1023 – Advanced shopping online: Tom talks Ebay

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

🔹 Episode Theme: Why eBay Still Matters in 2025
Tom shares his extensive experience with eBay and highlights several powerful ways it can be used today, both for making money and saving money.
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💼 Main Business Uses of eBay
1. Lead Generation
o Tom recounts how a buyer who purchased a $2 book later bought two $1,000 speaking systems.
o Lesson: eBay can bring in valuable leads even from low-cost products.
2. Direct Cash Flow
o Tom used to earn $7,000/month as a PowerSeller.
o It’s a good way to clear out old inventory or household items while building a customer base.
3. Success Stories from Others
o A local ex-Marine made $20K/month selling:
 Used cell phones (bought for $10, sold for ~$120)
 Doll heads (made for $0.10 each, sold for $10)
o A single mom made $1,100/week by flipping yard sale items on eBay.
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🛍️ Product Sourcing & Selling Tips
• You can’t sell digital products unless delivered physically (e.g., on thumb drives).
• Great for niche hobbies and handmade items (like doll parts or collectible toys).
• Use eBay to practice selling before diving into bigger businesses.
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💰 Saving Money with eBay
• Tom often buys discounted gear like:
o Discontinued tennis shoes ($30 instead of $90)
o Multi-pocket tactical vests ($64 vs. $150+)
• Broader marketplace than Facebook — global selection and often better prices.
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🧠 Pro Tips & Tools
• Advanced Search (Completed Listings Only):
o Shows what items actually sold for in last 90 days.
o Helps set pricing or determine what’s worth buying.
• Never Bid Directly:
o Use BidNapper ($8/month) to "snipe" at the last second.
o Saves money by avoiding bidding wars.
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🧰 Final Takeaways
• eBay is still highly relevant — for:
o Generating leads
o Producing cash flow
o Getting great deals
o Flipping items for profit
• It’s a practical entry point into e-commerce for entrepreneurs at any level.
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🎓 Resources Mentioned
• Automation eBook v3.0 (Tom's free resource)
• Mentor Program: GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
• Online School: IMTCVA.org — licensed distance learning in digital marketing

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Episode 1023 - Ebay
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1023 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today I'm going to surprise you and talk about something. You think, oh wow, that's not very modern. And that's called eBay. Well, maybe you should think twice about that when I tell you all the stuff you can do with it. Hope you didn't miss episode 1022. That was security when you're working from home and a lot of little tips and tricks there. And there's tons of stuff on this, but if you're going to work at home, you got to stay safe for you and your family. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 1022. All right. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book. Version 3.0 is out now. So make sure you grab the latest copy and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and IMTCVA.org is my school.

[00:01:21] All right, let's talk about eBay. I used to be a power seller on eBay. We used to do about $7,000 a month when we were actively doing eBay, but I still use eBay for lots of things now. And I'm recommending that you do too, because there's lots of advantages to it. And the first one I want to tell you about is called lead Generation. And you say, well, you know, there's just cheap crap all over, but yeah, there's a lot of cheap crap, but there's billions and billions of of good stuff things on there too, including potentially your products and services.

[00:02:00] So let me mention, uh, one thing that happened to me because I almost made the mistake of quitting eBay. And I was like, oh, man, somebody just bought to wake him up, book a 24, 95 brand new book for $2 and and asked me to autograph it for him. And I'm thinking, oh my God, this is not worth it. I'm crying to myself. And and then a week later that that guy bought two of my thousand dollar speaking systems. Nobody on earth buys to. There's less than than 30 and 20. I don't know how many years it's been out. Nobody has bought more than one. All right. So that was my two by four to the head saying, hey, this is lead generation. That's what I'm doing this for now. There was a time when you could they had a special like, like program that would allow you to sell digital products, but it fizzled quickly. It never worked right. And so now you cannot sell digital products unless they're in a physical form. So that means you can sell ebooks, you can sell art, you can sell audio, you can sell software, but it has to be delivered physically. And that's nothing more than the inexpensive thumb drives. You can even get them customized with your company name on them. So it used to be we'd send DVDs or CDs, but now it's thumb drives if you want to do that.

[00:03:34] So that's lead generation. Now direct cash flow is another big advantage. Like I said, we were doing $7,000 a month in cash flow with that. Yeah. There's a lot of, you know, less profitable prices that we get for stuff. But we were bringing tons of people into my database that went on to buy other stuff, and my mentor program and school and all kinds of stuff. Say, that's originally how they heard of us. So direct cash flow can be, uh, can be great, uh, on eBay. And you can sell your junk out of your basement just to get the hang of it. And let me tell you a story about the guy that taught me. See, they have a program where people, some even people close to you, put their name in the hat. That for pay. They will teach you all the ins and outs of how to do eBay. All right. And and there's lots of little details for sure. So I found this guy locally. It was an ex-Marine and he said, yeah, I'll come teach you. And he says, I do about $20,000 a month. And I'm thinking, uh, you know, I'd like to see the proof of that. And so he came over and he brought his sales for the previous month, and it was a stack of papers. Um, I don't know, 2 or 3 in thick.

[00:04:57] And I said, what in the heck are you selling? And you'll be surprised at the answer. He was selling used cell phones and doll heads. I'm thinking, oh, is this guy weirdo or what? This marine selling doll heads. He said, no, no. Let me. Let me explain to you. So I said, where are you getting all these cell phones? And he had this giant box filled up the whole back seat of his car with used cell phones, with cell phones and chargers and all kinds of stuff. He said, I went down to all the pawn shops in the area, and I asked them, what are the the products that they take, but it's a hassle and they can't get rid of them easily and so forth. And they said, oh, cell phones. He says, we can't tell what service they're on. The chargers, this, that and the other. He said, how about, you know, I'll come around once a month and take all, you know, how much will you charge me for each one if I come in and take them off your hands. And they just wanted to get rid of them. Pawn shops normally, you know, really rack you Ten bucks. You take them all. All you can take. So. So he would go around and then he'd figure out what service they were on. And and I asked him why would somebody buy a used cell phone. He said, well, they didn't buy the insurance when they got the regular cell phone and they broke it or lost it, and now they're desperate.

[00:06:21] I said, well, how much you get for him? He says, I get about $120 a piece with charger. He was making $110 profit for every cell phone that he got for ten bucks from, from the pawn shop. All right. And then I said, okay, all right. That makes sense to me. But the doll heads come on, man, we doll heads. And he showed me all these sales of doll heads. And he said, yeah, I have these molds. You know, the doll industry is apparently big making, you know, homemade dolls. And and that's one thing you find on eBay. There's a billion different Hobbies and things and all kinds of stuff that goes on. And so he says, I have these molds and it cost me about $0.10. Uh, well, the molds make four doll heads each, and each doll head uses about $0.10 worth of rubber. So he has $0.40 in this mold and makes four doll heads that he gets $10 apiece for. And people sometimes buy 810 at a time. So he's just cleaning up doll heads. All right. So. So there you go. There's, uh, any kind of hobby. There's ways to make money with it. With eBay. And like I said, you can clean out the junk in your basement. I'm going to show you at the end of this, or tell you a really cool thing that you can find out how much stuff is worth.

[00:07:49] In fact, there's another story. A friend of mine, Lynn Jolley. I haven't talked to her for years, but she would take 80 to 100 bucks every Saturday morning and go to yard sales. And then she would see something, and then she would go on her phone and look at eBay how much it was selling for. Like maybe a Tonka truck, you know, those nice quality metal trucks. And maybe it was selling for five bucks at the yard sale, and it's selling for 50 on eBay. All right. So she would buy it. But if she saw something that was really nice, but they were asking too much money and it was selling for less on eBay. She wouldn't buy it. She was clearing as a single mom, like 11, netting $1,100 a week with one day going to yard sales on Saturday the rest of the week, pictures and descriptions and and listings on eBay, and shipping stuff out 1100 bucks a week. And that was years ago. So. But people are still doing it to this day. All right. I had a guy. I gave him a freezer and for free because I just needed the space and it was icing up on me. And I told him it freezes like crazy, but it's icing up. He came over. He had this whole truck and trailer full of stuff that he had gotten for free.

[00:09:06] Fix it up. A lot of times he sells on Facebook Marketplace the big stuff. But the other stuff he sells on eBay. All right. So. So there you go. Now other things, discount purchases. I buy a lot of stuff. Now, a lot of you have heard me talk about buying a lot of stuff on Facebook and getting bargains like crazy, but I also buy stuff on eBay. In fact, I worked out this morning with a pair of New Balance 786 brand new tennis shoes. Well, that's a discontinued model. But you know, my feet are weird and I know if something fits, I always try to buy it, keep buying it. And it said pre-owned, but it looked gorgeous. The pictures. And I said, are these the real pictures? Yeah. And so it was brand new when I got them and I got them for 30 bucks, but they go for 65 to 90 and you can't get that model anyway. You got to go to the next model that replaced it. So I buy all kinds of stuff on eBay. And I got to wait for it to be shipped. I know we got several packages today as stuff, so so you can make discount purchases just like Facebook Marketplace, but they usually ship it to you. But you do have a bigger marketplace to pick from because it's worldwide. Yeah. Okay. Oh. The vest. A lot of you who don't see me that often, but when you see me wearing a vest, I have this multi pocket vest where I carry trauma shears and and tourniquets and, you know, I'm a self-defense pretty much expert and, you know, so I carry all kinds of stuff.

[00:10:42] And in my vest and the vest I liked was $150, $170 at places. I got it for brand new 65 bucks. No, actually, I'm looking here, $64. All right. Brand new. In fact, I was in Walmart yesterday and some photographer came up to me and says, oh, man, he and his wife were there. Oh, man, I was looking at your vest. I'm just. I gotta get one of them. And I said, hey, go to eBay. And I told him, here, look at the label on it. So. So, yeah, you get to save a lot of money, uh, buying stuff there. Okay, now, this cool thing I want to tell you about is called advanced search. And so anything you're either looking for or you're trying to sell, this is a handy thing. It's totally free. It's not an extra tool. It's just the advanced search of eBay. And so you click advanced Search. It's usually on on desktop. It's right next to the end of the search box. And then you click the box. It says completed listings only, completed listings only. And then you search for whatever you were interested in. So it brings up all the searches in the last 90 days for that particular item, and it tells you how much it was listed for.

[00:12:06] And if it's sold, if it's sold, the amount is in green that it's sold for. And they can't fudge this. I mean, this is going through eBay. So whatever the the final bid was, that's what it sold for. So you can see oh man. Uh, if you're trying to sell something you see oh this description got a much higher price for this product. So I'm going to borrow this description and just change it a little bit for me. And then it gives you more bargaining power. If you're buying you can say hey listen there's eight of them that's sold for like $26 and you're asking $48. Are you crazy? And you can show them and and then you can put a bid in much lower. Say, another trick on eBay is when you want to buy something, never, ever, ever bid on it. All you're doing is raising up and creating competitions for people to jump in and and raise the price of the thing. So I use a service called Bid Napper. I think it's like $8 a month, but it has saved me thousands of dollars over the years because you tell at the auction number and you tell it the maximum you're willing to pay. And it waits to the last possible electronic second and puts your bid in. And I win all the time stuff because I'm not in there creating competition for the whole time.

[00:13:35] Bidding and bidding and bidding. It doesn't throw my bid in until the end. Now, do I get them all? No. But if I was willing to pay up to a certain amount and nobody else was, I'll win that auction. See? So that's called bid Napper. So there's all kinds of things you can do and just, just basically price research if you're, if anything you're you're thinking about buying. I go right there and do some price research with that advanced search and see what are they actually going for? And of course there's new and there's used. You've got to consider that factor and what kind of shape whatever you're looking for is in. But I'll tell you what. It's, uh, it's still part of my life after all these years. So. So there you go. There's eBay. All right, so if you want one on, one training on all this stuff, greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and if you're in my mentor program, you get a scholarship to my school, the only licensed, dedicated internet and digital marketing school in the country, probably the world at IMTCVA.org and it's licensed, operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia because it's distance learning and quality distance learning, I might add, during a distance learning. So there you go. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Let's see you on eBay. Catch you later.