How To Double Your Income By Reselling On eBay (Interview W/ChooseFi)

Thank you so much for spending your time with us! We would be so grateful if you could take a minute and leave us a review.

We were interviewed a few years back by ChooseFI about how reselling can help you double your income. Jonathan Mendonsa and Brad Barrett are the co-hosts of the “ChooseFI” podcast. Their podcast is all about helping people get to financial independence, and reselling can be one way to do that. If you’ve followed us, you know we buy used items locally and resell them on eBay.

How Did You Get Into Reselling?

Melissa went to school and got a college degree and then met me. I have been reselling since I was a teen. I’m from a bigger family with six older sisters and my parents went to yard sales growing up. They’d buy commercial stuff from yard sales, and sell it in the classifieds section taking it from the small yard sale audience to a bigger market. Reselling was modeled to me as a kid. When I was around 16, I got into because that’s when eBay started.

We buy items from a lower market, which in our area, you’re dealing with anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 people and throw it on eBay which has a market of 181 million registered users.

Are You Buying Individual Items Or Things In Bulk?

Our business model is a little bit different from other resellers. We capitalize on larger items. When we find those larger items locally, for instance, a commercial exercise machine, we sell them online for a higher price.

We look for those higher retail items that are going to make us a ton of money when we get it to a larger audience and they’re willing to pay more for that. We sold 89 items to produce $80,000 in a year.

Our business model is to work less, but make more money on the flip higher profit items.

How Do You Get Started Reselling?

We teach people to start where they’re at and learn how to resell before they go buy a ton of items or a truck and trailer. Start with small stuff you have around your home that you’re ready to get rid of. As you get more experience flipping, you can start purchasing items with the intention to resell them.

Do You Still Have Items From Years Ago?

It can take time to find the right buyer. We’ll sit on some stuff for a while, just because I want to get the profit out of it. And I know we’re usually 50 percent of retail for an item. People know they are getting a good deal, but it takes the right person seeing the item before they can buy it.

What Skills Have You Had To Learn?

When I first started reselling I went to the flea market and built relationships with many vendors there. Now I can use all the apps that are around. Learning how to use the apps is a great skill to have as well as consistency.

How Do You Research And Assess Price?

We can actually determine if an item is a good buy just by using our phones. We can go on eBay and see what similar items have sold for, and look at what the item costs new. That gives us an idea of what we could make off of the item, and also tells us what price we should try to buy the item at to get the best return on investment.

How To Double Your Income By Reselling On eBay (Interview W/ChooseFi)

How Do You Market Your Reselling?

We use eBay because eBay does all the marketing for us. If we take good pictures, write a good description, and over promise and under deliver, we’ll get good reviews and eBay will give our listings attention. We also sell unique items, so they will likely get seen if someone goes to Google and types them into the search.

We sell about 85 percent of our items on eBay and the rest through Facebook Marketplace. We usually cross post listings.

Reselling is a very learnable skill and you can get started doing it today just by using items around your home!