eBay for Beginners: 5 Tips to Make Your First $1,000 Selling on eBay

If you are new selling on eBay, you may be concerned about hitting the milestone of making that first $1,000. In all the years I’ve been selling on eBay, I’ve learned a lot. And I’m not going to lie: I’ve made a lot of mistakes too. Throughout my successes and failures, I can offer you five tips that are really going to help you get moving, get growing, and start making first thousand bucks.

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#1: Lift Your Selling Limits
When you’re brand new and haven’t really done any business on eBay, eBay is going to put selling limits on you. They’re only going to allow you to sell a certain number of items and a certain dollar amount worth of items as well. Essentially what that means is it’s going to take some time for you to prove yourself in the eyes of eBay until they lift your selling limits.

Now, what you do is call eBay after about 30 to 45 days once you’ve listed the maximum number of items that you can. That number is always changing, so you will just have to list until you hit it. But hit whatever limit you have, conduct good business for a while, and then give them a call and say, “Hey, listen, this is what I’ve done. I’ve got good feedback. I’ve shipped everything on time. I’ve provided good customer service. Can you  lift my selling limits?”

Sometimes they’ll ask you questions: “What type of items are you selling? What are your goals? Where do you get your items from?” And as long as you can explain yourself, a lot of times they will lift your limits. So get your selling limits lifted as soon as you can.

#2: List Many Items, and List Every Single Day
Not only should you list a lot of items, but, if you can, you should list every single day. From my experience, I’ve found that I have more success listing 5 to 10 items a day versus listing, say, 30 items one day once a week. I think eBay just rewards sellers for being consistent in putting out new listings and providing business for their customers. If you can’t list every day, you might want to consider scheduling out your listings as well. I know it does cost a little bit of money, but that might be a good option for you.

Create a listing routine and schedule for yourself. When I first started selling on eBay, every single day I would wake up in the morning and get my mannequin ready. I’d get my camera ready, get the 10 items ready, bring them into the living room, and list my 10 items. That was my habit. Ten items a day, five days a week. And doing that helped me hit my selling goal.

#3: Invest in a Store as Soon as You Can
Having an eBay store is beneficial for a lot of reasons. But the biggest benefit to having a store is that you can actually run sales. You can go through the markdown manager and run a sale in your store. And this is powerful. If you’re having slow sales and things aren’t moving, run a sale. I typically am running sales all the time.

#4: Sell Profitable Items
This tip is twofold. First, some people are trying to sell items where the profit margins are just too low. Sure, they can sell the item, but in the end the small profit just isn’t worth their time. They’d be better off going to a minimum-wage job. The second issue is that they are selling items that don’t have a market that is large enough.

Some items have a huge market. Think Apple products that everyone wants. There’s a huge following. People love Apple. So not only is that going to keep the price up, but it’s also going to keep the sales velocity going strong.

Some items just don’t have a large market. It might be a clothing brand that isn’t popular. Maybe it’s a type of figurine that only a few people collect. You can go onto eBay and check the sold listings to see how much a particular item is selling for and how many are selling per day. So do your research before you start listing items.

I’ve seen so many people list hundreds of items, and the items are not selling. They’re running sales, they’ve priced the items competitively, they’re taking great pictures, and they say, “Steve, why aren’t my items selling?” It’s because nobody wants your items! You’ve got to focus on good products.

#5: Don’t Get Discouraged Too Quickly
It’s not easy to make that first thousand bucks, and some sellers don’t like that fact. They don’t like that they have to put in some hard work to get their selling limits raised. They have a hard time building a routine and getting into that consistency of listing every day. Or maybe they are doing everything right but are still frustrated that it’s not happening for them fast enough. But this stuff takes time. It’s a learning curve to figure out what to sell and how to take great pictures and how to do keyword research and listing on your phone and creating efficiencies. It just takes time.

I suggest you surround yourself with positive people. There’s a huge community on YouTube of amazing eBay resellers sharing content. There are tons of free Facebook groups. There are all different types of content and information out there that could help you. So don’t give up; don’t quit. Keep pushing forward every single day.

Hang in There!
There are going to be times on eBay when things are going just all kinds of wrong. Items aren’t selling. You might even have great products. You might be running a sale, you might have great feedback in your store, and things just don’t sell. That’s one known fact about eBay; it’s always like this. You can ask the top sellers on eBay and then you can ask the beginners. It’s part of the game.

But don’t get discouraged. Just don’t. That’s business; that’s Entrepreneurship 101. Go make it happen, and you will make your first thousand dollars on eBay.