Finding products to flip online for a profit is a great sales strategy. It’s a really simple idea – buy a product and then sell it on for a higher price. You could purchase the product from anywhere, an online retail site with a really good sale, an eBay auction with a really bad listing, even something like a liquidation auction. There are all sorts of buying avenues for sellers today. And what’s more, with so many different options available for selling products on you really do maximise your chances of being able to flip an item for a profit.
Finding the Best Products to Flip
The first and most crucial step when it comes to flipping products online is actually finding something to sell in the first place. There are many strategies for searching for these products, but first let’s take a moment to think about your budget and the profit that you really need to make with each sale.
I’m a great believer of trying to sell an item on for a profit of at least £5, particularly if the item is a one off. This means I need to sell less stock to make a good living online, however it also means carefully calculating the sort of profit that I think I am able to make on each sale. If I know that I can buy a pair of sunglasses for £50 and sell them on for £55 – 60 then that’s a good buy. If it looks doubtful that selling this particular pair of specs on for more than £50 is possible then I’d steer clear. It’s relatively easy to assess how much you think you should be able to make for an individual item by searching a website such as eBay and looking at the Completed Listings.
Try to stick to buying products that are within your own specialist niche market to flip on for a profit, that way you’ll already have a good idea as to whether you’re getting a good deal or if you’ll struggle to make enough of a profit on a sale. The last thing you want to be left with is a pile of stock that you just can’t shift.
So onto actually finding the items. This really comes down to how active your imagination is! Products to be flipped online can literally be found anywhere and everywhere. From a sale on the high-street to an Amazon daily deal, from a poor eBay listing to a closing down sale for a chain recently gone bust; you can find great prices for goods anywhere. One of my personal favourite places to look though is on the eBay website. Searching for a great deal can take a lot of precious time, but using eBay as a source of stock can be incredibly quick due to a vast assortment of free tools online ready to help out.
One of my personal favourite tools is known as Goofbid and can be accessed here
This website has a whole range of functions that can be used to find eBay auctions that have simple mistakes in them, for example misspelt words within the title or finishing times at antisocial hours. If I were to head to the Late Night Auctions section of the Goofbid website right now I could see a whole assortment of items unlikely to sell for much due to their middle of the night finishing times.
So many eBay customers wait until the last minute to bid that these auctions finishing at times between the hours of 2 – 6am frequently sell for less than they are worth.
A category list on the left hand side of the results page here even lets me filter the results by products that I’m particularly interested in. This is great news as I can see what I’m looking for at a glance to potentially snag an excellent bargain.
Of course, I don’t want to actually wait up until the middle of the night to put in a last minute bid on an item, but that’s where another online feature available on the Goofbid website comes in handy, the Sniper tool. All you need to do is let the website know what auction you want to bid on, your maximum bid amount and when you want the bid to be completed and the programme will automatically complete the transaction for you. You can simply go to bed and wake up in the morning to an email letting you know whether or not your bid was successful.
You’ll need to register for an account to use the Sniper tool, but once registered and logged in all you need to do is enter the eBay item number to start the process off.
Then just enter the amount that you’d like to bid as a maximum, and also the time at which you’d like the bid to be placed.
Flipping Your Products
Once you’ve found some great deals the next step in the process is selling them on for a profit. If you do use a tool such as Goofbid to discover some bargains due to typos within headings, late night auctions or any of the other auction faux pas that you can search for with the site then I implore you not to make the same mistakes! When you go to create your own listing make sure that your title and description are free from potentially costly errors and that your auction finishes at a sensible time, preferably evening.
eBay isn’t the only website that you can use to sell your products on of course, you may wish to consider listing on the Amazon website to see if you can make any extra profit, or even listing the goods that you’ve found for a bargain price on your own website.
Sticking to your niche market when you find goods to flip on will help during the actual selling to prevent your store becoming cluttered with a mismatch of assorted bits and pieces. Choosing to stick with what you know can also help with budgeting issues; it can be very tempting to spend a lot of money on products that you may be able to flip for a profit that aren’t related to your niche, so keep to it and limit your purchases to those that you know you can sell on for significant gain.
Finally some very exciting news!
Over the past few weeks I have hinted I will be reopening my Mentoring Programme this month, and now, finally I have some very exciting news for you!
I’ve recorded a short video to explain exactly what’s going to happen…
Simply add your name to the waiting list to ensure you are the first to receive the details as soon as they are released. I’ve run four mentoring programmes in the last two years, all of which have been extremely enjoyable for both my students and myself and I’ve been part of some amazing success stories.
Tricia who recently attended my mentoring programme emailed me just last week to share her fantastic news:
Hi Amanda
I thought you might like to know that I received a nice surprise this morning I went onto my eBay account and it stated that I was a Bronze Level PowerSeller :). A little while later it stated I was a Top Rated Seller. WOW!!! Didn’t think I was anywhere near that status. I want to thank you for all your advice and support, with your help and my determination I have achieved my first goal. I plan to keep moving onwards and upwards I am doing well on Amazon also and so… My next goal is to give up my part-time job by Christmas time, so I can spend more time on the job I love, my business
I just want to say Your Mentoring Programme and The Source Report has most definitely been money well spent
Thank You for sharing!!!
Kindest Regards
Patricia Munro
And so did Stephen who also secured a place the last time I opened the programme. He said:
Morning, hope you are ok today.
Just would like to let you know that I have got Platinum selling status this morning and I have done this in the last six weeks since I have been doing the course and using the tips in your books. A very big thank you from me and I will now keep working to keep my status high on ebay.
Many thanks for your help
Stephen Lennox
And that’s just two success stories! There are others who have fully embraced my mentorship programme and have taken my advice, actioned my strategies and used my methods to get their online businesses moving.
If you haven’t got your name on the waiting list yet – do it now!