eBay Trading Assistants: earn whilst helping other people to sell on eBay

If you’re reading this then there’s an excellent chance that you’re an experienced eBay seller.  Whether it’s selling items that you have laying around the house, have bought from yard sales, maybe sourced from wholesalers, made yourself or even misspelled ebay items that you’ve found and purchased using Missing-Auctions.com you’re pretty unusual.

Why ?  Because for every seller on eBay there are tens, maybe hundreds, of other people that either don’t use it at all or they only buy.  Just think of your own family and friends – how many of them use eBay to buy and how many of those also sell on eBay ?  Very few, I’ll bet.  That’s where eBay Trading Assistants can help – they sell other peoples items for a commission of the final sale price and it can be a lucrative business to be in, if done correctly.

One of the beauties of being an eBay Trading Assistant is that you don’t need to buy stock.  Instead, you advertise your service on eBay in the Trading Assistant Directory (US here, UK here, Canada here and Australia here) as well as in other places where potential customers might be (think offline like postcards in store windows).

When potential clients contact you, you use your knowledge of valuing items on eBay to assess how much the item is likely to sell for.  Based on that you can agree a fee for selling the item.  For low value items a fixed fee might be best whilst for higher value items or those in demand, a percentage of the final selling price is probably best.

If the client agrees, then you’ll need to collect the item making sure to give the owner a receipt and then you’ll photograph it, prepare the listing and sit back and handle any inquiries as well as taking care of the packing and posting should the item sell.  Only once the buyer has left feedback do you give the original owner the money that the item sold for minus your costs and fees.

So where’s the best place to promote yourself if you want to get more business ?  Classified adverts should work well both on and offline as well as contacting companies that may have stock that could sell on eBay but which don’t currently have an internet presence.  In my local town of Abergavenny in South Wales here in the UK I can think of around 20 local businesses that don’t currently sell online who sell products that regularly sell on eBay.  Everyone of those could be a potential client.

Anyone can become an eBay Trading Assistant so long as you’ve:

1. sold at least 4 items in the past 30 days
2. have a feedback score of 50 or higher
3. 97% or more of your feedback is positive
4. your eBay account is in good standing

To get started, visit the appropriate eBay Trading Assistant directory for your country (links above) and then click on ‘Create/Edit Your Profile’ in the menu to the left of the page.  You’ll need to provide details of your services and fees as well as the hours that you can be contacted.  If you’re stuck, try looking at the profiles of some of your local or regional competitors to see what they are charging.

Even if you only sell a few extra items, for the time taken, if you chose the items that you sell carefully you should make some extra money relatively easily.  Furthermore, with the right mindset, it could turn into a full blown work from home business.

Although I’ve outlined the steps that you need to follow above, if you’d prefer a more detailed process together with sample emails etc that you can use straightaway then The Ultimate Guide to Becoming an eBay Trading Assistant could be what you need.

Although it’s a paid product it offers far more information than I can offer in this article and comes with a full no-quibble money back guarantee should you not be entirely happy with it.

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