The reselling course
Everything that decides whether a reselling business works
38 guides in 8 parts, written to be read in order. It starts where profit is actually decided — at purchase — and works forward through margin, listings, shipping, disputes, growth, and the compliance questions most sellers meet too late. Each part assumes the one before it.
Start at part one or jump to any part below
Not sure where to start? Eight questions, three minutes: find out whether capital, supply, or time is the thing actually holding you back.
The running example
The Halstead lot
One hundred and eighty items bought for $260 at a house clearance in March: around 120 paperbacks, 30 pieces of kitchenware, twenty-two LPs, two mid-century table lamps, and a boxed film camera.
It is followed through every part of this course — valued, listed, shipped, disputed, aged, and finally accounted for — so each idea lands on the same pile of stock rather than on a fresh hypothetical.
Part 01
Foundations
What a reselling business actually is, and the first decision that constrains every other one: where you sell.
03 guides · 39 min
By the end of this part you can
- Judge whether a category can support a business before committing money to it.
- Compare categories on margin per handling hour rather than on headline margin.
- Choose a first sales channel from evidence about your own inventory rather than from popularity.
- Recognise the point at which a second channel adds profit rather than only work.
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01 Getting started
How to Start a Reselling Business
What actually decides whether a reselling business works: sourcing, pricing, listing, and the records worth keeping from your very first item onward.
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02 Getting started
Choosing What to Sell
How to pick a reselling category from evidence rather than enthusiasm: testing demand, supply, margin per handling hour, and the traits that make a category workable.
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03 Channel strategy
Choosing Where to Sell
How to pick marketplaces, when a second channel is worth the work, and why your own storefront usually comes later rather than first.
Part 02
Sourcing and inventory
Profit is decided at purchase. Valuing stock before you buy it, handling bulk lots, spotting fakes, and clearing what you got wrong.
05 guides · 61 min
By the end of this part you can
- Choose sourcing channels on the trade-off between price, volume, and your own time.
- Set a maximum bid backwards from realistic net proceeds instead of from hope.
- Value a bulk lot you cannot itemise, and price in the share that will never sell.
- Run a repeatable authenticity check before money changes hands.
- Identify and clear aged stock on a schedule rather than on impulse.
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04 Sourcing
Where to Source Inventory
The realistic supply channels for resellers — charity shops to estate sales to liquidation and consignment — what each costs in time and money, and how to turn one-off finds into repeatable supply.
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05 Sourcing
Valuing Inventory Before You Buy It
How to value stock before you commit: sold comparables, sell-through, handling cost, and the buy-price discipline that decides whether a deal works.
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06 Sourcing
Buying Collections and Job Lots
How to value a collection or job lot before you commit: sampling, sell-through, the real cost of handling, and the lots that quietly lose money.
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07 Sourcing
Authentication and Counterfeit Risk
How resellers assess authenticity, avoid counterfeit stock, and handle a rights-holder claim without losing an account. Practical diligence, not legal advice.
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08 Sourcing
Dead Stock and Aged Inventory
How to find, age, and clear inventory that will not sell, and recover the capital, shelf space, and attention it has been quietly consuming.
Part 03
Money and margin
Fees, pricing, cost of goods, and cash flow — the arithmetic that decides whether a category is a business or an expensive hobby.
05 guides · 61 min
By the end of this part you can
- Break a marketplace payout into its component deductions and predict it before it lands.
- Price from sold data and hold a floor stated in currency rather than percentage.
- Track cost per item so that profit by category becomes visible.
- Model your cash conversion cycle and see the trough coming.
- Run the business on turns and return on capital rather than on revenue.
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09 Money
Marketplace Fees Explained
The structure of marketplace fees, from commission and payment processing to listing and ad costs, and the deductions sellers forget to price in.
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10 Money
Pricing Strategy for Resellers
How to research what items actually sell for, set a price that protects margin, and reprice without training buyers to wait for a discount.
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11 Money
Inventory Accounting and Cost of Goods Sold
How to get cost per item right: what belongs in cost, tracking COGS, valuing stock at year end, and the records that make true margin knowable.
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12 Money
Cash Flow for Resellers
Why profitable resellers still run out of money: payout lag, stock as trapped capital, the seasonal trough, and how to model your cash before it bites.
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13 Money
The Numbers That Run the Business
Sell-through, inventory turns, return on capital, margin per hour, and payout accuracy — which reselling numbers change decisions, how to calculate them, and how often to look.
Part 04
Listing quality
Getting found, earning the click, describing an item so accurately nobody sends it back, and diagnosing the ones that still will not sell.
06 guides · 69 min
By the end of this part you can
- Clean, test, and prepare stock without destroying the value you are preparing.
- Write titles in buyer vocabulary that survive marketplace search.
- Complete structured attributes so that filters cannot exclude you.
- Grade and describe condition accurately enough to make not-as-described claims rare.
- Diagnose a stalled listing as a traffic, click, or conversion problem and fix only that.
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14 Listing quality
Cleaning, Testing, and Preparing Items
The work between buying an item and listing it — what cleaning is worth, how to test what you cannot verify, and when a repair pays for itself.
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15 Listing quality
Writing Listing Titles and Keywords Buyers Search
How marketplace search actually reads a title, which keywords earn their place, and the title habits that quietly cost resellers visibility.
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16 Listing quality
Item Specifics and Structured Data
Why structured listing fields decide whether buyers ever see your item, how to complete them properly, and how to keep them consistent across channels.
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17 Listing quality
Product Photography for Resellers
A repeatable photography setup for resellers: lighting, background, shot lists, and how to shoot flaws so they prevent disputes instead of causing them.
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18 Listing quality
Grading and Describing Condition
How to grade used items consistently and write descriptions that prevent not-as-described disputes rather than inviting them, including flaw photography.
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19 Listing quality
When Listings Do Not Sell
A diagnostic method for listings that get no sales: separating a traffic problem from a conversion problem, and fixing the cheapest causes first.
Part 05
Shipping and fulfilment
Postage as a pricing decision, packing that survives the network, crossing borders, and what to do when a parcel goes missing.
04 guides · 46 min
By the end of this part you can
- Price delivery against volumetric weight and carrier bands rather than guessing.
- Pack fragile goods to survive an automated network, with evidence that supports a claim.
- Decide whether international selling suits your categories, and open destinations deliberately.
- Run a carrier claim that succeeds while keeping the buyer resolved separately.
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20 Fulfilment
Shipping Costs and Postage Strategy
How to price delivery without losing margin: volumetric weight, packaging that changes the band, free shipping maths, and tracking that pays for itself.
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21 Fulfilment
Packing Fragile and High-Value Items
How to pack fragile and high-value items so they survive transit: materials, void fill, double-boxing, and the evidence that protects a claim.
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22 Fulfilment
International Selling and Customs
How cross-border selling works for resellers: declarations, duties and import charges, restricted goods, and which destinations to open first.
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23 Fulfilment
Lost, Damaged, and Undelivered Parcels
What to do when a parcel is lost, damaged, or never arrives: resolving the buyer first, evidencing a carrier claim, and preventing the next one.
Part 06
Service, standing, and systems
Disputes, fraud, account health, and the record structure — SKUs, storage, cross-listing — that stops a growing inventory from breaking under its own weight.
06 guides · 70 min
By the end of this part you can
- Respond to a dispute in the way most likely to close it without escalation.
- Read your seller metrics for direction rather than waiting for a threshold breach.
- Recognise the common seller-targeted scams and keep evidence before a dispute exists.
- Design a SKU and storage scheme that still works at ten times the stock.
- Cross-list across channels without overselling the same unit twice.
- Move inventory off spreadsheets without losing history or creating duplicates.
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24 Operations
Handling Returns and Buyer Disputes
How to handle returns and buyer disputes so they cost less: responding first, when to accept, when to contest, and removing the repeat causes.
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25 Operations
Seller Account Health
What seller metrics measure, how standing affects visibility and fees, the habits that quietly damage an account, and what to do if you are restricted.
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26 Operations
Fraud, Scams, and Payment Risk
The scams that specifically target sellers, why payment holds and chargebacks exist, and the evidence habits that make you a poor target without making you hostile to real buyers.
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27 Systems
SKUs, Labelling, and Finding It Again
Designing identifiers that survive growth, labelling stock so it can be found in seconds, and organising storage by location rather than by category.
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28 Systems
Cross-Listing Without Overselling
Listing one item on several marketplaces multiplies your exposure and your risk of selling it twice. How quantity, delisting, and reconciliation actually work, and where manual systems break.
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29 Systems
Migrating Off Spreadsheets
When a spreadsheet stops being enough, what to fix before you move, and how to migrate inventory without losing history or creating duplicates.
Part 07
Demand and growth
Buying ahead of the season, discounting without destroying margin, turning transactions into returning buyers, and raising throughput without raising hours in proportion.
05 guides · 58 min
By the end of this part you can
- Measure your own seasonality and buy counter-seasonally with an exit date set in advance.
- Judge a promotion on profit rather than on units.
- Build the specialisation and service habits that produce returning buyers.
- Find the listing bottleneck and raise throughput by batching before automating.
- Judge honestly whether an owned storefront is worth the traffic it demands.
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30 Growth
Seasonality and Demand Planning
How to measure your own demand pattern, buy counter-seasonally, fund the peak, and avoid the post-season write-down. A planning method for resellers.
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31 Growth
Promotions and Discount Strategy
When a discount earns its cost and when it simply gives away margin: promotion types, measuring real lift, and avoiding a permanent sale.
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32 Growth
Repeat Buyers and Seller Brand
How resellers build a following on marketplaces where buyers remember the platform rather than the seller, and why repeat buyers cost nothing to acquire.
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33 Growth
Scaling Throughput Without Scaling Hours
Why listing is the bottleneck in most reselling businesses, how batching and workflow stations raise throughput, and when to template, automate, or hire.
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34 Growth
Driving Traffic to Your Own Store
A marketplace supplies demand; your own store does not. How resellers earn traffic through search, email, and social — and how to judge whether it is worth the effort.
Part 08
Business, compliance, and what comes next
Structure, registration, consumption tax, and risk — the questions worth understanding before you take them to an accountant or a broker — and the decision about whether this becomes your income.
04 guides · 45 min
By the end of this part you can
- Recognise when selling has become a business, and what tends to follow from that.
- Keep records in a form that survives a question from a tax authority.
- Name the exposures a reselling business carries, including the one no policy covers.
- Arrive at an accountant with specific questions rather than a shoebox.
- Test whether the business could replace an income before betting on the answer.
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35 Compliance
Business Structure and Registration
Hobby or business, sole trader or company, what registration involves and which records to keep from day one. The questions worth taking to an accountant.
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36 Compliance
Sales Tax and VAT for Resellers
How sales tax and VAT work for resellers: what marketplaces collect on your behalf, what remains yours to handle, and the records to keep.
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37 Compliance
Insurance and Business Risk
The risks a reselling business carries that nobody mentions — stock at home, product liability, platform dependence — and how to think about covering them.
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38 Career
Going Full Time
What it actually takes to replace an income with reselling — the profit-per-hour test, the costs a salary was hiding, and why the decision is usually made too early.
Course files
Take these with you
Free, no sign-up, no email. Open formats you can edit — spreadsheets and plain text, not locked PDFs.
- CSV Inventory and COGS tracker
One row per unit, with the allocation and margin formulas already written. Opens in any spreadsheet.
Explained in this part of the course
- CSV Bid ceiling worksheet
The number to stop bidding at, worked out before you are standing in the room.
Explained in this part of the course
- Checklist Listing shot list
The fixed order of shots that keeps photography fast enough to sustain and stops you missing the one that prevents a dispute.
Explained in this part of the course
- Checklist Packing and dispatch checklist
Including the photograph before sealing — the only evidence of adequate packing, and it can only be created once.
Explained in this part of the course
- Templates First-reply templates for disputes
Five scenarios, each with the wording and the reason it works. The first reply decides most outcomes.
Explained in this part of the course
- Worksheet Monthly review worksheet
Half an hour a month on standing, ageing, and cash — early enough to act, rather than after the warning email.
Explained in this part of the course
Shorter reads
The course covers each subject end to end. For a single question answered quickly, the blog goes deep on individual problems, and the free calculators handle the arithmetic — fees, margin, and what a sale actually nets after everything comes out of it.
Start with 25 items. Stay for 25,000.
Free for 25 items · No card · Cancel from your account page.