- Richard S. started reselling electronics and eventually used clothing after losing his job in 2008.
- He scaled the business dramatically over the past 15 years, bringing in six figures per month.
- One of his top strategies was to optimize his listing pages using keywords.
Richard S. became a dad at age 18, skipped college, and took a job at CVS while attending vocational school to learn computer repair.
His vocational degree led to an entry-level position at Circuit City. But weeks after being hired in 2008, the electronics retailer filed for bankruptcy.
He didn't have many options.
"In 2008, you weren't getting laid off and getting hired immediately," Richard, who prefers not to share his last name for privacy reasons, told Business Insider. "We were in the middle of a housing crisis, the stock market lost 57%, people were not hiring."
To put food on the table, the single dad started reselling electronics and eventually used clothing on eBay.
In the last 15 years, he says he's grown the hustle from a one-man operation to a full-fledged business that, at its peak, had five employees and was bringing in seven figures annually.
BI viewed a screenshot of his eBay dashboard showing $472,493 in sales during a three-month period in 2022. That's about $157,000 a month.
BI also confirmed that his eBay store, Technsports, ranked No. 1 by gross market value in highly competitive categories on the site, including: used T-shirts with 137,128 total sellers and used polo shirts with 193,012 sellers. That's according to eBay's 2021 Listing Quality Report, which provides sellers a performance overview of their biggest 10 categories.
Richard is scaling his store down from over 50,000 items to about 5,000, in preparation for what he calls a "50-year vacation" starting in August 2024. The 40-year-old says he has enough in savings and investments to live on and plans to travel the world in his early retirement.
He also plans to grow the YouTube channel he started in 2023 to help other people make money selling on eBay.
"Anybody can do it," said the eBay veteran. "It took a minute or two to make the profile and list the items the best that I could at the time. I was not an expert. I didn't know everything. But I took a couple quality photos, made a quality description, and it was good enough to sell rather quickly."
He shares three strategies that helped him take his online store to the next level.
1. Source profitable products
In the reselling business, "it doesn't matter what I think is cool," said Richard. "It matters what the customer thinks is cool."
Rather than speculating what might sell, use the tools available to you to understand what people are buying.
He said you can browse the "sold items" section of your category on eBay to figure out what is selling well and what isn't. Spend 30 minutes a day studying your category. When it comes time to actually source an item, look it up on eBay before you buy it.
"You can go right on the eBay app and you can look at the comp," he said. "In 2024, there is no excuse to speculate on an item and there is no excuse to lose money on an item because we have this luxury. If we're unsure, check eBay." If you found an item for $5 at a thrift store but it's selling on eBay for $4, pass. If you find something for $5 and it's selling on eBay for $10, you might consider listing it — or, you may decide the profit isn't big enough to be worth your time.
Richard, who started off reselling electronics, specializes in used clothing.
He likes apparel because it requires "no testing, no troubleshooting, no parts or pieces," he said. "It's not going to break in the mail. You don't need instructions to put on a shirt. At worst, if it doesn't fit, they can send it back for a full refund."
Plus, "it has grown to be much more acceptable for people to buy secondhand and pre-owned," he said. "It is very environmentally friendly. I have probably processed and sold a million pieces of clothing, and if every piece of clothing weighs half a pound, I have saved probably 500,000 pounds from going to the landfill."
2. Optimize your listing pages using keywords
Building an accurate, engaging listing page is "the most important part of the process," said Richard. To do so, you first have to know who your customer is.
"The customer for a Tommy Bahama shirt is totally different from a customer that wants a Nike skateboard shirt," he said. "I need to create a listing that will capture the customer that I'm looking for."
That requires using specific keywords in the title of the listing.
"The search on eBay defaults to best match, and if you can best match what the customer has searched, then you will get more favorable results," he said, adding: "I have spent 15 years studying the platform."
For example, if you're selling a Tommy Bahama shirt, don't just title your listing "Tommy Bahama shirt," he said. "Everybody can put that part into their title. It's what comes after that, the nuance, and that's the separator of how you get your item seen versus your item never selling."
There's a right and a wrong way to add details. You have to know what your customer is searching for.
"If your title says 'Tommy Bahama Shirt Purple Monkey Dishwasher,' nobody is ever going to search that," he said. "But if your title says 'Tommy Bahama Silk Blend Button Up Camp Hawaiin Shirt,' now you have all of those keywords. So every single time a customer searches 'Tommy Bahama Hawaiian Shirt,' I show up; 'Tommy Bahama Camp Shirt,' I show up. 'Tommy Bahama Silk Shirt,' I show up."
In addition to keywords, your listing should have clear photos and a detailed description.
If you're selling clothing, "you have to provide measurements because the customer is buying it sight unseen, so they need a fundamental idea of what they are purchasing," he said. Or, "If there is any sort of flaw or thing you need to bring attention to the buyer, you need to have that filled in."
3. Retain customers by offering excellent customer service
In any industry, "the most expensive thing for most businesses is the cost of customer acquisition," said Richard. "So, once we have the buyer in the funnel, if we can sell to them again, that's just a free customer for us."
He has a few strategies for retaining customers, including a 60-day free return policy, which is the most aggressive policy eBay offers, he said: "It is the best way to attract customers, and it is the best customer experience."
He also takes advantage of tools that eBay provides sellers, including coupon codes. When he ships items to his customers, he includes the coupon with a note in the package: "I just say, 'Hey, I'm from South Florida. I'm a regular guy. I've been selling on eBay for over 10 years. If you're happy with your item I would love positive feedback and I would love for you to come back to my store. Here is a coupon code for your next purchase. If I've overlooked something or made an honest mistake, please feel free to send me a message.'"
The platform also allows sellers to send offers to potential customers who have looked at items.
"If a buyer has watched my item, I can send an offer to them that's greater than maybe what they thought I would accept," explained Richard. "So maybe they looked at my item, and it was 30 bucks, and maybe they wanted to pay 20, but they don't want to send an offer. In the past, that's a sale I lost out on. But now eBay gives me the ability to send an offer to a watcher, and I'm in control now."