So You Want To Sell Millions On eBay? | Top 5 Tips
You might have seen some of my instagram posts with actual screenshots of my sales on eBay from my account. You’ll notice numbers like $180k/60 day, $250k/60day, etc.
You might have seen that I was featured by Mr. Garyvee himself in this article for doing $40k-800k in my senior year of college. You might have seen that my eBay business was nominated global business of the year in 2018.
Look I want to make it really clear, selling millions of dollars of product on eBay is not only possible but also very viable.
For the last decade I’ve been amazed at how lucrative selling on eBay is but more importantly, how lucrative it can be.
Just like anything good in life, it takes time. I’ve got nearly a decade of experience on eBay so here are my best tips.
1) Focus on Replenishables — Replenishable products are products that you can list once on eBay and sell it over and over and over again. Even if they are used, you can sell used products over and over again on one listing. As long as the condition of each is accurately described on the listing — you’re good!
This product right here the gopro wifi remote, I used to purchase these for $8 a pop and sell them for $15. I would net $5 profit from the sale. Oh yeah $5 for all that work no thanks Prince.
Well, what if I told you I sold over 10,000 of these a year for an average profit of $5 each? Does $50,000 a year from one listing wake you up? Are you listening now?
You can go the route of finding one-off products and building a large inventory like my friend Chris from dailyrefinement, btw you should check his stuff out, he is also on youtube and knows practically everything about eBay. The thing is, Chris works like a dog. I’ve seen this man wake up at 5AM after a long night everyday without fail, to start his business day. If you have that hustle in you — than buying one-off products and listing them everyday is almost a surefire way to sell millions on eBay. That is the great thing about that business model. High margins, low cost inventory — but remember, a lot more work.
With replenishables — margins are typically lower because you’re finding hot products to list and hot products are very difficult to get with high margins. I used to see people making fun of sellers do high volume on low margin:
In one situation you find products to list and you’re done, you just keep ordering from your supplier. In another situation, you’re hustling everyday to find products. You think Walmart cares they have 2–3% margins? Lol.
I’ve always looked at the overall profit as my main target, that’s why I’ve made over half a million with eBay alone. Think about cash flow and think about reinvesting over and over again. It compounds really quickly, trust me.
If you saw my got banned on eBay video, I talk about how my gopro business that was doing nearly $1.5M in projected revenue got banned and I had to start all over. This year in 2020, I started an entirely different product line and managed to get to nearly $800k in sales. The replenishable game is serious!
2) THINK SCALE. I’ve seen thousands of eBay sellers, literally, I’ve been in this game for nearly a decade. I’ve had a lot of friends in this space, I’ve been to a bunch of meetups, and even got very involved with the eBay community.
I see a lot of sellers never growing their business because they get too caught up in the “hustle” mentality. Yes you need to hustle, it’s important, but where you focus your efforts is just as important as making the effort.
Most resellers don’t re-invest enough back into the business — it’s like poking a hole in a balloon and blowing it at the same time. You net, no growth — but your sales are consistent because you’re hustling. You need to re-think your business model to allow for more growth. Whether that be pumping more money into your business, whether its hiring a VA to free up your time to go find more good inventory (more inventory theoretically means more sales).
3) Keep up with issues — Unlike selling on your own website. You have very specific guidelines to follow when selling on eBay. KEEP UP WITH THEM.
You’ll run into issues in your career at some point, late shipments, forgetting to take care of refunds/returns/cases, etc. When you’ve been selling for as long as I have, you know it happens. You need to make sure to make it a priority to address it.
If you’re young & foolish like I was, you might even run into situations where you can benefit monetarily like doing sales outside of eBay to save fee’s or sharing contact information (both of which are not allowed on eBay). Trust me when I say, it’s just not worth it. Don’t get banned. Don’t dissolve your opportunity to have a full time business, or even a side business. Millions of people sell on eBay, not necessarily just business owners. It’s a known fact that almost everyone, including you, has thousands of dollars worth of things around the house that can be sold on eBay.
I find eBay extremely valuable, you can liquidate almost anything within a day. There’s a lot of cash flow power there. Might come in handy for you in life even if you don’t sell on eBay as a business.
4) Don’t be fancy, enjoy the process — No matter what you do in life you should figure out how to enjoy it. I found eBay very enjoyable at 17 years old because I enjoyed the thrill of flipping things. I remember I would start with as low as $30 bucks, I’d find something on craigslist (an old phone, an ipod, a gopro) drive 30 mins to hour somewhere to pick it up, and then either sell it back on craigslist after spending another 30 mins to an hour meeting up or selling it eBay. And guess what? All to make a grand total of $20! I remember when I was 17 or 18 I was trying SO hard to hit that 4 digit number ($1,000) in my bank but I just COULDN’T break that $1000 mark because I had a girlfriend at the time and we would go out regularly (dinners, parties, activities). Don’t get me started on valentines day, christmas, anniversaries, groundhog day. There was a leak in my bucket. You guys know how it is, dating is expensive.
When I first started selling on eBay part-time in 2016 I would spend as many hours as it would take to generate a profit. I didn’t care how many hours that would be, I just wanted to figure out this business that badly. If I had to put an hourly rate to my income in 2016, it would probably be like $2 an hour for working 10+ hours a day. I was a man on a mission.
Now I get it, maybe you’re not that hungry about eBay like I was. Maybe I was just weird. I did other things that really got me amped about eBay. The main thing was to join the reseller community on instagram. I found thousands of sellers on instagram and quickly fell in the rabbit hole of talking to as many people I could.
The biggest growth hack is surrounding yourself with people on a similar mission. The coolest thing about eBay is that most people are not necessarily competing with each other, they’re competing against the market. So you can build a bond and a connection very easily over this business. When you surround yourself with other business owners your entire drive/motivation changes. You look forward to doing what you do and you share your thoughts with the community. You end up learning a lot, you get to see other business models, the potential, and just overall relatability. I’m not the only one that sold millions on eBay guys. There are a lot of people out there just not posting it on social media.
5) The eBay algorithm — Just like youtube and most sites, eBay has an algorithm. eBay’s algorithm is always changing and there is no definitive blueprint out there that exposes it. However, I’ve had several years of experience with trying to game the algorithm. My story with eBay is very similar to that of Mrbeast and youtube, I was basically living to figure out the eBay algorithm.
- Competitive pricing/cheapest price
The number one factor to beat the algorithm on eBay will always be having the cheapest price. Most people that search on eBay usually have the sort filter on lowest price + shipping first. This will always drive your listings to the absolute top in search. Now I get it, sometimes you can’t list at the cheapest, at least due your due diligence, look at comps and competitors and be competitive with your pricing. If you have a unique one off product to sell, you might have no competitors, in that case you can list however much you want.
- Relative performance to competitors (Terapeak)
Use the tools that eBay gives you. eBay has a research tab where you can see exactly how you perform compared to your competitors. All you need to do is search the product you sell and you can see exactly how you compare to your competitors. Use this to your advantage. Copy their listing strategy and improve on it if possible. If you don’t do your research then you’re just jumping blindly into this.
- Impression CTR (Click through rate)
Most people don’t focus on CTR and it blows my mind. Click through rate is extremely important. You can find this on your performance tab on eBay. CTR has a direct correlation with conversion right? More clicks = more sales. To improve your CTR make sure you are utilizing every single title space and add as many important keyword as possible. You also want to make sure your images are as professional as can be. I would recommend clean white backgrounds because those tend to get a much higher CTR than let’s say a product in your hand or on a dirty floor. It’s also far more searchable — I’ve noticed that a lot of my gopro listings would make it onto google images so that just proves that professional images do better. You don’t need a fancy camera, infact, an iphone would get the job done. Get as close to a stock image as you can. I mean think about what eBay want’s to promote, they want to promote good sellers and good listings. Youtube is the same way, high CTR means youtube wants to promote your videos because people click on them.
- Account age/activity/history
This you have little control over but I have to say it does make a difference. The longer you sell and the more active you are the more sales you will get. If you think about it from eBay’s perspective, if a seller has been selling for a long time and they continue to have a good track record, it’s in eBays best interest to push your listings because you are a trusted seller. I believe eBay has something very similar to a “credit score” in their system, the higher your credit score, the better you do.
Now this is just a theory but me and thousands of other sellers have experienced this. If you sell on eBay right now you might have noticed that the days that you spend listing on eBay, revising listings, doing customer service — the sales start to come in. Sometimes I’ve had stale listings that won’t sell for several weeks but then I simply go in and adjust some keywords and revise the listing. Then magically I get back to back sales on that listing. Coincidence? I think not.
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I hope some of these tips helped you guys out — this was just a very brief synopsis of all the tips I have regarding eBay. If you want more, please do let me know. Cheers!
