sethb - ResellingRevealed

The 4 Best Postal Scales For Shipping Items in 2021

January 19, 2021

One of the first tangible pieces of evidence that I was creating a “real business” was setting up a dedicated shipping station. Before that point, I had always just taken my packages to the post office to ship, picked up some flat rate boxes on the way home from my day job, or randomly printed off some labels on my old college printer and taped them to re-used Amazon boxes. Not exactly professional. Shipping items isn’t hard but it’s an integral part of many businesses. That packaging that you send your items in is about the only physical impression that a customer will have of your business. If your product is great but your shipping is crappy the chances of you having a repeat customer fall dramatically. Luckily, a shipping station isn’t overly complex. I already had an old desktop that would function as the brains of the system and so I only needed to …

What are the Fastest-Selling Items on Mercari in 2021?

January 26, 2021January 14, 2021

During the time we have been selling on eBay we have seen at least a dozen platforms come and go. Every time something new comes along everyone that isn’t doing so hot on eBay claims that the new platform is the savior of the reselling community and encourages others to jump ship. Here’s the truth though…if you can’t make it on eBay, you probably can’t make it as a reseller anywhere. For all it’s issues, eBay has the largest audience, the best support, and the lowest fees. However, other platforms have a valuable place if your reselling arsenal. After all, why would you want to leave money on the table? So let’s talk about what is (in my opinion) is the best of all of the alternatives to eBay…Mercari! Mercari, a Japanese company, is a selling platform/app that is currently available in Japan and the U.S. It has exploded in popularity recently and most resellers …

The Complete Layman’s Guide To Properly Use USPS Media Mail

January 14, 2021January 13, 2021

One of my first exposures to shipping via media mail came before I even started reselling on eBay. My wife encouraged me to sell my textbooks on Amazon at the end of every semester instead of selling them back to the campus bookstore. I was all about making more money but, like most people in my generation, had hardly ever sent a package before. So when my books finally started to sell I knew I had better figure out how to send them if I wanted to get paid. I simply wrapped my physics book up in brown paper, took it to the post office counter, and told them I wanted to ship it the cheapest way possible. I ended paying about $3.00 to send it via media mail but was warned that “it might take a while.” Once we started getting into the full-swing of reselling and realized that we were spending over $1,000/month …

The 3 Best Mannequins for Selling Used Clothing Online

January 12, 2021

When I first started selling clothes online I figured that getting a mannequin was the holy grail, one of the signs that I was actually a reseller and not just some dude listing his old clothes for sale. So, naturally, I went out and bought 4 different mannequins to prove to myself how professional I was. Did it help? Well, I make way more money now but I’m not sure it was the mannequins (and I definitely can’t say I’m professional….) While the mannequins turned out to be great for selling used clothing, they had an even higher calling. Scaring the crap out of my wife. I would routinely dress them up, put a large hat on them, and then go stick them in the driver’s seat of her car. When she went to work she would often run back in to yell at me or throw something in my direction. Despite my hijinks, we …

How To Find Out How Much An eBay Item Sold For On Best Offer

January 6, 2021January 4, 2021

Recently my wife and I were wandering around a pawn shop (as we’re wont to do) and we came across an interesting display of plates! They were extremely beautiful but this beauty came at a steep price, $100 per plate or $500 for the set of six. The plates didn’t match our sense of style (if our decorating can be called a “style”) so we naturally thought of reselling them on eBay. Out came our phones so we could check if anything similar has sold on eBay in the past couple of months. Sure enough! A similar set of 6 had sold for (what appeared to be) $1,395 plus shipping! Now we didn’t exactly want to drop $500 on a set of plates but if we could make a quick $800 profit we could sure make it work. Fortunately, we didn’t get quite swept up into our self-created hype and put in our due diligence …

The Strangest Thrift Store Finds: Goodwill Edition

January 6, 2021January 3, 2021

If you’ve been in a thrift store for more than 5 minutes you’ve undoubtedly realized that they’re is some weird stuff there and weird people around to purchase it. One one of my first trips to the Goodwill Oulets (the “bins”) I picked up a pair of shoes and an honest-to-goodness dehydrated poop rolled out. Was it human? I didn’t check. When we posted about in on our Instagram page we had people reporting that they had found anything from human teeth to dildos. These are just a few of the stranger thrift store finds that people mentioned (pics not included…because we care….): Underwear with a pad still in it A small bag of cocaine (in a KUHL shirt pocket. Nothing goes with crack like the outdoors apparently!) Mice (They didn’t say whether they were dead or alive and I’m not sure which I’d prefer) Dirty diapers All types of sex toys (do people pricing …

Transparent Liquidation.com Review From An eBay Reseller

December 30, 2020

Every reseller hits the point where they know that digging through rack after rack in thrift stores just isn’t going to cut it. For some people it’s because they’re just sick and tired of thrift stores. For others, it’s because they realize that they can never find enough inventory to make the kind of money they want to make. At that point, you have a couple of different options. You can just accept that your reselling business will never be super profitable, you can quit, or you can change your methods in a way that will allow you to scale your business. Which leads most people to the same question: how can I get massive amounts of inventory with less of a time investment? The answer, of course, is to buy items in bulk. Unless you want to set-up wholesale accounts and pivot your business into selling new items, you probably started looking at buying …

How To Ship on eBay: 4 Easy Steps To Get Your Packages Out

December 31, 2020December 30, 2020

For the first several months that we sold on eBay, we would pack up all of our orders, write what item was inside on the top of the box, and trek to the post office to ship them. I have way too many pictures of my wife at the post office at 1:00 in the morning, standing at the shipping kiosk, and looking like a very angry little eBay elf. One day (while we were sitting in the hospital waiting room for the birth of our nephew) I was killing time on my phone and saw an offhand comment about a thermal printer. I did some research and found that I could print from home anytime and it was actually cheaper than going to the post office! I could even schedule pickups! I might never have to leave my house again! I decided that, since we were already making more money on eBay than I …

How To Take Pictures of Clothes To Sell Online (4 Easy Ways)

December 17, 2020

They say that pictures are worth a thousand words. If you’re talking about selling clothing online, I think that estimate is a bit low. In the fast 5 years, I’ve sold well over 5,000 items of clothing online and, if I had to choose between a description or pictures, I’d go with pictures every time. If you have a title and bare minimum description, your pictures can make or break your sales. While I mostly sell on eBay and Mercari, what I’d like to share is true of not only those platforms but of Depop, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, Poshmark, etc. In every case, better pictures mean better sales. While each platform attracts a slightly different customer base that is attracted to slightly different things, good pictures are good pictures. So what makes a good picture for selling clothing online? Well, the good news is that you can learn how to take pictures of clothes to …

eBay BOLO: Silent Butler (What is it and what is it worth?)

December 17, 2020

It’s not unusual for us to find strange things at thrift stores. Even after selling full time on eBay for several years we still find things we can’t identify. In fact, I’ve found several things that I’m almost certain are worth good money…if I could just figure out what they are. Such was the case this past week when I came upon a fancy metal and wood contraption sitting (sparkling, actually) on a shelf at my local Goodwill. It was unusual, high quality, and cheap so, in the spirit of thrifting, I bought it with hopes to identify it later. With the help of Reddit’s What Is This Thing I was able to figure out that the thing I thought was a mini bedpan was actually called a Silent Butler. What is a silent butler, you ask? A silent butler is a small metal container with a hinged lid and wood handle. It functions as …