My wife and her friends love Mercari. We won a plush Super Mario for about ¥500 doing those claw machines and managed to sell it on Mercari for about ¥2,000. Crazy!
Has anyone ever done online selling or side hustles in japan? Like gone to second street or hard off and bought things and sold them online ? Looking to make some Christmas money !
11 comments
I doubt sourcing things from Hard Off/Second Street is worth the effort.
You gotta have a real niche in order to do so. I know lots of people that sell things but they found a niche that they can fill that others can’t or haven’t.
The market is pretty saturated with resellers.
Keep in mind that you can be taxed on that income.
The real money is in overseas sales. Especially with the weak yen.
If you frequent the flea markets, you can find stuff very cheaply that you can sell online for a markup. I’d say there’s an information gap between older analog folks and younger online folks.
I wouldn’t plan on quitting my day job, but I know people who make decent money doing this kind of thing, although they tell me margins have gotten worse over the past couple of years.
My husband buys, sells, and collects rare plants. He does most of his buying and selling online. It’s an expensive hobby that pays off when the value of some of the plants go up. He made enough money from selling plants last year to buy a new car.
Nope, nobody, ever, you are the first.
How much was the shipping fee though?
Initials costs 500 yen
Mercari’s commission 200 yen
Shipping fee??
Packaging costs? (Often reusable materials, but could still require stuff like plastic bags, special envelopes, dedicated cardboard boxes, etc)
Money withdrawal commission – fixed 200 yen per transaction.
Keep in mind that even though expensive purchases happen at Mercari, it’s a very popular platform for people with low income. You might get 50 likes for a sold out, rare item, but nobody will still buy it at a reasonable price: they’re all waiting for a bargain.
Also crane game prizes tend to sell at a high price only while they are recently released. The more time passes the cheaper they get.
People willing to sell a certain item cheaply might set the trend and affect the market price as both the sellers and buyers check the market price.
So somebody selling the same product too cheaply can f*ck you up.
It’s better to be very careful and do enough research before banking on selling stuff there as it can be profitable or lead to a loss.
People spending big money shopping at Amazon and Mercari users are 2 different target audiences for example.
My best friend sells figures on mecari. He doesn’t suggest doing that for money he just wants to get back some coins to go back to the Game Center.
He also laughed at the hard off suggestion
“it would make more sense to buy off mecari and resell on mecari”
Many moons ago, I made a bundle buying Crazy Climber for PSX for 1500 yen here and selling it on eBay for $80-100. I listed one a month. It was working well until someone with no business sense decided to get in on the action and listed 5 at a time or so. Drove the prices down to about $25.
There are millions of people doing this on Mercari.
Hell I’ve seen people part out Costco kitchen paper and sell individual rolls for like ¥200.
Remember it’s a rush to the bottom. There’s someone out there willing to do all the legwork and only make ¥50 from each transaction.