How to Flip for Profit: A Beginner’s Guide to Reselling

# How to Flip for Profit

Flipping sounds simple: buy low, sell high. The difference between people who profit and people who just shuffle stuff around is one habit. They run the numbers before they spend a dollar.

Here’s how to flip for profit, the way we’ve done it for 27 years.

Your money is made in the buy

Profit is decided the moment you hand over money, not when you sell. If you overpay, no amount of clever listing saves you. So before any purchase, ask one question: can I buy this cheap enough that fees, shipping, and my time are all covered?

Run every flip line by line

Let’s do a real one. We found a BOB double stroller. Buy it for about $60, sell for around $500.

• Sale price: $500
• eBay fees, about 13 percent: $71
• Shipping: $100
• Cost of goods: $60

That leaves about $319, for roughly three hours of work. Over $100 an hour. That’s the kind of math you want on every flip.

Here’s a smaller one that shows how the boring items win. A stainless steel valve, $10. Sold for $900. After $118 in fees, $47 in shipping, and a few bucks in promotion, we cleared around $716.

Research before you buy

Search eBay and filter to sold and completed listings from the last 90 days. That green number is the real market price, not the aspirational asking price. If the sold number still leaves room after fees and shipping, buy it. If it doesn’t, walk.

Go high value, not high volume

We sell low volume, high value items. We’d rather do one $100 an hour flip a day than fifty $2 flips that eat the whole day. Pick a couple of categories, learn them cold, and let the numbers do the work. That’s flipping for profit instead of flipping for busywork.

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