Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether eBay is dead and if you should be using it for your flipping business.
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Reseller Hangout Podcas - eBay’s Dead, Or Is It?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about eBay and more specifically, is it dead?
Rob: eBay is dead, or is it?
Melissa: We're gonna dive into that question today. So we've been seeing around, you know, a little bit of everywhere our sales dried up our, like, is eBay even an all worthwhile platform to sell on anymore?
Can anybody even still sell anything? So we go, I don't wanna dive into some of our experience, lately, and some people, other members experience that we wanna share, to see is eBay dead or not?
Rob: We'll let you decide. So right now, for the last 90 days, we've had the highest, I just looked at our, our thing and we're up a thousand percent in the last 90 days, for our eBay sales.
So by far the best that I've ever sold on eBay in the last 26, 27 years, within the last 90 days. That's, that's how eBay's been working for us.
Melissa: Yeah. So we had our highest 90 day total, and that was $46,606. Woo. So, and the coolest part, what do we have? 23? No, this is 20, only 20 items sold for $2,300 average sale price.
So.
Rob: $2,300 guys. That is what our average sale price is per item. It fluctuates. This is the average out. So some of our items were a lot more, and some of 'em, but averaging out over $2,300 per item.
Melissa: So this is our business model, we talk about all the time, you know, it's high profit, low volume, so we don't sell a lot of items.
But we tend to gravitate towards the ones that can bring in the most money because it saves us time in the long run. And that's been working for us for the last 90 days I mean, it, that's what works for us for a long, for a long time now. Yeah. But this, since you've been started, since you've started on eBay at 20 something, you were.
How long ago was that?
Rob: Long time. Around 26, 27 years. I've been selling on eBay on and off part-time, full-time. I've done it back and forth.
Melissa: And this is your highest 90 day total, which is really cool. And I will have to add, you, you picked up listing in the beginning of the year a little bit more. I did.
So a little more consistent and that always helps. Absolutely. So, but you're still like, haven't done as much the last month and the sales are still coming in. Yeah. So, which is pretty cool. So. Absolutely. So yeah, so it's been good for us and, and yeah, so that we're excited about that.
Rob: Us, you've heard kind of our story for the last 90 days now.
What about some other people? Now we coach people, we teach people how to do this and some of the people in our group, it's been pretty, pretty good for them for the last 30, 60, 90 days. So we'll break down some of their experiences, throughout the last, I would even just say more specifically 30 days. Yeah, how it's been for them.
Melissa: We just, recently kicked off our one-on-one coaching group again, which we are super excited about, but that's also given us the opportunity to really dive into people's businesses closer so we can, we have conversations of what's working, what's not, and all this stuff.
So we're a lot more into like the every day, which is really cool because then we get to see really what. Things are working in other people's businesses cuz it's, I don't wanna say easy to say, oh well it's working for us, but it can't work for anybody else or whatever. So so it's really cool to see all these different businesses and see, are things working, how eBay's working for them, are they able to still make good money on eBay?
Rob: So, absolutely, and we'll kick off with Jennifer, Jennifer and Thomas actually, who have had their best 30 days. In the last 30 days they said they looked back and Jennifer,
Melissa: we just talked to all of these, talked to them last week.
Rob: Absolutely. So, and they said it was their 30, their, best 30 days that they've had. They were surprised about it, but they said the numbers were amazing. And it was from Jennifer and Tomas typically sell, appliances, so it's a higher profit on appliances. They're typically between a thousand and I think $2,000, for their sales. And they said their last 30 days was up and that was their best so far.
I don't know if it's this year or within the last couple years, I don't know, but, but they said it was definitely, definitely up. So, they're doing awesome, which is totally cool. But yeah, let's take it to somebody else.
Melissa: No, and, we got to talk to, Kevin, who was, it was really cool getting to know him and his business and like he's been doing eBay for a while. But he's never really, I don't know. Really tried to make it happen, I feel like. Yeah. And so, and he said just recently he's had, he's made the most money on eBay than he is ever made in, in a long time, like in a short frame of time.
Rob: In two sales, two sales is all he did it with, with a Soul Flex, a S oul Flex exercise machine.
And I forget what the other one, some type of weird thing that he got a small thing that I think he got $500 from from a local estate sale. But I forgot what, it was a weird electronic. I know. Yeah, I know what something you hook up to a truck that checks, something on a truck. I forget what it was.
But anyways, yeah, both of those items about it. I think just under $2,000. And he said it was by far his best month. Kevin sold years and years ago, and he stopped selling for a little. But he never went to the high profit sales. And that just shows you high profit is still selling, between these two people, Kevin and Joanna and Tomas.
So, yeah, it definitely is still working in that realm of the higher profit items.
Melissa: Yeah. And like, you know, we do gravitate towards these items. They're sometimes they're larger. A lot of times if they, A big part of why this business model works for us and other people is we're willing to ship items. So we do the freight shipping and stuff, kind of our jam and what we like to do. But not everything. Like just today you sold a, a humidor, humidor, small humidor for a thousand dollars. Yeah. And that, that just is gonna go in a box and all these things that people are selling, they're not all huge stuff. Some of it is, it's a mixture. It's a good mixture of both.
Yeah.
Rob: Typically though, higher profit items do go hand in hand with freight shipping. It's gonna be a larger item. It's gonna be a commercial item, it's gonna be an industrial item, it's gonna be a higher brand name item for a residential item. It's just higher retail value on those items. That's what we seek out.
That's what we are looking for when we're out there sourcing are items that have high retail value that we can get in and get them at a really, really good price, and then turn around and resell 'em and have money to be able to ship them anywhere in the country. Yeah. So I wanna what.
Who else? Deb just said in the last 24 hours, so we just did recently, you just did a message with her.
We just did recently a training on descriptions. And we wanna give you guys some tips at the end of this, this whole training or this whole episode on some stuff that you can do. But one of the things that we just went over with some of our one-on-one students were descriptions, really coning in and getting good descriptions on eBay.
And Deb said in the last 24 hours, she's had seven items sell. She went back and redid her descriptions and the new stuff that she was listing. She changed the description the way that she was writing 'em.
Melissa: She's had more sales than ever.
Rob: More sales in 24 hours, which was seven sales. That she had in the last 24 hours that she said she is a hundred percent confident that it is because she's working these descriptions the right way.
So absolutely that's working for Deb. And it is one of those things that yes, stuff is still selling on eBay. So, anybody else we were gonna call attention to?
Melissa: Yeah, Shane had his, he did three sales that were over $1,500. So I think another misconception too that we get is, we get comments on social media, obviously.
Who is spending a thousand dollars on eBay or who is spending, you know, $5,000 on eBay. And a lot of times you don't realize that there are small business owners that wanna save money on these items and they don't wanna buy something brand new. They're trying to save money, but they still need something that works.
So that's, I feel like a lot of things that we sell and they, it's a business expense, so, one of their business expenses. So absolutely. It's not always that, it's not always the case, but that's a, I feel like a big part of, of who, what, who were sold to.
Rob: Absolutely. And I think about the two last, two big, sales that we actually did before the humidor.
I, I had two sales I think yesterday and today. The humidor was one and another one was a Stryker, the little bag thing. Oh, a little bag guy. It was like $180, something like that. But it's still, it is tiny. It's gonna fit in an envelope, but $180 for that. And the humidor a thousand dollars, $999 for that.
But the two sales before that, which was, we shipped 'em out, I think it was last week or the week before last week. Yeah, were items that were commercial items. One was an oven, a TurboChef oven, that a business bought because they needed it. And they paid $6,250, actually I think they paid $6,600, something like that now, with taxes and stuff.
But we sold it, we agreed on the, it's $6,250 for that oven. We paid $150 for the oven and then sold it for $6,250 which killer, killer deal. But it did go to a business. So, the other thing was a stretcher. We sold a Stryker stretcher, around the same time, sold that, and that was, I think it was $4,500, was the price we got.
They paid more with shipping and taxes on top of it. It was $4,500. But it was another, it was a business. Somebody who's buying something they can use in their business, in their transport business, in the back of their ambulance, that kind of stuff. So, that's the stuff that we gravitate more towards in the stuff that is still moving.
And this is not stuff that's theory. This is stuff we are selling, our students are selling. So it absolutely is still alive. eBay's still alive, right now if you're selling the right items.
Melissa: Yeah, so, so you, you might need to pivot and gravitate towards different things of what you're selling if you're not getting sales, but we're also gonna go through some tips to increase your sales in just a second.
One last one I wanted to talk about was Brandon's change machine. Remember that he sold that, he said within hours he told us he, that he listed it and he got it for free. Like four hours on eBay and it sold. Four hours and then you're like, kick yourself. You're like, oh, it was too cheap. Yep. But he sold it for a thousand dollars.
Yep. And it was free.
Rob: We actually helped him source that. So I found that for him, and he picked it up, sold it, in four hours thousand bucks on that thing. So, love it. Love it when that happens. But that just goes to show you, and it was, it was a commercial, change counter or soy or something like that.
So yeah, and that's one of those things that, yeah, these things are moving. And if you are selling right now and you're not getting anything to move, maybe you do need to pivot, like Melissa said, maybe you need to, and not necessarily to say, hey, it's not everybody's jam to go to big items, bulky items.
That's, that's not everybody's jam. That's what we do. We love it, but maybe you just need to pivot to different items. If you can't, we try a new niche, that's it, and find something else that's, get out of what's not working and get something that is working. So what's my favorite definition of insanity?
Doing the same thing over and over and not getting a different result. So that's one of those things. Don't be insane with what's going on. Definitely pivot if you have to and get into those items that you can get to move.
Melissa: Yeah. And all these any of these ones that we are talking about have all been in the last 30 days?
So this, we just recently caught hopped on calls with these people and like we are reviewing what's working, what's not working, and in their businesses and all these sales were in the last 30 days, which is really cool. So our consensus is eBay is not dead. It's a lie. You might need to change some things up in your business, which is fine.
It's also shifting your mindset, I feel like, to instead of like, okay, well this eBay's dead, I can't sell on it anymore. So that it's switching your thinking. Okay, well, platforms are changing, reselling might be changing. What can I do to, to be able to still make a good amount of money on this platform?
Absolutely. Or maybe it's time to do to a new platform. A lot of people, you know, like the live selling thing and like to go to whatnot. So like, there's different ways you can do it. You can maybe pivot your entire business. Totally. But there are different ways. It doesn't mean like you have to be done with reselling completely.
Rob: So, yeah. But we wanna give you a couple tips. Yeah. If you're here right now and you want to go on. We love eBay. We've done eBay for years. eBay is our bread and butter because of the amount of people that it reaches. We cannot find that anywhere else on any other platform yet. And we are not sponsored by eBay.
We are not, but we do use them and we make great money off of eBay. So, that's one of those things. So we wanna give you a cut, guys, a couple tips. If you do wanna stick it out, you wanna figure out, how to really make it work, how to get your items moving. Let's give you a couple tips that you can jump in and start to implement to see those results that you're looking for.
Melissa: Under promise and over-deliver.
Rob: One of the biggest mottos that we say is under promise. Overdeliver, make sure you're not making false promises on your items or item or promises that you cannot fulfill. Make sure that you are talking down your item and then you're overfilling when the, when the buyer gets your items so they're so happy with it.
That's one of our biggest mottos around here as we want people to be happy. You want buyers to get items and be super, super excited and happy about the item.
Melissa: Yeah, because if you start to do, let's start to try to sell your item and it's not exactly what, I mean, we're mo mostly talking about used items.
New items is kind of a different category cuz you can sell it as new and whatever. It has its perks or whatever we're talking about kind of used items. And then you're, you're saying this used item is in mint condition and it's not really a mint condition or whatever. Or you try to make the photos look perfect and they get the item and it's not perfect.
There's a dent or a scratch that you didn't disclose. Obviously that's bad business practice. Person's not gonna leave you good feedback. And then your store goes down and then it's just snowballs there. Absolutely. So we're just trying to have the best business practice, the best customer service we can so that people are happy.
And then eBay does shore items to more people.
Rob: Absolutely. That is a tip that will totally keep you going and make you go far under promise overdeliver on everything that you do on eBay. So yeah. What's number two tip number two?
Melissa: Good pictures. And it's surprising that, I mean, not surprising, like good pictures, you might say.
That's so simple. That's so simple.
Rob: Still people don't do, it's still, it's, it's, it's important. Yeah. And it's not just good pictures. It's a lot of pictures. So you have to remember, people that are buying your stuff on eBay are not getting to feel it, touch it, look at it in person until they actually buy it, pay for it, and it shows up at their house.
So keep that in mind when you're doing pictures. Make sure that you're getting every single angle, every single defect that is on it. If it scratches, scrapes, whatever it. Make sure that you're getting pictures of every, every single thing. And you, I mean, some people will go on and sell something and put two or three pictures in there of it.
Don't do that. Try to get, I mean, eBay, I think allows you up to, it's 24 pictures now. Now, yeah, 24 pictures you can load in there. So absolutely take advantage of that. The other thing is make sure the pictures are not cluttered up. Try to get a good, solid background when you're taking a picture. Make sure that you have nice pictures, that you are using.
You don't want clutter in the picture. You don't want any. Stuff that's going to make people, sway from looking at what you're trying to sell them. So make sure it's no clutter and it's a good picture and as many pictures as possible.
Melissa: Yeah. And now you used to recommend do using all 12 pictures. Do you recommend using all 24?
There's not really anything like if some items you don't need to. Obviously, obviously like, it's no, like if you can only see so many sides of the item. So.
Rob: Yeah. And remember, we're selling higher profit items. I don't want somebody like even that TurboChef that we just resold or just sold for $6,250. I, I wanna give every single angle of that that I possibly can and show every single imperfection that I possibly can, because like I said, the buyer has not seen this in person. And another thing that we'll get to is the video. I put a video of all these things in there. I know I put a video of all these things in there because you want them to be, you wanna underpromise over-deliver. You want them to be happy with the item that they are absolutely getting.
Melissa: Yeah. So that was another one.
Add video.
Rob: Number three is if you're not using videos yet, eBays just recently updated. Their actual format where you can get in and do it from a computer. The phone, you have to go outside the app and do it, inside of a browser, to upload the picture from your phone. Or you can just, the video from your phone.
Yeah. Put the video from your phone onto your laptop, your, and then import it in through there. You can totally do it, but you can do it totally quicker, than you used to be able to have to download it onto, or upload it onto YouTube and, put a link into your eBay listing so people could go to the link and then go to YouTube and watch the video.
Now it's so much easier. You can totally do that. And it totally helps with the sales on your, on your items,
Melissa: especially if you're selling, items worth more money because people do want us see as much and it's a lot harder to fake a video than it is to fake a picture. Absolutely. Like you can Photoshop a picture and now with AI you could probably do crazy stuff and you're gonna be able to do crazy stuff with video too.
So we'll see where that goes. Like in the future. Yeah. When people start using images for the, to sell their stuff, but for right now, like you can trust video a little bit more than just a picture. So it just helps the customer feel better about purchasing your item. So if you're not using videos, and obviously again, it does matter what you're selling, you don't really need a video of a stuffed animal or a, you know, like, you don't really, so I mean, you could, if it's like a higher value one absolutely index, like. Absolutely.
And you could show that there's no rips and tears. So I guess you could, so if you can use it, it could help your business. Yeah. So.
Rob: Yeah. Is that it? Number three?
Melissa: Number four. Four. Number four is your better descriptions. So add more to your description. Yep. And add just, yeah, eBay likes longer descriptions, that's for sure.
So we try to add as much as we can, not like a whole bunch of fluff. We do add our terms and conditions in there too, which does help with the length, but eBay does like better descriptions, so.
Rob: Absolutely. Some time doing the description. One of the keys that I'll even give you, go to the manufacturer's website, find some bullet points, give, make sure giving them credit on the website of features and things about that item.
Try to get the description as long as you possibly can. eBay definitely loves to show the items that have more descriptions on them, so they're thinking the buyers are gonna be more happy.
Melissa: Don't people hardly ever read the description?
Rob: They don't, but at the same time, that's what eBay will promote is, is the longer description.
So absolutely. Spend some more time on the descriptions, get to where they really, really are good. Don't, don't overpromise, underpromise over-deliver is what you wanna do. So, any of the pictures too that you are, show imperfections. Make sure you're putting them into the description as well. If there's a scrape on the right side, make sure you say, you know, please see pictures.
But there's a scrape on the right side, a dent on the right side, stuff like that. You don't only wanna put pictures of it, you also want to put it in the description as well. So, yeah. That's, that's pretty much it.
Melissa: So our consensus is that eBay is not dead. It is alive and flourishing. You might just need to change some things up in your business, and look at your business and see like, where can we make some changes?
Cuz that could help. Absolutely. So, yeah, so we do offer one-on-one coaching. Not everybody knows that. On the podcast we've usually just offered it to our course members. But we do offer that. We have, if you're interested to learn more about it, we do have an application. It'll be in the show notes below, so you can check that out.
It's actually, fliphighprofit.com and you can access that application and then we can hop on a call and see if it is a good fit for you. So yeah, we'll put that link in the show.
Rob: Absolutely. And if you guys are interested, like Melissa said, hit that link below. Check it out. Fill out the application.
We'll see if it's a good fit and we can work with you if it is something that is a good fit for both. You guys rock. We cannot wait to see you on the next episode.