Selling used books on eBay
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on โ08-01-2024 09:46 PM
Hey everyone,
I've just started on eBay and I chose what seemed to be the easiest path for me to sell. Which is books. Turns out that heaps of the books I'm listing aren't being sold by anyone else on eBay. After some lovely you tubing, it seems as if I've taken the wrong approach to eBay and I'm just listing heaps of products with no demand. Problem being that I have just bought hundreds of random used books that are taking up heaps of room at my place.
So my questions are:
Have I taken the wrong approach to eBay?
How can I figure out which of my books will sell so I don't waste time making dud listings?
What approach could I take to realign my store and become successful? (I'm quite ambitious and would want to start this asap)
On top of all of this, I have started buying items on Lloyds auctions in my country, and I've also ordered some products from china to sell. My biggest two issues to figure out at the moment is Sourcing and shipping.
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on โ09-01-2024 10:22 PM
good sell through rate
Moderate.
My supplementary account has numbers similar to the OP and a sales conversion rate of <5%. I have no idea what that means, but the cream tends to get picked off.
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on โ12-01-2024 06:20 PM
Wouldn't items people want be popular items.
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on โ12-01-2024 06:44 PM
@brickworksmarket wrote:Wouldn't items people want be popular items.
They're just as likely to be hard to find items.
"Start me up I'll never stop......"
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on โ12-01-2024 06:48 PM
@brickworksmarket wrote:Wouldn't items people want be popular items.
When was the last time you actually read a book. lol
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โ12-01-2024 06:51 PM - edited โ12-01-2024 06:52 PM
Re: Selling used books on eBay
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on โ12-01-2024 06:58 PM
Wouldn't items people want be popular items.
Popular items would tend to have no margin in them as everybody is attempting to sell them. There are always those who race to the bottom. And we are, according to the header. talking about books
I sell an eclectic range - some are hard to find/signed/first edition, some are MMPBs with small margins. Those do, however, keep the turnover up.
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on โ12-01-2024 06:59 PM
Is it that time of the day. Theres many hard to find items that dont sell on ebay. Not sure what your really trying to say.
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on โ12-01-2024 07:01 PM
Not sure but thanks for asking.
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on โ12-01-2024 08:05 PM
What is a small margin, if you don't mind me asking? I'm trying to price my items and I'm thinking my stuff might be too expensive.
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on โ12-01-2024 08:08 PM
I haven't actually heard of managed payments, I also was not 100% aware that people could do click and collect for my items. Both of these are topics I might do a little research on.
Over the past couple of days, I finished sorting through the books I had and have put ones with above 50% sell through rate in a seperate box to list first. The others I will try to sell at a local flea market. Just because space is currently much more valuable to me than some lower quality stock. (I live in a share house)
Postage wise, I've looked into flat rate postage costs, my main concern with that is that I am not left with much of a profit margin if I sell books below $20 with free postage. I will start printing out all my postage labels through Aus post my business site. I've realised that the eBay doesn't connect to my business properly though. So I've been doing it manually.
I met a guy today who has been involved in selling in ebay for the past couple years suggest doing untracked postage for lower priced items. I know this will make me heaps more competitive on price if I start doing that. What's your thoughts on untracked postage?
Another thing I've noticed is that book sets sell quite well, so I've combined a few of my listings. I might even do book bundles by the same author or topic and see how that goes.
I realised with auction houses, I am a bit too excited to win the bid and make bad buds due to that, so I'm going to write up a bidding price versus profit chart and put it up on my wall to give me a hard line price wise for bidding. I've also decided that I don't want to sell any used electronics unless they are still sealed in their original packaging.
Is there any chance @davewil1964 that you could drop a link for one of your eBay stores? I would like to take a look through and see if there are any easy things I could adopt from you.

