I listed 14,000 items on eBay and learned this

did you think growing an eBay business was going to be easy well I did so over the last four years I've listed up 14,000 items and while I would eventually go on to see success and generate thousands of dollars in sales it was a real grind I really wish I'd done things smarter sooner to help speed up the process so to help you with your eBay journey and make it 10 times easier here's 40 brutal truths about growing an eBay business that I wish I'd knew sooner lesson number one do you remember the first time

you learned to drive a car it took forever right and you were terrible at it but eventually you were able to go on to get your license the same goes for eBay at the start you're going to be terrible but if you don't get that learner a license and just get yourself underway you're never going to build a successful profitable eBay store so for lesson number one just simply start make the start and then from there you'll learn how to do it as you go lesson number two in my mentoring sessions I'm always asking for

the numbers around my sellers eBay store I want to know how they're going are they profitable are they not could they make any changes to ultimately better things and a lot of the times these guys don't have the information for me it's not because they don't want to give out the information it's because well they don't have it they haven't created a basic spreadsheet and they truly don't know where their business is sitting so for lesson number two I think it's a really important step to go ahead and create that spreadsheet have two tabs one

could be your income that's coming in and the money that's going out of your business which will ultimately end up giving you a profit amount um just that simple step there can get the ball rolling from a financials perspective and at least give you some guidance around what the business position is lesson number three this is arguably one of the biggest lessons that I've learned in my journey over the last 4 and A2 years and that is creating a skew system to be able to find your stock when an item goes on to sell I

actually didn't do this for about 3 years when I first started selling on eBay and I would waste so much time looking around these tubs to try and find the item that had got on to sale it got to a point where we had 2,000 items up for sale and I had no skew system in place so I had to work on backtrack to try and get everything into place in to what you see behind me where numbers are associated to certain tubs and that is reflected on my eBay store as well so I know

when an item sells exactly where it is it might sound like a simple step like I said I went three years without doing this so lesson number three create a skew system right away and you won't have any headaches down the line lesson number four did you know that eBay is a global marketplace with over the last just three months 132 million buyers now America makes up about 48% of that market and Australia if you're selling in Australia it's only 4% of the total market share so with all of those numbers if you are not

selling internationally you are doing yourself a massive Injustice a 10% of my sales come from International sales and it isn't as scary and daunting as you think so lesson number four turn on your international shipping you'll thank me later lesson number five what if I told you that 68% of my sales came from one promotional tool that eBay gives you as a seller it is promoted listings promoted listings puts you into the top of the search rankings every so often depending on how much of a percentage you're willing to give when the item goes on

to sell via a promoted listing I do this for every single one of my listings at a blanketed 3% and that generates 68% of my sales I believe it is the most powerful tool for any eBay seller selling on the platform so if you're not yet selling on eBay or if you've begun and you're not choosing to do the promoted listing feature I highly recommend it 68% of my sales I wouldn't have an eBay business without it lesson number six Albert Einstein once said that compound interest was the eighth wonder of the world this graph

shows that perfectly you got to think like this in terms of eBay as well the same goes for your eBay journey you've got to think in years not months in the early stages when you first just starting out it feels like a grind you don't know what you're doing but the longer that you learn what to do and the more that you stay persistent with it you'll start to see that compound interest take effect and things will become much more efficient much more easier to go ahead and continue to make profit it so compound interest

Eighth Wonder of the world it makes sense for your rebay journey as well lesson number seven I'm a huge Kobe Bryant fan always have been but what I'm really really obsessed with from his perspective is the m mentality that he's developed for everyone we all can use it it's it's a mindset of positivity just basically saying that every single day you're just going to try and get 1% better now I've tried to adopt that to my eBay business but ultimately what that's doing is it's instilling a positive mindset just a positive frame of mind and

for lesson number seven I truly think think that it is the positive mindset sellers that are actually going to be having more success than a negative pessimistic mindset seller all too often I see people complain on this platform about all the issues that are associated with selling and I just simply refuse to believe any of it I'm just trying to Simply learn what to do and make myself better each and every day and that has kept me here after 4 and a half years still with the mindset that things can only get better lesson number

eight this might sound controversial but I've spent the last 12 months proving it to be true you don't need to list a certain number of units per day if you're a 10 item a day seller you can throw that out the window you don't need it to have success on the platform personally for the last 12 months I've been listing up a dollar value per day and I think that's the crucial step to unlock efficiencies with your eBay business if you pick a golden number for me it's $500 I can then go out with the

mentality of trying to find $500 and that could come in the form of one item so for me on a listing front for that day I'm only having to list up one item and my day is done this makes a lot of sense from an efficiency efficiency perspective but it also makes a lot of sense from eBay's point of view as well they're going to make 10% to 15% off every single sale whether that's 10 sales or whether that's one sale it's still going to be a 10 to 15% return for eBay so they don't

care how many items you list up and neither should you lesson number nine have you ever seen a bad listing on Facebook Marketplace they're everywhere everyone's taking bad photos and that's one of the ways that we can improve a listing on Marketplace but also eBay as well if you just grab some box lights which are often around $1 to $150 I I think that's the best investment that you can make buyers really rely on great photography to go ahead and confirm the purchase of an item so as a seller you're doing yourself another Injustice if

you're not taking great quality photos with brightly lit uh images so grab yourself some B lights it'll make you a lot of money in return lesson number 10 if you've never listed an item up onto eBay before you're going to be daunted with the process when you see it there's a lot of things that you've got to fill out and that can be very overwhelming but for lesson number 10 I can reassure you guys that there are only three things that are important when it comes to listing an item onto eBay that is your photos

which we've already touched on the title which we'll touch on later in the video and finally your price points that is all that they care about as long as they can see it they can find it and they love the price of it they will go ahead and purchase your item so if you spend any amount of time on your listing make sure that the most amount of time is on those three elements because really everything else doesn't matter lesson number 11 you do not need a doo label maker to uh sell on eBay it's

just not required they cost about $2 to $300 and I would rather you put that money in the early stages when you're not selling too many items per day into good quality stock that's going to go on to make you some money you can use the home printer I personally still do after 4 and a half years I don't think you need the doo lesson number 12 if you've been selling on eBay now for a little bit you're going to have some really really useful information in the eBay seller Hub analytics you're going to see

which categories are selling really well for you this is something that I did after a while where I looked at my bestselling categories and I actually tripled down on them and I removed all of the other categories out of my store I no longer do shoes and I used to have that as a great selling category what I'm doing here is I'm niching into two to three categories and I'm being known for those categories that's helping me on an algorithmic front when I list up that category it helps promotes all the other categories or all

the other items in that category I should say so I think it's a really useful thing to do when you're further down the line as an eBay seller to start honing in on your best ones and just triple down on that and become known for those categories and overall it's going to make things easier lesson number 13 if you don't have a network you will never be able to find stock to sell on eBay now Network can come from multiple different places but ultimately it's human connection it's human beings and having conversations we don't speak

enough as people that are trying to Source stock to sell online it's quite hard to go into a thrift store nowadays to try and find profitable stocks so we need to look for other avenues and a great way to do that is to build your network and communicate what you do don't hide behind the fact that you're trying to buy an item to sell for a profit tell the world and the more people that know about it the more chance you are of being able to maintain a sustainable eBay business because the stock is just

going to keep coming in lesson number 14 listing sucks I know it you know it but unfortunately it's a huge part of the process as an eBay seller so make it fun turn some music on put a podcast on put YouTube on you are your own boss you can listen to whatever you want and I highly recommend you put on the Aussie flipper it just makes the process and the time go by so much quicker and you're going to have more fun doing it even though it's a boring task you can make it fun lesson

number 15 I was in a thrift store the other day and I found a PR it was $35 and I thought that I'd be able to sell it for at least 100 bucks on Facebook Marketplace so I went ahead and bought it and for lesson number 15 I think Facebook Marketplace is a great space for you to buy big bulky items that aren't accessible to be sold onto eBay due to really heavy postage costs so I you always use Facebook Marketplace for those scenarios don't limit yourself just to eBay specific stock uh look elsewhere Facebook

Marketplace is a great platform for those sorts of products the pr end up selling for 100 bucks lesson number 16 we're all complaining about thrift stores increasing their price points but we've got to understand that this isn't going to change forever it seems that we're always going to be dealing with this problem so you've got to understand for lesson number 16 that there are so many other places to Source items from these donations are ultimately coming from people's homes so how can we get in there and knock on that front door to say hey this

is what I'm doing I'm trying to sell this sort of an item onto eBay do you have anything chances are most people do most people have got stuff lying around the house so think outside the box don't always rely on the thrift Source there are so many other places to Source items lesson number 17 I gave my accountant a really big headache in my first six months of selling on eBay because I didn't have a separate business account I was putting all of my sales and all of my expenses through the one personal account that

I would spend on the beers when I was at the pub on a Saturday afternoon that made it really hard for me to go ahead and create a business position for myself to know where my business numbers were so as much as you need to create a spreadsheet that I spoke of also go ahead and create yourself that uh extra business bank account get yourself a business debit card and make all of your business transactions it'll thank you your accountant I should say well thank you for it but you'll be thanking yourself too lesson number

18 if I didn't know where I was trying to go with this eBay journey if I didn't know that I wanted $130,000 in Revenue I would probably have lost the motivation to keep persisting with it because there's no direction to where I'm trying to go so one of the biggest things that I did in the very early days was establish all of my goals and then put them right in front of me on a daily basis on a whiteboard having that visual representation of what you're trying to do and then the small little steps that

you're achieving towards the bigger picture is a massive unlock for sustainable success on the platform so I highly recommend that you go and buy yourself a little whiteboard it might cost you 10 bucks put it up on the wall just like I do and you'll be motivated for the rest of time lesson number 19 I have a rule here in the garage where all my stock is kept and that is have nothing on the floor make sure you can see carpet if you can't see carpet immedi medely do something about it because when you've got

clutter clutter is mental clutter as well physical clutter ends up being mental clutter so I always try to eradicate that and I try to keep a really clean tidy workspace I try and vacuum the CL carpet every couple of days and I think that has a massive effect to my my calmness as an eBay seller I know where everything is I know what needs to be listed and I know how much stock I need to go out and purchase if that's even the position that I'm in so make sure you've got a clean and tidy

workspace physical clutter will become mental clutter lesson number 20 in my hand I have a pen and I have a deluxe Jerry Lewis DVD box set out of these two items it doesn't matter how long you've been selling on eBay to know that the DVD set is always going to be a better selling item there's going to be more demand for it people are going to want to pay more money for it than a pen so that is really ultimately lesson number 20 is to stop buying junk stop buying things just because it's cheap it

doesn't mean that you should buy it and try and sell it you should always pay attention to sell through rate and average sale price and focus focus on better quality stock only if you do that you'll save yourself a lot of time hard work effort and energy and you'll continue to put more money in your pocket lesson 21 have you ever come back from a thrift trip and realized that the stock that you've purchased isn't actually a great selling item it might be less of a sale price than you thought it would go on to

sale for or maybe you've checked sell through rate and there isn't that many items that have gone on to sale that match the item that you've got it's pretty disappointing but lesson number 21 there is a way that you can do this before you even go to the checkout it's just using the eBay app and filtering for SS to see how many items have gone on to sell and also maybe even doing a comparative search to active listings what that will do is it will give you a sell through rate that is a really good

determinant of whether or not you should go to the checkout and buy that item yet too many of us as eBay sellers we don't do it it's back to that old step of seeing a buo pen for a dollar and thinking we can flip it for five you just shouldn't be doing that focus on sell three rate high average sale price you'll have a much better return lesson number 22 the postage costs for me are arguably my biggest expense for this business a stock on hand is obviously a pretty big expense as well but I

help myself a lesson number 22 with the postage costs by going and sourcing free supplies where possible I've got an opportunity every now and again to be able to get free bubble wrap through my dad and his connections um but there is also ways that I'm able to get free boxes from my local Timber and hardware store that I can use as postage supplies so that's a massive one there make sure you're looking for other ways of reducing the cost of post because it is a heavy expans lesson number 23 postage also isn't as daunting

as you might think it is my number one advice around postage is if you're in Australia selling in Australia create a my post business account you're going to get some serious savings you're also going to have the simple ease of doing it all from home printing out your labels putting into your prepaid or or your satchels I should say and then taking that out to the post office the job's done all from home it's integrated with eBay as well so you can sync your eBay store into the Australia Post my post business and you've got

all of the data required to print off a label for your customer so for lesson number 23 create that my post business account lesson number 24 here's two examples of a listing for Forza Motorsport 3 on the Xbox 360 let me know which of the two listings you think has a better constructed title hopefully you said that it was title number two reason why is because all of the front-end uh keywords are the most important everything at the front is the most important and what you've got to think when you're creating titles is what would

a buyer be searching up what keywords would they be using that you could have at the front of your title and that is ultimately how your title is going to help um to be found and put in the eyes of that person all too often we see bad titles where people are putting useless information at the beginning which distorts the process of eBay trying to find the right item for a buyer you don't get your item found you don't get your item sold so for step number 24 front end the most important keywords at the

beginning of your title and you'll start to get found more lesson number 25 I've been fortunate over the years to be able to sit down and speak to a lot of eBay employees and one of those eBay employees was a title expert he was literally fronting Up titles at eBay and he had one really sound piece of advice and I've never done it ever again ever since he said it never use big bold capital letters for every single one of your letters uh in your words big bold capital letters don't work on eBay from the

algorithmic front the first letter of a word is completely fine but not the entire word so alfreds written like this on eBay no go capital a lowercase for the rest that would be how to create a title lesson number 26 what if I told you there was a very quick simple and easy way to work out how much profit you're expected to make on a particular item that opportunity comes in the form of the EIT app it's a fantastic calculator for any level of seller all you need to do is punch in the information which

isn't a lot it's just how much you bought it for how much you sold it for and then how much you shipped it off for and then the calculator will generate the fees Associated from eBay standpoint which will give you a holistic profit amount that you get a make from the item you could be using this calculator in a thrift store or a flea market a garage sale wherever you may be and you can know before you go to the checkout whether or not it's a profitable item to purchase so download the EIT app it

will completely change the game lesson number 27 death piles kill an eBay business more than anything else we can get overwhelmed by the amount of stock that we buy if you've been doing this now for a little bit let me know if you're in this position let me know in the comments have you got too much stuff that has overwhelmed you it's caused that mental clutter to kick in and now you're out of the game and you're out of the game at a massive loss because you've sunk all that money into your death pole for

me I've understood that from day one and it's one of the best things that I've ever done I've never had a death pile I've never built up excess amount of stock I've had a golden rule where I will list up what I buy and I will go out again and Source more stock now that doesn't mean that I'll go ahead and list live I'll go ahead and I'll draft a ton of listings ahead of time so I've got at least 2 to 3 to 4 days ahead of the game all my stock has been listed

that I've bought and then I allow myself to go back out and buy again that is a very very useful way to go about the Journey of starting an eBay business as you get to a full-time level you may need a bit of extra stock but you're going to be in a good habit then to be listing up consistently consistently so it shouldn't matter so that's a massive step guys don't have a death pile when you're first starting out it'll absolutely kill you lesson number 28 the day that I unlocked the understanding of sell through

rate was the day that I believe I became an eBay seller sell through rate for those that don't know is what is active and what is sold and what is the difference between the two if you have more sold in the last 90 days on eBay than you do from your competition that is active that is a strong positive sellr rate and it means that the item that you've got if you price it correctly with a great title and good photos you're going to see that item go on a sale in a quick space of

time cash flow is everything and when we when I first started I used to buy a stock that was I guess no awareness of sell through rate firstly and also a lot of it was really slow sell through rate type items and I ended up wiping them out of the store because I often found that the slow sell rate was also a small average sale price so I worked on high average sale price picked up my sell through rate and generated more cash flow to be able to go out again and just grow the store

quicker lesson number 29 if you're serious about selling on eBay I think it's time to get yourself a basic store subscription there are many benefits to having a store subscription you can get a storefront you can get some discount on your fees Associated to eBay but ultimately it's only $25 a month and I think after a couple of sales you've obviously covered that cost um and you're going to stand yourself better chance of running promotions which you can't do when you don't have an eBay store so promotions saving your fees $25 cost to get started

in a nice pretty storefront I think it's a small price to pay to have yourself set up as a reputable seller on eBay lesson number 30 when I first started selling on eBay I actually didn't really fear the percentage issue of falling below 100% positive feedback I coped a couple and I didn't matter because I was still above 98% and I knew that to be a top rated seller on eBay you need 98% posit POS feedback or more and I've never fallen below 98% so I've never lost that title of top rated seller and I

haven't seen my sales dip as a result today 99.2% is my feedback score yet I see so many sellers out there that are really really stressed out because they want to uphold their 100% seller status now if you've got 100% try and keep it but if you haven't don't stress about trying to get back to 100% because as long as you're over 98% it doesn't really matter lesson number 31 a lot of the negative feedback that I used to receive was because I wasn't communicating enough I wasn't getting on top of my messages when a

buyer would simply ask what's going on with my item I would leave it a couple of days and they would get really pissed off about it and they would send me a negative review so I eradicated that by always getting on top of my messages and communicating as fast as I possibly can that alone has slowed up my uh issues with negative feedback so it's a really important step a lesson that I've leared over time always hit back to your messages as soon as you can lesson number 32 if you haven't yet sold 100 items

on Ebay you're not yet a top rated seller to be a top rated seller you need $3,000 within a year you need 100 sales and you need to have 100% positive feedback so if you're not yet there with 100 units sold that should be your focus if a best offer comes in or an opportunity to get a sale at a slightly reduced price just simply take it because those 100 sales when you're first starting out are absolutely gold the revenue of $3,000 is actually quite easy to achieve at least it's easier or it comes around

quicker than the 100 unit sold so speed up the process say yes to the first 100 and then you can wait for a bit more money after that lesson number 33 did you know that out of those 132 million buyers 70% of the sales that get taken up are with a result of the free postage being offered on the listing so free postage I believe is the best way to go about listing up an item but the lesson here is that free postage does not mean free postage what it means is that you're basically saying

that I'm going to sell this item for $30 free postage where the the sell that's next to you is trying to sell an honor for $20 plus $10 postage at the end of the day revenue is revenue it's both going to be a $30 amount that the buyer's going to pay it just to me in my mind gets marketed better if it's got the word free in it it's all psychological it's just marketing you're not out of pocket free postage does not mean free postage lesson number 34 did you know that some Funko Pops can

go on to sale for $100 did you know that there are shoes out there that can sell for over $500 did you know that corduroy bong hats can sell for upwards of $250 well I didn't until I got really curious about everything when I first started out I just wanted to know what everything sold for and it built up a really really strong knowledge Bank in my mind I knew what things were worth when I went out to S uh to sour stock so I think this is a really important lesson guys be curious even

today after 4 and a half years I've got curious around the category of CDs and I'm actually making it one of my main niches I'm trying to focus on media I wasn't initially doing CDs I Unearthed the awareness that CDs do really well because I was curious and then I've been able to make that a new category for myself so there's a big lesson there make sure you're curious and find new stock to sell lesson number 35 I used to get really caught up about bad buyers there are bad buyers out there that just want

to make your life as a seller miserable especially in the early days when you're first just starting out you're fearing the fact that there are going to potentially be scammers out there trying to get you money and look there's a really great way to eradicate that which only worked out a year or two ago and that is that you can just simply delete them you can block them as a as a buyer and they're never going to be able to purchase an item from your store because eBay won't allow them to see your store so

once I started to do that or once I started to get a couple of negative messages coming in that the buyer seemed to be fiery for no particular reason at all maybe it was a hater off my YouTube channel that's come across to my eBay store that often happens unfortunately for me uh I've gone ahead now and I just simply blocked them it is so I guess peace of mind to know that I'm never going to hear from them again unless they were to make another another account and then I'll go ahead and block that

too lesson number 36 when I first started I used to dive into the YouTube education from eBay sellers educating me how to do it because I was just here in a single car garage I had no idea how to build an eBay business but I listened to Rally Roots I listened to daily refinement and these guys ultimately taught me how to sell on eBay they taught me all of the basic fundamentals now there are so many great YouTube channels this one hopefully being one of them that can help you with your eBay journey so spend

the time to watch these videos and learn as much as you can the fact that you're already this partway through the video tells me that you should be subscribed to this channel because we're going to go ahead and provide all of this useful information for you over the coming years and it's going to be hopefully the rally Roots daily refinement that I experienced 4 and a half years ago this channel can be that for you I want to help and educate I'm always available for mentoring let's do it lesson number 37 last week I listed

up a bunch of Beatles CDs I thought that they would go really well as a bulk lot I had 17 of them and they went on to sell eventually but there was a step that I did to allow it to get on to sale initially I listed it up for $175 and then I watched it I thought it was quite highly priced so I wanted to keep an eye on things to see if I could build up a few watches I ended up after a few days picking up six watches and then from there I

dropped my price I went back into the listing and I made at $149 within 2 hours guys that ended up selling it sold because one of the Watchers received well they all all six received an alert from eBay to say that I'd dropped my price and then they were able to go in and see that drop price and go ahead and make the purchase so if you've got listings with builtup watches go ahead and drop the price they'll all get notified and you'll get yourself some fast sales lesson number 38 eBay has this really annoying

habit of deleting your listings and not telling you what happens is ultimately after about 90 days 120 days I'm not exactly sure of the time frame because eBay doesn't communicate it with you they'll go through and they'll sweep your store if you've paid no attention to your listing for like I said 90 to 120 days I believe anyway um so what we can do to eradicate that is we can do the sell similar feature option which is ultimately going in ending the listings which sounds scary but it's not you can get it back within a

couple of clicks and what it's doing when you sell similar again is it creates a new order number and in the eyes of eBay's algorithm that is a brand new fresh listing day one being uploaded even if it's been in your store for months and that's going to help promote that item and hopefully get it going on to sell quicker than what it did originally so you've always got to maintain your store store maintenance is so important I never did it in the early days I had a lot of the items wiped away I went

and did a stock take one day A couple of years ago I saw all of my items not listed and now I go ahead and do that sell similar and make sure all of my items remain in store lesson number 39 scheduled listings is not the answer you want to be using your draft Bank Drafting and then going into that listing on the day that you want to list it and click list now is the way to go about scheduled listings I used to go ahead and list up my items to go automatically live at

9:00 a.m. but then I went away for a 3-day holiday and I realized during those 3 days that my sales plummeted I didn't know why but ultimately it was because I was going ahead and scheduling those listings rather than drafting them up and putting them live that day myself in the eyes of eBay all of the work that ID done on the Friday before I went away from my long weekend was accounting for Friday's work it left Saturday Sunday and Monday as dormant days with no new listings even though the scheduled listings were going up

so what I've swapped to is draft listings and I only take about 5 minutes to sit there and list live the products that I want to go live that day and in the eyes of the algorithm eBay is seeing that uh go live on that day which allows consistency and consistency of active listings every single day on eBay is a great way to get a ton of sales to come through lesson number 40 it's not for everyone eBay is not a thing for anybody you know it's it's something to try but ultimately if you're not

having fun with it don't feel like you need to persist with it you've got to enjoy what you do I'm a big believer in always doing the things that I enjoy to do the most and for me eBay is a really great fit for what I like to do I can express myself here on YouTube I can sell some stock which I love to do I'm a sales person through and through but you got to understand that that might not be for you so give yourself a really nice window but make sure for lesson number

40 you're having fun because you don't need to be doing this if you're not there are plenty of other ways to go out there and make money but for me I just love it so much that I can't see myself doing anything else so there you go guys 40 brutal truths uh to help you with your eBay journey that I've experien over the last 4 and a half years let me know in the comments which one was the biggest for you and uh go on tune into this video right here thanks very much guys we'll

see you soon