When I first signed up with amazon (2012), books were an easy money maker. I could walk into any thrift store, library book store, garage sale, etc and find books to flip. All that was needed was a barcode scanner and a few bucks. But once I got comfortable with retail arbitrage and then wholesale, I never looked at another book for the next twelve years. But since getting back into ebay at the start of this year, I will grab a book (or a stack) here and there. I generally look for very niche subjects and books that likely had a fairly low printing run. Books about building sailboats or raising goats or Pennsylvania stoneware. In other words, I don't really focus on volume, but rather, high ASP. Both models can work (and you can certainly make more money playing the volume game), but I just prefer the higher profit niche stuff.

@Jerry Wilson Britni sources mainly clothing. She understands brands and style factors much better than I do, but I help out when I spot something interesting. The problem that we have with clothing is that we live in a fairly rural area, so we really don't see a lot of youtuber bolo brands around here. If we lived in a more cosmopolitan/metro area, I'm sure that we'd see much more of that stuff, but we make do the best we can with what we've got. Currently, our cogs on clothing is about $3.40. Our profit per item sold is $18.51. And our average sell through is 62 days. My background is in antiques and collectibles. I like to think that I have an eye for quality, so I try to gravitate toward nicer things. Our average cogs on these types of goods is $18.99. Our profit per item is $40.77. And our average sell through is 40 days. The third general category that I watch out for is household/hba. Everything from toasters to eyeshadow. New in the box is best, but I'll buy used all day if the demand is there. Our average cogs is $6.82. The average profit per item is $22.64. And the average sell through is 27 days. Adding up total profits for the year so far, antiques/collectibles is easily our most profitable category (double that of clothing/accessories) but the cost of goods is much higher and the roi is much lower. Clothing has the overall best cogs and the greatest return on investment, but it is our slowest mover. Because it is so plentiful, we do buy and sell quite a bit of it. Because of this, our overall profits are nearly double that of household/hba. Household goods sit comfortably in the middle in terms of cogs and roi, but they are currently our smallest earner in terms of overall profits. The smaller earnings are due to fewer good opportunities. I would easily focus all of my attention on this category if I thought I could get away with it. I can share my store if you'd like to take a look. Not sure if that is frowned upon in this forum.

@Jerry Wilson Our cost of goods for clothing is likely lower for two reasons. One, we have a bin store in our tiny town. There is a large goodwill office building and transfer station here, so they just popped a bin store in there last year. Twenty people is a good sized crowd. It's often closer to ten people. I'm not sure why they even keep it open, since it probably loses money. That said, we haven't been there in at least a month because...two, we do buy outs. We don't really advertise, but we have good luck with stumbling upon opportunity. We have bought out several closets this year and our cost of goods is lower than the bins. Much of what we source this way ends up being donated, but a good chunk is usually decent ASP vintage stuff. Just google "mr mellon ebay". Click the link and scroll all the way to the bottom and click the "see all" button. I like this view much better than the store view.

I didn't even know that this was possible. So you can sell an item, but then the item is still available for sale until the first buyer pays? Am I understanding this correctly?

@Joann Defelici thank you. That's interesting, and I suppose it is a good policy for sellers. I guess I've just never had it happen.

@Jerry Wilson This might be the guy (Thrift Boss). If not, it's a very similar strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-cseWb1QqU&t=700s

Great job Richard! Around here, our ebay sales routinely crush our Poshmark and Mercari sales. It's never even been close. But I often hear about people that do very well on the other platforms. Congrats all around to those who do. Because I know it's possible, maybe I should look into how to boost sales on the other platforms.

I practically spoon-feed discounts to potential buyers on ebay...I would have to imagine that has something to do with it.