Sell Your Stuff Online with Ease

If you haven’t sold online before, or you have but not regularly or for a while, just following the ideas and direction below and start making money by selling stuff you no longer use or want. Create a free account on these sites and start listing products you have around the house that you don’t want or need.

You might be thinking this isn’t going to make you much money, but you will be surprised how easy it is to see you balance on EBay and Amazon start to tick up and once you see that you’ll start to feel more enthusiastic about selling online

If you are concerned about the environment, this is also an environmentally friendly way of making a profit!

EBay

Bay is a global leader for selling your stuff online. It start as an auction site where different buyers bid to ‘win’ an item by and end date. The ‘auction’ format is still an option, but you can also just set the price and leave it on eBay till it sells.

You can sell almost anything on eBay from pre-loved clothes to books to… anything. When it comes to selling your stuff it’s easier than Amazon. With Amazon, you need to have a product that is the same as the product on the Amazon listing. Not so with EBay, you just take some photos of what you want to sell, create an account on EBay, and then hit the ‘sell’ link at the top of the page. EBay then takes you through the process, during which you can upload the photos (EBay has made that easy too).

Buy it now, or Auction?

I tend to use the ‘Buy it now’ format rather than the ‘auction’ format as I want to just leave it on the site until it sells. You can see the ‘Buy it now’ and ‘auction’ format options clearly when you create your listing. EBay is getting good at ‘advising’ you on when to use the ‘auction’ format or not, but it’s up to you which listing type to go with.

The main fee EBay charges if you make a sale is the ‘final value fee’, which is about 10% of the sale price. They used to charge a ‘listing fee’ which I always thought was a bit cheeky, but it looks like they have seen the error of their ways and removed this :). Well, at least for the first 1000 monthly listings which is plenty unless you are a pro seller.

Tips for Selling on Ebay

• List your item under the appropriate category

• Take good quality pictures

• Give your listing the best possible title

• Give an accurate description of the item you’re selling

• Optimize your descriptions so search engines can find them – think keywords

• Always post feedback (as a buyer or seller) – YOUR FEEDBACK SCORE IS VERY IMPORTANT

Amazon

Selling on Amazon is the similar to selling on EBay where you create your listing and pay a fee to Amazon when you sell. As mentioned above though, when starting out you will need to find the product on Amazon first and then click the “Sell one Yourself” link. (You will have to search the product page for this link as Amazon may change the wording or make it button in the future, but it will be on the page somewhere.

You can create your own product listing on Amazon but it has to have a product bar code like an ISBN number for a book. We cover this in our ‘Intermediate’ section as this is more involved than just listing a book you have as second hand on an existing amazon product listing.

Set up as a Seller on Amazon

Step 1: Go to services.amazon.co.uk (services.amazon.com) in the US. (Each country will have their own version of this page on the country domain.

Step 2: Hit the “Start Selling” button.

Step 3: Select between “Sell as a Professional” or “Sell as an Individual”. As a beginner you will want to sell as an individual. Amazon charges about £25/$40 per month for a professional seller account, but you will only do this as an advanced seller selling enough volume to justify the monthly cost.

Step 4: Fill out you information and that’s it. You’re an Amazon seller.

You can use your personal information, you don’t need a ‘legal’ business to start selling on Amazon, or even be an “Amazon business”.

The Best of the Rest

To be honest, EBay and Amazon are where most of the traffic is when it comes to selling stuff online, BUT, there are alternatives that you may want to consider or try first, and then sell on eBay/Amazon if they don’t sell, as many of the following are free…

• Shpock. Popular and FREE to sell. Good for local sales and has a good mobile app.

• Craigs List & Gumtree. These are well-known listings sites. FREE to sell! Good for local sales

• Preloved. www.preloved.com. Preloved can be perfect for used goods.

• Vinted. Great for selling clothes

Others worth checking out if you are really keen are Ebid, Depop, Facebook Marketplace and Mercari.

Niche Markeplaces

Another good strategy for selling your stuff online is to find a specific marketplace for the type of product, or “niche”, you want to sell. For example, if you want to sell an item of clothing, search for:-

“clothes marketplace online” or “sell clothes online”

(you will surprised how easily even second hand clothes sell.)

For example, most search engines for this term should have the ASOS Marketplace at www.asos.com in the results. This is part of the now quite well-known and fast growing ASOS fashion site where users can sell their own, new, and used clothing.

Another example of product or niche specific online selling is old laptops, tablets and gadgets. The best sites for this kind of stuff change all the time so Google is your friend here as it will likely show you the main players as these change.

I used buymylaptop.co.uk (UK specific) recently to convert all of these types of items into cash. There is no point in letting them gather dust until they are literally worthless. They take up space and then you have to dispose of them. Get the value out of them while you can.

Start Earning and Get Motivated

This isn’t a formula for making a million, but if you are not experienced at selling online this will give you a higher level of confidence with selling online. It is also a primer for the more intermediate and advanced online income generation strategies such as online arbitrage and retail arbitrage.

Post a comment or question below and I will do my best to answer. Or, let us know about your selling successes!