My eBay education continues...as a Trading Assistant

I continued the "thrift store circuit" for another year or so. During that time I got involved in eBay's Trading Assistant program. A "Trading Assistant" is someone who will sell your items for you, generally for a commission. As I was going to garage sales, I'd tell people "hey, if you don't sell this, let me know and I'll sell it for you on eBay".

Pretty soon people were calling me on a regular basis. I even went so far as to run an ad in a community newspaper advertising I was a Trading Assistant. I can share my ad with you if you're interested. I got a great response to that as well, at least several calls a week.

Another trick I had was to contact people before they had their garage sales. How? Well in my city, the Pennysaver comes out on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. It would list maybe 50 garage sales coming up the next Saturday or Sunday. They always have the address because they want you to come. I did a zip code lookup online, based on the address and city and that was all I needed. I wrote this great letter explaining how I could sell thier valuable items for them if they didn't sell or if they wanted me to take a look at them before the garage sale, they could call me. I used all the PowerSeller logo's and Trading Assistant Logo's so it looked very professional. It cost me .37 cents at the time, so I spent maybe $20 a week to mail 50 letters and I usually got anywhere between 5 and 10 calls back. That's a pretty good ratio I think, 10-20%! Sometimes I'd get calls from their neighbors or friends who they had given my number to, and I was getting calls months after I quit this marketing technique.

I hung flyers up everywhere, at churches, schools, laundry mats and just about anywhere you'd find a public bulletin board. Honestly, I don't think I ever got a single call from one of my flyers.

Point is, all this marketing stuff I found on or through eBay. Start HERE . I also spent a lot of time on the eBay discussion boards. If you're trying to grow your business or just get a question answered, these online forums are extremely helpful. Another great resource were the Groups . I joined several groups for Sellers, PowerSellers, Trading Assistants, Store Ownwers, and I browsed many more. Just reading what others had to say, soaking it all in, good and bad. Learning...

Now being a Trading Assistant involves a lot of differnt dimensions and you can run that business in several differnt manners. I personally chose to charge a flat percentage and I paid all the fees - both eBay and PayPal from my commission. I also chose not to charge anything else. No up front fees for making the ad, or picking items up. So bottomline, if it didn't sell, I lost money. But I was pretty good at what I did, and rarely would I take something that didn't sell. And in the long run, I think I got so much TA business because people liked the concept of my business. If they didn't make money, I didn't make money. It definately made me more attractive than some of my local competition.

If you look around you'll see mosts TA's charge between $5 and $10 just to make the customers ad, whether or not it sells. Then a large majority of TA's pass all the fees associated with selling an item on to the customer. Then they charge their commission of 30-50%. I had a sliding scale that I changed depending on circumstance, but in general, items under $100 I charged 30%, $100-$500 - 25%, $500 - $1000 - 20%, and it ticked down from there.

I made special contracts with different customers and I learned some valuable lessons. My first large customer was a local golf driving range, that wanted me to move their excess demo clubs and past years inventory that was quickly becoming dated. Because of the high selling price of these items and large volume they gave me, I agreed to a flat 15%. Later I figured out that between eBay and PayPal I was paying out 10% and only making a little for all my hard work. But, I learned a lot from it, and still made some money. Other customers I negotiated flat 20 or 25% contracts depending on what they had to sell and how much they had to sell. Over time I figured out it wasn't really worth listing anything that wasn't going to sell for at least $50-$75. I became more selective about what I took on, and as I got smarter, I made more money.

I mentioned a contract for Trading Assistants, and I can share mine with anyone who wants one. It's a Word doc so you can modify it to fit your needs. All in all, being a Trading Assistant taught me how to run a business on eBay, not just sell stuff. And in pursuit of this, I landed my best deal ever...until next time.