Robert 
[UltraVid id=80 ]hey everybody welcome back to my Channel today I have a quick video an informational video for you guys on how I make money on eBay now I’ve been selling on eBay since I was in college I use eBay and half.com as well as amazon.com to sell a lot of my used textbooks obviously in college textbooks are really expensive and when you sell them back to the bookstore on campus you get a fraction of the resale price so I found that selling them on eBay would get me a lot more money and I kind of that was my crash course in selling on eBay and learning how to ship stuff efficiently so I can make the most bang for buck and return less the cost of shipping so I want to kind of learn the ins and outs um and I want to share my knowledge with my youtube subscribers since I know a lot of my friends asked me how I saw an eBay like they want to know how do I find time to list stuff how do I find time to pack stuff how do I pack it so that it’s not really expensive to ship and that kind of thing so I have a few tips and tricks to tell you today about how I make money on eBay now I’m not an expert but I just wanted to share my tips and tricks with you today so the most common things that I sell on eBay are clothing and beauty items because I buy and shop and haul so much I also have companies who send stuff to me for review I’m constantly going through my stuff and purging and selling and donating so I like to keep a flow of stuff coming in and out of my closet and my collection so for items I buy that I never reach for never even have a chance to open or I’m no longer interested in trying it I will list stuff on eBay now I also use Poshmark but I have a separate video on that I’ll link it down in the description box with this for the purposes of this video I’m just talking about eBay so let’s start with evening today eBay has come a long way um since its founding obviously I think the number one first step that you can take is downloading eBay’s mobile app so they have an app for Android and iOS so you want to download on your iPhone or smartphone or whatever you have and their their app is actually really robust so you can show if you can sell you can search you can do pretty much everything you can do on the website most likely through the app let’s say I had this lipstick it’s max saint-germain it’s what I’m wearing today and I never reached for it say I bought it and I lost the receipt or I bought on a CCO and I just never reach for it and opened it I want to listen son you may the number one thing I would do is first search for the item and see how much people are asking for the item so you can either do that by scanning the barcode if you solve the box for this you can search find out what other sellers are selling theirs for um and keep in mind the shipping cost when you want to sell this you can sell directly from the pack one thing to consider is if you want have good lighting make sure the lenses wipe clean on your phone take somebody’s pictures of the item walk through the selling tool it’s very easy it’ll tell you all the fields you need to fill out if you’re selling there’s even an option to scan a barcode again and fill out all the product information for the item you’re selling you will just go through those steps and then you pick out the photos you want to use write a little bit about the product like make sure to mention if it’s new and box because that’s something people look for they want new and sealed and unused products but if you’re selling something that is used say I tried the skinnin AVS spray and I sprayed it three times and I didn’t like it but that’s not the case but I’m saying you know what if um you know in a certain scenario there may be a product that you sprayed a couple times and you just really don’t like the product I had this situation with a foundation and a BB cream I previously tried I got them as a gift I tried them once and they were just terrible for my skin I couldn’t return them so lots of them on eBay and wrote very very clearly in the description that the item is used and is really being used and be honest you know two applications or two squirts from the bottle you want to give as much detail as you can because that’s really gonna help the potential buyers figure out your legit they’re out here honest you definitely want to keep the details of the product in the description if you are selling makeup that is used sanitize it if you can so there’s plenty of YouTube videos on how to do that I personally don’t sell that much stuff that’s used it’s a very very small amount of the total items I listen I pay most of the stuff I list on eBay is brand new in box never opened just something I’m not interested in trying or I just got bored with it and I maybe I tried different color and I didn’t really like it or maybe I’m just trying to downsize stuff before I got a chance to try it so anyways so then you’re going to get to the price and shipping option now in my case I only like to list stuff on eBay that is lightweight meaning that it should be something that is lightweight and small and easy to ship so obviously beauty products fall on that category and in the case of a lipstick this is something very small and very light when I list on eBay I like to make it as easy as possible for the buyer to consider my listing over the next listing do that by way of nice pictures of really in-depth description about the product but also the price so I list all my products that the absolute price I want to get for the item and I say free shipping so for this matte lipstick say it’s permanent color I want to charge $15 for this $15 free shipping knowing that eBay is gonna take a small slice off the top of that price and PayPal take a small slice off the top of that price you’re gonna earn about depending on the fees I don’t know 1350 back on your item you then need to consider how we’re just going to cost you to ship this item so what I recommend if you’re sending beauty products or lightweight fashion items like say scarf or t-shirt I love padded envelopes because they’re small they’re not bulky they’re thin and very very lightweight so this is not going to give you any extra packaging voltage but they are bubble lines so it’s going to protect your item on the inside so with the lipstick you know I drop it in write a thank-you note pop it in I’ll seal it up tape it shut put my address on it and once this is packed and ready to go and my buyer has bought it paid me through PayPal I you know maybe have three days to ship it or whatever you set up on eBay you can set that up to your liking I then take this to the post office and they have the self-serve machine at the post office it’s so SuperDuper simple what you’re going to do is get in line for one of those machines you’re going to put your item on the scale and you will select I want to ship a package Pat it envelope and then you’ll punch in the zip code of your buyer and that will be in the eve 1/2 and then you’ll know um it will tell you you know do you want to regular mail regular mail is the cheapest and within the US that’s gonna take over three business days it’s not a long time for just a simple little package like this and in my experience if you’re shipping a lipstick or something else really light it’s gonna cost you about a dollar and these pattern envelopes if you buy them in bulk it’s gonna cost you about fifty to seventy-five cents so already off this MAC lipstick that I’m charging fifteen US dollars for a dollar let’s say let’s round up for a dollar on the envelope let’s round up a dollar on the shipping and then the eBay fee and the PayPal fee so you’re going to lose a couple dollars in the transaction so you should definitely consider that in pricing your item and if it’s really worth your time or worth selling so then you know with once you go through the walkthrough that’s it just your regular cheapest shipping it’ll print out the shipping label you’ll stick it to your mailer you write in the person’s address from the eBay app it’s only going to print out the city state and their postal code so from there I would then just drop it in the designated mailbox at the post office and then you’re done in the eBay app you’ll then want to mark your item as shipped so your buyer knows that the product has been dropped off and it’s on the way so yeah I feel them kind of rambling but I hope this gives you some help for a couple of power user features that you might want to consider if you are selling some things on eBay that you can take advantage of or the push notification so if you are listing items I usually list my items as you know just a regular sale price but you can change your listing to auction so not everything on eBay is set up as an auction but if you do set up an auction you can enable push notifications so you can get notifications when somebody places a big when somebody checks out when somebody buys your order when your money comes through um you want to set up these notifications so they work for you if you like getting the push notifications on your phone or if you prefer getting the notifications by email definitely visit your notification settings so you can be alerted when important stuff happens on your eBay account um another power user feature you’ll want to mark if you are selling items and you don’t have time to maintain your kind of own store like if you’re just doing this to clear out space in your makeup collection or your closet at home you want to mark your items as final sale because you don’t want to have to deal with returns unless you have the bandwidth to do with return so make sure you mark your items as final sale and make sure your mark your items as only available for sale in the US um international shipping is very expensive and it can eliminate the any chance of margin that you would make on the item that you have for sale if you’re selling stuff for say under $15 I mean even under ten dollars you’re not making a lot of money if you are shipping even to Canada or outside the US from a Americans perspective just make sure you’re looking at that setting and setting it to where you want to ship um for in my case I only ship within the US and the u.s. includes Alaska Hawaii and Puerto Rico so like I mentioned most of the things I sell I sell in these padded plain envelopes that you can buy it Target or at Walgreens wherever you shop look in the stationery aisle you’ll find these and obviously you’re going to save a little money if you buy these in bulk so at Target they can get like a six or eight pack of these for $2.99 so you’re saving a lot of money if you go to Walgreens I’m by just a single you know six inch or whatever this is padded envelope it’s going to cost you in downtown San Francisco close to $2 so I’m getting a huge savings if I’m buying in bulk at Target so you want to you know go cheap on your supplies you’ll also want to stock up on packaging tape that can get kind of expensive when a roll kind of starts at four or five dollars so you want to buy that in bulk if you can when you’re shipping stuff that’s fragile just remember that these only have a little bit of bubble wrap lining on the inside so if you’re shipping something um I don’t know like a nail polish or something like that maybe wrap it in another little scrap of bubble bubble wrap or tissue paper that you might have say from your other online purchases all right you know whenever I buy something online and I get extra bubble wrap I will save it for my eBay selling just so I don’t have to go and buy that and spend money out of pocket for my eBay supplies because that takes away from the profit I get from this but just kind of keep that in mind and I totally recommend like setting up like a bin um this is how I kind of keep my stuff organized if I list something on eBay I put it in the bin I want to get supplies I put that in the bin so I kind of have my ebay box and my Poshmark box that are right to go when I make a sale I can easily find the item that I listed I can easily find the packing materials the sharpies the bubble wrap the tape whenever I need it’s all they’re contained in that box and I don’t have to like tear my apartment upside down to find the lipstick that I sold in you know you want to make it since you’re not making a ton of money off this this is not a get-rich-quick kind of scheme um make your eBay selling work for you you don’t have to work for it you know what I mean so just don’t don’t make it so it’s like a huge tour to like do all the wrapping the listing the the selling just streamline it so it’s easy for you and it’s worth your time the last thing I wanted to cover our flat rate boxes so in my case when I was selling textbooks in college textbooks are very heavy and they’re not too fragile so what I would do is I would sell maybe a textbook for 40 or 50 dollars used and then I would ship it in a flat rate box so the post office has the boxes that they provide for free so you want to look for those when you go to the post office the only catch is that you have to send them USPS so you have to send them through the US Postal Service you cannot take those boxes and then go ship at FedEx or UPS that’s against the rules so the post office has these boxes and they’re labeled flat rate boxes and they have small medium large and they have these other dimensions that you can get if your post office is out of stock of these you can actually go on their website and order them for free and they’ll ship them to your house or your office or whatever in seven to ten business days and in my area and San Francisco they’re always out of these boxes at the post office I think people just grab multiple more than they need and take them home so I always order them so I have them on hand again keep them in a designated area so it’s neat and organized so you have him when you need it um the flat rate boxes are great if you’re shipping heavy things so if you’re shipping something like a textbook maybe a pair of shoes something that has a little more weight to it and these boxes are flat rate meaning the medium box I think is like $15 or 12 to 15 dollars that means whatever you can fit inside that box no matter the weight the post office will ship it now they do have some technical things you have to agree to you there can’t be like firearms or explosives or flammable materials in the box but you know you can send a pair of shoes or a textbook in these flat rate boxes and you’ll save a lot of money on the shipping because if you were to go the route of packing a textbook in let’s say a larger padded envelope it would probably get damaged one and then two your shipping costs will be based on weight and not by size or not by the flat rate boxes so use the flat rate boxes if you have an item that’s a little more bulky or is a little more heavy and it’s really not economical or efficient to ship it by weight you’ll want to use a flat rate box all right so I think that’s about it for my ebay selling tips I know this video is a little bit all over the place but like I said people ask me about this all the time and the only way I can kind of explain it is kind of like tell you the full full nine yards so I hope this helped you wherever you are if you have a question I will try and do my best to answer it if you leave it in a comment below I will tell you from my experience you know what I think in hopefully I can help you out thanks so much for watching I’ll see you again next time in my next video bye
