The Outsider's Guide to Reselling

After wandering around the trading post/auction boards, it's easy to think, 'Hey! Why don't I resell! You just buy stuff for less than it's worth, then sell it for more! That sounds so easy!' Trust me, I felt the same way. Reselling takes a special kind of person, a person with patience, forward thinking, advertising skills, and a different kind of goals. First I'm going to go through a few things for you to think about to see if reselling is for you.

1. Are you patient? Everyone would be a reseller if it was quick. Hard to sell items are, indeed, hard to sell. It can take weeks, months, or longer to sell your item, and when you do, you will make a profit, but you may not be willing to wait that long. It can be frustrating to try for so long to sell an item. And for those of us who are impatient you will find yourself often selling the item for less than you paid. This is why you must be willing to wait long periods of time if you want to be a reseller.

2. You need the neopoints. Hard to sell items are often very expensive. Though you will buy them for less, it may still be quite costly. I found that five hundred thousand neopoints is a good starter point. This may seem like a lot, but to be a reseller you have to be able to buy several items, not just one, so make sure you have enough neopoints before you begin to resell.

3. Reselling takes a different kind of goals. Many people's goals are things like 'get a paint brush / morphing potion' or 'get 200 avatars'. Resellers need to have goals like 'make a one million neopoint profit from a resell' or 'make one hundred million neopoints'. Having a very motivating goal can be a bad thing for a reseller because you will become so fed up with not being able to sell the item you will sell it for less. Reselling is not a way to start earning neopoints, or to get rich quick. It is a means of building your fortune.

If you are now sure you have what it takes to be a reseller, that's great! Now to begging the task of actually reselling. I'm going to go through a step-by-step guide to start you on restocking.

1. You need to know the lingo of reselling. Here are the basics:

k = thousand (such as, 100k = one hundred thousand neopoints)

NP = neopoints

HTS = hard to sell. An item that will take a long time to sell

ETS = easy to sell. An item that will not take a long time to sell.

haggle = when the seller and reseller negotiate over the price, the seller, trying to get a high price, and the reseller, trying for a low price.

firm = If someone says something like '100k firm' it means they will not go any lower than that price.

nty = usually said by resellers. It stands for 'no thank you'. It is a quicker way for resellers to tell people weather or not they will consider there item.

UB = unbuyable. This does not mean, as the name suggests, that it can not be purchased; rather, it can not be purchased in someone's shop (basically, it costs more than 99,999 neopoints).

UFG = up for grabs. Usually refers to an item that is heavily under price, possibly in someone's shop, that is being sold at that moment for less than normal price.

TP = trading post. Usually where items that are unbuyable are bought and sold.

r## = Show the rarity of an item. Replace the #s with those of the item and you have the rarity. This usually tells you about how many of that item there are. It's used by resellers to guard against items that are falsely inflated in price.

These are most of the abbreviations you will see around, but there are always new and more confusing abbreviations for reselling newbies to puzzle over. This is something that will come from experience. If you watch the boards for a little while, you will begin to understand what it all means.

2. Advertise! Always make a board when you are looking to resell. Try to make your board stand out, but avoid overdoing it. Having a board with twenty-seven clapping smilies and the word 'reseller' will not get you as many offers as a well written title. A good example is '---Reseller! - buying with 500k - looking for cheap HTS and ETS-'.

This example is more distinct; it tells a seller how much you can spend, and it says if you will buy HTS items. It is always helpful to say how many neopoints you have to spend so that you don't get offers for things outside your price range; this also helps the sellers not waste your time. Many people don't have quite enough patience to wait several weeks/months to sell an item, so they will specify 'buying ETS.' This means they will only be selling items that sell fairly fast. These items don't make as much profit as very HTS items, but can usually be sold within a few days. Basically, make sure your board looks different, and is informative.

3. The art of haggling. Many people will go lower than the price they first say. The trick to haggling is to start lower than the price you want to buy the item at. The actual price range depends upon the price of the item. Then slowly you and the seller will reach a price you are both happy with.

Okay, we've gone through the basics of how to restock; now I have a few warnings for you to avoid, all of which I have been through.

1. It's too good to be true! Are you REALLY putting an item in your shop that sells for 11.2 million neopoints? You may see thing like this on the trading post boards. Things that are too good to be true are usually too good to be true. Most often, if someone is putting an item worth MILLIONS of neopoints in there shop, it is either ridiculously hard to sell, or it is a trick to make people spend 99,999 neopoints on an item worth less. Make sure the item is worth it before you ever buy it.

2. Inflated items. Something many people lose neopoints on are falsely inflated items. This basically means that, either a person has purchased all of an item and is now selling them for many times the actual price, eventually, though, the price will return to normal and anyone who purchased the item will lose many neopoints. Another way that something might be falsely inflated is if it was just released. For instance, if you look at the neopets new and find a newly released item, the price is usually fairly high. If you look at the same item a week later, the price will usually have dropped considerably. Basically check the rarity of the items you are going to resell to avoid these common pitfalls.

Well, these are some of the basics to help you break into the exiting world of reselling.

Happy selling!