Opportunist Flipping: How to Make Money as a Full-Time Student With no Outlay

The digital freelance market is bustling as people trade nine to five jobs for a self-employed lifestyle. Students worldwide are funding their education or living costs whilst in education via online selling platforms such as eBay.

When thinking about flipping, you imagine someone with money to risk in the hopes of turning a profit. There is another solution; Retail arbitrage is buying up items from physical locations like buying clothing from outlet stores and selling that same item for-profit online. You can also use this method without leaving the house by purchasing items from online retailers and selling them to customers with room for profit.

Step one: Locate an item online that you are confident in selling for more than you can source it. Use eBay completed and sold items to see the price your item has sold for with other sellers. Make sure you calculate the maths and the shipping cost to make money. Note – eBay for every sale takes a ten per cent fee!

Step two: For a quick sale, price as low as possible whilst still in profit, and market to the best of your ability. Making sure you’re at the lowest price is key, or, you need to have something that others do not, such as positive reviews, return customers or make use of adverts.

Step three: You need your listing to be the most convincing and professional. On eBay, a unique feature exists. You can go to the bottom of other sellers’ listings and can press “Sell one like this”, which allows you to use a template that - if they are a good seller - makes use of good keywords for higher search results, correct categories and tags to get more eyes on the listing. You can even take the exact title and sometimes photos of a listing that succeeded in selling.

Step four: This is the hard but necessary part about selling without investment. The correct item that will sell for good profits probably has high demand, so you must constantly check that stock is available. As soon as you get paid for the listing, buy the item and get it to your buyer swiftly. This step is where many sellers fail to meet standards and give up. Two options exist here – transparently list that you do not yet have the item in hand, presale, pre-order or the old in the warehouse trick. Or the lie would be saying you have the item, then taking longer to ship, making it seem like you are slower, and it is not actually in transit to you.

Step five: Check over the item and quickly get it to your buyer, and if you have correctly done the maths, you should have made some money out of the sourcing part of the deal.

Step six (bonus): Take a passion and turn it into a flipping business. If you are knowledgeable about a subject, you will have more scope for for-profit and will know the risks worth taking. Once you get a little bit of money, you can eventually make some purchases before selling chances, and these efforts will compound. You could one day do this full time arbitrarily or with in-hand wise investments.

There is something people feel is morally wrong about buying something and selling it for more than you got it for, but then you remember that most shops buy for less than the retail rate at a wholesale price and make profits. The buyers desire for what you are selling and the time you have put into finding something scarce means that the small compounding profits of many five-pound profit sales or one or two few hundred-pound profit sales are justifiable by your efforts. You need to watch out for pitfalls and keep up selling standards like fast shipping and maintain as much honesty as possible.