Trading on Craigslist

There are several good ways an online retailer can utilize Craiglist.  Whether you are buying things to resell on other sites or selling your own wares, Craigslist has a bustling community of buyers and sellers and is almost always free.

For those of you not familiar with craigslist, it is a site with on line classified ads.  It is set up so you can search just in your local area (or in any other local area.)   To get to your own local area on the site, select your country, your state and then your town or the nearest town listed. 

You will then find the site broken down into several sections.  There are sections on housing, jobs, personals, and my favorite--"for sale."  You can browse this section by catagory and find things you may be able to resell for a profit on eBay.  Do your own research or use my favorite eBay selling tool, Terapeak, to see what the market value is before you buy.

Craigslist is also a great place to sell.  I use it mostly to see bulky or hard to ship items.  When we remodeled our kitchen, I sold our oven for $250.  Not bad--and it was wonderful not having to pay selling or listing fees, the sales price was total profit.

Craigslist is also where many folks are going to advertise their garage sales.  Use a combination of your local paper and craigslist to learn about all the sales.  There is even a section on craislist where people give stuff away--this is a section you want to check often because the good stuff moves quick.

Flea Marketing 201

EBay has earned it's place in cyberspace as the world's largest rummage sale. It is a great place to resell vintage and preowned items. The profit margin can be huge when you know what to buy.

Some great ideas for finding second hand inventory were given in earlier in Flea Marketing 101.

Here are some more things to look for when shopping for eBay inventory:

Scrapbooking Supplies (Creative Memories)
Stamping Supplies (Stampin' Up)
Games for Wii, XBox, DS
Digital Cameras (even broken can be sold for $20-30)
Vintage Phones (color and style matter here)
Electric Rollers (Richard Caruso Brand or Remington certain colors)
Hooked on Phonics Sets/Learn to Read, Write or Do Math Sets
Unopened, unused makeup (Brand names)
Perfume (Brand Name, can be opened or used)
Dance and gymnastic costumes and shoes
Sport Shoes, Cleats (Brand Names)
Longaberger Baskets
Pier One Pottery and Dishes
Fishing Gear
Board Games (intact and complete with instructions)

Always get items as cheap as possible. If you are at a personal sale, strike up a bargain. If you are shopping the thrift markets, go on discount days or shop for items that are on sale.

Make sure to use Terapeak Price Report or do your own research on eBay to see what items are selling for.

A resource that will pay for itself over and over again is Garage Sale Goldmines.

Using Your Ebay Store

Yeah! I love my ebay store.

No matter where this ebay journey takes me, there will always be time to scour garage sales and put treasures into my ebay store to wait for the right buyer. It seems like just as I tire of looking at them on my shelf, and wonder if they are ever going to find a home, someone comes along and snags them.

This weekend a buyer plucked a group of five coffee cups out of my ebay store. He paid $20 for them. They cost me a total of 50 cents. I LOVE that profit margin!

The math:

Sale Price $20.00
Handling Charge: $1.00
Inventory Cost: .50
Store Carrying Cost: .18 (six months in the store at .03/month)
FVF & PayPal 3.00
PROFIT: $17.32

Lynne Dralle, AKA the Queen of Auctions, clued me into the coffee cup idea. She is an expert at figuring out what to buy at local garage sales to sell on ebay. I have learned a lot from her and highly recommend her as a teacher if you want to sell collectables.

She has written many great books and has an entire "boot camp" dedicated to helping sellers learn how to find antiques and collectibles and sell them on ebay.

Take a look at Lynne's book right here

Flea Marketing 101

Get there early and be ready to bargain. Scour through the entire sale, picking up your "maybes" as you go along. Use your phone's ebay application for items you aren't sure about. Keep the following list in your mind (or in your pocket) when looking for inventory to sell on ebay:

Anything with tags: If you can list an item on ebay as "new with tags," the value increases. Name brands and trendy items will do best here.

Books: Focus on non fiction and "coffee table" books. Avoid fiction books unless you can get them super cheap (10-25 cents each.) Books are easy to sell on ebay, half.com or on amazon. Learn more about selling books with a great and reasonably priced ebook loaded with tried and true ideas for book sellers. I bought this ebook a few months ago and it has paid for iteself several times over.

Winter Coats: Children and Adult. Name brand and pristine condition coats sell well on ebay. Brands to watch for: Gap, Hollister, Abercrombie, Anne Klein, Roth's Child, Gymboree.

Shoes: Name brand and in top notch condition. Depending on the brand, plan on getting $10-20 pair on ebay.

Dishes: Bought in a set (aim to spend $25-$35) and split into lots of 2 or 4, these can have an excellent profit margin.

Toys--current or vintage: Condition matters here, but there is a huge market for toys on ebay. Vintage toys can do quite well. I bought two "See and Say" plastic toys at a garage sale recently for $1 each and they each brought around $15. I also sold a lot of old Lincoln Logs for around $70.

Coffee Cups: Look for Starbucks or Trader Joe cups. Think trendy and nationally known. Coffee Cups do very well on ebay.

Lynne Dralle (the queen of auctions) has buying and selling second hand items down to a science. I've listened to several seminars with her and she is helpful, fun and willing to share her ebay secrets. She has been selling on ebay for over 10 years and makes a good full time living selling unique and antique items on ebay. She explains the particulars and gives great advice on exactly what to watch for when shopping to resell items on ebay. Check out her book:



Another resource that is highly recommended comes from an accomplished ebay seller. If you are looking to become an expert at flea bay markeing check out Garage Sale Goldmines to learn all of the tricks.