Making Money On eBay Using Craigslist

eBay Overview

Whether you are a seasoned veteran on eBay or brand new to the website and don't even have an account yet, there is always money to be made on eBay. eBay was founded 18 years ago, and is ranked 21st as the world's most viewed websites. Their website is available in 27 different languages, with over 200 million members worldwide. Millions of items are bought and sold everyday on eBay.

So what are you waiting for? Most established eBay stores started out as individuals selling unwanted household items they no longer had a need for. It is as simple as filling out a few details about the item and selecting the right category, posting up a few pictures, and listing your item for the world to view.

If you don't yet have an eBay account, you can sign up for one HERE.

PayPal Overview

One other necessity to sell on eBay is PayPal, which is a subsidiary company now owned by eBay, Inc. PayPal is the world's leading online banking system, which almost every online marketplace accepts money from. You can link your PayPal account to your bank account or debit/credit card, or electronically transfer money into it to make purchases online. When you sell something online, and the customer pays you through PayPal, you can then transfer it to your bank account, request a check for a small fee, or use the money to spend at other stores online. You can even get a PayPal debit card which allows you to withdraw money from your PayPal account at any ATM! If you would like to sign up for PayPal and see what they have to offer, CLICK HERE.

Craigslist Overview

If you aren't familiar with Craigslist, it is the world's largest classified ads marketplace online. It is also the world's second most popular not-for-profit websites, only behind WikiPedia, and it is one of the most simple websites to navigate around and use. Sign up for a Craigslist account requires minimal information, and posting ads and making sales through any section of Craigslist is always 100% free. On Craigslist, you can search for items by your local area, and narrow it down by category or search for what you are looking for. If you find an item you are interested in, you can either reply by email and wait for the seller to contact you, or sometimes they will leave a phone number for you to call or text so you can meet in a public place to complete the transaction. The nice thing about buying on Craigslist is that there are no fees, you most often only deal in cash transactions, and there is always room for negotiation. If you have never checked out Craigslist before, I suggested giving it a look by clicking here.

If you happen to live in or around a metropolitan area, you will have tons of items to choose from. But if you don't, do not be discouraged, you can still find great stuff (I don't live in a highly populated area and I have managed to make a few great buys that I will share with you later).

If you are planning on buying from Craigslist and selling for profit on eBay, I highly recommend you start looking for items on a category you are familiar with. For example, one of the first Craigslist-to-eBay flips I did was a specific Android smartphone. I knew what the going price was on eBay from a little bit of quick research, and I found one at a good price; I was even able to negotiate the price down a bit further and ended up selling it for almost twice as much as I got it for.

One thing I practice when looking through Craigslist ads, is I will make a new folder in my favorites section of the internet browser (Firefox in my case), and look for some potential items you feel you might be able to get a good price on, adding them each to your favorites folder as you go. ***Even if somebody says FIRM on their Craigslist ad, mark it anyway; they are posting on Craigslist for one reason only: they need the money. More often than not, if you contact them and they haven't gotten many hits on their ad, they will be willing to negotiate, and maybe more than you think!***

After you have a list of some potential items, start searching for them one by one on eBay, and try to get an estimate of what they are selling for. You can narrow down your searches to show only completed listings or sold listings, so you can really get good figures of what they are selling for and how often they are selling, or how high of a demand there is for that particular item. I usually shoot for at least a 50% mark up from the price I think I can get it for to what they actually are selling for on eBay. That may sound a bit high, but remember there are selling fees and shipping charges (whether or not you decide to charge your buyer for shipping, I usually don't) involved when you are selling on eBay, so you need to make sure you have an excess margin if you really want to make money from that sale. My favorite tool for figuring out approximately how much my fees and shipping costs are going to be is this eBay calculator. You just fill in what features you are using for your eBay listing, and you can easily see how much you need to sell it for if you want to make X-amount of dollars from it.