Lesson Four - What ARE You Going to Sell and Where

You've decided that you are going to go into business for yourself.  Good for you.  Now comes the hard part - what are you going to sell and where are you going to sell it.  

New items?  Well, there's EBAY and there's Amazon.  Both are the big names on the net and both are expensive.  One you can start small (.35 per listing with about 10% comission), the other you are locked into a hefty rate from the start (minimum monthly payment, listing fee and a final commission).  My advice?  EBAY is probably the more economical solution.  EBAY is where I started and I have to admit I learned an awful lot from the site.  What did I start with?  Believe it or not, stuff that was lying around my apartment.  I loved collecting stuff so I had lots of items to choose from but I started with toys that I had purchased from Toys R Us thinking they would increase like Star Wars toys.  What I sold didn't really have a high value but watching the auction prices go up each day was a wonderful feeling.  My very first sale was Pegasus from the Clash of the Titans movie.  I paid around $10 for the toy (on sale) and the bidding went to $80.  Not a bad profit I thought.  One toy led to another until i was completely sold out.  Then I moved onto other items, vintage hankies, Victorian paper, costume jewelry, frames, porcelain items, penny dolls, the list of smalls I had was endless, or at least I thought so.  

The day finally came when I no longer had anything to sell.  I was still crafting and it was around that time that something called a Beanie Baby started to take the world by storm.  

Little did I know that a company I was doing business with had the hottest collectible on the market.  AND I had a wholesale account.  So guess who was able to buy beanie babies at cost ($3.00 each) and sell them to the highest bidder.  Yep, me.  I ordered by the gross, worked in a law firm by day and sold beanie babies at night.  I thought my fortune was made, that is until the day the market fell out of beanie babies.  Oh well.

In any case, EBAY was a good learning experience for learning what the customer wanted.  Prompt shipping was also something I had to develop as well as good communication.  Both those attributes are tantamount to staying in business.  

Today, EBAY is competing with Amazon and it shows.  Dealers on the site seem to be into everything but collectibles.  You can't sell collectible nor antiques on Amazon and unless you have a wholesale account with someone, you can't really compete with a lot of the people that are dealing on EBAY or Amazon.  There will always be someone who can sell it just a fraction or two cheaper then you can.  They may have money behind them, they may have more workers but one thing I have learned is that unless you can deal with volume sales and low profits, it's best to stay off both EBAY and Amazon.

Vintage items?  Well, yes.  There is always a market for vintage.  The older the better and NOT in quantities of more than one (unless there is a difference in design or the item is extremely scarce).  If you have ready access to a lot of collectible items then Ruby Lane or ETSY are probably your websites of choice.  Both have good reputations but while one is a little better with the press (ETSY) the other is better with word of mouth (Ruby Lane).  

If you choose to sell on Ruby Lane, fees are reasonable with NO listing fees and about a 10% commission.   If you just want to try a site to see if it is for you, then ETSY is the right choice (.20 per listing fee and 10% commission).  I happen  to sell on both venues though I choose my inventory on each site with care.  While one thing might sell well on Ruby Lane it might not sell quite as well on ETSY.  The demographics are quite different.  And while Ruby Lane is strictly Antique and Collectible items only, ETSY allows for handcrafted items as well as Antique/Collectible.  You definitely have a wider variety of listings on ETSY especially if you like to craft items as well.

So, what to sell and where to sell it.  You definitely have to make a choice.  

Till next time...