Shari’s Sourcing Insights

I have been selling on eBay for my full time income since 2006. Since I need to make enough to pay all the bills, I need to make sure I have enough merchandise, including high end inventory to earn enough for all the bills each month. In the beginning, I was getting enough to list to keep me listing full time, but it wasn’t bringing in enough money. I needed to improve my sell through rate on the items I was listing as well as my profit margin. I realized that I needed to source for more profitable items and start turning down the items that would sit for months or even years or had a low profit margin.

In order to have enough good items to sell, I needed to source more so I could turn down the low profit items and select only the profitable items.

My accountant invited me to a local business networking meeting in 2008. There were over 30 people each in a different profession and each person (including myself) got to give a 30 second infomercial to the whole group. I shared that I sold on eBay. After the meeting several people asked me for my card. I joined that group which meets every week. I shared this when I was on eBay Radio with Griff and Lee in 2008, and they said I’m the only eBay seller they heard who was using local networking to get merchandise. This group is one person per profession so there are no other eBay sellers in my group.

Also, there are multiple chapters and as a member you can visit other chapters. I am selling for people in several different chapters.

You might be thinking, ‘but that only works well if you sell on consignment’. But you can opt to offer the service of buying people’s items outright instead of selling them on consignment.. Some people would prefer that. With certain items, I will buy them outright.

I would love to share what it’s like to go to these networking groups, how much time it takes and what items I’ve obtained this way. It’s a way to purposefully generate word of mouth referrals. In addition to my own eBay account, I run an eBay account for a non-profit. I donate back a percentage of my commissions since they are a non-profit, but it is definitely more economical for them to have me handle the eBay business than for them to have to hire and pay someone a salary to do it. I got this account from my business networking group.

My sales in my account in the past 12 months are $179k and in the non-profit’s account are $58k in the past 12 months.

About 50% of my items are generated from the networking groups. The rest are from my website and previous clients.

In my course, I will walk you through setting your goals, determining what you need to make monthly and how to utilize your local market that has not been tapped into by other eBay sellers.

Shari Smith