I've been selling on EBay for about 8 years now. 20,000 feedback across two accounts, about a 60% return customer rate, an estimated average 80-90% sell through rate, in short I know what I'm doing.
I've seen other sellers come and go, I've seen little sellers get bigger and big sellers disappear.
Mostly I've been able to say "Recession, what recession?", in the last 12-18 months though it has been getting tougher and tougher, and then tougher and even tougher. I'm not going to slag off Ebay, there are thousands of sites out there who do that, besides I don't want to, they've been pretty good to me over the years. The downturn in trade is everywhere, I'd be lying if I said Ebay did everything right (I'll get to it) but lack of sales can't always be down to everybody else.
I've been looking at ways to boost trade, and I've mixed up a lot of what I do to sell, which is to some extent kicking in and going ok, there are just a few bumps along the way. I do periodically check what else is on Ebay. To be a good seller you have to occasionally check the buyer experience, I must admit I'm not too good at remembering to do that. So to that end I've been trawling Ebay on the wholesale pages, when I get past the single jewellery items from Hong Kong (come on Ebay, wholesale categories were always meant to have minimum of six items) and other useless listings hogging it up, there are quite a few good deals to be had. Don't worry I'm not advertising here, it just got me thinking that maybe I could buy on Ebay and resell on Ebay, at a different level to what I do know. It has been done before, trading up items. I genuinely don't know if I can turn a profit, I may end up losing out, but it should be interesting trying.
I don't really know what I'll be buying or selling as I write this, as I said I've trawled through the listings but nothing has yet caught my interest, so I'll do what I can when I can.
I may buy single items and find matching items to sell together, I may buy wholesale and split up, I've got a wide knowledge of stuff, so I'll put that to use, I'm experienced in wholesale and retail.
I think I need to keep it small, so a maximum spend of £50 in total.
Will I win or lose, break even, break a profit, I've no idea, we'll see how it goes. Hopefully I'll be saying "Recession what recession?" again some time soon.
