
Flipping items online can be a great way to make extra income that can even replace your full-time job if done properly. Flipping doesn’t always mean selling items you own. Flipping means buying items for cheap price and selling them at a higher price.
You don’t need any prior experience or qualifications to make money flipping items online. Anyone with a little amount of money to invest can start this business. In the beginning, start by flipping low cost items. I’d say don’t spend more than $10 on a single item. Doing so, you can learn about this business and even if any item you purchased to flip don’t sell, you won’t lose much money.
Now, let’s see how you can start flipping items online and make money with this step-by-step guide.
1. Find Items to Flip
The best way to succeed in flipping business is to find unique/branded items for cheap price. Such items sell immediately at a higher price point. So, finding good items to flip ensures that you don’t have to store them for long and make more profit.
You can find good items to flip on Facebook Marketplace, eBay, Falling Prices, Craigslist, garage sales, thrift stores, flea market, etc. If you can negotiate well, you can find good items to flip at insanely cheap price. When you’re trying to buy items from Facebook marketplace, eBay or garage sales, don’t hesitate to negotiate. Most of the time, people just want to get rid of the items they don’t use. So, they are ready to sell for less than what they’re asking for it.
While buying an item to flip, keep these things in mind!
1. The item should not be damaged or highly fragile.
2. Check the item’s demand in the market. If it has high demand, it will sell easily in no time. You can use Facebook marketplace or eBay to find it’s demand. To find the demand of an item, check the number of listings, date the listings were posted and engagement on the listings. If there is good amount of listings posted recently, then that product is in high demand.
3. Check how much the item is selling for? Always buy items at less price than what it’s selling for, online.
If an item you want to buy passes all 3 things mentioned above, then it’s a good item to flip.
If you don’t have money to flip items, then you can find something in your own house, that is of no use to you and flip them for a profit.
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2. Evaluate the Condition
After you buy an item to flip, you need to evaluate it’s condition. Some items can be in a really rough state. Sometimes, you can find highly valuable items at low price because of their terrible condition. So, you need to repair or clean such items before flipping them for profit.
3. List it For Sale
At this point, your item is ready to sell. So, you need to list them online in order to sell. You can sell your items on Facebook marketplace, eBay, Craigslist, etc.
If you want to sell your items locally, then Facebook marketplace is the best place to sell it. They don’t charge any fees on products, that are sold locally through their marketplace. Even Craigslist doesn’t charge any fees on items being sold on their platform. Whereas, eBay charges $0.30 per sale + 13.25% of the sale amount as their platform fee. You need to pay $0.35 per listing if you want to list more than 250 items for sale each month on eBay.
In my opinion, Facebook marketplace is the best place to sell items. First because they don’t charge any fees on items sold locally and second, Facebook has more users than eBay and Craigslist. So, you can reach more people on Facebook.
Follow this 3 Step process to list your item for sale!
1. Take Good Photos
You need to take good photos of your item to list it for sale. Clear photos taken from every angle of the product can increase it’s chances to sell fast. The first thing people notice about your listing is it’s photos. So, listing your product with good photos can make your listing absolutely unbeatable.
2. Write it’s Metadata
To list your product, you need to create a title, write genuine description of the product, and add relevant keywords. Other than these, you may have the option to add additional details about your product. If you do, add them to increase your listing’s visibility.
3. Set the Price
At last, you need to set the price of your product. Check how much others are selling the same product for and set your price accordingly. If your product don’t sell for a long time, then you can slightly decrease it’s price. After you price your product, it’s ready to sell.
I would suggest you to list your product on multiple platforms at the same time to increase it’s chances to sell.
4. Packaging & Shipping
After someone purchases your product, you need to pack it properly and ship it to them. If you’re selling the products in your own locality, then you don’t have to worry much about packaging. But if you’re selling it out of your locality, packaging is extremely important. If the product is highly fragile, then you need to take extra care of it while packaging. To ship the product, use a reliable and trustworthy shipping company.
You can either make your customers pay for shipping or you can add the shipping fee in your product price and offer them free shipping. You can choose whatever you like and is easy for you. In the beginning, I’d suggest you to make your customers pay for the shipping instead of adding it to the product price.
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Tips to Succeed
1. Great communication skills and fast replies to inquiries can be a great way to succeed in this business.
2. Listing your products on multiple platforms can be a great way to increase your listing’s visibility.
3. Selling the products at slightly lower price point than others can help your product to sell out much faster.
4. Finding branded/unique items to flip can sell much faster and generate more profit compared to other items.
5. Making a habit of visiting garage sales and falling price stores time and often can land you some insanely valuable items at a cheap price.
6. Don’t keep all the profits to yourself. Keep re-investing it into the business to make even more money.
7. Decrease the price of your product if it doesn’t sell for a long time.
8. You can share your listing to relevant Facebook groups to increase it’s exposure.
9. Follow or reach out to other flippers to learn more about the flipping business.
Wrapping It Up
The most crucial step to succeed in any business is to start today itself. Don’t waste your time thinking you need to learn about it, talk to someone with experience about it and so on. Just start and try things yourself.
This was all about flipping products to make money online. It doesn’t matter who you are and what you do, you can still make money flipping items in your free time. Success in this business is all about your choices. The product you choose to flip, the price of product you choose to flip and so on. So, don’t let your mind act like a gambler and start by taking small steps in the beginning.