How to Start a Flipping Business

Reselling 101

By RC Staff

19 December 2023

Hey, got your New Year’s Resolution ready? Yeah, yeah, it’s still December, but it feels like it was June just a few weeks ago. Time flies, and there’s no better time to prepare for the future than right now. Why not make starting a reselling business your goal for 2024? It’s quite a bit easier than you might be thinking, and the potential profits are exceptional. If you’re ready to start making your own money next year, keep reading.

Why start a resell business?

Well, we’re getting pretty deep into December. Now’s the time of year where your wallet really takes a beating. Presents are one thing, but why is that every grocery trip feels like torture when you see the receipt?

The point is, you might be realizing you want to make more money in 2024. That’s a pretty natural feeling, but now’s a great time to start planning things out. Are you gonna ask for a raise? Are you going to get a job? Gross!

Instead of digging deeper into the 9 to 5 slog, it’s time to be your own boss and make your own money. Reselling is one the easiest ways to make tons of profit. The best part? You don’t need any experience, know-how, or even much money.

Over the past year, we’ve covered tons of profitable flips. If you’ve been following our blog, you might have seen our articles on stuff like the M.A.D.1 RED (potential profit: $7,000), Paul McCartney’s 7″ Singles Box (potential profit: $1,300), or Hummer EV (potential profit: $70,000).

This has been an incredible year for resellers, and they’ve been raking it in month after month. If you’re ready to cut out your slice of the pie, we’ve got you covered.

What do you need to start a resell business?

Good question! Enthusiasm is great, but proactive planning is better. For the most part you don’t need much to start a reselling business. Actually, flipping is pretty easy, or else most resellers wouldn’t bother with it.

There are some basics you’ll want to figure out before you start:

Budget

So yes, you dont need a lot of money and time, but you do need some. Before getting started, you’ll want to budget out both your time and your money.

Money is pretty straightforward. If you follow our blog, you’ll see we post a wide range of items that retail from under $10 to over $1,000. Realistically, you don’t need a ton of money to be an effective reseller. Around $1,000 is great, but even a little extra money can work.

What is important is that the money you use for reselling needs to be something you can risk. While we endeavor to post the most profitable items, sometimes stuff flops. You shouldn’t be tying up your mortgage payments going after sports cards, so be smart.

Time is a bit trickier. A lot of the time, buying a hyped item at retail requires flexibility. You need to be ready and willing to make a purchase at any moment, day or night. If you’re working a day job, especially one that keeps you away from your phone, this might be harder.

Of course, there are flips that posted days in advance so you can have time to prepare. With the proliferation of mobile phones and online shopping, it’s easier than ever for a reseller to buy up products anytime and anywhere.

Accounts

The next step will be start setting up accounts so you can actually resell the stuff you buy. If you already have an eBay, Amazon, Etsy or Mercari account, this makes things easier.

Some resellers prefer to stick exclusively to one platform, while others will list items in as many places as possible. Most prefer eBay.

It’s free to set up an account for most platforms, and if you’re just getting started don’t worry about paying for premium upgrades or anything fancy.

We have in-depth guides for creating accounts and making listings published on our site. Check out our guide on eBay here, and our guide to Amazon and Amazon FBA here.

Products

And now for the fun part. Obviously if you want to succeed as a reseller, you’re going to need to actually buy some products in the first place.

Reselling works just like any other business. You stock items, you sell items, you make a profit. With reselling, you get to skip the boring parts like designing and building a product. Instead you just sell someone else’s hard work and pocket the change.

But what products? Another good question.

What are the best products to resell?

There’s a whole wild world of items out there, and most of them don’t resell. You may already have some preconceived notions about the items that do. Maybe you think it’s only shoes and designer clothes that are worth flipping, or maybe you think most items are out of your price range.

And while there is some truth to that, you might be surprised by what actually ends up being profitable. The best items to resell are going to change depending on your budget, experience and connections, and time.

We’ve written a full guide you can check out here, but here’s the short version:

Profit

First things first when it comes to reselling; you need to secure a profit. Pretty much everything we’ve posted over the last year has been profitable one way or another.

At it’s simplest, securing profitable items just means buying it at a lower price than it resells for. That could be because you’re picking up a hyped item at retail price, or getting something off a price error or discount and flipping it for under retail, but still more than you paid for.

Of course there’s more to it than that, but checking for profitability should be your first step when sourcing a product.

Cost

This is more subjective. The amount that you’re comfortable spending is of course, up to you. That’s why we stressed the importance of making a budget earlier. Flying by the seat of your pants is always fun, but it’s smart to set aside money for your flipping business.

Keep in mind that some flips can take several weeks, or even months to come to fruition. You may have to have your money tied up in a single item for some time. Is that something you’re comfortable with? And how much money are you okay with risking.

Let’s look at a specific example. Back in 2021, the MetaZoo 1st Edition Kickstarter was finally made available. At $99 a box, many RC Elite members got in on this. After about a week, the boxes started to resell for $500.

By any metric, this was a great flip. Many resellers decided to cash out then, but things didn’t stop there. The sellers that elected to hold on to their boxes until the end of the year were in for a surprise.

MetaZoo Kickstarter boxes that retailed for $99 in March were reselling for nearly $10,000 in October. Yes, seriously.

The point is that sometimes stuff takes a while. Could you hang onto these boxes for 6+ months? What if it was more than $100, like $1,000? This is the kind of thing you’ll need to figure out yourself. Again, make a budget.

Hobbies and Interests

Yes, you can leverage the things you like to make a profit as a reseller. Actually, many people who resell either as a full-time job or just a side hustle got their start as hobbyists.

Think about communities like trading cards or sneaker collectors. Buying and selling is practically ingrained into the hobby, and learning the values of items and which drops to go after is just part of the game.

Over time these skills can be applied to other fields. If you have any particular interests like sports, video games, vintage collecting, or really anything you can think of that revolves around physical goods, chances are there’s an opportunity to make a profit reselling.

Sourcing products to resell

Once you have a general idea of what’s worth selling and you’ve got the basic steps ready for your reselling business, it’s time to actually start sourcing products.

But how? If you follow resellers on Twitter and other social media, this seems stupid easy. Every day new flips are getting posted and constant profits are rolling in, but if you actually start hunting for these products yourself it doesn’t seem that easy.

The truth is that reselling can be pretty damn hard if you’re just getting started. We’ve talked a lot already about how anyone can do it and it takes no experience, and that’s all true. But without any idea of where you can actually source profitable items to resell, it’s all too easy to get stuck with a brick.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Joining an experienced network of resellers is a cheat code to developing the resell know how that results in profit.

RC Elite is the premier opportunity for anyone looking to get started as a reseller, or even experienced resellers to find new items. Joining gives you access to several advantages:

For one, you’ll have early notifications when profitable items come in stock, and a heads up before the biggest drops.

This alone essentially pays for a membership. As long as you make the effort to pick up one or two profitable flips a month, you’re making a profit. And spoiler alert, there’s a lot more than than one or two items posted in a month.

You’ll also get access to a community of other resellers, hustlers, business owners, and other people just generally looking to make a buck. Want to learn how to get your cards graded? We got that. Need advice on the best way to ship an Xbox? Yup. Looking to start investing in real estate? Easy.

For a serious reseller, or even the unserious ones, this is the only way to go. Make your New Year’s Resolution count, and join RC Elite.