CRAIGFIN

Is there anybody on here that makes a good living just using ebay?
It facinates me how many people online claim to do just that.
Do you have to register a company name here?...Companies House

Do you have to have a VAT number to buy from wholesalers?

I'm not in a position to do it myself as I'm in the Armed Forces but it does interest me how people do it, especially after reading this guys story.....I'm an ebay millionaire

what would scooby do

Yes one person has..

Pierre Omidyar

CRAIGFIN

Yep, he definitely qualifies as someone who has made a living from ebay!!

[Pierre Omidyar

Puff The Magic Wagon!

iTrader: (2)

Friend's brother does. Sells baby stuff.

speye91

My Sister sells Ladies cosmetics,and she does ok for a second income.Roughly £700 a month,but im not sure on the VAT,or company register?

scoobyboy

so where do they buy it from in the first place to be able to sell at a profit on ebay?

Midlife......

iTrader: (2)

Bloke at work gets stuff from TK Maxx and sells on e-bay .... makes a profit so he says !!

Shaun

baser999

iTrader: (2)

Do it regularly and make enough at it and you're going to fall foul of the Revenue

TopBanana

I know someone who makes a decent living selling cables

The Chief

You do not have to register with companies house as you are not a ltd company although you have to inform the inland revenue within 3 months (i think) of you trading.

You dont need a vat number as you wont be Vat registered but you will have to sell the stuff inclusive of vat. (i think a lot of people do this on Ebay anyway)

Problem with Ebay people want something for nothing, if anything its good as a shop window for your online business.

Ghetto Dude3

a mate who i have know for years, has his parents now building houses in GOA to sell

he is always out there on holidays (i tried to buy+run a nightclub out there) and always brings ****loads of (mostly fake) goodies back to sell, his sister is my brothers fiance and claims he made 30k in a year a few years back just selling the stuff

which was ploughed into the nightclub in GOA, which swallowed all his cash up, and ended up closing anyway

not sure if he still does anything on ebay nowadays, last time i saw him a few years back he had came home and was running his dads fencing buisness for him in the uk.

not sure if its 100% true or not, but as far as i was aware, the only source


he did tell me ebay banned him a few times but it was a doddle to setup another account and people just dont pay attention to zero feedbakc when they think they are getting a bargin

[Davey]

Look at that grin on his face... LUCKY LUCKY bastid

fitzscoob

my brother sells chicken wire and fencing supplies on there, seems to be doing well enough.

Mitchy260

I find the fees and time required are not worth the hassle.

List Fee
Sell Fee
Paypal Fee

The amount of time and effort required to buy products, take pictures, add descriptions, list the item.

Sell the item, package the item, post the item and then do all the financial side of things.

Far too time consuming for me, just to make a tiny profit.

Gets worse if your item does not sell then you're hammered again for a 2nd listing fee.

My missus bought me a pair of diesel jeans last xmas at a cost of £120, ive never liked them and they have remained at the bottom of the wardrobe since. I tried flogging them on ebay a few weeks back but people are wanting things for nothing nowadays and i'd rather have a pair of £120 diesel jeans in the bottom of my wardrobe than to let someone get hold of them for a tenner.

I tried listing them for a reasonable amount of £50, but not a dicky bird of interest.

Tried a relist of £40, again not a hint of interest.

Cost me 2 lots of selling fees and then i gave up.

Ebay is sh*te, full of cheapskates

(Although saying that i once bought a turbo and manifold from the for sale section of a car forum site for £220 and flogged it a week later on ebay for £580. I put this down to once in a life time luck on my behalf, stupidity on sellers)

Mitchy260

Another way to make money, scour ebay for high mileage cars. Pay £100 or so for a bit of mileage correction and then flog the same car through ebay a few weeks later with its mileage halved.

Lots of people will sacrafice paperwork trail, ie service history for a bargain.

Highly illegal of course but a good money making scheme.

No i have never done the above, but i know it happens.

ChrisB

I bought some computer kit off an ebay trader recently and collected from their premises (converted cow shed!). I saw his trading statistics whilst there and had done £10k in the last 30 days.

Mitchy260

How much of that is profit though, by the time all fees and his stock cost considered, it might only be about 1/10 of that profit wise.

Full time business, £1000 profit isn't a lot.

Varboy

I have a friend from Uni who sells computer 'stuff', he also has a shop outlet but a considerable amount of his turnover is from ebay. He has close to 20k feedback when I last spoke to him.

I also know someone who buys top brand audio equipment via the free ads (or indeed ebay), cleans them up and then sells for profit. I'm not sure whether he still does this now as I personally don't think there are many bargains to be had nowadays. However, at the time he used to make a few £K / year which was sufficient enough for him to buy gadgets for himself and a holiday.

Sonic'

Yeah thats my take on it as well, most of the time it just isnt worth all the hassle

although maybe drop ship stuff might be reasonable but you need high quantities etc and good prices to sell through large quantites, but still the time involved etc

I went to collect some studio equipment one day from an ebayer, and he spends all his time buying up dirt cheap old studio gear and re-selling on ebay for triple and quadruple the price he pays for the stuff

Ghetto Dude3

i did some dropshipping a few years back as a part time thing

did quite well out of it to be honest, i was selling bathroom towels, did really well until some other people found where i was getting them from and started undercutting me, so i simply stopped

it used to just pay for more stuff from ebay, bits and bobs etc etc
had very little "work" to do for the profit at the time

The Chief

I used to sell Slam Panels on Ebay. I sold a few and made a bit of pocket money but nothing with regards to a good profit.

With the price of stainless rising all the time it stopped becoming viable.
so i stopped

Spoon

I dropshipped too for 10 months. Started from 1 email to someone I'd never met or even heard of asking if I could sell his products. A price to me was agreed and away I went. For very little time and amongst other things I was doing, I was selling 15K worth a month from about month 8 and totalled 110K over the 10 months with approximately 45K Net profit.

The Chief

Spoon your obviously on a high level with regards to Ebay.

How do you go about telling the tax man what you sell - do you just declare what you've sold? keep your invoices etc?

PM me if you wish.


Thanks

Spoon

Chief, simply keep all paperwork in case of any complications/discrepancies, as any self employed bod would and fill out your tax return like any self employed bod would.

So yes, just declare it and as you rightly said earlier, register as self- employed within 3 months if you aren't already.

The Chief

cheers fella