Ebay experiment

[Fireaxe]

Okay. I have £100 and im going to try and make a profit in 7 days. I have already bought a product to set the ball rolling. I will post every day about 8pm GMT with results. I will update for the first time tonite at an earlier than scheduled 7pm GMT.
What do you guys think???

[Fireaxe]

Okay. It sold earlier than I epected so here is:

Day 1

Its been a long day. I had the task of finding a product to sell. I went to a local car-boot sale and had a good think at what to buy. I was looking for CD DVD boxsets. They can be found quite cheap and sell for loads. I came across a huge comedy classics bundle featuring 'Friends' 'Will and Grace' 'Dads army' and the like. It was going for £70 which was a considerable amount to invest in my first sale. I continued to look.

Next I found a bundle of PS2 games. Ebay has a big market for games and yet most of them dont sell well. This however was a good deal. £60 got me. 'Burnout 3' 'Fifa 05' 'Killzone' 'Time Splitters 3' and a wireless controller. This was a deal if there ever was one. But I was hoping to find at least 3 items to copare.

My final item was a complete 'Friends' boxset containg alll the episodes. It didnt seem as exciting as the others but after flipping open my laptop and looking at the rrp for these this was a huge deal. Priced at £129.99 on the net and £40 on the stall. I grabbed it from an old lady and ran. J/K.

The sale

I put it up for a buy it now price of £70 and a time limit of 7h. The first hour goes slow but the next two hours see the bid price rocket to £40. It seemed quite certain that I would break even with only 30 min left on the clock. Of course there came a pile of last-minute bids raising it to £65 before some body who clearly missed the Buy it now price and raises it to £85 just before it closed.

Summary

WOW, thats a good first day. A £40 profit. The package has been shipped.

Looking ahead

Of course I have to buy something for day 2. I woke up at 5am to make sure it got posted early. I looked for 2 cheaper pieces to try and reach £190. Find out what I have bought tommorrow a 8pm GMT

Hope it comes on time. Bye

Please keep on topic, this is a serious experiment.

[reki]

No more spam please.

Fireaxe, this would ultimately be much more interesting if you posted links to the items for sale & we could make suggestions or something. As it stands, its you telling stories about stuff you're selling.

[Locutus]

Thank you for deleting the spam Reki. It really isn't a bad idea for a thread, just have to scroll past all the "This message has been deleted by reki." messages :p

I've heard about people who work ebay for a job, so this should be a very interesting thread to watch.

[Starfisher]

I hate all of you for removing the Two Towers catapult gifs. Those ruled.

This sounds a lot like day trading, almost, except you're doing more research and with the reserve you can at least force a break even.

[General Blaze]

Hehe. Sorry about my spam as well. It's just that the others were doing it and the mods didn't seem to mind. (And Moe "contributed" his) So I thought "When in Rome.."

Anyway, back on topic. This looks interesting. Hope you make lots of moola. :)

[Locutus]

Any way you might involve the community in this experiment? If you could that would be great.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think you can easily make a profit working Ebay, but you can't make a living.

[Splitstar]

This is actually a good idea, but not successful enough for you to quit your job.

[General Blaze]

I dunno about that. If you play your cards right, you COULD make a living from selling stuff off ebay. The catch is that you have to be REALLY good at it.

[Harmanoff]

I'd say the catch is that you'd have to spend so much time on it it would be like.. uhm.. work.

[Fireaxe]

Apparently Im not allowed to give out my ebay details and im not allowed to give out the links to what im selling, some, unfair publicity rule or something.

[eventhorizon]

we wont tell if you wont : P

or you could post links to the stuff that has already been sold.

[jpaugh78]

just PM one of us, and have us link it, then it won't look as suspicious ;)

[Fireaxe]

Okay ive sent a message to the nice people at ebay, il post my next round up when I can tonite.

[Fireaxe]

So. What have I bought to sell today? well 2 items really...

What I bought

I've decided to buy 2 thing to try and get more of a profit, with £140 to spend I have certain limits of cost. My first choice was one that I bogut from my local game store and is the last game/dvd related product I will sell.

Choice 1: Costing me £44.94 were 3 pre-owned PS2 games (£14.98 each). I tried to get the latest games possible and I had to fight for em'. A copy of 'Conflict Global Storm', 'Burnout 3' again and 'Fifa 06' which I persuaded a friend to trade in after he decided he would rather have PES4.

Choice 2: A little diferent here. 5 Star wars E3 figures cosing a total of £29.00, cant remember which ones but that really doesnt make a difference.

This leaves me £74.89, a hefty reserve.

The Sale

Choice 1: I put a buy it now price of £55.00 anda limit of 7h. The first hour leaves the bidding at £20.00 and nothing happens until the 5th hour where two bidders fight it out raising it to £45.00 the clock slowly ticks away until it closes. 6p profit.

Choice 2: This was a bit of an experiment. I set a buy it now of £40.00 andtime of 7h. After an hour with no bids I realise that you can get the same deal at toys 'R' us for the same price. Oh dear. All is not lost though. The next 3 hours se the price rise to £10.00. And then.... silence, nothing. And. It closes. a loss of £19.00.

Summary

After adding up all the numbers. I have £121.06. I think I might try the figure again, perhaps day 5.

Looking ahead

HAHAHA my master package has arrived. I'm taking a big gamble tommorow, the reason I have done this is because I should go below £100 if I play it right.

*TIP* Since this is the last time i'm doing a game/dvd heres a tip. Dont buy new releases then sell them on e-bay. Its easier to by it down at Asda/Walmart. It might seem pbvious but i've seen it.

Cya.

[Trizzdog]

Hehe this reminds me of some reality game show on TLC...

This is rather interesting. Gonna keep an eye on your endeavours. Hope you make a good profit in the end :heyhey:

[Lestaki]

Oh, spam time is over. Well fine, engage sensible comments mode. This actually is quite intresting (just not as intresting as spamming). So with many hearty apologies for my earlier faux pas, I await the next installment. In the name of money!

[BmB]

:werd:

Thats, um... interesting.

[Verrin]

As I said before, the infommericals (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=DVXA,DVXA:2005-33,DVXA:en&q=make+money+on+ebay) are one step ahead of you. Making money off people who want to make money off Ebay has become an industry in itself.

[Fireaxe]

The worst has happend. My package has not turned up. My big Surprise is ruined, RUINED. Well I had got a realy good deal on a BMX. £60 buy it now, I saw a profit, the bloody thing better turn up tommorow. No review tonite. I am wont cosider it as day 3 until I sell and buy another product, I will do a full seven days. Cya

[HunterX]

Fireaxe, I hope you do realize that there are certain fees you have pay eBay at the end of each month, and that you've figured that into this whole thing.

[Gale_Force15]

This sounds like fun.... if I had $200 to waste I'd do it too....hell... I might anyway. Can't wait to see this BMX sell.

[philgreg]

this is actually interesting to see how lazy people on ebay are and wont check the price of summit bofore they bid lol

[Fireaxe]

Sorry for not posting last night, but once again the package didnt arrive. It is up on the bay now and has 1hr left, i think. C ya then

1HR 22min left.

[Verrin]

I think you should start posting your auction links so the curious can better follow what you're doing.

[Fireaxe]

Yes I havent recieved the email as to whether I can do this. .:Twiddles thumbs:.

[Fireaxe]

Finally my BMX has come and gone.

What I bought

Its a customed Reaper BMX, with custom frame and spokes. BMX's can be bought dirt cheap and sold high after a quick polish. I was surprised to bag it for just £60, and all that was wrong was a dirt stain on the frame which was easily removed.

The sale

This was a tough one. I coulndt decide if not to put a buy it now (BIN) price on. I decided that if the price had ogne way above my est. target it would be a waste. So, it went upp without one. Up for a limit of 9hrs the first few bids came high. One perticular bidder seemed in perticulary interested and raised it to £40. Nothing came of significance until the same bidder pused past all the others to raise to £70. Then a few more bids came to £75 when again the same guy bidded for £90. It closed at £90, £30 profit.

Summary

Hmmm. Not as much as I wanted really but fair enough it was a profit, now, the maths. 121.06 + 30 = 151.06

Yay up £51.06. Tommorow im going into the trading card line. Its quite big and theres a lot of competition but its got to be tried

For a second item I go into the super hero line, what I've bought is a mystery.

Cya

[reki]

ok so this thread did end up sucking, Moe & Squid predicted correctly. Its fun for you, Fireaxe, but it's so boring when we can't even get linked to the items you're talking about to make comment. It ends up reading as a personal eBay diary, which.. well.. wouldn't sell so well if you got it published.

Maybe next time, you should consider posting links but writing about it in third person so that you don't get in trouble with eBay. At least it might hold some kind of entertainment value.