Selling on eBay - tshirts, hats, mugs etc.

By Anonymous (not verified) on Feb 15, 2006

I do embroidery and heat transfers mainly to local businesses. I'm fortunate enough to be near the city where most of my business comes from. But of course extra cash is always nice to have and that's why lately I've been thinking of maybe selling online particulary on ebay since it's popular and lots of people shop there. Anybody gone this route? I'd be happy to know anything about this method of doing business. I've never sold anything on eBay before, frankly I'm a bit intimidated.

By Anonymous (not verified) on Mar 3, 2006 - 2:00 PM EST

royce wrote:
bradmeister do you think you can elaborate more on your bad experience? It would help so much. Thanks.

As Marc mentioned, there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of t-shirts, hats, etc. already on eBay that you and I are trying to sell. eBayers like to buy from sellers who have tons of feedback already which the sellers there do have because they got in the game early and are now established and dominating the scene. Basically eBay was/is already saturated with what we had in mind selling. To add to that, you claim to be a n00b when it comes to eBaying so your chances for success is even lower. :(

By Marc on Feb 16, 2006 - 4:33 AM EST

Welcome to the forums, royce and bradmeister :)

Well, no doubt lots of people make money on eBay. Conversely, lots of people loose money on eBay. To which side you'll end up depends on many, many, many factors.

Are you going to be selling your line of t-shirts and mugs, just stock designs, or licensed merchandise?

Quote:
I've never sold anything on eBay before, frankly I'm a bit intimidated.

This is a problem.
Quote:
But of course extra cash is always nice to have...

Do just want extra income on the side so you can save up for a vacation or do you want to be able to buy a yacht? In other words, how do you define "extra cash"? It's important to know what your expectations are because Expectations and reality are two very different things, sadly.

Let us know more info :)

By Anonymous (not verified) on Feb 20, 2006 - 7:32 PM EST

The more cash the better I guess... hehe

Thanks for the welcome! Ideally I would want to sell on ebay on a part-time basis. I'm thinking of selling just clothing, mugs, mousepads printed with stock designs.

By Marc on Feb 23, 2006 - 8:36 PM EST

Okay, in my opinion, you have a hard road ahead :(

Here is why: There are already hundreds of thousands of what you're planning to sell on eBay. To make a bad situation worse, you claim not to have much eBay experience, if any at all, and you're not planning on putting a lot of time into it according to your "part-time" comment.

To have any form of success on eBay, you need to offer something unique or focus on a niche to start things off--this applies to selling online in general as well. Don't sell something online anybody can buy at a local Wal-Mart. In a world of instant gratification, why should a consumer have to wait days and pay shipping for something they can buy locally on their way to the grocery store?

So basically, if you want to sell on eBay, approach it as you did with your brick-and-mortar business :).

By Marc on Feb 23, 2006 - 9:02 PM EST

Also, if you're feeling intimidated, the best way to overcome that is by just diving in there. Why don't you start buying/selling little things on eBay to get a feel for things? It'd be good for ya!

By Anonymous (not verified) on Mar 10, 2006 - 7:04 AM EST

Thank you guys for your advice. So i continued doing research and doing lots of reading and browsing on eBay. It seems it'll take too much time to become a pro there - at least for me anyways :D. I'm so busy right now. It seems getting negative feedback is a HUGE issue there so I won't risk getting one. I'll start one step at a time but I won't start right now until I can allocate more time online and learn the ropes. Thanks again!