Low price items seem to be more work then they are worth.

[Beans]

Spent the last few years selling low price items along with high price. After a run last week of the low price items, it seems to me to be a lot of work for a small profit.

What is the lowest limit you sell before you feel you are wasting you time?

 

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[Paleo_joe]

It used to be $25, if I could pay $1 or $2.

Now I am trying to stick to at least $100 items. I make a little less per month but I probably spend only half the time.

 

[mugsisme]

Mine is $10. If I can't list it for above $10, then it isn't worth my time. I'd rather throw it into a lot, or take it to consign. (I only get about $2-$4 per item, but it is basically no work.)

 

[trdhrdr007]

I won't sell anything unless I can make $15 profit minimum. Once I account for ALL the time involved between sourcing & selling it works out to about 30 minutes. The only exception to that is if I can buy multiples of an item that's easy to ship that I can make 1 listing. For example, I bought a bunch of cabinets from the estate of a watch maker a while back. I made multiples of my cost selling off the large items & ended up with a crap ton of glass watch crystals. I made a BIN listing for small lots of those. When one lot sells I snap a quick picture of a new lot & relist. By the time I pay fees, packaging, & postage I net around $12-13......but my time is less than 10 minutes per lot.

 

[dieselram94]

The only thing low price items are good for is getting your counts up.


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[mjlalt]

Well that depends. I take into consideration how much time it will take to list and how easy it is to ship.

If it is easy to ship and list $10

If it is a pain to list or ship it varies but probably at very least $25

When I look at items to buy I consider

Time to clean
Time to test the item
Time to research item
Time to fix or part out item
Time to pack item
How fast item will sell
How much space the item will occupy


I would much rather list and sell two sealed ink cartridges for $10ea than a used vintage cassette player for $20.

 

[diggummup]

Nothing wrong with selling something you can list quickly with minimal photos/descrip. and throw into a padded mailer. It's all about the time it takes as to whether a low dollar item is "worth" someone's time to list, besides the initial cost of the item of course. I will gladly list items that sell for $9.99 w/free shipping, if the items cost me $1 or less and I can list 10-20 of them in 2-3 hours. The most time consuming thing for me with any listing are the photos. Items that only require 2 or 3 photos can be listed pretty quickly. If it's gonna take an hour to photograph, list and package something then that item has to be netting me at least $50 profit, minimum.

 

[Beachkid23]

I guess for me The minimum would be about a $10 profit however I just bought a box of video games and there is a wireless adapter in here that sells for $10-$13 with free shipping. I already listed all the video games and this falls in line with everything else so I'm just going to auction it for $10 with free shipping.

That said it depends how much I spend on the item too. I'm not looking to spend $300 and make $10. If I spent $300 I need to make at least $100 off of that hopefully more and quick. But prefer to make double what I paid for the item. Always shoot for double but not really any price amount minimum as long as it can be shipped first class and go in a padded mailer. But then again I sell a lot of jewelry so I will do something for seven, eight, or nine dollars.

I think it kind of depends on inventory too. like right now I'm up to my eyeballs in stuff so I probably won't do anything that cheap but in the summertime when it's slower then ill throw up some cheap items just to make a couple bucks extra.