Whether you call it flipping, picking, reselling or thrifting, buying and selling used goods can be a great way to make money. This guide should help you get started from ground zero, whether you want to make extra spending cash, have a fun hobby, or make it your full-time job.

The first thing you should decide the reason you want to start flipping. Do you love going to thrift shops and want an excuse to do it more? Are you unemployed and just need extra cash from a job without gatekeepers? Do you just plain like the feeling of buying something that seems like junk and selling it for a huge margin? Any of these can be legitimate reasons to begin flipping.

To be successful flipping, you’ll need to be razor-focused on profit on every flip, to know when to explore new opportunities, to know when to mine steady sources, but, more mundanely, you’ll need to do taxes, pack up boxes, and deal promptly with irate customers.

One thing every flipper needs is inventory. Since you are just starting, you don’t currently have inventory. You think.

Go around your house and find things that you don’t need (protip: if you haven’t used it in the last year, you definitely don’t’ need it). Great examples would be books, DVDs, video games, clothing, toys, sporting equipment or electronics. Anything that people are willing to buy used will work. I recommend choosing some smaller, lightweight things. This is now your first inventory. Using these items, you’ll learn the mechanics of selling. Taking the time to understand the sales process will make it much easier to understand the buying process. It is also the best, low-risk way to get your feet wet.

Resources

There are three main sites used by flippers to sell their inventory in the US, Craigslist, eBay and Amazon. Which site is best to sell your stuff depends on what the item is exactly. Here is the quick summary.

Amazon

Amazon has quickly become one of the most popular venues to sell used items. Selling on Amazon has one main selling point. If you use “Fulfilled By Amazon” you can just send Amazon a box of your stuff, and they will take care of storing, packaging and shipping it. If you are operating out of your house, this is a huge benefit. You may not have space to store thousands of dollars worth of books, much less an efficient organization scheme and every imaginable shape of packaging. Unfortunately, Amazon has the highest fees of the big markets, especially with Fulfilled By Amazon (also called FBA in the community). The prices on Amazon tend to be pretty high, in part because only things in very good condition can be sold on Amazon.

The simplest way to tell if something is a good candidate for Amazon is if it’s in its original packaging, and if it has a barcode. Most new flippers use Amazon specifically for books, video games, toys and some electronics.

There are many categories on that Amazon restricts from new sellers. A complete listing can be found here but the most relevant are “Clothing and Accessories,” “Shoes, Handbags & Sunglasses,” “Video, DVD, & Blu-ray” and all the collectibles categories. To get approved on one of the listed categories, you usually have to provide them with information like your primary source of inventory, and 3 invoices or purchase orders from your largest inventory sources. This isn’t going to be immediately available to most flippers. These restrictions are in place to prevent fraudulent merchandise from selling on Amazon.

Signing up on Amazon

Signing up on Amazon is easy. If you have items that you are planning on selling there go to their signup page and select your plan. You should definitely try out the professional program for a month. The main benefits of the professional account are that you don’t pay the $1 per listing fee, and you can get placed into the “Buy Box.” The Buy Box is the main price shown on the listing. If someone clicks “Add to Cart” or “Buy now with 1-Click,” you’ll get the sale if you are in the “Buy Box”, otherwise they have to click through to the offers. Winning the buy box isn’t as important for used items, since most people will be clicking through to the used offers page. It is nice to be the main used option shown on the page though. A professional account is cheap enough that it will definitely be worth it once you are doing a few hundred dollars per month of sales.

Amazon pros

Reach a huge market of customers

Amazon does all the hard work for you with FBA

Prices are generally pretty good for sellers

Amazon cons

Most expensive fees

Some significant limitations on the kinds of items you can sell

eBay

eBay is the old dog in the online marketplace world. You can list almost anything on eBay provided you’ve given it a complete and accurate description. But most of the work of getting buyers is on you. You have to have well-crafted titles and descriptions, good photos, and be much more responsive to buyer questions and purchases.

The disadvantage of selling on eBay is that there is a lot more buyer fraud going on. You can expect that every so often you’re going to get a dispute notice from a buyer that didn’t read your description. Sometimes you may even have to just write-off the sale. Also, unlike using Amazon FBA, you’ll be responsible for packaging and shipping your sales, and staying organized enough to do so in a timely fashion.

Something is a good candidate to sell on eBay if it’s small enough to ship, but it’s not complete, not in great condition, not in its original packaging, or is a collectible or antique item. If it doesn’t have a bar code, eBay is a good selling option, or if it has a bar code but you don’t have access to the proper Amazon section to sell it. This is a wide variety of products, so most flippers will become quite familiar with eBay.

Signing up on eBay

To sign up on eBay, all you have to do is go to the sign and register an account. Any user can post an item for sale at any time. At first, unfortunately, you will have no “feedback,” which is the system used for buyers to know whether sellers are legitimate. If you’ve ever purchased things on eBay in the past, it’s better to use that account, as you’ll at least have a little bit of feedback. If you haven’t, then you can still make a few purchases on eBay to start getting feedback. For example, eBay is a good place to buy a scale and packaging materials for your future flipping efforts.

eBay pros

Can sell almost any item you’ll encounter while flipping (no guns, gross items, etc.)

Fees are lower than Amazon

Having auction and buy-it-now models gives you some more selling options

eBay cons

Fees are still pretty high

New users have a harder time making sales

More work put into product descriptions

Fraudulent buyers

Craigslist

Craigslist is the Internet’s giant sketchy flea market. Unlike eBay and Amazon, there are no fees to list items on Craigslist. Also unlike eBay and Amazon, you are much more likely to get robbed or sold broken/stolen goods on Craigslist.

Craigslist is best for items that are either large enough that shipping them is impractical, or valuable enough that the saved fees make the hassle worth it. For example, suppose you are going to sell a high-end zoom lens for a DSLR camera for $300. This item is small enough that you could ship it, but if you sell it on Amazon FBA it will cost you $24.05, so you’ll only get $275.95. Likewise, on eBay you’d pay about $30 in fees for the same item. If you list it on Craigslist and sell it for $300, you’re making $24-30 more, even though you’ll have to schlep down to the grocery store parking lot to meet someone who may or may not show up to give you cash. Most of your sales on Craigslist should be for the large items, if you want to stay sane.

Staying safe while transacting on Craigslist could be its own whole article. If you are going to be using Craigslist, I recommend at least reading craigslist’s page on it.

Signing up on Craigslist

Luckily, you don’t even need to sign up to use Craigslist (but you can). Just go to the site, answer the questions and fill out a web form and your ad will be immediately posted. Couldn’t be easier that that! That is, until the responses start rolling in. Depending on what you’re listing, you’ll soon be under a deluge of email from some combination of legitimate buyers, annoying low-ballers, and straight up scammers.

Craigslist pros

No fees

Can list furniture, equipment and other stuff that’s too heavy to ship

Plenty of buyers

Craigslist cons

Dealing with buyers is very time consuming

Tons of low-ballers and scammers

Resources

Thanks for reading, and please share our article if you found it interesting! Our next post is going to cover making your first listing, including advice on taking photos, and writing titles or descriptions. Leave comments if you have other ways of building your starting inventory, or to talk about other places you like to sell! Use the signup form at the right to be notified when we post our next article, or follow us on twitter @Statricks, or on Facebook.