How I Make Money From Home

Most of you who know me know that I use a variety of strategies to make money from home. One way that I’ve been using for years is ebay. Granted, ebay is not nearly as lucrative as it used to be, but I still make a good chunk of change using ebay. If you haven’t used it in a while or maybe you’re looking to get started making money with ebay, here are a few tips and ways I use ebay to make money.

First off, I’m going to assume you have an ebay account, if not, go get one now. None of this will make sense if you have no account. Also, you’ll  not be able to buy and sell on ebay without an account.

The biggest secret to ebay is finding products to sell. Sure, you can put anything on there to sell, but will you make a profit? Nearly every gets started selling on ebay buy listing stuff they have laying around the house. This is a good place to start. However, one day you’ll wake up and not have nothing to sell. So you’ll have to go out and find something to sell in order to make some money. This is the tricky part!

Start From Home

Start by looking around your own house. You’ll be amazed at the things you can come up with. I have a rule, if I find something that I haven’t used in the last 6 months, it goes on ebay. No questions asked! Some people have so much stuff, they’re literally sitting on thousands of dollars worth of merchandise.

You should also get your friends and family involved. See what they have to sell and offer to sell their stuff for a small cut. They pay your cost to list the item and the ebay fees and you take your cut, generally 10 to 20 percent of selling price.

Garage Sales

Some people turn their noses up at the thought of stopping by a Garage Sale. Good, that’s more money for you and me. Truth is, there’s a lot of people from all walks of life who put on Garage Sales and who attend Garage Sales. This was a constant source of great bargains for me when I first started selling stuff on ebay.

Attack Garage Sales with a plan. Don’t just drive around aimlessly. I would get the local paper on a Wed. and look through the Garage sales. In our area, Thur. and Fr. can be huge Garage Sale days, more so than Saturdays in many cases. Here’s another tip. Target the high end neighborhoods first!

Sounds like common sense, but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t do this. Once I learned to hit the high end neighborhoods up first, my profits easily tripled. They simply have more valuable stuff than all of the other Garage Sales in the lower income neighborhoods.

I once found a little old lady selling some metal army toys at one of these Garage sales. They were Dinky toys. They resemble hot wheels, but they’re made of metal and most are old. She had 4 of them in a little basket along with some broken Army men toys…metal Army men toys. How long has it been since you saw Army men made out of metal? Yeah…you’re getting the idea.

I bought everything for $5.

Those Dinky toys were collectible and brought between $60 and $142 EACH! Those broken metal Army men fetched me $31. A nice profit for visiting a high end neighborhood Garage sale! This is only one example. I routinely made such finds in these neighborhoods.

Craigslist

Craigslist has become my number one source (along with estate auctions) for finding valuable products to sell on ebay. I live near a huge Metro area and browse the free section several times a day for valuable stuff that people want to get rid of. Once, while moving I scored some free moving boxes on ebay. When I picked them up, the guy was from California. We got to talking and he told me about a guy in California who went around picking up all the free Moving boxes on Craigslist and reselling them at his Moving Supply store for $1 to $3 a piece depending on the size. Considering that even the smallest Apartment dweller will probably need at least 30 to 40 boxes, that’s some serious profit!

I have picked up free appliances, tools, power equipment…you name it. I’ve priced it up and resold it on either Craigslist or ebay for huge profits. It also pays to look in other sections for great bargains. I often find merchandise that people are willing to sell really cheap because they need a few bucks. This is a Golden opportunity for people like you and me.

Estate and Consignment Auctions

These are just a great place to get top bargains. You will have to do your homework, but these can be like printing your own money once you learn to spot bargains. I often get the auction bill and see what types of items will be on the auction. I then go to ebay and try to find the same, or similar items to see what they are bringing. Once I get an idea of what they’re bringing, I then write down a price much lower next to each of those items. This is my maximum bid.

Sure, you won’t win all the auctions and that’s okay. At least you won’t be sitting on a bunch of stuff that you can’t sell or that you’ll be taking a loss on!

Dropshippers

Dropshippers have gained in popularity with people selling on ebay in recent years. The idea is that you list products to sell that you don’t have in your possession. These companies let you post their products and in return, once an item sells, you pay them and keep anything above the stated price including the shipping and handling (in most cases). They in turn ship the merchandise for you.

Sounds simple enough, but it can be a little tricky. Some dropshippers will require you to give them a deposit. The other downside to this is if you’re listing hundreds of items. Someone still has to pay those listing fees and that someone is you!

There are a lot of things to be taken into account when selling stuff on ebay in this manner. Sure, there are people making a killing on ebay by doing this, but there are probably more that have spent a lot of money with little return because they didn’t know what they were doing.

This is why some services that teach you how to do ebay with volume sales are so popular. These companies have kits that help you get started with ebay by giving you everything you need in order to get started, including a list of wholesalers and dropshippers.

This can be a huge time saver, especially when considering all the shysters out there today selling list of wholesalers and dropshippers that aren’t even in business any longer!

Whatever method you choose to get started making money from ebay, make sure you know what you’re doing. It’s a fun way to make a lot of money if you know your cost and know how to find stuff to sell on ebay. But fail to do your homework and it can cost you a lot of money!