Here is the truth of it all
Ok here is the truth of it all, now some people will tell you you can make money on ebay and some people will tell you its impossible well heres the truth. You can make money on ebay with cell phones but for the kind of the phone you want to sell, you will make about 5% on your initial investment if that. And as any business man can tell you thats not good. Heres the way it works and i will give you some false numbers which are going to be random but they are to illustrate the point. At the store they buy the phone for around 385 and they sell it for say about $300 to you and you may get some kind of rebate so its even less. Now if you have ever thought about this you are sitting there scratching your head thinking how can they do this? They must get the phone for $200? Well the way it works is they get a commission for getting you on a plan for 2 years. Also they get a commission if you buy the data plan, which you have to have if you are using a sidekick, not to mention any text. So lets say to keep things even they get a commission of $160 which makes there total sale $465 minus there original $385 so they come out with about $80 which is around 21% profit for them. But if you have ever seen those Chargers and Car chargers and fancy cases, those cost about $15 a pop maybe $20. Those in wholesale cost about $5 or so. So thats where they make there money. Especially in the Bluetooth department. Now since you are selling on ebay and you are not a authorized dealer, you are just selling from wholesale to retail without a plan. You might get lucky and find someone who bought some extra and need to get rid of them. So you buy them for $385 and you are selling E-tail without a plan so people expect to pay a little more. But its ebay so not alot more. So you sell it for around $425. Not bad right? You just got $40 bucks and you dont ever have to see the person who bought it again, after all if they have a problem they can send it to the manufacturer right? But lets not forget that paypal will take there cut which is around 4% so there goes $17 then ebay will take a good 5% chunk which will be $21.25, that leaves you giving them about $38.25. Then you are left with your grand total, which is $1.75. So you can make profit selling that sort of phone. But lets not forget that you have to find this Cell phone and somehow you have to pay them in a secure way. Which these days almost doesnt exist. I mean i could tell you i will sell you 25 KRAZR's for $80 each and then i will send it COD, sounds good right? Well all i have to do is put a few bricks inside some phone boxes and bubble wrap so that they dont rattle around none, they disconnect the prepaid phone you called me on and cancel my free email account like yahoo or gmail so that you couldnt find me. Meanwhile when the UPS guy gets to your house I would have them send it to a forwarding address like a bus stop or something. Even Kmart, since they usually have a outside mail box. And then i would get your money, and you would have a box of bricks.
What im trying to say to you, is i hear it all the time, guys getting ripped off. Even people who have been in this business along time. I hate seeing good people who are down on their luck looking for away out and all they find is someone trying to kick them down and steal their last bit of money. I hope this has shown some people the reality of the business. There are ways to sell cell phones but to make money they usually have to be used and if one is faulty your profit quickly disappears because then you have to sell that phone to someone else, when you paid $50 for it they will only give you $8 if you are lucky.
It is a unfortunate age when we have to have security guarding our shipping trucks and you almost have to meet someone face to face to even do business with them, but i hope this has shown that for the average person who is looking for something to sell that is "Popular" like Sidekicks, you really should focus on something you are good at. I helped a woman who was a single mother, start a small time business selling very good tiles that she made by hand she almost makes at least 8X her money back for each tile, obviously its time consuming though. Anyway my apologizes for bursting any bubbles but i hope this has helped someone. Take care, and my best wishes to all!
Chase S.
OCAW Wireless
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