Category: Tips

Historically, eBay sellers like to list auctions items on Sunday afternoons so they end on Sunday afternoon the following week.  It’s a good time to have items ending, since the number of buyers online tends to be higher then.

While BIN items can be listed at any time, Sunday listings are also popular for fixed price items.

Be sure not to miss these popular listing times for scooping up deals with BINSniper and VieBuy.

Other times that get more listing action for Sundays are Thursday afternoons for 3-day and 10-day listings.  Tuesday afternoons for the less common 5 day listings.

 

eMarketer, who post data and insights on ecommerce, recently released an analysis of ecommerce in 2011 and projections for 2012. In the article, they project 20% growth in the fashion category in 2012, making it the fastest growing category.

That makes clothing lots a great buy/resell opportunity.   Use our BINSniper add-on for Firefox or the VieBuy.com website to find the best deals as they are listed.

Here’s an example:
Item: Lot of 100 set Alpaca Wool Sweater+hat+gl​oves+socks, andean designs high quality

Price: $1400 with free shipping from Peru, seller Detuei

Elsewhere on eBay, single priced alpaca sweaters range from $35-$150, Hat+scarf sets for $20+.

Breaking apart this lot and selling it as single items/set will yield more profit. When broken down, this lot could be sold as singles – 100 sweaters and 100 gloves/hat/mittens sets. Breaking it down further (separating the hats and scarves) would probably not add additional profit, but would add more work.  Potential income from resale is $5500-17000 or $4000-16000 profit!

The more you are able to spend, the better the deals get. Smaller lots are available too. It’s also possible to resell single items for a profit, such as premium designer items.

 

See some live clothing lot listings:

 

Using some of the tools found on this site, you can source items for resale and then list them on eBay or other sites. BINSniper and VieBuy are two tools that perform a similar function: they alert you to new items that meet the criteria you establish.

eBay is not only a good place to buy and sell, it’s a great place to buy and resell. You can buy product on eBay for resale and then sell it on eBay, or a number of other sites, or even in your brick and mortar store if you have one.

Where these tools add value is in the instant alerting features. Instead of searching through thousands of listings or bidding on auctions for days, you get alerts of brand new listings that you can buy immediately.

By setting criteria such as price range, keywords, and category, you can set the tools to show you deals seconds after they are listed on eBay. Check out the free eBay buying tools listed on auctionbucks.com

Finding product
To find products that can be bought on eBay and then resold on eBay you’ll need to browse listings looking for items that have a wide range of selling prices. Some examples are cellphones, PDAs, musical instruments, GPS, industrial equipment, cameras, high end fashion items, some collectibles, laptops, electronics, network routers, and more.

Generally speaking, the higher the item price, the more room you have for markup. Using BINSniper, set the keywords to search for, optionally set a category number, and then set the price range to monitor.

Many new or casual sellers undervalue their items. They will typically put the item up for auction and set a BIN price below the normal going rate. If you use BINSniper to find this item before other buyers and before anyone can place a low-ball bid, you can purchase it at the BIN price.

In other cases, fixed priced items that a seller is unfamiliar with will be placed up for sale and the first buyer to find the deal gets it. BINSniper can alert you in seconds of an item being listed and typically a minute before it is displayed on the eBay websites. (depends on the site, category and day)

An example: A Cisco 2811 router currently sells for anywhere from $500 to $3000 depending on the options installed. A router valued at $500 may be resellable at $800 without any modifications.

A less costly example: An iPod Touch listed at $59 can be resold for $89. BINSniper lets you monitor for iPods priced from $49-$69. Setting the low end of the range excludes unwanted listings like cases, chargers and other accessories that would fill the search results on the eBay website.

A bad idea: A zhu zhu pet hamster that sells for $5-$9 on eBay is probably not a great target for resale. The inbound shipping costs will undo any profit you might have made. But if you can buy them in lots, it might be worthwhile. For buying and reselling to be profitable, you need to factor in all your costs including eBay fees. Generally speaking, you’ll need to look at items where the BuyPrice+ShippingCost is less than ResalePrice+eBayFees.

There are items out there, and hundreds of eBayers use BINSniper everyday.

You should also consider using two eBay accounts. One to buy and one to sell. This helps prevent your purchase price from being researched thru your feedback listings.

 

Why are items already sold when I get to them?

The answer is, of course, that someone else beat you to the item.

BINSniper is a tool that lets you setup searches and alerts you in realtime when new matching items are posted on eBay. It’s free and available thru the Firefox add-ons feature or from this site in the Firefox Add-ons section.

 

You can’t win ’em all

One of the most common questions we see from BINSniper users is “Why do I lose some items to other buyers?”  While system speed and update delays can occur, the biggest factor by far, especially in popular categories, is your competition.

For example, take a hypothetical case where only ten people worldwide are buying used iPhone 5’s.  Let’s say three of them are using BINSniper. If the three BINSniper users combined win every single iPhone 5, each one is still only going to win only a third of the listings (give or take). While that would be a balanced result, all three would still feel they are missing items. Imagine how the seven users not using BINSniper feel. In reality there are hundreds, thousands, or maybe more people at any given moment trying to buy an iPhone on eBay.

 

BINSniper and VieBuy.com let you compete against the speed-buyers.  Please keep in mind that there are thousands of eBay users vieing for new items. There are no guarantees that you will beat another user to a new item. There are other users running the applications listed on this website every day. Power users are generally focused on electronics categories such as phones, computers and cameras. These categories are in high competition.

The tools presented here are designed to speed up the buying process. To this end, there are some features that were developed based on user input, to make things faster. Aside from the obvious features, such as the real time alerts:

• The listing details screen has a Buy Now button that takes you directly to the offer page.
• The detail screen provides a quick view of most of the item details and doesn’t have the image and javascript delays you experience on the eBay site.

There are some other things you can do to make sure you are getting the fastest results:

• keep your searches as simple as they can be.
• login to eBay before using the tools. That way you won’t be prompted to login when bidding
• make sure you have at least DSL speed for your Internet connection.
• make sure your computer is reasonably fast. You don’t need a new computer, but a ten year old computer running Windows 95 probably won’t do the job.
• try VieBuy’s RSS feed option if the API option is slow
• UK users can set BINSNiper to use our server in the UK to speed things up

There are other issues which may affect speed that are not under your control:

• how long eBay takes to add the item to the feeds (shown as lag time at the bottom of the VieBuy screen)
• how long it takes to fetch data from eBay (shown as response time at the bottom of the VieBuy screen)
• sellers updating items shortly after listing. This may cause the item to reappear in VieBuy.
• the load on the eBay systems. During heavy use times (e.g. Sundays) response time will be slower and may vary throughout the day
• In some cases the website will be faster than the data feeds, but usually the feeds are faster.

In BINSniper, multiple searches can be configured. Searches are executed in parallel and the results are displayed as they arrive.

Combining searches is usually faster. For example, if you have the following searches:
ipod nano blue case
ipod shuffle blue case

You could replace these with:
ipod blue case

The nano and shuffle searches would be included, as well as other ipod models.

Or you can use the OR syntax to limit the results to nano and shuffle only:
ipod blue case (nano, shuffle)
which means: items containing “ipod” and “blue” and “case” and either “nano” or “shuffle”

VieBuy.com has added an RSS option that users buying from UK and other eBay sites outside the USA may find faster. For users outside the US, the RSS feed may be a bit faster. The RSS feed may also be affected by server loads at eBay on busy days.