Rob and Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about why you should be selling on eBay in 2024.
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Why You Should Be Selling On eBay In 2024
Rob: What's up, Pro Flippers? On today's episode, we are talking about why you need to be selling on eBay in 2024.
Rob: All right guys. Today's episode, we're talking all about eBay and why if you're not using eBay yet, you need to be using them right now in 2024.
Melissa: And it's no secret that our favorite way to make an extra income is from flipping items, flipping used items. More specifically, we, our whole business is flipping, finding items that people no longer value in a smaller market and bringing them to eBay. So that is what we wanted to kind of dive into today.
Rob: Yep. And even one step further, not just finding and selling items, but high profit items. We are looking for those items that are going to make us a lot of money versus spending a lot of time selling a lot of items for a low profit on those items, or maybe not as much money. So where we can spend less time finding those high profit items and then making a lot of money on the back end.
Melissa: Like for example, this last year we did, I think we're, we still have to do all of our tally for our numbers, but we did around 55 items that brought in just under a hundred thousand dollars. So, so our average sale price is usually averages between, you know, $1,200 and $2,200 depending on the year or whatever.
So that's kind of where we're going with our items. We want to be selling these because they take a lot less time to fulfill the action. And you can, and you add one of those into your reselling gig a month. I mean, that can change the game and it's a lot less time to, to do them.
Rob: So absolutely.
So we want to dive in. Why should you be using eBay if you are not using eBay yet? The biggest reason is eBay is the behemoth. It is the big boy out there. It is the longest one that has been out there, that gives you the most exposure. So, let's break that down a little bit further. When I was growing up, my mom and dad used to go to yard sales.
And I come from a big family, so I have six older sisters. I'm the youngest and only boy in my family. But to provide for our family, my parents took us to yard sales. They went to yard sales. We got a lot of secondhand stuff because my parents couldn't afford to give us brand new stuff. But they also went to yard sales to be able to find cool things at a yard sale, bring it back and then sell it in the classified section.
So how that worked was at a yard sale, any given weekend, you might have a couple hundred people that come through there and see that yard sale, depending on how many people are going to those yard sales. The classified section had the potential of that's how the only way you could buy stuff, use stuff back in the day before internet apps and all this other stuff came out.
You had to look in the classified section and that's where you found used items. So my parents would take it from a spot where a couple hundred people had the opportunity to see that item and then they would bring it to the Classified section which had anywhere from 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 people reading the classified section looking for those used items. So they took it from a small market to a large market and that's what we're doing nowadays with eBay. We are taking it from the local market, which is offer up Craigslist, flea markets, yard sales.
We're taking it from that smaller audience that are able to see that item to a huge audience, which eBay reaches 132 million. Something like that 135 million registered users on eBay, which I will state, they're not all looking for that specific item. But when you have a bigger pool of people more people are looking for that specific item then when you have a smaller pool of people actually looking for those items.
Melissa: And we're not saying, we're not saying there's nothing wrong with eBay either. Like, we're the first to say every platform has problems. Absolutely. And you're not gonna be like, okay, we're like, eBay is the best. But for us, it does, it is our bread and butter. It is where we sell the most, you know. There is gonna be something with every app that you don't like.
You don't like the, you know. Well, let's touch on fees for one. So, eBay fees. So, people like, they don't want to sell on eBay because of the fees. Nobody likes fees. Nobody likes to pay anybody more than you have to. So, what, why does that work for eBay for now? At least if they go crazy and they, they want to do all these promoted stuff lately, like, we'll see if that changes later, you know, it might change.
But what about, like, why is it we're still worth it with the eBay fees?
Rob: Absolutely. And the reason is because it, eBay still reaches more than any other platform out there for the items that we sell. We're selling high profit larger items. eBay is the only marketplace out there that will allow us to do that.
Now we can sell them in local markets say we sell them in Facebook Marketplace, which we do we sell some things on Facebook Marketplace, but a lot of times we'll cross post it and try and sell it on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. And typically we make double, triple, quadruple the amount of money selling it on eBay and we're able to sell it quicker because it just reaches more people,
Melissa: which makes the fees worth it.
Rob: Absolutely. You can sell it for more. That's the biggest thing. Are you going to pay somebody and just take of it like think of it like this. Are you gonna pay somebody, maybe you're gonna pay somebody $200 to sell an item for $2,000 that you can sell quicker and it has a bigger audience, or are you going to have it in the local market where it's free, you don't have to pay anything for it, but then you can't sell it because you can't find the right person to find that market.
So is it worth it to you pay a little bit more money? If the profit is there, absolutely. And that's where one of the keys in our business model is the profit has to be there. You have to be making really, really good money on these high profit items. You have to be making good money to be able to pay eBay money and still make a lot of money on the back end.
Melissa: And you can, like you could also, we've talked about this before on the podcast, run your own store, like a Shopify store or do that. And that could be an option, but it's getting traffic to it, getting more people to it. So eBay brings the people to you right now. And for us, it is just been the best platform to use.
So that is, and it is bringing it to a bigger market. Cause we get that comment a lot on social media. It's like, well, why, why can't you sell it for that on like Facebook? Cause we buy a lot of our items on Marketplace. We find this stuff and they're like, well, why can't that person sell it for that? They could try and there might be somebody in that local market looking for that, but the likelihood is a lot less.
And that's what you've kind of touched on.
Rob: Facebook Marketplace is on there. They started at a thousand dollars. They drop it down to $500. They drop it down to $200 because they can't get it sold on that Marketplace. They need to bring it to the bigger marketplace. They're not willing to do it and that's what we'll touch on in another second.
Why they were, they're not willing to do it, but that's one of those things of, yeah, you see the markdown on Facebook Marketplace and then we come in and we get it for the lower price because they need to get rid of it. And then we bring it to eBay and we're able to ask that full price of what we actually can get for it, of what it's actually worth on eBay because we reach more people.
And then the key is being willing to ship it. You have to know how to navigate shipping. Now this is shipping from anything that you're shipping in boxes, pallets, any of that kind of stuff. That is what you have to know how to do when you do decide to go to eBay, is learn how to really master shipping, everything about shipping.
Melissa: Yeah. And that is probably the one big thing that, well, that is one hurdle that people don't want to go over is to do the shipping and that's why we can get our stuff for pretty cheap usually. But if you do want to do this as a business, mastering shipping is a huge piece of it and it doesn't have to be scary.
So, and we've learned a lot over the years with shipping, would you say? Yep, absolutely. So like that, what were you going to talk about? The one, NordicTrack.
Rob: Oh yeah, one of the biggest lessons that I've learned. I mean, not one of the biggest ones, but one of the ones that I remember plays out in my head, early on in my, my selling, my flipping career. If you could call it that back in the day when I was doing this for fun, when I was younger, I sold a NordicTrack. I sold a NordicTrack for $1,750. And at the time, the most expensive NordicTrack that I had ever sold. Prior to that I was selling them for three to five hundred dollars. It's a different model.
It is. It was a Elite, NordicTrack Elite. It was a gray NordicTrack, so it's different than the normal ones that you see, the wood ones. Excuse me, this was a little bit different than that. Very, very top end. Sold it for $1,750. I over promise, under delivered, which if you guys know us now, we've learned, these are lessons that we've learned, we tell you guys that all the time, is under promise, over deliver.
I did that, when I sold it, and also I didn't package it properly. So, two big X's in this wholesale, which ended up having, I had to give a return on this item.
Melissa: And you're probably, you were younger, so you've had that money spent already, right?
Rob: Yes, so I brought the money in, another big lesson, so let's call it three lessons.
Spent the money when I got it. Because if you know how eBay works, the people pay you for the money. Back then, you didn't even ship the item until you had the money in your hands. A lot of times when eBay started, they actually sent out personal checks or cashier's check, money order. And they mailed it to you in the mail, you got that money, you had it, and then you shipped the item back out.
That's how eBay worked back in the day. Now it's a little bit more I'm actually glad you don't have to deal with checks now. It's a little bit more foolproof than that. eBay has a little bit more protection for the buyer and the seller. They've learned a lot of stuff throughout the years. But my biggest point was I shipped this out, I over promised, under delivered on the item, you know, I thought it was in mint condition, great condition, it was not as good as what the buyer was expecting it to be in, and then also it got damaged in shipping because I didn't package it the proper way.
This didn't go in on a pallet, it went in a box, I packaged it in a box. But, That was a $1,750 mistake that I made. Did you get insurance on it? I did not get insurance on it.
Melissa: So there's number four. So had you packaged it properly, had you got insurance, you wouldn't have been out the $1,750 because it got damaged in shipping.
Yes. You would have done a shipping claim. You might have had to go after them a couple times because it's a higher value one, but you would have got your money back had you packaged it properly.
Rob: Absolutely. So these are very, very costly. And I can tell you out of what we've learned in the last almost three decades of shipping, flipping, doing all the stuff that we do, tens of thousands of dollars in mistakes, where it comes to shipping, shipping stuff like Melissa just kind of gave you the rundown of how to package it properly, how to make sure that you're, you're crossing your T's and dotting your eyes for everything that you're doing. So you do not run into problems with shipping. And that's one of the biggest things that we've learned in this business is how to really, really be successful at shipping and not just shipping, every aspect of shipping. So, that's what we have put together. And we want to invite you guys, if you guys want to join a actually bootcamp that we're putting together about shipping anything, anything that will fit into a box.
We want you guys to do that. And where can they go to actually grab a seat?
Melissa: If you want to go, it's learn2ship.com but it's with the number 2, so learn2ship.com with, yeah, with the number two, but yeah, we're going to be going over all this stuff for shipping because we know that this is a big hurdle for a lot of people that want to get into selling on eBay, want to get into reselling.
And we don't want it to be something that stops you because it like this business is really fun and we enjoy it and we want to help you. So it's. It's $47 for the bootcamp. So jump in. We would love to see you there. It's a two day bootcamp, Thursday and Friday, and we're going to have a lot of other things going on too.
That'll be a lot of fun. Like we said, it's everything in a box. It is not, we're not going over freight. We do have Flipper University for that, for freight shipping. We're not doing freight, but we've shipped some large boxes. Just what are some of the stuff that you've shipped?
Rob: If you even think about that NordicTrack that I told you about, now we've shipped hundreds of NordicTracks since then.
Big boxes. Because we sell NordicTracks. Nightstands. You're talking about boxes that are like this tall, 55 inch tall. That's right. 15 by 15 by 55. These are some of the boxes This is the kind of stuff that we will be going over.
Melissa: We've sold thousands of dollars of cooktops that have gone in boxes Absolutely, there's a ton of stuff still high value that you can go in a box.
So furniture can go in a box. We've done nightstands. We've done the end table. What is the one thing the I can't think of it now, that big box that we did anyways, so some furniture can go in boxes. So we're going to go over, yeah, anything that fits in a box. So we're excited to, to go through that with you.
Rob: And Melissa has told you $47 to jump in to this live training. We're going to give you guys some great information going over all the stuff, tens of thousands of dollars of mistakes that I've made throughout my career. I want to shortcut fast track you through all those mistakes. So you guys can learn with us, learn from us.
We've done it. We ship, we've shipped hundreds and hundreds of items. If not, no, probably thousands of items. And when you throw freight in there as well, like I said, we're not discussing freight, we're not discussing any of the stuff that goes on pallets, but large boxes to small boxes, just making sure that you are doing it the right way.
We would love to see you guys there. Hang out with you guys. Like I said, it's live. It's going to be so much fun to be able to do that.
Melissa: I was just going to add that it is, it's live and, which is a lot more fun for us because then we get to answer your questions too. And, and we have a good time. Absolutely. So, hopefully we will see you there.
We'll put the link in the show notes below as well.
Rob: You guys rock. Have an amazing day and we will catch you on the next episode.