I’m generally not a friend of starting an eBay consignment business. Why you ask? Because I ran an eBay consignment business back in 2001. And it did me no good. In fact, if anything I wasted a lot of time and energy. Did I make some money? Yes, I did. Was it worth the trouble? No, it wasn’t.However, I made a mistake back then. And if you absolutely want to start an eBay consignment business, that’s okay. There are people are doing it very successful. But be clear about the fact that they are the exception, not the rule.

If you want to run any eBay consignment business you definitely should specialize. Don’t become the guy or girl that everyone can dump their old stuff to and get some money for it. You should really specialize on high quality items that will still bring a good amount of money per auction.

You see what I did in my consignment business seven years ago was that I sold almost everything people wanted to get rid of. This was very pleasant for the people, because I would actually go to the house and pick up the stuff. I’d bring it to my storage facilities, take pictures, write good item descriptions and put it up for sale on eBay. When I sold it I gave a percentage of the sales price to the people who gave me the stuff.

And quite frankly that was a lousy business model. Because it kept me really busy. And I mean really, really busy. And it made a little bit of money.

That’s why I say you should specialize on high priced items. For sample, sell high quality used clothing. Sell used brand watches or high-value mobile phones. I don’t recommend books. With books it’s just so difficult to sell them on eBay. And in general it’s not worth the trouble. Unless you specialize in certain kinds of very valuable books are rare to get and that are in demand.

I’d also stay away from DVDs. Selling DVDs for five dollars a piece is just not worth it, because you have to create an auction for every single DVD. It’s not like you have the same DVD 100 times, and you just put the auction up one time and sell 100 DVDs. No, you actually have to create an auction of every single item, and you have to describe it exactly. For sample, are there any scratches? If it’s a book, are there any notations inside?

That is okay if you make at least $10 of net profit from the auction. And by that I mean that you actually get to keep $10 from the auction, after you paid the person who gave you the item, after you paid for shipping, after you paid for eBay fees and painful transaction fees, after you pay for taxes, after you paid for driving to that person’s place in picking up the stuff. But my suggestion really is that you should make more profits per item than $10. Because even that will only keep you busy. But it will not help you to build business.

If you are knowledgeable about a certain topic, it might be worth to specialize in that. If you are an avid baseball card collector then trading baseball cards on eBay can be a good business. And you can get baseball cards from your local area and put them up on eBay. But it’s kind of difficult to become the go to guy for people who want to get rid of old baseball cards. I’m not so sure a consignment business would actually work for that.

If I were to start a consignment business now, I probably go to a wealthy neighborhood and put up classified ads telling people that I sell their clothes on commission. Sometimes these people are not even interested in the money, but if you donate a percentage of the profits to charity, there will often be glad to give you their old clothes. Specially if you offer to pick it up for them at any time they please. It’s all about being service oriented.

Also you should be aware that generally if you just put up classified ads there won’t be many people answering. But if you put up enough, some people will answer. And you really want to leverage them. Give them a great experience, and when you sold the items show them how much money you got for the items and how much money you donated. When they’re happy to see that they actually helped and you got good money for that and donated the money for charity purposes, that is exactly the moment when you want to ask them if they can think of other people who might have clothes that they want to get rid of.

You can also ask them if they have other valuable items that they want to sell or get rid of, and offer your services.

You see, advertising is really just to get them in the door the first time. Then you want to provide them with a great experience with you, so they like you and your business. And then you can leverage them and their network of friends. This is how I did it with my consignment business back then. And word of mouth works extremely well for a consignment business.

But as I say it I’m not that big a friend of the eBay consignment business model. There are more profitable ways to make money with eBay than that. If you are interested in that just visit the AuctionInformer.com website:

http://www.auctioninformer.com/blog

There you can find all the information you need to get started on eBay and grow a successful business. You get introduced to a different business models that allow you to make a good income from home starting from zero. And if you have questions I and my team out there to help you out and answer them.

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