YouTube Transcript:
okay here we are in the West Coast Classic cougar shipping Department I haven't done a video in a while but about a year ago exactly a year ago actually I was approached to buy an estate out of Southern California and when I got down there I'm like wow these Mercury Cougar parts are incredible uh but of this estate not one in ten pieces are Mercury Cougar so it's going to take me weeks to go through all these boxes he had four storage units a two-car garage a shed out back and two of his bedrooms full and all over his yard I mean it was a major pick and the families like well I know you only buy cougar stuff but we need to get rid of all this stuff quick we're tired of paying uh storage on these uh rental units and the house is getting broken into so just make us an offer on everything so I was thinking like 10 000 bucks on the cougar parts and then I said this isn't going to be your best bid but if I take everything all this Buick and GTO and Corvette and all this other stuff I have no idea what it is I said I'll give you 30 for everything it was a lowball bid and I told him they'd probably do better you know getting some other bids or like we want it out of here Dad made a lot of money off this stuff and to be honest with you we've already taken all the ram air units and high performance stuff and sold it to other people this is The Leftovers get it out of here it's free money to us so Scott and I had to buy a second 25 foot enclosed trailer we spent a week cleaning up these properties and I haven't done eBay in years because our website does fine we don't need eBay for the most part but I'm like I got a lot of stuff here I gotta get rid of so I got back into eBay and I know a lot of people are down on eBay because it used to be like a dollar or two to the list stuff and it was you know the Wild Wild West it was a lot of fun and now it looks a little more like Amazon and you pay 15 percent I'm telling you it works and I want to run you through some things that I'm doing now and I'm bringing in regularly ten thousand dollars a month in my spare time on eBay and there's a lot of opportunity out there right now and I want to show you how to make ten thousand dollars a month with very little capital and space and this is a long game it takes a while to get hundreds of listings up but I think I think I have some valuable stuff to show you here so uh I ended up with this estate spent thirty thousand dollars on it it filled up two 25 foot enclosed trailers pretty much overloaded them getting them out of Southern California we bring them all back and what's your first goal when you spend thirty thousand dollars on a bunch of parts your absolute first goal is to get your thirty thousand dollars back so we started putting all the items that looked like they're worth about a thousand bucks on there and all we needed was 30 of them and within a month I think we got back our initial investment didn't pay for our time or the fuel down there or or all the labor ahead of us but uh or the totes had to go to wall I had to go three Walmarts and clean them out of all their totes because the old cardboard boxes the old man had were decades old and just crumbled on us so uh yeah lots of Labor here but here's the deal eBay in 2022 and 2023 yes they charge a lot of fees yes they have a lot of rules compared the way it used to be when I say used to be if you look at my account wccc hyphen Inc uh you'll see that I've been a member since 1998. actually remember I was involved in eBay earlier in that I had a guy working with me we used his account so I was in 96 and 97 I was doing eBay back then it was really hard to download a picture uh it took a lot of work to get a picture on eBay my little digital camera only uh held like eight photos at the time and you were encouraged to bid on your own items they were like hey we want to mimic a real auction site and a real auction if your stuff isn't going how you want and you're in the crowd you raise your hand it was the Wild Wild West it was scary too because you put something on it and be doing pretty good and right before the hour it was to be finalizing the auction the whole site would go down tough luck well fast forward um eBay today is a much different animal but it is a marketing Powerhouse eBay spends millions and billions of dollars doing everything for you and in the old days people would say I don't understand technology I can never do that that's not an excuse anymore it I don't care how old you are if you happen to have a smartphone you got it you got everything because they've made it so intuitive you take the pictures and they just easily download on there pictures are not hard to do anymore because your cameras Focus so nicely you write a couple sentences and even gets easier than that eBay encourages you to look at the part find a part number on somewhere and a lot of times you don't have to find a part number it could be a casting number an engineering number who knows it could be just just the writing on the part you put that in the searching engine at eBay and you're going to find a similar item and it says right there sell similar item they're encouraging you to you know take over other people's work so anyway you can hit that little button use your own pictures they don't want you using their pictures write your own little sentence or you could use their description if it's good enough and hit the go button when it sells it's really this easy print label boom and the beauty of it is you get wholesale UPS rates which sometimes are 30 40 percent less than what uh than what you would find at the retail counter so that 15 you're giving eBay at least you're getting some of it back on the back end so maybe when it's all done and said considering you aren't paying PayPal fees you aren't paying retail shipping maybe it's more like nine percent to list your item there and here's why that nine percent is so very valuable in my opinion they are putting all your items in Google so you Google I'm looking for a 1969 Cougar whatever Boom eBay is always at the top you even if they don't have it they put it at the top so the marketing is amazing so let's talk about sourcing your product I'm in the business it comes easy to be me people find me they they see my ads they're like hey will you buy this well let's talk about you sourcing stuff as an individual that doesn't have a parts business and a 30-some year reputation I'm gonna say it's easier than ever right now to Source this stuff the generation that has hordes of this never got into computers they never got an ebay account if they did they just surfed it to be able to figure out pricing and what other people get the generation that owns this stuff from the 50s and 60s and early 70s they did the swap meet thing swap meet thing is a very inefficient way to sell product I'm telling you I've done them both back in the day it's all we had great but there are senior citizens that just need to get rid of this stuff garage fulls of it they got it for next to nothing they got you know they parted out a car to get the parts they needed for their car and they knew that this was valuable stuff that shouldn't be thrown away and they might need it someday and they've stacked and stacked and stacked it now that they're elder or they've passed away their kids want it out of there the realtor needs to show the place they need to get the junk out of there and you can literally get this stuff so on my thirty thousand dollar uh purchase there's about 10 000 individual Parts when you look at every stick of trim every emblem every radio there's about ten thousand so I paid about three dollars a piece for my items and for me to make it worthwhile to sell on eBay everybody's got their minimum I don't want to invest more than 10 minutes to get fifty dollars out of item that's my level you might be different maybe you'll spend 20 minutes and be happy with thirty dollars well I'm running a business so this is a side hustle and I I have to draw the line so sourcing your stuff you just start looking on Craigslist and offer up and Facebook Marketplace and you're gonna find people that are um wanting to sell this stuff cheap in fact uh as soon as I got this thirty thousand dollar uh two trailers worth of inventory I thought I don't want to deal with this stuff I just want to get my cougar stuff so I put all this stuff up for sale the day I got home for thirty thousand dollars and I was very upfront hey I bought this just for the cougar stuff if I can take one in 15 items out of it and and get thirty thousand um I'm happy to provide the labor to bring it bring it up to Oregon and show you what I got crickets had it advertised for four months No in fact I got some snack I put it on eBay I put it in several places I got some snide comments like well if this is so valuable why would you sell it because I have a job so the stuff is out there in quantity in fact I want you to look up mag Mustangs here on eBay this guy keeps upwards to 20 000 listings going at all times and if you go on there you're going to find that all his prices are 120 to 200 percent of retail and you're going to look at and go are you crazy why is he asking these prices here's the reason he's asking those prices is he doesn't want to sell more than 100 items a day because there's no way to get them all packaged so he has to slow down the sales by upping the price and if you look at his feedback he's got good feedback and he is selling lots and lots and lots of items and the last two tranches of inventory he got were offered to me and it was Rose City Mustang in business since the 70s guy had zero computer skills didn't want him time to retire just get this 10 000 square foot Warehouse empty that's all I care about the other local business that recently sold out was r s Mustang another uh small one-man show that had been in business since the 70s again just get it out of here I made my money and I'm assuming uh that the items were sold at about two dollars a piece and those aren't this is happening all across the country that's not an anomaly the generation that's been into these cars forever is aging out and you don't have to be an expert on these because eBay is so broad the internet is so broad that if there's numbers anywhere on it you can take these numbers and put them in a search engine and it's going to narrow you down what I often do is sometimes I don't have enough information so I'll put my listing on eBay knowing there's holes in it knowing I don't have it quite right and I'll say eBay Community I don't know what I'm doing with this Buick part I think it's this anybody that knows for sure can you uh chime in and they will they will they will say no that's a 70 and a half Chevelle only so the the there is innumerable opportunities to buy inventory out there and some of these people are desperate enough if they like you and they trust you they'll consign it to you you of course get a better deal if you just cash them out and walk away but you you could work an agreement like that with them so I've covered getting your inventory next I need to talk to you about what is the best way to Market on eBay and one of the first things where almost even the pros make a lot of mistakes is pictures your smartphone has all the capabilities you need you have no more excuses on why you have bad pictures building something like this and it doesn't have to be just like this this was built out of scraps for very little money building something like this is key and for our website we we have it peeves this camera and when we take the picture these light up boom and then we go in and edit and we drop the background for eBay I think uh a more raw approach less like a corporation uh like Amazon or whatever it goes good so I don't I leave the scratched glass as a background but the main thing is light and another thing is 12 pictures why take three pictures when eBay gives you the ability to do 12. and for you you're thinking three's enough front back side good enough well you might not realize that the person that is really contemplating this is going back to that auction three times in the week to really think about it and he wants to thumb through pictures and giving them 12 pictures gives them something to thumb through so you give them every single angle you zoom out you zoom in it just makes sense to do 12 pictures eBay now allows you to do videos why not if it's an eight-track player and you want to prove that it works stick a tape in it put a battery to it show them it works so search words is the next important thing you need to load that up that title where they give you 80 characters fill them in just I mean don't make stuff up but really think hard about what people are going to be searching for under these items and fill that title up here's something I do eBay gives you lots of tools and most people ignore them I promote my listings and you're like I'm giving eBay 15 and you want me to hit a button that says give them three six or nine percent more well maybe there is 20 of this particular carburetor on eBay right now and maybe you're the only guy that hit the promote button at two or three percent I don't usually do the nine or ten they want you to do nine or ten I don't usually do that yours gets bumped up to the top of the category and as they go to other websites throughout the week guess what's in the sidebar is the advertisement eBay linking you back to this carburetor that two percent can really help you especially if you're competing against 10 or 20 other guys that have this exact same item so think hard about I mean so instead of uh lowering your price 10 or 15 to make yours look more attractive than everybody else's why not go five percent higher than everybody else's and know that when somebody goes to search and they see yours front and center and that's all they see and it's a hundred and fifty dollars and it solves the problem that they have they don't care about scrolling like I found it I want to be done so so I highly encourage you to promote all your listings another thing I do is I always let it be offer why because the eBay algorithm gives you better placings if you'll do that and once you engage a customer and they hit that button maybe they lowball you you can set it to their automatically rejected so you don't have to deal with lowball offers but anyway once they engage with you they're more likely to focus on your item you've already opened up a somewhat of a dialogue with them so always let them do an offer even if even if your 150 item you have it set at 140 and you go back and forth and you end up taking 142. it makes sense okay presentation is everything most people want to get in a hurry and say eh I don't need top dollar I'll just put it on like this this looks like a piece of piece it looks like something that maybe you could have faith in I go a little extra distance on some of my items and I recondition them these seals available for the Galaxy cougar T-bird on my website cheap and once you put them in they work these old 50 year old seals they just don't hold like that that's a core so at least clean them up I use a glass bead Blaster you could use a wire brush just get them wet and wiping them down it just shows you care a little more uh when Chrome on on Chrome items you need to get four ought steel wool this stuff is great you can get it for uh 27 a roll on Amazon this will last you 20 years if you use it like most people do for me I go through them a little faster than that but a little squirt of Windex or a simple green on these Chrome items and very little effort and you can really make it pop and taking the extra time what other people don't do uh really matters another thing along with your 12 pictures is to concentrate on the defects you think it might slow you down and hurt sales some people just you know they put it in the picture but they don't say much no get a little pointer even use your finger if you have to and say missing stud we want you to know this before you purchase returns slow you down negative feedback slows you down and being very upfront about your parts it really gains credibility and Trust in your items so whatever you might think it's the effect and not worth pointing out and maybe you even say hey my camera is not powerful enough to get this little spec here but I want you to know about that spec and your buyers are smart they know that your competitors have those specs too but they aren't pointing them out they like you if you need that connection with them I also want to mention uh I forgot to mention earlier that you have to have a white background black velvet might look pretty cardboard might be good enough asphalt whatever no it's you have to have a white background why a big reason you're using eBay is their multi-million billion dollar marketing structure they are paying for Google search words for you and Google has requirements to get their top listings their top recommendations and one of them is a white background so if you're using a background like this or brown or any other color you're really hurt in the search version so get some White cardboard get some white signboard uh pee in a piece of plywood white it doesn't matter it really helps with the lighting too so huge tip there okay shipping this is of utmost importance you gotta you gotta do it right we pretty much never have anything get broken because we do it right when you're wrapping something you gotta have padding around it you know I I invest in this you can get this free from different dumpsters and businesses and whatnot I Rely heavily on the United States Post Office because they give you so much free stuff for for boxes and whatnot but keep in mind when you're shipping something you can't go with a box that's this long you gotta have a crush Zone those are gonna have bumps they're gonna other packages are gonna smash into it you got to go a little longer on all areas I use a lot of this brown paper here it's cheap Uline is a place that you can get a lot of that stuff from again there's lots of businesses that would be happy if you'd show up once a month and take stuff away from free there's a carpet store here locally come this way and they love it when I show up twice a year and take away these carpet tube cores they probably pay me to do it but of course I do it for free but going there twice a year I get a uh I guess six month s These are nice and thick and then you put them inside the box now you've double wrapped your long pieces of trim and whatnot here's another tip I want to give you on shipping so many people on eBay and this this works well in my favor they won't ship internationally that's ridiculous I sell parts all the time that there's lots of them listed and they'll pay more for my part that maybe is lesser quality because I hit the little boxes as I will ship internationally what you're not realizing if you're if you're choosing not to ship International unless eBay takes care of everything they take care of the tax the custom forms and often you don't ship internationally it goes to a hub in Kentucky and costs very little for you well the customer always pays for it so there's I can't think of any reason not to ship internationally International people are less likely to return items as well and they're thankful because their window of opportunity and buying is so narrow and you've you've helped them out so I just find shipping international to be easy and eBay takes away the fraud you'll never get fraud on eBay you will on some of the other platforms but eBay takes that out you aren't going to get your money yanked back from you because it was a illicit account eBay needs that hey future Dawn here hey I made that video and like the next day we got this email saying there's a change in eBay policy so check this out I want to talk about communication um I hate to be married to my cell phone but uh the eBay app works really well and you'll get people asking questions throughout the day in the evening it's good if you can get on them right away uh I've also let people know at times hey it's Friday evening and I'm going to take the weekend off so can we talk about this on Monday and most people are like oh yeah no problem but you got to be a good communicator you are going to get some of the dumbest questions that it's it's so you're going to want to come back with something snarky sometimes but take the time to give them full sentences and be patient with them and sometimes know that they aren't trying to be snipey they might be a different nationality and not have the English skills they might be senior citizen they might be rude and you might still make the sale and you'll be a best of friends so so um answer all the questions you can and sometimes it's okay to say I just don't know and sometimes I've even said I'm sorry I've already boxed up the item and and I can't take that picture for you I've already done my 12 pictures just be honest with them it's really important to have good communication and I always check the box for returns and I hate getting returns but it gives it gives the customer so much more confidence to know that if he bought the right wrong part he can return it and once in a while you're going to get scammed a little bit you know they're going to say one guy tried to say that I sent him a broken item and I'm like no I packaged it myself was there any damage in the package no there wasn't that makes you mad but still um look at the big picture you know I'm selling multiple items a day I'm keeping 400 listings going I got this ten thousand dollar a month income stream coming in the big picture is um don't worry about the outliers the rude people the one guy that tries to return something after he broke it just just keep on keeping on in summary I've talked a lot about having this as a side hustle or even a career and yes you can if I did this full time I I'd bring in eight hundred thousand dollars a year gross um you need some space to do that and I personally don't want to have more than 400 auctions going at a time but instead of thinking of this as a side hustle I want you people that have these parts to collections to really think about getting started here because the day you die or you're no longer capable of going out and getting dirty in the garage and wrapping stuff your wife or relative is going to have to deal with it and they are not going to have the capacity to get top dollar out of your stuff and some guy like me will come in and say gee this is a mess I don't even know what you have here there's no labels on everything ah my five cent on the dollar bid is this nobody knows your inventory like you do if you're a collector of parts and memorabilia and such so at a minimum start writing tags down on stuff so your relatives can look stuff up and get an idea what it is you want to go to sell it you know there's some organization uh start throwing away garbage because when a guy like me comes in and bids a thing and we see a lot of garbage we're like yeah what percentage are you being salable get the garbage out of there wives you're gonna have to give your husband some encouragement here um then start putting it on eBay you can do it you have an iPhone your wife has it somebody you know has an iPhone that's all you need and start out small do an emblem and build on it and you've had this stuff on the shelf for years and who cares if it takes you five years to get your 600 items listed they're still on the Shelf they're cleaned up now they're labeled and one day somebody's gonna buy that item pretty much everything I put on eBay sells I mean something some things this is a long game if you're trying to get good money out of stuff know that when you put it on it can take nine months sometimes two years to sell an item because we're talking about obscure things here that not everybody needs that maybe isn't in the best condition that maybe there's 20 of them already there on eBay but I guarantee you as long as you're not putting out now garbage on there everything you put on there sells so that 500 items in your garage or 40 items or whatever it is that's some real cash and like say if you let somebody else deal with it later sweep up after you you're getting five cents on the dollar maybe if you got good stuff and it's labeled you're getting 30 cents on the dollar if I come in and it's cougar stuff that I really want and need I will pay 50 cents on the dollar but that ain't 100 100 cents on the Dollar on eBay so try it get somebody to help you now I gave you a broad overview here just shotgun style here but there's guys that have YouTube channels maybe they're not dealing with antique car parts but they will every week focus on another part of increasing your eBay sales there's there's a dozen of them out that are really good look at the ones that have you know 50 and 100 000 hits on their videos those guys have something to teach you watch those videos you don't even have to watch them put your air pods in your your headphones on and listen to them and there is some excellent advice on so you could be a YouTube Pro so good luck get on it get going don't do don't uh don't dilly dally on this you're not getting any younger get out there and get your hands dirty in the garage