Take advantage of other people’s sloppy listing habits and help yourself to some easy profits…
Firstly a big thank you to everyone who ‘liked’ my new Facebook page last week. I’m adding new information all the time so if you haven’t already done so, please hop on over and take a look – all the information is totally free, in return all you have to do is ‘like’ my page – simple!
Also this week, I think I coined a new phrase! It happened whilst I was writing about how profitable it can be to search out and buy bargains online (and I’m talking really cheap bargains – items you can pick up for peanuts), tweak them (or not!) and resell them straight away for more money!
There’s very little effort involved and it’s an easy way to add to your inventory and have a bit of fun at the same time.
I’m calling this ‘Find and Flip’ which, I think has quite a nice ring to it and it’s what I want to talk about today.
Find it, flip it, profit, with Bay Crazy!
If you haven’t started selling online yet then this is an ideal way to get going quickly, easily and cheaply and, not only that, but it will give you some great buying and selling practice too.
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 at 99p or sometimes even less.
We all know that with auction listings the bids often start rolling in at the last minute, 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. And I’m not talking about items that are totally useless that no-one wants, these items are perfectly decent in-demand products! These are the 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 shortly – all you need to do is relist them for a guaranteed profit!
So, you find a product and purchase it really cheaply and then you flip it back online and sell it for more – that’s ‘Find and Flip’!
But why aren’t these items selling?
I know you’re probably thinking that if an item isn’t selling then why would you bother to buy it and 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 loads of items out there that attract very low or no bids for a number of reasons, the three main culprits being:
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 searches made by potential buyers – this is particularly important for eBay. Even so, huge numbers of sellers simply don’t spell check and great items get listed… but never found.
2. ‘Silly O’clock’ end times
There are hundreds of listings (again specifically on eBay) ending in the dead of night when most people are throwing zzzz’s with the last thing on their minds 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 for a pair of shoes (yes, really) buyers do not really expect to have to go and collect and of course if the seller is hundreds of miles away then it’s not worthwhile anyway – hence fewer or no bids. By offering pick up only you are really restricting your market – not a good idea!
How do I find these bargainous items? …
… Surely it’s not just pot luck?
No it’s not! Obviously it would be really time consuming if I just left you 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!
That’s why I’m going to tell you 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.
Earlier this week I clicked into the “CrazyTime: Listings Ending In The Dead Of The Night” 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 a complete Sat Nav system in its box at £6.00 and ending at 1.10am. Not only is it ending at a silly time but the listing was rubbish – literally four sentences describing the product – so this would be a perfect item to ‘Find and Flip’.
Here’s another example – on Monday I spotted a pair of Converse All Star Shoes ending on eBay at 3.08am 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 normally sell on eBay for up to £25…
When I checked back the following morning, as I suspected, this item ended with just one bid at £9.99 simply because it ended at 3am and at that time of night there are no ‘browsers’ hanging around that will bid the item higher – you can see the listing here.
Can you see the potential?
And you can do exactly the same using the other search tools provided by Bay Crazy:
CrazyMisspellings : Misspelled Keywords in Title – As I mentioned earlier, if an item is spelled wrong 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, spell every word correctly, and resell for a higher price. Simple.
I checked this button out this morning 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 know 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!
CrazyRightNow : Auction Listings Ending RIGHT NOW with Zero Bids – now what about this tool where you can 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. Create a better listing 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!
You can definitely use Bay Crazy to your advantage – seriously it’s a really good website and provides 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 bit addictive!