
As you’ll see, everything I do and everything I teach is all step by step and everything I share with you in this video is for free with no affiliate kickbacks. Step one for learning how to sell on eBay is to first figure out exactly which strategy suits you and your circumstances the best. eBay is simply a marketplace where you can sell new and used items. You make money on eBay, of course, by selling items for more money than you paid for them. You can do this with used items or new items.
Personally, though, I prefer to sell new items as you can create a listing on eBay for a new item and sell it over and over again. And with new items, you never ever have to leave the comfort and safety of your own home. When I started selling on eBay over 20 years ago, the first item I ever sold was a rusty used socket set. From there, I moved on to sourcing used items from garage sales, thrift shops, car boot sales, et cetera.
But the big problem with that was it’s nearly impossible to automate it, as you’re the one driving around on your weekends and at night picking up inventory. And if you’ve got a family, it can be very challenging. With used items, you’re continually out and about driving to garage sales, thrift shops, people’s houses, et cetera, to collect inventory. With these items, you also have to photograph and write ad copy for every single used item.
Whereas with new items, you can sell the same item over and over and over again and you don’t need to take photos with new items as you can use stock photos. Now, if you enjoy continually sourcing used items, awesome. But personally, I prefer automation where the business runs 99% of the time by itself without you and that’s done using automation software and low-cost overseas VAs, or virtual assistants, that you can get from $1 per hour.
I’ll put a link at the end of the video to where you can get VAs from $1 per hour if you want more information about that. The ability to automate is why I love new items. Now, if you want to sell new items, the first thing you need to do is ask yourself, how much money, if any, are you willing to invest in purchasing inventory? Cash to purchase inventory is what used to stop a lot of people in their tracks.
But the good news is, today, you no longer need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars purchasing inventory to build a seven-digit online business. Since COVID, there’s been a big move towards what’s known in the industry as virtual inventory. That is, selling your supplier’s inventory and not your own.
Virtual Inventory, or dropshipping as it’s known in the industry, has many advantages for online sellers. Some of these advantages include no pre-purchasing any inventory before it’s sold, no warehouse as using your supplier’s inventory, no driving to the post office, and no packing up items as your supplier does all the hard work of packing and shipping the items for you.
Your supplier ships the products straight to your customers. No stuff in your house, my wife loves this. For years, our house looked like a warehouse. These days, we’re dropshipping. All our VAs work from their own homes, mostly in the Philippines. You simply couldn’t do that just six years ago. We simply didn’t have the technology. One note though with dropshipping on eBay, only ever use local suppliers, never ever use overseas suppliers.
If you’re building an eBay dropship business in Australia, only use Australian suppliers. If you’re building a dropshipping business in the USA, only use USA suppliers. You can build eBay dropship businesses in 37 different countries, but only use suppliers in the country that you’re building the business for. Basically, buyers won’t tolerate it when things arrive late and there is always a gazillion reasons why things arrive late when you buy from overseas.
If you need more local dropship suppliers, I’ll put a link at the end of the video to a free list of over 900 local dropship suppliers. Back when I started on eBay, virtual inventories were not an option. We had to pre-purchase inventory back then and we had to find all sorts of creative ways to finance that inventory.
But these days, you can build a full-time business using less than $100. The next step if you want to sell on eBay is to open an eBay account if you don’t already have an eBay account. If you already have an eBay account that you already use to just purchase items, that’s all you need. You don’t need to open another account. Note though, it’s best to have at least 20 feedback on your eBay account.
However, that 20 feedback can be from just purchasing items. Feedback from buying and selling on eBay looks basically exactly the same to a buyer. To get the feedback up quickly, the easiest way to do that is just simply to change your personal buying habits from your local mall to eBay.
What I mean by this is instead of purchasing your personal items from your local mall, just purchase the same items through eBay. Only purchase items that you’re going to purchase anyway. For example, let’s say you need a new case for your phone or a new toner cartridge for your printer.
Instead of driving to your local mall, consider purchasing them from eBay. This way, you know, you’re not spending extra money. You’re simply just changing your buying habits from purchasing your personal items from your local mall to instead purchasing them from eBay. If you also get other people in your household to do the same, your feedback will obviously grow faster.
Around 40% of eBay sellers will leave you feedback and you only need around 20 feedback. Next, make sure your eBay account is verified. If your eBay account is not verified, eBay will impose low seller limits, meaning eBay will not allow the listing of many items. When you’re new to eBay, eBay sets a seller limit of the total dollar amount of products that you can have listed each month.
This selling limit is automatically reviewed by eBay on the 20th of each month. However, you can very often get this limit put up in one phone call. A big part of your eBay selling limit is based on the verification process. If any of the identification fields in your eBay account are not completed or not completed correctly, the eBay trust and safety algorithm will automatically give you a lower limit. Rather than drill through the pages, it’s quicker just to call up eBay and ask them if they can raise your limit.
The person you speak to at eBay will be able to see on this screen if there are any identification fields that require more information. What normally happens is the eBay rep will ask you a couple more verification questions to confirm your identity, and then they can often immediately increase your selling limit while you’re on the phone.
As you sell more and more each month, eBay will increase your seller limit automatically on the 20th of each month. However, if you hit your limit again, just call ’em up and they’ll very often raise your limit, again, while you’re on the phone. You can also change your account from a personal name to a business name.
This can often also raise your seller limit even further. You can check your seller limit in eBay in your dashboard and that’s located in the eBay seller hub. The next step to start selling on eBay is to find a winning product. However, the strategy used to find winning products varies depending on which strategy you choose to do. I’d highly recommend you just choose one strategy for now and master that one strategy.
Life doesn’t reward us for being a jack of all trades. Life rewards us for what we master. Choose one strategy, master it, and fully automate it before adding another strategy. Do you want to import? If so, the next step to finding winning products is to watch this video up here. Do you prefer to dropship? If so, to find winning dropship products, watch this video again up here. If you need more dropship suppliers, watch this video.
Again, I’ll put a link at the top of the screen. If you want to know how and where to get virtual assistants from $1 per hour, here’s the link. Or do you prefer to sell used items? If so, the next step is to watch this video. Again, I’ll put it on the screen. I’ll also put the links below the video.
That’s all for this week. If you have any questions at all, please leave them in the comment section below. And if you found any value in this video, please give it a thumbs up as it helps the channel, and make sure you hit the subscribe button to the no-fluff, ad-free channel that teaches you to step by step how anyone can make a full-time living from their home using less than $100. Until next week, stay safe, list more, and sell more.
✅ How to setup Scarcity Manager
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dropshipping-suppliers/
✅ Download – Dropship Suppliers Top Selling Items Spreadsheet
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/dss
✅ How To Quickly Find eBay Best Selling Items.
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-best-selling-items-01
✅ How to Increase eBay Sale By 16x. The 16 Times Rule
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-16
✅ Understanding eBay Cassini Search Engine to Increase Sales
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/how-does-ebays-cassini-search-engine-work-01/
✅Automatic Supplier Inventory Management for eBay, Amazon, Shopify
https://www.scarcitymanager.com
✅ How to enable eBay’s out-of-stock function
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/out-stock
✅ How To Make $1,000 Profit Per Week Dropshipping On eBay
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/1000-week/
✅ How to increase eBay Sales Fast
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-opt
🚀 Beginners Guide To Starting an eBay Business.
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/beginners-guide-to-starting-an-ebay-business/
✅ How to find eBay Best Sellers in 5 Steps https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/find-ebay-best-sellers
✅Overseas Virtual Assistants From $1 Per Hour
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/va1
✅Beginner’s Guide to Starting an eBay Business
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/start
✅Beginner’s Guide to Starting an Amazon Business
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/amz-start
✅eBay Dropshipping | Top 8 Secrets | 23 Years Selling On eBay https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-sec-1/
🎬 My Free- Step By Step – Dropshipping Course – Dropship Formula™ https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/drop
✅Here is a free list of 934 popular dropship suppliers all over the world including Australia. https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ds-suppliers
✅Check the ebay dropshipping secrets. eBay Dropshipping – Secret 1
https://www.neilwaterhouse.com/ebay-sec-1/
✅How To Build a 7 Digit Dropship Business – Step By Step
✅How and where to find overseas staff from $1 per hour Click here
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