11/12/09 eBay Powersellers Secrets Newsletter

“In this week’s newsletter, Amanda swaps coffee and Sunday papers for a pasting table and numb fingers.”  

Hello!

I had one of those ‘light-bulb’ moments a few weeks ago and so last Sunday I decided to test out a little theory for you.  

I often receive emails from people who are just starting out on eBay, asking me how much capital they actually need to get going and I always tell them that you really need very little to enable you to purchase your first batch of stock. I spent about £150 on my first small wholesale lot, so this is around the figure that you should aim to have to enable you to get started.  

Years ago I used to enjoy going to Car Boot sales from time to time – not as a buyer, but as a seller. I used to regularly have a good old clear out, load up the car with my ‘junk’, throw in the pasting table and off I’d go at the crack of dawn down to my local racecourse where a Car Boot sale was held every Sunday morning. 

This was a long time before I started my eBay business and I used to do it simply to make a bit of extra cash once every few months. It’s true when they say ‘one man’s junk is another man’s treasure’ because I used to regularly make over £100 from the bits and pieces that were sitting in my house taking up space and gathering dust. 

So, thinking about raising cash to buy your first wholesale lot, I wondered whether rather than just having a clear out at home, it might be profitable to purchase a load of items from a cash and carry for say between £50 and £75 and then sell these items on at double the price at a Car Boot sale, thus doubling my money to spend on stock for eBay. 

You might be thinking, why go to the trouble of buying stock at a cash and carry and then selling it at a car boot sale just to make money to buy stock for eBay – doesn’t this sound a bit long-winded? Why not cut out the ‘middleman’ – in this case the Car Boot sale - and just buy some items from a cash and carry and list them on eBay?  

Well, you could do that, however the thing with eBay is that you have to do your research and be absolutely sure that the items you are going to list will sell and quite honestly, a random batch of cheap cash and carry items most probably won’t!  

However, cash and carry items are ideal for Car Boot sales where you can reach a wide range of people from all walks of life who are mostly just looking for cheap knick-knacks – i.e. non specifics.  

People go to Car Boot sales for something to do on a Sunday but they are never really looking for anything in particular. A bargain is a bargain though and most can’t resist buying something whether they want it or not! 

So, as I have said, I wanted to test this theory out and so last Sunday, instead of being curled up on the sofa reading the Sunday papers, I could be found shivering behind a very wobbly pasting table displaying my goods at my local Car Boot sale. 

Once I had beaten off the rabble who tried to actually climb in to my car boot as I was unpacking my stuff – I hadn’t even got it out of the boxes and people were poking their noses into my car asking what I was selling – I set myself up, arranged everything nicely and waited for my customers.  

I have to say that I was extremely impressed with the turn out because you may recall that last Sunday was not the nicest of days weather wise (no snow though, much to daughter number two’s disgust – she is still on ‘sledge vigil’). 

Anyway, I had for sale a range of goods that I purchased at random from this website: www.mxwholesale.co.uk in bulk. I bought packs of dishcloths, cutlery with novelty ends (?), bottle openers, toy robots, pirate swords and kites. I then added a few items of my own that I wanted to get rid of after our recent loft conversion. So my total spend was about £52 plus delivery at £7.95, so I spent under £60 including delivery and had a total of 70 items to sell.

And I purposely wasn’t too choosy about what I was buying because as I have said, the market at Car Boots is very wide. My plan was to buy cheap and make preferably 100% profit on each item I sold.

My trick was to put only a couple of each item out at a time (to disguise the fact that I did in fact have multiples of each item) mixed in with my personal stuff, so that interested buyers assumed that the items were limited and if they wanted them they would have to buy now. I was also careful to keep the money I made on my personal stuff separate from my purpose bought items so that I could see exactly how much profit I made.

My aim was to at least double my initial investment of £60, so I wanted to come home with about £120 or near enough. Each item I had purchased cost me on average 85p, so I needed to try and sell everything on my stall for anything over £1.70 per item. This is about right because to be honest, Car Boot sale buyers are looking to part with up to about £2.00 maximum per item they buy – preferably much less if they think you are a push-over!

Anyway, to cut to the chase – I didn’t sell everything – but near enough! As luck would have it I had the kites and Sunday was so windy that I sold all of them within an hour – at £3.00 each! Brilliant, but definitely a stroke of luck and not prior planning on my part!

Pretty much everything else went except the novelty cutlery – probably not to everyone’s taste – I have 4 sets left which are now residing in my own cutlery drawer and providing much amusement to my children.

I totted up my loot and overall had a grand total of £141.00 – this was largely due to the kites selling at more than I thought which more than made up for the disastrous novelty cutlery!

So all in all it wasn’t a bad morning’s work. No lie in and 5 hours behind a pasting table but I was £81 richer, well £76 richer after I took out the Car Boot entrance fee of a fiver, so in my book it was definitely worth doing and if I was starting out on eBay right now and wanted some capital, this is what I would do – why not give it a try yourself?

I know that £76 isn’t huge riches, but if you set yourself a target and did say four car boot sales in a month and made £50 each time, that’s £200 which is more than enough to get started on eBay. Alternatively, you could do two Car Boot sales a month with purpose bought goods, make £50 a time and that would give you an extra £100 a month to do what you like with – and all for just a few hours work.

As always I wish you the best of success,

Amanda

P.S Not only have I been ‘Car Booting’ recently, but you may remember that a little while back I asked you what you wanted to learn about selling on eBay successfully. Well, I’ve been burning the midnight oil putting something special together for you. So, if you are serious about selling on eBay in 2010 you will not want to miss it.

I’m putting the final touches to it right now, so keep an eye on my weekly newsletters for updates and sneak previews of what’s in store. You will absolutely love it!

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I produce this newsletter on the understanding that these are my own personal opinions and experiences, which are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. I cannot be held responsible for any error in details, accuracy or judgment whatsoever. 

© Amanda O’Brien 2009

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