The change in my life that made the fastest profit | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

My life has radically changed on the 9th of September 2012.

I have started selling on eBay. Changed my Personnal Paypal account to a Premier account and started listing 12 items a month auctionning them at the price I want them to sale and setting up a 25% higher Buy it Now price. I always list the MSRP in my listing description, this way buyers are lured by the high MRSP in-store, then they see the Buy it Now price that they consider the price that the item will probably sell if people start bidding so they take the chance and bid on my auction with a start price that is exactly the price I want the item to sell.

eBay has made 50 free listing available per month. This means that you can list 50 items per month or you can list 12 items the first week and relist them 4 times during the month if they don't sell which comes to 48 listing during your month-listing period and you won't go over your 50 free listings.

The free listings are independant of the starting value of the item you are auctionning. For example I listed a $750 bike frame the first 7 days, didn't sell. Listed it at $725 the next week, $700 the third and finally put it at $650 the 4th week and got a bid on it. (The used frame had a scratch on it and does not value over $500 IMO but bidder saw it listed at a higher price for 3 weeks so they took the jump to bid on it when they saw it at a lower cost. I paid $0 in insertion fees but of course eBay and Paypal gets your with the Final value feed ($63 on my total sale for final value fees).

Considering I have many things laying around in my appartment: Bike parts, warranty replacement for items that had minor deffective parts (corldess phone with speaker phone not working), I am selling the replacement I got from the warranties but keep using the old ones I managed to repair: Blackburn footpump, cordless phone, VoIP modem, Stethoscope replacement tubing and the list goes one. I am now listing all my medical books since I do not need them anymore being in orthopedics.

In 1 month, I have made $971.98 with eBay sales. However I paid over $100 in final value fees and Paypal fees. But still I am able to get at least 10% more than I could get on Kijiji or Craigslist with my auctionning startegy. However be aware that the above described auctionning startegy only works for items that are repetitively followed by the same potential buyers when relisting. For examble my $750 bike frame was a Swiss made Small triathlon specific frame and I saw the number of watchers in the eBay selling features groing up over the weeks I relisted meaning the same buyers followed my item when I relisted.

Of course this profit is limited by the things that you have and not using much or not using at all. I have some Wii console and Wii games laying around. Haven't used them for over 1 year. This is sleeping money I will put up on auction when one of my 12 current listed items sale to avoid paying fees for listing more than 50 items a month!

Good selling to everyone, you can all become businessmen