A novel way to take advantage of mistakes! Source items, resell them and ultimately profit!

So, what’s my new phrase? Well I’m calling this ‘Find and Flip’ which I think has quite a nice ring to it and so that’s what I want to talk about in this article today. Seriously, this is so simple that you can try it out as soon as you’ve finished reading this if you want to and in my opinion it’s a particularly good starting point if you are new to selling online. It’s an ideal way for you to get going quickly, easily and cheaply and not only that, it will give you some great buying and selling practice too. What’s more it’s really quite good fun at the same time and that’s always a nice bonus!

So, what do I mean by ‘Find and Flip’?

Well first of all let’s look at the ‘find’ part of this. Your aim is to uncover items listed for sale online – particularly on eBay and Amazon – that for one reason or another are close to their ending times and yet have received few or zero bids and are languishing around at 99p or sometimes even less. We all know that with auction listings often the bids start rolling in at the last minute just as the auction is about to end, but sometimes there are reasons, which I’ll go into in just a moment, why this is definitely not going to happen and the item will go unsold or sell for the opening bid of 99p.  Now I want to make it clear that I’m not talking about items that are totally useless that no-one wants, these items that this strategy is based on are perfectly decent in-demand products. And these are the types of items that you must ‘find’.

Now for the ‘Flip’ part! Once you have found these items – and I’ll tell you how to do this in just a moment – all you need to do is literally relist them online for a guaranteed profit!

So you ‘find’ a great product and purchase it really cheaply and then you ‘flip’ it back online and sell it for more – that’s ‘Find and Flip’!

The question is, if these products are in demand, then why aren’t they selling in the first place?

I realise that you are probably thinking right now that if an item isn’t selling then why would you bother to buy it and then relist it? Surely it means that no-one wants it? Well no, that’s not strictly true! Of course this could be the case for some products but there are hundreds of items out there that attract very low or no bids because of a variety of scenarios and circumstances. The three main culprits are:

1. Misspelled title keywords

If you list an item but spell the brand name or other main keywords incorrectly in your listing title then your item won’t show up in the searches when potential buyers browse for items – this is particularly important for eBay. Even so, huge amounts of sellers simply don’t spell check and so descriptions for great items get listed…but can’t get found by buyers simply because of misspellings.

2. ‘Silly o’clock’ end times

There are hundreds of listings (again specifically on eBay) that end in the dead of night when most people are throwing zzzz’s with the last thing on their mind being making a few online purchases! I’m talking about items listed to end at 3, 4 and 5am. Yes there may be a few night-shifters around but most of your target market is likely to be tucked up in the land of nod and certainly won’t be bidding!

3. Stating ‘Pick Up Only’

For large, bulky items, of course collection / pick up only is going to be the way forward and buyers expect this, but I have seen ‘collection only’ listed for a pair of shoes (yes really) and buyers simply do not expect to have to go and collect something like this and of course if the seller is hundreds of miles away then it’s not worthwhile anyway – hence fewer, lower or no bids. By offering pick up only you are really restricting your market – not a good idea!

So, how do you find these bargainous items that I’m talking about? Surely it’s not just pot luck?

No it’s not! Obviously it would be really time consuming if I just left you to your own devices to trawl around eBay and Amazon trying to find all the items with no bids on or with misspelled titles or with local pick up only being offered. You’d probably find a few items but nothing worth writing home about. That’s why I’m going to tell you now about a brilliant tool that’s totally free that you can use to ‘find and flip’ bargains for yourself, really quickly and really easily. As I mentioned, this is perfect if you are just starting out and want to get a little bit of buying and selling practice under your belt. Equally, you can simply add new products to your current inventory and have a bit of fun!

You need to go here; it’s a site called Bay Crazy

Earlier this week I clicked into the “Night Time Bargain Search” section on the site and was amazed at the kind of stuff I could have won for next to nothing – and all because the ending times are completely bonkers!  I spotted an MP3 Player at £5.99 and ending at 12.57am. Not only is it ending at a silly time but the listing was also not very informative – a poor description and a blurred photo – so this would be a perfect item to ‘Find and Flip’.

Here’s another example – on Wednesday I spotted a pair of ‘Converse’ shoes ending on eBay at 2.01am the following morning with no bids and just a few hours to go. These would be perfect to ‘find and flip’ as my research tells me that Used Converse All Stars can sell on eBay for up to £25 normally…When I checked back the following morning, as I suspected, this item ended with just one bid at £8.00 simply because it ended at 2am and at that time of night there are no ‘browsers’ hanging around that will bid the item higher.

I hope you are beginning to see the potential here because you can search out more bargains using some of the other search tools provided by Bay Crazy:

Misspelt Titles – As I mentioned earlier, if an item is spelt incorrectly it won’t get found in the searches. If it doesn’t get found in the searches then people can’t bid and if people can’t bid the item won’t sell! This tool will help you find those exact items so that you CAN bid and bid cheap. Then you simply relist making sure you spell every word correctly and add extra relevant keywords in, and resell for a higher price. Simple! I checked this button out and found hundreds of items from the clothing designer ‘Monsoon’ listed as ‘Monson’, Moonsoon’ and other weird and wonderful spellings! I was actually quite shocked by the state of the spelling in some of the listing titles – and I do realise that not everyone is blessed with finding spelling easy – however that’s exactly what a spellchecker is for. And if you haven’t got a spellchecker then ask someone, or use a dictionary – please. Monsoon clothes sell well online so there are bargains to be found here!

Ending Now – You can use this tool to instantly see what’s ending immediately with no bids for any category and sub-category. All you have to do is place your bid and you’ve bagged a bargain. Relist it better than the original seller and there you have it – a sale and a profit. You’ll find loads of 99p bargains this way which translates to items that have huge ‘Find and Flip’ potential! I found a Laura Ashley jacket for £1.99 with no bids, also a Silver bracelet for 99p and a necklace and earrings set for £2.00 and that was just at a glance. You can narrow your own search down to the category of your choice to find exactly what you want!

You can definitely use Bay Crazy to your advantage – seriously. Although it’s not the prettiest of websites, it does what it says and can provide you with an easy way to source new items. Even if you decide not to take advantage for your business though you’ll have good fun browsing and finding bargains for your own personal gain – be warned though, it’s a little bit addictive!