Reselling has recently experienced a significant increase in popularity. For many people, it is a way to earn extra money, especially in addition to their job or studies. All kinds of goods are “resold” in the process: Sneakers, electronic items, Lego – even cloud storage. But how exactly does it work? What is important to keep in mind when reselling? This article explains!
What does a reseller do?
A reseller is someone who buys products with the aim of reselling them at a higher price. He wants to buy products, sell them and make a profit. In the beginning, many people do reselling as a side job and later as their main independent occupation.
Reselling Strategies: How it works
In order to achieve profits, you have to buy the products cheaply on the one hand and keep the costs as low as possible on the other. Basically, 4 different ways can be distinguished here:
1. Limited products with high demand
Products can often be resold at a higher price when demand is very high or the number of pieces is limited. This is especially the case with sneakers. The quantity produced is often artificially limited, which means that they are very rare. Here the difficulty lies in obtaining the goods in the first place. Resellers who manage to get hold of a sneaker right at the time of its release can resell it shortly thereafter for a significantly higher price. The situation is similar to other clothing items or special watches.
2. Favorable purchase prices due to strong discounts
With electronics, on the other hand, it can be worth looking out for good special offers. Occasionally, there are big sales because stores want to replace their assortment or clear out their stock. Unlike sneakers, the merchandise here is not limited or the demand exceptionally high, but it is simply the low price that makes reselling worthwhile. For example, a computer may be heavily discounted at an electronics retailer because a newer model has been announced and the retailer wants to clear out its stock.
Unfortunately, this way of searching for attractive deals is very time-consuming. That’s why we have developed a free app that informs you about the best reselling deals on a daily basis. Download it now for free and become a reseller!
3. Investing in products for the long term
The third way to make profits is the time factor. Your smartphone or computer you’re reading this on is becoming less and less valuable as time goes on. You use it every day, the battery performance deteriorates and the technology becomes increasingly obsolete. The situation is different with old Nintendo games or special Lego sets, for example. These products often already have a collector’s value and gain more and more value with time. In the picture, you can see that Lego can increase in value significantly after production has ceased. It is possible that a Lego set is no longer produced and is very difficult to get. Resellers take advantage of this: they buy up rare Lego sets or games and speculate that they will be worth more in the future. However, this also requires some experience, as not all Lego sets or Nintendo games become worth more. If you want to learn how investing in Lego works you are welcome to read our blog article about it.
4. Upgrade products before sale
Maybe it has already happened to you: You drop your smartphone and the glass is cracked. The repair costs demanded by the manufacturer are so high that you can’t resist buying the latest model. No one wants your old, broken smartphone anymore and you have to sell it for a song. It is quite possible that the buyer was a reseller who profited from this.
As a reseller, you buy defective products and upgrade them before reselling them. In the case of a defective smartphone, you order the appropriate replacement part (for example, a new display), repair the device, and are now able to resell it at a significantly higher price. Of course, it doesn’t always have to be defective products: You could also buy an old computer and completely refresh it by updating the operating system, increasing the main memory, and installing an SSD hard drive. Of course, this can be applied to almost all products, but it works especially well with electronics.
Which platforms do resellers use?
Now that we’ve talked about how to make a profit with reselling, there’s still the matter of where to buy and sell the goods.
Purchasing goods: Buying products for resell
There are many different ways how you can get goods as a reseller. Among them for example:
- At the flea market
- On the Internet (all stores)
- eBay classifieds
- At insolvency auctions
- At wholesalers
This list could be even longer, but with this, you already have a very large selection.
Automated deal search on eBay Classifieds
eBay Classifieds is a super platform to buy products for reselling. Many sellers often advertise items at very low prices because they want to get rid of them quickly, or are not aware of the actual price. However, these good listings have already disappeared very quickly. If you want to gain a big advantage here, it is recommended to use our classifieds monitor developed for this purpose. It monitors your search queries of a niche and notifies you immediately when a new ad is available.
Price comparison is helpful
To find out if an offer is really cheap, you should compare the prices and check the demand. Idealo is a good place to do this. There you can see the price development of a certain product over time. To find out whether the product is in demand on the market at all, it is worthwhile to look at eBay under the ended/sold offers. To do this, log in, find the product for which you want to check the price, and click on “sold offers”. Now you can see the dates and prices at which your searched item was successfully sold. This way you can estimate what a product is actually worth.
Where to resell the goods
Now you have bought reselling products and wonder where you can sell them. For this purpose, eBay Classifieds and eBay are particularly suitable, since there are many potential buyers.
Create an offer on eBay Classifieds
To create an account here, all you need is an email address and 2 minutes of your time. After you have created an account, you make an offer. It is important that you take some meaningful photos of your product and indicate the condition of your product (“new” or “used”). You can find a step-by-step guide for an account and offer creation here.
Create an offer on eBay
Probably the most popular platform for resellers is eBay. This is mainly due to the fact that the platform is very large and therefore there are many potential buyers for your goods. It is therefore advisable to sell your goods here. If you want to test reselling for the first time, you can use a private account. If you want to do it on a regular basis, you should create a commercial account on eBay. How to do that, we show you here. After you have an account, you create an offer. In this official video from eBay you will find detailed instructions on how to post items:
Business registration
To make a long story short: Yes, as a reseller you absolutely need a business. You shouldn’t let that scare you away, because the business registration is pretty straightforward and usually costs less than 30€. You can find all the necessary information and a step-by-step guide to reselling business registration in a separate blog article.
Summary
Reselling is simple: you buy goods and then resell them at a profit. All kinds of goods can be traded. Various reselling strategies can be pursued in order to achieve profits:
- Buy limited products with high demand
- Obtain favorable purchase prices through heavy discounting
- Use time as a factor: Invest in products
- Add value to products before selling
You can find reselling products on the Internet, as well as offline. A very important factor is the purchase price. To check an offer, it is worthwhile to do research on eBay or Idealo. Creating an offer on the Internet is not complicated at all. Common platforms for this are eBay or eBay classifieds.
Have fun reselling!