Flipping Listings - Keywords to Search #2

Flipping listings is a great way to make a nice profit with very little work and a small time investment. The most common stumbling block to this process is thinking of words to plug into the misspelling tool. Let me help you out! I have been selling on eBay since 2003 and have sold over 20,000 items, so I can make some great suggestions.

Every week I will be posting 5 brand names, words, or phrases that you can plug into a misspelling tool. You can just copy the list and keep these ideas in a spreadsheet or WORD document.

This week's keywords:

Citizens of Humanity

Estee Lauder

Dansko

Pfaltzgraff

Brighton

If you aren't familiar with these brands or items, take a moment to research them on Google so you will know what you are looking for. To learn how I flip eBay listings, click here for a free 5 minute tutorial.

Happy Selling!

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Learn to flip eBay Auctions in 5 minutes - Free Tutorial

You may have seen my posts about flipping listings using a misspelling tool. Here are the exact steps for how I do this.




Key Tips for Flipping Listings:

1. Know what you are looking for! What brands of clothing, electronics, fragrances, or other goods do you purchase? Think about what is expensive and plug in those keywords. I look for brands like Burberry and Ralph Lauren that have products in lots of different categories - clothes, shoes, fragrances, household, accessories, etc. Browse websites that carry expensive products such as Nordstrom, Saks 5th Avenue, Bloomingdales, Macys. Keep a list of brand names to search for. Zone in on international sounding words (French, Italian, Spanish) as these are frequently misspelled. Good categories are apparel, shoes, fragrances, cosmetics, electronics, musical instruments, and cameras. Stay away from handbags as they are usually not authentic. Also be careful with jewelry if you are not an expert.

2. Do your research. Know what the item sells for on eBay. If you aren't paying for a research tool, now is the time to start. It will pay for itself in one flip. Try Terapeak or Hammertap.

3. Sort search results by ENDING SOONEST. Focus on items you can win in the next few hours. Watch items a few days out and check on them later.

4. Set your limits. The objective is to win the item at a low enough price to resell for a profit. Do the math and stick to your high bid. If you don't win, move on. My limit is at least $30. If I can't make a $30 profit (after fees are deducted) it is not worth my time.

5. Watch shipping fees. You will need to add shipping fees into your total cost of the item. Remember that you will have to re-ship the item. Avoid fragile items as they will have to be shipped to you, and then shipped out again to your customer and this opens up opportunities for damage. Focus on items that are easy to package and ship and aren’t fragile.

6. Always snipe. The more attention an auction receives, the more costly a bidding war is which is not what you want as a buyer. Stay under the radar, watch the item, and use a sniping tool.

7. Prepare to lose. You aren’t going to win every auction. That is ok. You only want to win the auctions for items you can resell for a nice profit. There is no sense winning an item just for the sake of winning it - we are in this to make a fast profit. I lose about 60% of the auctions I try to snipe.

8. Stay positive. Millions of new listings are added every day so there will be plenty of opportunities to win other auctions.

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My eBay Flip - Brooks Brothers Pants

Here is an example of a recent flip. (Click here for a 5 minute video tutorial on how to flip listings.) You can really make arbitrage and Best Offer work for you if you take your time, do the research, and use this technique on a regular basis.

1) I purchased these Brooks Brothers pants on eBay on November 26. Click here to see the actual listing. I found these on a misspelling search. Fatal errors include misspelled brand name in the title ,the word NEW not used in the title, poor photograph, returns not allowed. Here is the listing:



Womans pants Brook Brothers size 8 NWT!!

2) Received the pants in the mail, created my own listing with a better photo, better keywords in the title, 30 day return policy, more measurements. Did my research and determined the selling price for these pants is $49. Put the item on a 7 day fixed price listing for $49 with Best Offer. Here is my listing:



NEW NWT $118 Brooks Brothers wool dress pants black 8


3) Offer received on Dec 12 for $45. Accepted the offer.

4) Bottom line:

Profit = $26.11
Days to flip = 16
Time investment = 30 minutes

By using this arbitrage technique, I can make $50 - $100 an hour without even leaving home. Imagine doing this several times a week, getting a steady stream of inventory coming to you, and making this kind of money with such a small time investment. With some practice, you will learn what items and brand names to look for on a regular basis. Click here for more information on how to do eBay arbitrage, also known as flipping listings.

Happy Selling!

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Flipping eBay Auctions - I Really Do This!

You might remember my post a few weeks ago about "Local Sources for Inventory, I Really Use Them!" Now I am going to show you another cool way to make money flipping auctions. You can do this from home, in your pajamas, 24 hours a day, without ever leaving your chair.

The purpose of this exercise is to find good, expensive items that will sell well, that are very badly presented by people who don't know what they are doing. Find it, buy it, present it better, resell it.

1) Think of an item you have sold that brought you a good profit, or maybe one that you read about here on my blog. Let's use cycling jersey as an example. (That is on my "things to look for list.")

2) So I put "cycling jersey" in the search box on eBay and got thousands of results. Now, sort them by "ending soonest." We don't care what is going to happen 5 days from now, look for items ending in the next few hours.

3) I found this listing, with many fatal errors. Click on the photo to enlarge it an look at these issues:



a) no brand name in title
b) the keyword "cycling" not used in title
c) no measurements of garment given on listing
d) background of photo is distracting and unattractive (ok, it is really awful)
e) no returns accepted (affects your sales!)
f) shipping time is 7 business days (I can do better!)

According to my Hammertap research, I can sell this same item for around $20. I can buy this item for $8.99, retake the picture, rewrite the listing, and make a profit of about $10 for about 15 minutes of work. $10 for 15 minutes of work equals a pay rate of $40 an hour. That is called working smart instead of working hard. $40 an hour working from home, in my pajamas if I want. I use a free auction sniper program to set up my bids and walk away. (There is a reason not to bid until the last seconds, which is what a sniper program does.) This takes me about a hour a week and I make several hundred dollars a month with this technique.

I do this weekly and many times make 3-4 times what I paid for a item, just because I present it better, do the research, use more powerful and popular keywords, ship faster, and have more accommodating customer service policies.

This strategy is also called eBay Arbitrage. I found a great eBook that explains exactly how to do this. Some people do this full time and it is their only source of eBay inventory. Click here to check out the eBook and add this technique to your eBay bag of tricks.

Happy Selling!

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