# Anyone doing good at eBay?



## The60s (Jan 29, 2007)

Just thinking if anyone out there is doing reasonably well selling their own clothes at ebay or other auction sites.


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## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

Try this thread:

http://www.t-shirtforums.com/t-shirt-marketing/t4920.html


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I haven't tried eBay in a while, but the last time I made a go of it, I didn't do too well. Although, to be fair, I didn't follow all the tips here either.

If anybody has any more recent experience with eBay, I'd love to hear it as well


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2007)

Ebay gives you access to customers and an ecommerce solution. 

The drawbacks are :

1. The costs (ebay + paypal) 
2. The time involved. Unless you are using a third party solution such as marketworks/channel advisor (at extra cost) you are going to have to spend considerable time managing your ebay sales.
3. Competition. Theres a lot of people out there selling T-shirts on ebay. If you come up with a unique design or idea but be suprised if you see imitations appearing.

I think it is a pretty tough to make money on ebay.


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## COEDS (Oct 4, 2006)

I think ebay is a waste of time. I would look at ibid. Good luck if you try ebay and it works let us know.


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## amp267 (Oct 11, 2006)

its ok for a little side money, i do a little over $500 a month sometimes $1000 on a good month part time, after expenses(shipping, ebay fees, paypal fees, etc.) thats on t-shirt. im slowly building it up.


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## Buechee (Dec 22, 2005)

just started a store, so I can't say as of yet.


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## JPD (Nov 8, 2006)

I've sold two shirts in the first week I tried. I posted up one of my fun, retro shirts and a couple of folks liked them enough to buy them. I get the order, print the shirts up and send them out. 

Pretty easy, large market, but expensive to put them out there.

Eric


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## Ken Styles (Mar 16, 2006)

eBay is expensive but it is a good way for future customers to check a feedback on you which gives them more confidence to buy from you.


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## Buechee (Dec 22, 2005)

Ken Styles said:


> eBay is expensive but it is a good way for future customers to check a feedback on you which gives them more confidence to buy from you.


 
Which also makes it good as a starting point. You can use it as marketing as well.


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## The60s (Jan 29, 2007)

but ebay pricing now is atrocious! not as cheap as before..well i suppose thats the way..when you get more popular so will the listing price.


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## Froggy (Jul 20, 2006)

Selling on eBay can work well if you have good ideas and create a good image for yourself. In fact I would claim that if you can't successfully sell your shirts on ebay at a profit than your unlikely to make much with them elsewhere. Once you've proven the concept on eBay you can then move to your own website etc where the margins are going to be hire.


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## 48HourGraphics (Jan 31, 2007)

Hello Everyone,
I have been in business for many years. I worked on E-bay for a long time and had a marketing salesperson dedicated to E-bay and my web site, and the results are that E-bay is a buyers market now. In the past E-bay was a sellers market but now with the heavy compition and increased fees it is almost impossible to make money on there. Don't get me wrong you can *gross* money on there but the time you have to be devoted to it and the labor and time to print, press, package, and ship your items you are better off putting your time and energy someplace else. I also did not mention the time to post your auction and answer emails, and fill out feedback. At one point I had over 100 items listed on E-bay. Take a wild guess on average how many E-mails that generated??? Over 75 E-mails per week, and in order to sell items on E-bay you need to respond to those which take alot of time.
In summery I would stay away from E-bay. I hope this helps.
_*Jason*_


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## Froggy (Jul 20, 2006)

48HourGraphics said:


> At one point I had over 100 items listed on E-bay. Take a wild guess on average how many E-mails that generated??? Over 75 E-mails per week


People sell thousands of items a week on ebay and do just fine. If you are getting that many questions you are doing something wrong, for example your auction listings aren't very clear. Unless you are innovating new products and get a patent you are always going to have competition no matter what market...so in that sense ALL markets are "buyers markets" (excluding again IP). You can successfully sell your tees on ebay if you either learn how to efficiently sell at low margins or have great artwork that makes people want to buy the shirts for the art itself.


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## The T Shirt Man (Aug 29, 2006)

I have been selling on Ebay for 2 years and along with my website it is my full time job. Competition can be hard because when new sellers set up they dont realise the costs involved and sell at ridiculously low prices, which harms your sales, then after time they must realise that although they take lots of money they make next to nothing or even loose money.

The fees are also far too high and ebay keep changing their sites and categories which i think harms sales (on ebay.co.uk there is no T-Shirt category anymore, it is mens clothing and you have to search on item specifics for t-shirts). 12-18 months ago Ebay was much, much better, more sales, less fees, more customers.

I have been looking for an alternative way to sell my t-shirts online but in truth there are none. You cannot advertise your product to the massive amount of people for the same price. If you can, please tell me 



> Hello Everyone,
> I have been in business for many years. I worked on E-bay for a long time and had a marketing salesperson dedicated to E-bay and my web site, and the results are that E-bay is a buyers market now. In the past E-bay was a sellers market but now with the heavy compition and increased fees it is almost impossible to make money on there. Don't get me wrong you can gross money on there but the time you have to be devoted to it and the labor and time to print, press, package, and ship your items you are better off putting your time and energy someplace else. I also did not mention the time to post your auction and answer emails, and fill out feedback. At one point I had over 100 items listed on E-bay. Take a wild guess on average how many E-mails that generated??? Over 75 E-mails per week, and in order to sell items on E-bay you need to respond to those which take alot of time.
> In summery I would stay away from E-bay. I hope this helps.
> Jason


If you can afford to hire a person to do your marketing then you probably dont need Ebay to sell your shirts. Also, 100 items is nothing, i list 1200+ a month and i know other sellers list many more, US t-shirt sellers list 1000's and 1000's. It is not very time consuming, maybe to start with, all you need to do is create pages for all of your t-shirts and use Turbo Lister which is free; you can also use Seller Manager Pro from Ebay which is not much £4.99 in the UK which does lots of work for you. Yeah you do get emails and questions, but come on, it is your business so you do actually have to do some work.


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## monkeylantern (Oct 16, 2005)

eBay is still just about possible as an advertising stream, but I'd only ever use it as one of a host of selling outlets. Don't put all your eggs in the eBay basket....it's just too volitile.


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## Shuffy (Sep 3, 2005)

I've been a ebay member for 9 years
yes the ebay money making market has gone down
HOWEVER . . I use ebay as an advertizement tool . . . 

I have two ebay stores - @ 15.95 ea and only list about 100-200 auction a month between the two accounts . . . so if I spend $100.00 - $150.00 between the two stores and auction listings . . . the money that is made within the ebay community brings me MORE out of auction re-orders and add on's

I have had a buyer through ebay order a t-shirt and come back to me a month later and order 30 more shirts for family reunions and for their awareness event . . .

I always add a discount flyer in with every order I ship out

so ebay isn't all that bad . .


Diane


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## upgraphics (Mar 6, 2007)

I use ebay to advertise. Its ok I sell all custom on there and It works, BUT you get all the spam and crap from people trying to get your information. Every day I get at least 4-10 spam emails from what looks like ebay members. You must check all messages threw ebay and so forth. But you sell a product and mail a few cards they tell there friends and hit my site and buy. I use it mainly in the winter months if things are slow....good luck to all


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## jshade (Feb 24, 2007)

Hello, im thinking about starting an online T-shirt store. But i was thinking about going it alone and not useing anysort of ebay like advertising. My customers would be people in the Gothic/Rock crowd, So i thought id go to sertain sites where i would pay about $130 a month to advertise (gothic/rocker sites) But alot of there prices are so high that i couldnt advertise there long. I also plan on doing shipping and handling threw paypal or some other shipping service (but im not sure if the shipping part will work out). But the truth is i dont have alot of money. And im not sure if im gunna be able to make this work. If anyone has any advise that they would like to share id love it much!
-Thanks guys


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Another major problem I found with eBay is their listing and Fee Avoidance policy. According to them you are not allowed to list an auction that allows the customer to choose the size of the shirt they want. Instead they force you to list an auction for every single size you want to offer which I think is just plain ridicolous and greedy and eBays behalf.


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## Ken Styles (Mar 16, 2006)

^ no way. I've been putting "choose your own size at the end of the auction" in the body of the listings for months now with no problems.


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

yes way. its just likely you haven't been reported in yet

Choice Listings


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

Ken Styles said:


> ^ no way. I've been putting "choose your own size at the end of the auction" in the body of the listings for months now with no problems.


You're one of the lucky ones then.


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## amp267 (Oct 11, 2006)

i guess im one of the lucky ones also....i have never had this problem. in fact ive had ebay reps help me in similar cases. i have had pick your size and your design on one add. i emaild them to make sure it was ok......they said it was fine. i have been selling there for about a year now.


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## monkeylantern (Oct 16, 2005)

Well, I'd advise you to be careful. I know numerous people who have had not only auctions removed, but stores close for just that.

Not good when it's your business, not a hobby.


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## amp267 (Oct 11, 2006)

It's Only A Hobby At The Moment, But It Keeps Growing. Maybe They Changed There Rules. Not Sure. I Have Had One Add Pulled, Just Got A Small Slap On The Had, And Was Told Not To Do It. No Big Deal.


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## The T Shirt Man (Aug 29, 2006)

with regards to the sizing "choice listings" Ebay do remove your listings, and also suspend accounts which is not good as someone mentioned above if it is a main source of income.

They have an exception which says "made to order clothing" is allowed, although i have had many arguments with customer support that all my items are made to order so it says in their own rules that i can let my customers choose size, you still dont win the argument.

If you are listing with options and not listing individual sizes i am suprised you havent had listings removed yet.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

amp267 said:


> Maybe They Changed There Rules.


Nope, they're just very inconsistent in how they apply them.


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## txmxikn (Jan 16, 2007)

I find it easier to have a listing for each individual size. THAT WAy I can tell from thr title what size shirt they want. I create a liisting in my store for each size of each design and then I only send one from that design to auction. The size doesn't matter in the descr. I state that I have other sizes to choose from in my store. Helps keep costs down. Store listiings are only $.06 wiith a pic for one month doesn't matter if its 1 item or 1000.


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## Shuffy (Sep 3, 2005)

T-shirt Man . . 

If you are doing custom work/design -- where you give the bidder an option to change something in the design -- such as adding personalization -- Name, date, etc . . AND 
If you have these words --- AT NO ADDITIONAL COST ---

here's one example that I have in my listings 

We can change "Son" 
to daughter or cousin or whatever you wish, 
We, also can change the font color to whatever you wish 
AT NO ADDITIONAL COST 
WANT TO CUSTOMIZE YOUR T-SHIRT A LITTLE MORE?

We can change the extra ribbons to puzzle pieces 
Just let us know at the time of check out 
OTHERWISE 
The design shown is the default design 
soooooo......
Please email us and let us know as soon as you 
submit payment so that your order is 
processed in a timely manner.

This --sometimes-- opens another door to new ideas from your buyers 
and it gives the buyer the choice of size/or color

It doesn't matter if I have 50 orders a day .. I take the time with EVERY single buyer . . be it through email or over the phone
my profit margin is about 4000% -- and I want them to come back and of course -- word of mouth is the BEST advertisement . .

Diane


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