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How to Make Money Selling on eBay - Combined Shipping on Wholesale Purchases

If you want to know how to make money selling on eBay, it all starts with a little creativity. There is the creative idea that leads to a market niche and then some products to sell. It is the creativity involved in photos, titles and descriptions for auction listings. It is the creativity that leads to continued growth of your eBay business.

For those who really know how to make money selling on eBay there is another creative side to the business. That is the locating and purchasing of items to resell. So where do these creative ideas come from. Often they appear by just examining what is happening on the auction-sales side of the transaction.

For example, one of the strategies that many eBay buyers use is to make multiple add on purchases after winning an auction item. This allows them to reduce the shipping costs that often are a significant part of the overall expense. Those savvy buyers may make the request to combine shipping as they prepare to bid on other auctions items being sold by the same seller. They may also simply examine fixed price items and eBay store items and ask about combined shipping prior to buying those items. For the buyer, this savings motivates extra spending.

For the seller who knows how to make money selling on eBay, those extra purchases add up to big bucks in sales. The extra effort associated with combining products to ship really adds little work for the seller.

Sellers who know how to make money selling on eBay apply the same strategy when they are doing their product buying. They look for opportunities to combine products into one order, which typically reduces shipping costs that they are required to pay.

One recent example I have from our experiences negotiating for combined shipping was adding 150 of a new product to a shipment that I had purchased. The wholesaler had to do a little work to break open the pallet, rearrange the items that had been stacked and packed on the pallet, then add the extra 150 items to the pallet. So what was my cost for freight for those 150 items? $0.00. And that was for almost 1,250 miles of transportation.

The wholesaler, my customers and I all won in the deal. The wholesaler received an additional order that amounted to several hundreds of dollars. I got free shipping of the product. I was able to pass on the savings to my eBay store and fixed price customers. As I explained to the wholesaler, this was a purchase that I would not have made had there been freight charges involved. There simply wasn’t enough margin to make the new product work for me on eBay. However, with no-cost shipping, I was able to successfully purchase the products from her, and then sell the products on eBay.

If you want to know how to make money selling on eBay, it is being creative in all aspects of the eBay business. It is seeking creative opportunities to save money and then pass those savings onto your customers. It is asking wholesalers if they will discount prices or freight costs. It is always seeking strategies to grow sales without losing profits.

To your eBay success!