Cheap and Easy Business Idea: Start an eBay Store

A main income source just isn't enough anymore.

Supplemental income is all the rage nowadays - and Gen Z and Millenials have been getting creative for a couple of decades now. One of the huge platforms that began as a small website and quickly became a rage was eBay.com.

Now there are plenty of horror stories- but I'm going to just stop everyone right there when I say this: I have had my eBay account since 2011. Since then I have been a loyal customer and seller, and I even helped the IRS catch a fraud who would "sell" people cars and then take the money and disappear by making a report on someone I suspected of trying to scam me when I was attempting a car purchase on there once.

Customer service has never been unfair to me and overall, it's been a great experience.

It was only about two years ago though, that I discovered just how lucrative eBay can be.

I had a brick-and-mortar thrift store in the town over from where I live. Great community members brought in a MASSIVE amount of items through donations to sell since I took donations (and we all have a bit of a tiff over Goodwill being snakey). I also had vendors that I would sell their items for a small commission.

The concept was great - and maybe if I didn't live in the tiniest county in the most rural of areas it would have worked out. I had plenty of customers, just not enough.

So I had a dilemma when I decided to shut down the store. I had a massive amount of stuff, and nowhere to sell it. Or get rid of it. Or anything. So I started listing things on eBay a few months before I closed down completely, getting storage of the stuff that's been listed.

It turns out that the more you list on eBay, the more you sell. And the more you sell, the more they allow you to list and sell. You list up to 250 items every month for free - or up to a certain limit. The better your stats are, the more you are allowed to list and sell.

The fees are reasonable, and they are taken right out of the sale, with USPS integrating with eBay, shipping is easier than ever to calculate and list. Plus you get shipping discounts, purchasing the labels through eBay.

Before taxes, I made about $5,000 in 2023.

While $5k isn't a lot a month, that extra money was a blessing to my family.

And since I am a work-from-home mom, I have multiple streams of income to help supplement my family. When you have a whole savings account that doesn't get touched unless it's for emergencies, you have a stockpile of Christmas money at the end of the year. Because of my very small streams of income, I am able to supplement bills, birthdays, and holidays. It doesn't seem like a large contribution, but it's just enough to help my working family get that cushion that buffs us from life just enough. eBay is a very big part of that.

So if you need some extra cushion in your bank and you have a LOT of crap just laying around collecting dust...

From clothes to baseball/Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh cards, antiques, glassware, manga and anime, dish sets, EVERYTHING - you can sell it on eBay. A closet full of clothes you've barely worn? Sell it.

A garage full of random stuff you've collected over YEARS of accidental hoarding? Sell it.

Have a large collection of something you're ready to let go of? Sell it. For what it's worth.

It's not an immediate process. You have to list and list quite a few things to be ranked highly on the display algorithm. You can buy pallets of stuff off of liquidation sites for cheap to turn a profit.

The more you list, the more you sell. Consistency in your listing also helps, so if you can list 10 items a day, in a couple of weeks you should be getting consistent sales. Make sure to have a variety (though clothes do VERY well) of items.

If you are an eBay shopper, feel free to follow my store! I add new items every month!

Find my fictional fantasy book "Memoirs of the In-Between" on Amazon in paperback, eBook, and hardback.

You can also find it in the Apple Store or on the Campfire Reading app.

Thanks for your support!