Reply to: Deos anyone else buy and sell things on eBay just so you can have a tinker with them?

[Benny]

I was toying with the idea of creating a business around this

Local man passed away recently and his family had to travel from many parts of the UK to clear the house / put stuff in storage and then tidy up the house for putting on the market all of which took three weekends plus hiring of vans etc

They could have called in the local house clearance people and received a nominal sum... but given the amount of people who live long distances away from elderly relatives I think a better more complete service would be:

1. Company comes in and creates an agreed inventory of the house contents
2. Company then sells contents on eBay and keeps %
3. Company disposes of any unsold items to local tat man and keeps %
4. Company then leases with local estate agent and keeps % of house sale (in return for keeping lawns cut hedges trimmed etc)

1-3 can be done /seen over t'internet

(of course the company would sublet the house during 4 and then charge the estate for "securing premises")

There would have to be an initial view on the possible revenue generated - maybe only focus on middle-upper class estates

thoughts?

[DaveB]

Problem is when you realise you are going to have to do all this work for between 99p and £1.99 plus whatever you can get for over charging P&P per book. My heart sinks in to my boots when this dawns on me and it goes back in the loft.

MrsB used to do this, had an online book shop via E-Bay but it took so long to list the books in a way that got people to actually buy them it was hardly worth the effort. Worked out at well below minimum wage in effect.

[shaunbhoy]

Garden machinery mainly. Idea is to buy something off eBay, publish a review on my site complete with a video of yours truly demoing the product and then sell it back on eBay.

Hell Yeah!! Fire up that Paypal Account and prepare for the offers to flood in!!

[MarillionFan]

Problem is when you realise you are going to have to do all this work for between 99p and £1.99 plus whatever you can get for over charging P&P per book. My heart sinks in to my boots when this dawns on me and it goes back in the loft.

The problem with Ebay is the time it takes to do an advert. It can take upto 10 minutes per one online and 5 minutes in Turbolister. I was doing about £1000 per month in sales but it was taking tulip loads of time.

I did join the Ebay developers program and was planning to develop an integration tool which would do web, amazon, Ebay and the shop
but never got around to it.

The plan I'm working on in the pub is going to be brilliant!!!

[cailin maith]

You ebayed all his stuff and kept the money?? You are one tough woman CM!!

[northernladuk]

Me neither, but I reckon I could make tens of thousands selling my 3000+ (physical) books, which I rarely look at, and other assorted knick knacks I've bought in junk shops over the years.

Problem is when you realise you are going to have to do all this work for between 99p and £1.99 plus whatever you can get for over charging P&P per book. My heart sinks in to my boots when this dawns on me and it goes back in the loft.

[northernladuk]

I love eBay - I had a massive clearout recently and managed to make a fair few quid

One mans rubbish and all that.

You ebayed all his stuff and kept the money?? You are one tough woman CM!!

[Clippy]

I've used the local paper free-ads section to sell stuff in the past - old PC's, laptops and mobile phones.

For tech stuff like this it is better than eBay as the buyer can inspect the goods before buying, there are no transaction charges and its cash in hand.

The downside is you have to deal with some form of bargaining, which isn't a problem in itself, but you always get the odd numpty who wants the item for a throw away price.

Overall, I found it more productive than eBay but this was several years ago and I've not had much joy with it recently.

[Lockhouse]

I just moved and got rid of loads of junk on eBay leaving me with a healthy Paypal balance that I'm using to buy new junk for the new house.

[doodab]

Also, one of the items has 33 people watching, and one bid. There's either going to be a massive frenzy in the last few minutes, or a lot of people are just mildly curious and thought they'd see how much it goes for.

That's a good sign that they are put off by the high starting price IMO.

Either that or they all have one in the garage and want to see what it goes for.

[Incognito]

What sort of random tat do you buy?

Used underwear. I then wear it on my head for a week pretending I have a girlfriend. Sometimes I even touch myself.

HTH

SasG.

[dang65]

What kind of items were they.

I've tried mini-clearouts, about a dozen items, but only one or two items ever sell.

End up having to re-list the items a few weeks later.

Planning on having a big clearout in the coming weeks.

I'm selling a few quite big items at the moment, preparing for a house move - large wooden climbing frame, two-person trailer bike, a huge wardrobe. I've been inundated with questions about how much they would cost to post! I struggle to get them out of the garage, let alone down to the bloody Post Office. That's why I put 'collect only' in the first place.

Also, one of the items has 33 people watching, and one bid. There's either going to be a massive frenzy in the last few minutes, or a lot of people are just mildly curious and thought they'd see how much it goes for.

I don't tend to buy much on eBay, and only use it for selling at times like this, but it's pretty useful. I did have one case a few years ago where I sold some large print photographs of various movie icons and so on which I'd got as freebies on magazine covers and never got round to throwing away. I thought there was a chance that someone might want them.

Anyway, the winner got them dirt cheap. Almost wasn't worth the effort of posting them and I was not at all impressed. A couple of weeks later, while filling in the feedback thing for the buyer, I noticed that she had some stuff for sale and had a look. She'd only gone and carefully cut out my photos and put them in nice presentation bags like you get in comic collectors' shops, and was flogging each individual picture for more than I'd sold the whole lot to her! And people were buying! Got to tip my hat to the clever sales idea. She was targeting collectors and so on. I would call the collectors suckers, but I was in no position to point fingers really.

[MarillionFan]

I've been known to dabble.

[cailin maith]

Last year, I sold my old Dyson, I was just going to chuck it. It was a DC02 so a fairly old model and I was astounded by how much it went for!!

[cailin maith]

What kind of items were they.

I've tried mini-clearouts, about a dozen items, but only one or two items ever sell.

End up having to re-list the items a few weeks later.

Planning on having a big clearout in the coming weeks.

Clothes mostly I'm going to have a shoe and handbag clear out soon - that will be traumatic but I'm sure I'll pull through

Old DVD's too that we have changed for Blue Ray's.

The trick is to start stuff at 99p when it's free to list them and you'd be suprised how quick they stuff goes up. I'm always astounded at the stuff that goes for more than I expect, obviously some stuff will go for 99p but not much.

As doodab mentioned, I've sold stuff that doesn't work and just made it clear in the listing, I guess people buy stuff like that to tinker with. Old electronic stuff etc.