What’s going on everybody? Steve here. Raiken Profit. Raikenprofit.com. And I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine who wants to get started selling on eBay but they have zero experience. So I wanted to share some of the tips that I had shared with them in hopes to be able to help you out if you’re looking to get started selling on eBay or just reselling in general.

You can apply this to eBay, Poshmark, Etsy, Amazon, so on and so forth. But there’s a lot of people out there who want to start building an extra income stream, selling on eBay, making money on eBay. There’s a lot of people out there doing it. And there’s so many cool products you can sell. There’s so many thrift stores, garage sales, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist.

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And a lot of people in general just have a lot of items sitting at home, thousands of dollars worth of products that they can sell to make money. So I want to share with you five tips to getting started selling on eBay. Five things that I would do if I was brand new that could help you start moving in the right direction and help you again to build out that income stream. Which could be a hundred bucks a month, or two hundred a month, or even up to a couple thousand dollars a month plus selling on eBay.

So without further ado, let’s dive right into this video.

So tip number one, if you want to start selling on eBay and you have very little experience, what you’re going to want to focus on at first is building your educational foundation. You want to start learning as much as possible. And one of the best ways that you can do this, especially if you have a full time job and you’re a busy person … Maybe you have a family or maybe you’re a college student … Is to turn your car into a university on wheels.

And what I mean by that is when you’re driving or maybe when you’re walking or when you’re just doing certain things, have your headphones on or have something playing in the background while you’re driving, instead of listening to music. So a couple things you can do is you can have YouTube on in the background, listening to resellers talking about what they’re buying and selling on eBay. There’s great YouTube channels out there, like the Bonafide Hustler, Rally Roots, Rock Star Flipper.

And these are awesome YouTube channels that talk about making money on eBay and different platforms. So turn your car into a university on wheels. The average person’s driving for usually at least an hour per day. Some people are commuting even longer, two, three, four hours. So by listening to something educational, YouTube, podcasts, different things of that nature, you’re learning and you’re bringing in all this education that can help you to start selling on eBay.

So when you start sourcing or when you’re shipping or taking pictures of your items, you have that knowledge. It’s huge. So turn your car into a university on wheels.

Tip number two, and this is going to stem from the foundation of education as well, is you want to make sure you’re studying the sold listings. One of the biggest problems that new eBay sellers make is they buy items that aren’t profitable. They buy items that don’t have a market. They buy items that, when they list it, it sits, sits and sits and it never sells, and their money’s locked up and then they have cash flow issues and then they quit.

You want to make sure you’re buying items that not only have a market and a demand, but also items that are selling for a price high enough to give you that profit that you’re looking for, right? Because you’re not selling on eBay just for fun; you’re trying to make money. So by studying the sold listings … And if you’re not sure what the sold listings are, it’s essentially eBay’s sold items. What items have sold for? So maybe you want to get into selling clothing on eBay. You can go into the men’s clothing section, dive into maybe jeans, and you can hit the button on the left hand side of the screen called ‘sold listings.’

And that will share with you all the different items that have sold. How much it sold for. And then you can study even deeper into what size was the item, what color, all the item specifics, so on and so forth. And it’ll really give you a nice snapshot of what items are selling for and the various details that go along with it. So studying the sold listings is huge. How much time should you spend? Well, it’s going to depend on how much time you can commit to it.

When I was brand new, about six years ago, I was spending an hour or two a day studying the sold listings.

And tip number three, and this is going to stem … They’re all kind of connected … But tip number three, stemming from studying the sold listings, is you want to niche down into a specific product category. So don’t just go to the sold listings and study electronics and then clothing and then car parts and then gardening tools. You want to niche down, or niche down, you want to find a specific product category.

So maybe you want to … Maybe you like fashion. But that’s still too broad. Maybe you like clothing, maybe that’s too broad. Dive into shoes. Maybe women’s shoes. And really start to study the brands and the colors and the styles and the materials and the sizes that sell really, really well. Study for 30 to 60 minutes a day … After a couple of weeks … And you want to take notes, write down all the brands, write down all the specific details. And go out to the thrift stores, go out to the garage sales and start looking for it. Study the sold listings is one of the best things that you can do. The education is huge at the beginning.

Now learning and becoming acquainted with brands and stuff is only going to take you so far. Because you could have all the knowledge in the world inside your head, but if you don’t go out there and source and then list and then take care of your customers, it doesn’t mean anything. But this is the first step to getting started on eBay, is building out that foundation.

So to reiterate so far, we’ve gone through three tips. Number one, turn your car into a university on wheels. Be listening to podcasts, be listening to YouTube videos in the background. Number two, study the sold listings. The sold listings is going to give you a snapshot of what is selling, exactly what’s selling, for how much. And you can go through and look back weeks and months to see what the market is bringing about to give you a really good idea of if you should buy that or sell that item. So that’s number two.

And number three is you want to niche down into a specific product category. There’s so many products out there. Become really amazing at one specific category. Maybe that’s shoes or maybe that’s men’s clothing. And you can even dive down into women’s shoes, or dress shirts, or jeans, or specific items. But master it, get really good laser focus on that product. So when you go out sourcing, you know what you’re doing. And then slowly expand your horizon.

Number four, start selling items around the house. I know a lot of folks who are getting started selling on eBay may not have a big budget. You might not have a lot of money to spend. Maybe you’re not even sure if it works. So one of the best things that you can do is start selling items from around your house. And there’s a couple reasons why. I’ll give you two reasons.

Number one, you don’t have to take money out of your pocket, right? Number two, you can get a feel for how it works. How do you take pictures via the eBay app? How do you list? How do you set your shipping times? How do you set up all the ins and outs of your eBay business, and going through the whole process? You’re going to learn for free, pretty much, on a penny budget how to list items, how to ship items, so on and so forth.

So one, money’s not coming out of pocket. Two, you get to learn pretty much for free. So take your time, I know it’s maybe a little intimidating at first when you’re taking your first pictures. You’re not sure how many pictures should I take? What angles and so on and so forth? And a tip for that is find sellers … Like when you’re studying the sold listings, say you see one seller who’s selling a lot of men’s shoes, and their pictures look great. Go into their store and study, what do their titles look like? What are their shipping times? What angles are they taking of their pictures? How’re they setting up and arranging pictures? And model success, right? That’s right out of the Tony Robbins handbook; I’m a big fan of Tony Robbins. Model success. You do not have to reinvent the wheel.

So just go in there, find five or six sellers that you respect that appear to be doing well. And you can actually tell by going in their store, hitting sold listings, and seeing how much they’re selling and the prices, and just model success. But again, start selling items from around the house. The average person has a couple thousand dollars worth of stuff around the house.

I would start with smaller stuff. Reason being, the bigger, heavier, bulkier stuff, it’s going to be a little more difficult to ship. You’re going to have to find big boxes. Some of that stuff might be fragile, more expensive to ship. Just higher liability. So I’d start with smaller items around the house. Preferably things that are outside of electronics, just because a lot of those things are … You need to test them thoroughly and people have issues with that. But especially clothing and shoes. Great first items to start listing around the house.

And number five, and again these all are kind of interconnected, is continue building out your foundations, right? There’s different pillars that you’re going to want to focus on once you start getting this eBay business going. We’ve got photography, right? There’s always room to improve photography. Getting a better camera. Getting lighting. Getting a distraction-free background. Slowly start to improve these foundations, these pillars of your eBay business.

Then start improving your shipping. Start to organize your shipping center out. Order the correct supplies; poly bags, poly mailers. Get your tape maybe wholesale from YouLine. Or go on eBay or Amazon, find a good tape distributor. You want to start building out your shipping station, a nice organized place for that.

Then you’re going to have your sourcing. Putting together a sourcing schedule. Where am I going to go? When am I going to go? What’s my budget? And then obviously bookkeeping and finances. You might want to get yourself Quickbooks or possibly set up a Google spreadsheet. Or maybe you want to get GoDaddy Bookkeeping and link your credit cards and your bank accounts and everything to keep everything organized for tax season.

So focus on the foundation. Once you start getting things moving, pick a specific pillar, such as photography or shipping or sourcing, and slowly start to improve upon it. This isn’t a race, guys, this isn’t a race. You just want to be better than you were the day before.

So start getting some items listed up. Start learning as much as you possibly can. And take it slow. Set some goals for yourself. Maybe you have a goal of listing and selling five items this month. And again, you’re going to have … I didn’t touch on this … But you’re going to have some seller restrictions on your account when you’re new. A certain amount of items that you can list. Certain dollar amount of items that you can list. So it’s going to be a little slow at first. But that’s okay. Don’t panic, don’t freak out saying to yourself I need to hit $5000 the first month. Because it’s not going to happen, with the seller restrictions. You’re going to have to reach out to eBay and qualify to get them lifted.

But don’t worry about how much money you make at first. Worry about learning as much as you can, setting up your foundation, your educational foundation, and then you’re shipping center. Your sourcing plan, your bookkeeping, all that stuff. Any legalities, setting up an LLC if you decide to go that route, and so on and so forth. Which I don’t recommend at first, but you can obviously talk to a professional about that.

And just take it slow. And I’ll tell you right now, if you set up your foundation, if you learn the right way to do things, you start selling things around the house, then you start learning what to buy and sell through the sold listings, you start going to thrift stores, you’re going to slowly start to build. And you’re going to see your numbers slowly increasing. It’s a slow process. Then you’re going to get to a point where you’re making a nice little side income stream. Or maybe you could pull back a little bit at work, so and so forth.

Or maybe you can even decide to go full time. It’s really up to you. And that’s the coolest thing about running an eBay business; you get to make the rules. Nobody gets to tell you how much time you have to spend, or how much money you desire. That’s all in your hands. I know people who are making $50 a month and they live it; they’re happy, they list a couple items out per week and they sell a couple things per month. And they’re just having fun; it’s like a treasure hunt.

And I know people who are doing ten, twenty thousand a month and that’s their full- time gig. They have a warehouse, employees and so on and so forth. And so it’s really up to you, but hopefully those five tips were able to help you out to get started selling on eBay if you have very little or no experience.

If you guys have any questions or concerns or any tips for the viewers, feel free to drop them down in the comments. I’m always reading all the comments and do the best I can to get back to everybody. And I just want to let you know that I’m super grateful for you all. I appreciate you all. And hopefully this video was able to add value to you. If you liked it, like, comment and subscribe and I’ll see you in the next video.

Good luck. Go out there, make it happen, and I’ll see you in the next one. Peace.