How to Find Best Selling Items on Ebay in 2021
Making extra money with eBay has been around since what seems like forever, right? Everyone knows someone who sells on eBay on the side and you might already be one of those people. Everything sells on eBay, but do you know how to find the best selling items on eBay?
If you’re hoping to figure out what you should be selling on eBay to make more money, then this post is for you! I know, I know. What you really want is a post to just give you all the answers. Most articles like this are going to give you random lists of stuff that you should look out for.
While that’s great, it’s also important to know how to find top selling items on eBay yourself. Why? Because there are literally thousands of items on eBay that sell well! eBay is the biggest online marketplace out there and a list of a few best sellers isn’t going to help if you don’t know how to find best sellers on your own.
What makes a best selling item?
The hard part about sharing how to find best selling items on eBay is that “best selling” is kind of a matter of opinion. To you best selling might mean it sells quickly and easily, to someone else best selling might mean it sells for a lot of money (what is considered a lot of money anyway?). Of course, selling quickly and easily for a lot of money is the holy grail, but if that were easy to find we’d all be rich, right?
For the purposes of this post, I’m going to share some popular items in popular categories, but I’ll also show you how to find the best things to sell yourself toward the bottom of this post.
>> Want a step by step guide to starting a reselling business? Check out my course: Reseller Roadmap
Best Selling Items on eBay by Category
Video Games & Video Game Consoles
Although this is something that is so foreign to me, it’s pretty common knowledge that video games and video game consoles sell well. Because they can be pricey new, the secondhand market for video games and consoles is great. In fact, if you go to yard sales at all or have yard sales you’ll likely run into people who walk up and ask if they have any video games and then leave if not. These are popular products to flip for a good profit.
Mobile Phones
Cell phones are so expensive that not everyone can just go out and buy a brand new one when they’re ready to upgrade or if theirs gets lost or broken. Usually, you will have to pay up a little bit for these, but they can have some pretty high profit margins!
Vacuum Cleaners
You might be thinking, but I don’t want to ship a vacuum cleaner! Here’s the thing though, no one else does either. You can often find these for $5-$20 at yard sales and thrift stores and once they’re cleaned up the popular brands can go for $100 or more. So if you can get used to shipping bulky items, you won’t have much competition in this category.
Dietary Supplements
If you didn’t know, there are actually quite a lot of people who buy dietary supplements and vitamins on eBay! There are a few reasons for this. One of them is that they can find them cheaper than in most stores and the other reason is that they can often find hard-to-find or discontinued items on eBay. Of course with these types of things you need to make sure that they are brand new, sealed, and not expired. Wondering where you can find supplements to sell? I’ve seen them at yard sales or even on craigslist and Facebook marketplace being sold by people who no longer want them. They’re also pretty common at discount stores or on clearance racks.
Beauty
The beauty category is a good place for new sellers to start because the items are small and you can keep your shipping costs very low. Depending on what you find, many popular brands of beauty products can be in high demand, especially when a specific color or product gets discontinued which can lead to some high profit margins. Doing searches like “discontinued lipstick”, etc. and looking at the sold can give you an idea of what types of items to look for. My favorite find to date was 8 discontinued perfumes for $1 each at a yard sale which I turned around and sold for between $75 to $300 each.
Musical Instruments
Just like with vacuum cleaners, musical instruments can be a big bulky to ship. But that also takes out a lot of the competition because many people shy away from shipping large or expensive items. Musical instruments are pretty expensive brand new so when someone is taking up a new hobby and wants to learn to play a musical instrument, many will opt for a secondhand instrument to save money.
Clothing
Although clothing is personally one of my favofrite categories to sell, it can be hard because there is quite a bit of competition and 90% of what you find when at thrift stores, yard sales, or sourcing elsewhere will not be worth selling. If you’re interested in seeing some of the best clothing brands to look out for, make sure you grab my Best Clothing Brands to Sell on Ebay spreadsheet.
Consumer Electronics
TVs, computers, cell phones (which were already covered), stereos, DVD players, etc. are all consumer electronics. We all know that electronics can be pricey which is why many people head to eBay. While there are people who prefer new items, there are also a lot of people who are more than happy to take a used item to save even more money. If it’s a good product with good reviews, most people don’t mind buying used. Most of the items in this category have a high retail price so the average price of items sold in the consumer electronics category is going to be higher than many other categories as well. Also, don’t forget about older technology that people may not be able to find anymore. Do you know how hard it is to find a VCR? There are plenty of people still looking for them! Just make sure if you do decide to sell in this category that you test items to avoid unhappy customers.
How to Find Best Selling Items on Ebay
Now that you have an idea of what some of the best products to sell in different categories are, I want to warn you that that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many good products that sell well on eBay and you need to focus on the ones that you can actually source.
We’d all love to come across iPhones or piles of designer clothing that can make us hundreds of dollars a piece on a regular basis, but most people aren’t that lucky.
There is no easy way to just say “these are the top 100 things you should sell on eBay” because the chances of you finding enough of those top items to fill your store with are pretty slim. You’re not going to find success by simply memorizing a list of items to source.
Instead, you need to figure out how to find the best selling products on eBay for you and your business.
But how do you do this? Research and experience.
Some criteria to consider:
- What profitable items can you find regularly in your area?
- What is the average selling price?
- Is there enough of a profit margin?
- Is this something that will sell well forever or will the market change?
- Does it have a high sell through rate?
- How much can you invest in each item?
The best way to find out what you can source that sells well on eBay is to get out there and research. Go out to thrift stores and yard sales and start looking up items on eBay. The eBay app on your phone is a free tool and one of the best research tools available to resellers. I use it every time I go sourcing.
When you search in the eBay app, the search results will show you similar items that people have listed so you can evaluate if you can compete with those prices. Consider how much you can get these items for, how much they’re selling for on eBay, and if, after all the fees, you’re going to make enough money for it to be profitable.
The more time you spend out in the field doing the work, researching items, sourcing for items to sell, the easier it’s going to be to spot those best sellers for eBay.
>> Want a step by step guide to starting a reselling business? Check out my course: Reseller Roadmap
Tips to Increase eBay Sales
It’s not always just about finding the best stuff. Yes, if you find a brand new, authentic Chanel bag for $40, you’re going to be able to sell it. Usually. But there are other factors to consider. I have to admit that these tips are pretty basic but read through them as to why it’s so important.
Price it right
Best sellers will still only sell at the right price. You don’t get to dictate the price for 99% of the items you sell because there are competitors. You need to look at the market and what it’s actually selling for. It doesn’t matter if you want $80 for that designer top because that’s what you think it’s worth if everyone else is selling it in the $25 – $35 price range. Sure, you can price it at $80, but you’re not going to make the sale. Be smart and price competitively so you can actually sell your items instead of holding out with unrealistic expectations.
Free shipping
The funny thing about free shipping is it’s usually just a marketing tactic. $10 plus $5 shipping or $15 free shipping? Most people will pick the free shipping even though it’s the same. If you can handle doing free shipping on items (add the estimated shipping cost into the price of the item), you have a chance of increasing your sales in a world where everyone wants free shipping.
Good photos
Representing the item authentically in your eBay listing is so important. Not only will it initially catch the eye of buyers when compared to competing listings with bad photos, but it also will help convince them to buy if you have lots of clear photos because they can clearly see what they’re getting. Sometimes you can even get a higher price if your photos are good!
In the end, you can look up lists and lists of items that sell well on eBay. But the easiest way to find the best selling items on eBay is to just go out there and start doing the research. It doesn’t matter what the top selling items are if you can’t find them so take a look at what you can find and then determine which are the best items for you to sell.
Read next: Easiest things to flip for profit on ebay
