Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about how much a begginer can sell on eBay.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - How Much Can A Beginner Sell On eBay?
Rob: What's up, pro flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about how much a beginner can sell on eBay.
Rob: All right guys, on today's episode, we're diving into beginning on eBay. So what are the limits? How much can you sell when you start on eBay?
Melissa: So sometimes when people get started, they, you know, they wanna dive right in and jump in and start selling, you know, thousands of dollars, which is awesome.
Like you can get started fast, but eBay does have some limits when you're first starting out, and it's really for everybody's protection. So, absolutely.
Rob: So one thing you have to remember, and we've talked about this, we've touched on this on many episodes. When you start off in eBay, they limit you.
It's for the protect protection of buyers, that you're not a scammer and you're not gonna scam buyers outta money. So the basic beginner, when you actually open your account and you start selling on eBay, the limits that they put on you is $500 per month, or 10 items, whichever one you reach first.
Melissa: So it doesn't matter. Okay, so the first one, if you hit $500 in
Rob: two items, okay, that's it. You're capped. If you hit $500 in 10 items, you get 10 items listed and you're underneath $500, you're still capped. You cannot list over 10 items or over $500, whichever one hits first. It will cap you and you won't be able to do it.
Melissa: I would say even though like we hard, like we really promote you know, selling some higher dollar higher value items. Like that's our business model is these higher profit, higher value items. I wouldn't start with one $500 item if you're just starting out, don't list just one $500 item and that's your limit.
Because it might take a little while for that thing to sell and you have no feedback. So somebody probably will not spend that amount of money with you. Yeah. So I, it would be smarter to start with 10 items, and hit that mark first because then you have 10 chances for stuff to sell and you're building your feedback.
And the quicker you do that, the quicker your limits will be lifted.
Rob: So, such a great point. Like Melissa was saying 10 items, the thing about eBay is you might not get feedback on every single item you sell. Some, some buyers are flaky. They won't leave you feedback, for whatever reason it is. Even buying items typically, some buyers won't even give feedback. So, you definitely want to try and go towards the 10 items versus the $500 mark. And you want to move those items as quick as you possibly can so eBay can see that you're legit. They can see that you're trying to start a business and do it. What we're not talking about is definitely the buying, where you're buying items to get feedback as well.
Now, we recommend you doing that as well because when people see your name and they see the number after your name for the feed. eBay puts both of those numbers together as buyer and seller. And they will go up as you buy items and get feedback. They will absolutely go up. And that doesn't really reflect how eBay, will either cap or raise your, your seller fee.
I mean, your seller limits. Thank you, your seller limits. It doesn't affect that, but it still shows a higher number behind your name to show other eBay buyers, potential buyers that you are on eBay, you are using the platform and you're legitly doing it with a hundred percent rating is what we, we strive for.
Melissa: So say I have my 10 items listed, I hit my limit. What can I do now? How do I increase that limit? So.
Rob: Yeah, so eBay does this every single month. They will go in and internally, I think it's automatic, internally, they'll check in, evaluate. Yeah, evaluate. They'll check and see the sales that you had for the previous month.
They'll see the feedback coming in. They'll see all that. Even if you have sales and people, the buyers aren't leaving you feedback and you're asking for feedback, eBay will take that into consideration that you're actually reaching out. They can see all the messages going back and forth that you're reaching out, trying to build your feedback.
So that's one of the ways that they can raise your limits, just by seeing your history of what you're doing, watching the sales watching the tracking go through smoothly, like you upload the tracking. When you do ship an item, eBay can monitor that, see when it's delivered, all that kind of stuff.
The buyer doesn't give you negative feedback or say they didn't receive the item. They start to see that and they'll start to see the progression of your business, and then they'll start to raise your, your actual limits. And you can also, there's two ways you can actually get the, the limits raised.
It's just by calling them, calling up eBay and saying, hey, I'm trying to build a business here. $500 is not much. I'm trying to list some items that have a little bit higher profit. Can you guys raise my limits? And you can see that I've had the history of doing my transactions quickly. I'm getting stuff shipped out.
Can you guys raise 'em? And they'll either tell you yes or no, but you can also do it back in your back office through the MyeBay tab. You can go in there and request them to raise the limits without even having to call 'em up on the phone.
Melissa: Yeah. And you had to do that for, for when you hit, cuz you'll, you will hit limits too as you go.
Like, even if you're not starting out, you'll hit a limit that I can't list more than this, but you can usually just go in. We didn't even know they had a chat feature that you could ask. Yeah. Or go in and just request it. But you can call them or go in and request it and I think you hit a hundred thousand dollars and you wanted to raise it and they raised it to $250,000?
Rob: I don't remember. I think right now we're half a million, so $500,000 limit on our inventory. That's what they will allow us to list. But I think I was at two something and they had to raise me up to half a half a million. Okay. When we did it, and it was one big item that we had that was over a hundred thousand dollars for some, LCD, yeah screens that we bought one auction. And yeah, that was the only one that was pushing us way over. I called them up and said, hey, I'm trying to list this. And they said, no problem at all. We'll raise your limits in your hand.
Melissa: They didn't give you any issue, right?
Rob: No, but we have a long history, history with history, eBay.
So they know what we're doing. They know we're legit. We're getting positive feedback. We have a hundred percent feedback on what we do. We strive for that as well. So, that's one of those things that once you start building that history and eBay can see it, they're very, very apt to raise your limits.
They want you to be selling more money. The more that you're selling on, the more, the more they're making. So just keep that in mind. But your caps, when you start, when you open up your account, your caps absolutely start at $500 or 10 items.
Melissa: Yeah, so basically just have good business practice when you're starting out.
And I mean, anytime you wanna have good business practice, shipping out your stuff on time is very important. So eBay will dock you if you are later than you say, like you can put your shipping, handling, which in the beginning it's definitely smart to do as fast as quick as you can. If you can do one day shipping or like you just get it out, your handling time is only one day then that is will help your store and help your stuff sell faster, the faster you can get it out. Yep. Cause they wanna promote that because they want to compete with Amazon, so they want stuff shipped as fast as possible. So on our bigger items, we have a five day handling time, which is fine, for those items cuz we don't, like, nobody expects those to come overnight. Yep.
Or anything. But to have the, the faster shipping time. But if you put that, you have to make sure that you do it because if you go after what you say you're gonna do, they will start to dock at you and you don't want to do that. So.
Rob: Yeah. When you're doing, when you're starting off, you're not shipping stuff on pallets.
We ship a lot of stuff on pallets. You're shipping stuff that can go in a box and go in an envelope.
Melissa: It should be able to go out fast.
Rob: Exactly. So if I was you, I'm trying to grow it as quick as I possibly could. I would do the same day or one day handling. So you're getting it out as soon as it comes in.
Plus you only have 10 items to juggle. It's, that's not crazy. You see a notification coming, you made a sale, jump in once you get home from work that night, put it in a bag, put it in a box, get it shipped out, so you have it done as quick as possible. And that's how you can speed up the process of raising your limits and being able to sell more.
So, everybody has to go through this in the beginning. But I will, it can go quick. Absolutely. You can go quick and I will encourage you if you are thinking about selling and you have not started your seller's account yet, maybe open your account right now and start buying something so eBay can see your account's open.
You're, you're doing transactions through eBay, you're paying for stuff. And then when you're ready to list, like I said, they'll have you at $500, but they'll see that you've already had feedback, you've already been on the platform. You understand how stuff works. It'll raise it a quicker for you. So if you know you exactly, so if you know that you wanna start selling, open the account as quick as you possibly can, and just start, you know, buying some stuff and getting that feedback coming in first.
Melissa: So eBay will check, when you do request to have increase your limits. They will check to see if you did do all the good business practice shipping out on time.
And also they will check your selling feedback. So some other ways that you can grow, grow that is ask your customers. Once you send out your item, they received it, you can see it was delivered, maybe the next day, if they haven't left you feedback, you can just politely say, hey, I'm trying to grow my eBay business. Did we provide you how, what did I, I, let me, I'm gonna grab the card real quick. Yeah. And I'm gonna add.
Rob: One thing you do wanna keep in mind as, as well, when you are selling, eBay, the cap that you're getting at the $500 an or the 10 items, the other thing that eBay will do is they're gonna hold that money.
When somebody pays you for an item, eBay's gonna take the money from the buyer. They're gonna keep it in their account. Oh, good point. And they're not gonna release it to you until they have proof that that tracking number that you uploaded is delivered to the buyer and then I think they have with the even 72 hours that if the buyer gets the item and says, hey, this is not what I thought it was, or, you didn't ship the right item, anything like that, then eBay will not release the funds to you.
They'll allow the buyer to ship it back or prove that they shipped it back. So that's one thing to keep in mind, which is good because it's a lower, when you only have 10 items, you only, you can't list over $500. These are gonna be smaller items and items that don't have huge values on them. eBay is gonna hold that money until they see that you're a legit seller as well.
So, like us, our money doesn't get held once you establish the relationship with eBay. Your money doesn't get held. It, it, it goes well.
Melissa: It takes a little process.
Rob: They process it for 24 hours and then you can get it paid out immediately onto a debit card if you have your debit card uploaded into your account, or they take, I think it's one to three days to actually send it from eBay's account over to your bank account.
So you have a couple different options there. But the biggest thing you wanna remember is eBay is gonna hold the money until they see that you're a legit seller. They're not gonna release the funds until the buyer receives the item and either gives you positive feedback or they don't say anything for three days knowing that they received the item.
And yeah, they did not have any complaints with it in the first three days.
Melissa: So don't get frustrated because that will happen and just know that going into it. And also know that another good point when you're starting out is that you will get some scam requests. So we've done a whole podcast on what to watch out for, for scammers, but people will message you, they'll say, I can pay you more.
And then they'll try to go outside the app. Don't ever try to go outside the app. Don't ever. Like always keep all of your conversations within the app because then eBay can check it for you. And if they say that this is one that can trip up beginners a little bit cuz you said the money is held. Yeah.
So, you, if you don't know, if you, the money's there and you're afraid to ship out the item, like it'll tell you an eBay, like you're the person paid, you can ship out the item. But if you're nervous about it, cuz you don't see the money in your account, you can just chat with eBay and they'll check for you.
Yeah. And make sure that it's legitly there because sometimes people will tell you, I paid you. But then you don't see the notification. They're like, well, check your PayPal. They send you an email from P PayPal that's really fake, PayPal. It's just a screenshot. And they make it look all fancy. And they're trying to say that they sent it to you.
Yeah. And they did it. So that's just one of the, the scams that you could get.
Rob: Absolutely. It's a great point. Staying on platform. They can't do it if they don't have your email address, so they don't have your PayPal email address. They can't do that. They can't fake you out. That kind of stuff. So.
Melissa: Stay on platform.
Rob: Exactly. So one other thing that I will add about it is, you don't, eBay has made it now to where if a buyer buys your item, they click on it to buy it, they end the auction.
You will not have the option to ship that item until it's paid for. So if you can click on the listing and they have a little, a little, blue thing, create a shipping label next to the item. They will not give you that option until it's paid for. So you don't have to worry that it didn't, you didn't receive the funds.
But like Melissa said, if you're ever in doubt for any reason whatsoever, that, that something's processing or is taking longer for them to do it, call eBay up and say, hey, I just, this is, you know, I'm, I'm new at this. I wanna make sure that I'm supposed to ship the item out right now. And you guys have the funds and you're holding it.
You can do that. Absolutely. Call them and find out that for sure.
Melissa: And those people go away after a while too. They do. They'll, they tend to prey on the people with low feedback because they know they're newer to eBay and they think they can, you know, pull one over on you. But if you just know that they're, they're there and you can recognize 'em, as soon as you see a couple different ones, you, you can recognize 'em and then you just stay on platform.
Don't try to go off platform and you'll be fine. So. Absolutely. So yeah, but know that they will go away. They are not as annoying. Like once you get established, I don't think you hardly ever get any on eBay. Facebook Marketplace is another story. Yeah. They're everywhere and they're super annoying, but you can spot 'em once you kind of are in it for a little bit. Absolutely. It's not, absolutely, it's not super hard. So I was gonna read this. So this is one way to build feedback and I know I wrote it on another podcast, but, when we were talking about feedback, but this is a card that I, that we printed, that I made with Roxy and we had it printed and we put us, put it into anything that they sell on their account. And I have their eBay account name on the back of it, so in case anybody is, yeah, you know, you forget which what you bought. And it just says, we are three kids working hard to make some extra money.
We appreciate your order and please let us know if there's anything we can do to make your experience better. And if you're happy with your transaction, we would love if you left us positive feedback. Thank you so much. So.
Rob: And just receiving a card like that and the item that you're, that you bought that will usually most people are gonna go leave feedback. Absolutely.
Melissa: So even if you didn't, if you forgot or had no intention, you're gonna see that You're like, okay, I can leave feedback real quick.
Rob: And then the other thing is, once they receive the item, if you send out a message through eBay and say, hey, eBay won't release these funds until I hear back from you.
That will do it too. As soon as they hear back or leave you positive feedback, eBay will release the funds quickly versus waiting three days to do that. So just things to keep in mind while you're running through the process of opening your account, selling stuff. This is just stuff you wanna be aware of and yeah, know that this is what's gonna happen.
Melissa: So, and when you have the, the limit, so your limit is 10 items or $500. But if you go and you have 10 items listed and you sell five, you can go and list another five items. Yes. So, keep that stuff going and then you can eventually raise your limit. So, and it shouldn't take you very long if you can get stuff rolling, it should, you know, they'll reevaluate after a month and then you can always, get in touch with them and they can do it.
Rob: So, absolutely.
Melissa: It shouldn't take that long if you're really ready to go, ready to go fast. So it shouldn't take long.
Rob: Absolutely. So guys, if you love listening to this podcast and you want to know more about selling on eBay or other questions that you have about the reselling world, what can you do?
Melissa: We would love to answer your questions on the podcast. So you can check out fleamarketflipper.com/question and enter your question into the form, and we would love to answer it on the podcast.
Rob: You guys rock. We cannot wait to see you on the next episode.