How to make money on auctions

The internet version of this business is usually:

buy cheap → sell expensive → profit.

Technically correct. Also technically a complete finance degree.

The real process is longer, and almost all of the money is made before you start bidding.

First: decide what you're actually buying

Auction websites contain everything. MacBooks, cars, cameras, drills, watches, office furniture, forklifts and machines that look like they were designed to enrich whoever sells replacement parts for them.

Do not interpret this as permission to become an expert in everything by Friday.

Pick a category you understand. Knowledge is useful because auctions contain incomplete information, bad photos, vague descriptions and occasionally the magnificent phrase “untested.”

If you know Apple products, start with Apple products. If you've spent years working with cars, cameras, tools or industrial equipment, use that advantage instead. The point is to choose something where you can notice details that another bidder might miss.

Also decide your budget and your area.

And by budget, I mean your actual money. Not “€500 for the bid and then we'll deal with the other €230 somehow.”

Fees exist. VAT exists. Transport exists. Repairs exist. Taxes exist. Unfortunately all of these people would also like to participate in your deal.

Your location matters for the same reason. A bargain on the other side of the country can stop being a bargain once you add fuel, train tickets, a rental van or an entire day spent collecting it.

Now we can source.

Sourcing does not mean scrolling

This is the most important part.

Let's say you find a MacBook Pro. 16 GB RAM. Current bid: €300.

Great.

We know almost nothing.

Which year? Which chip? Which size? How much storage? German keyboard? Charger? Battery condition? Any damage? Activation lock? Tested? What exactly does the auction house say about it?

Until you know what the product is, you cannot know what it is worth.

So identify it properly first. Auction descriptions are often incomplete, so use the photos, model numbers, serial information where appropriate and whatever other clues are available to narrow down the exact configuration.

Then leave the auction website and research the resale market.

Check eBay sold listings. Check Kleinanzeigen. Check other relevant marketplaces. If the exact product is still sold new, check retail prices as well.

And please do not find one guy asking €1,500 and immediately announce that the market price is €1,500.

Pro tip: asking price ≠ market price

A person is legally allowed to be optimistic on Kleinanzeigen.

Sold prices are much better evidence. If you do not have good sold data, compare multiple active listings instead. Look at the configuration, condition and accessories, but also pay attention to how long listings seem to stay online and whether sellers keep reducing their prices.

You are trying to build a realistic resale range, not find the highest number that makes the auction look profitable.

Let's say our MacBook can realistically sell for around €950.

Still not enough.

Liquidity: can you actually get the money back?

Imagine two items are both worth €950.

One sells in three days. The other receives two messages in six weeks, one of which says “500 hole heute”.

These are not the same asset.

Market price tells you roughly what something is worth. Liquidity tells you how easily you can turn it back into money.

That matters especially when your capital is limited. If €600 sits inside one slow-moving product for two months, you cannot use that same €600 for other opportunities.

Ask:

If I needed cash within seven days, what price would I have to accept?

That question is brutally useful.

High liquidity means you can recycle the capital quickly. Low liquidity means your “profit” may spend the next two months sitting on a shelf.

Pro tip: “untested” means untested

It does not mean:

probably fine.

It means:

congratulations, you have purchased uncertainty.

Price that uncertainty.

If a dead logic board could destroy €400 of value, your risk reserve should not be €20 because the photos looked friendly.

The same applies to damaged screens, missing batteries, unknown activation locks, engines that cannot be started or machinery that the auction house simply says was “not checked”.

Unknown risk is still risk.

Now calculate the actual deal

We have a realistic resale value.

Now everybody gets paid.

Suppose:

• resale: €950
• required profit: €150
• selling + shipping: €35
• transport: €40
• missing accessories: €25
• risk reserve: €50

That leaves €650 maximum all-in acquisition cost.

Done?

Of course not.

Say the auction charges an 18% buyer's premium plus 19% VAT on the hammer price and the premium, as Restlos does in Germany.

So €650 is not your maximum bid. Every euro of hammer price costs you €1.18 × 1.19 = €1.4042, so your hammer-price limit is €650 ÷ 1.4042 ≈ €463.

That number has a name:

Max Buy.

Write it down.

Pro tip: calculate Max Buy before the auction turns you stupid

Future You will see €465 and say:

That's basically €463.

Then €475 is basically €465.

Then apparently profit is an outdated concept and the important thing is defeating a stranger called bidder_4821.

No.

Max Buy is Max Buy.

Now you need more than one deal

Once you have calculated Max Buy, there is still one problem: you probably will not buy this lot.

Maybe the price goes above your limit. Maybe another bidder wants it more than you do. Maybe you notice something in the auction conditions that makes the deal worse. Maybe collection turns out to be inconvenient.

If this is the only lot you have spent time researching, it becomes very easy to convince yourself that €20 or €30 above Max Buy “doesn't really matter” because otherwise all that work feels wasted.

That is why you need a pipeline of analysed lots before you start seriously bidding.

Not a list of random things that looked cheap. Every lot on that list should already have survived the sourcing process: you know what it is, what it can realistically sell for, how liquid it is, what the risks are, what the total costs look like and exactly where your Max Buy sits.

Once you work this way, losing one auction stops being a problem. The price goes above your limit? Fine. Move to the next opportunity.

Around 20 analysed lots is a useful target when you are actively buying. The number is not magic; it simply gives you enough alternatives that you do not become dependent on one auction.

Some lots will become too expensive. Some will reveal problems. Some will have terrible collection conditions. Some will simply be won by somebody else.

What remains is your real buying pipeline.

Each Max Buy is that lot's all-in limit (€650, €240 and €342) divided by 1.4042: the same 18% premium and 19% VAT as above.

Now you are no longer waiting for one auction to work. You are comparing opportunities and allocating your money to whichever ones still make sense when bidding starts.

Before bidding: learn what kind of auction this is

Not every auction works like eBay.

Some close at a fixed time. When the clock reaches zero, that's it.

Others use a soft close, where a bid placed near the end extends the auction by several minutes. In that case, waiting until the last second accomplishes absolutely nothing because the clock simply moves again.

Some use proxy bidding. You enter the maximum amount you are willing to pay and the platform automatically increases your bid only when another bidder forces it to.

Government auctions, insolvency sales and commercial auction houses can also have very different conditions. Some special auctions may even use descending prices instead of the normal “people keep raising each other” format.

Then there are buyer's premiums, VAT rules, payment deadlines, deposits, collection dates and identification requirements.

Read all of this before the exciting part.

Pro tip: current bid is not purchase price

A DJI drone sitting at €120 with six hours left is not “a €120 drone”.

It is a drone whose auction currently happens to be at €120.

By closing time it might be €170. It might be €300. It might stay almost exactly where it is. The current bid tells you what has happened so far; it tells you almost nothing about what you will eventually have to pay.

This is why I do not build a deal around the current bid. I build it around Max Buy.

The auction does not owe you the current price.

Bidding: where adults discover they are emotional

Let's say our Max Buy is €463.

The auction gets to €410.

Fine.

€440.

Fine.

€455.

Still fine.

€465.

We leave.

That is the entire strategy.

Yes, somebody else may get it for €465.

Excellent. Somebody else can also have the reduced margin.

What matters is that the number you calculated before bidding already included your expected resale value, costs, risk and required profit. Nothing about another person's willingness to overpay changes those numbers.

Pro tip: losing is part of the business

If you cannot leave an auction, you do not have a Max Buy. You have a suggestion.

This is why we built the pipeline first. One deal dies, next one.

You won. Now go get the thing.

Eventually another lot closes below Max Buy.

Congratulations.

Your reward is an invoice and a collection window.

Before bidding, you should already have checked the payment deadline, payment method, required documents, collection date, whether another person can collect for you and how the item will physically reach you.

Do not win a €100-profit lot and then discover that the required van costs €120.

Transport is part of sourcing.

For a laptop, collection may mean driving twenty minutes across town. For furniture, pallets, vehicles or machinery, it can mean a van, trailer, transporter, loading equipment, helpers or even temporary storage.

All of this should already exist somewhere in your calculation.

Pro tip: annoying logistics can make you money

Most people prefer easy lots.

That means difficult collection can reduce competition.

If you have cheap transport, storage, a van, local contacts or a good carrier, something inconvenient for everyone else can become attractive for you.

At collection, inspect what you can. Make sure the item actually matches the lot description and that all included parts are there. If you notice obvious damage or discrepancies, photograph them immediately.

Then take it home.

Now stop being the buyer

The next person does not care that you “won a great auction”.

They care whether the product works and whether buying from you feels safe.

Clean it properly, test everything you reasonably can and make sure you actually understand its condition. With electronics, check the main functions, battery, ports, screen, cameras, buttons and accessories where relevant. Remove your accounts or factory-reset devices before selling them.

If a €15 charger, cable or missing accessory makes the package significantly easier to sell or allows you to ask €40 more, buying it can make sense.

Then take proper photos. Use good light and a clean background. Show the whole product first, then the important details, accessories and every relevant defect. The first photo matters especially because it is what gets somebody to open the listing in the first place.

The description should answer the same questions you had when you were analysing the auction lot: What exactly is it? Which configuration? What is included? What has been tested? What condition is it in? What does not work?

Do not hide defects. Uncertainty lowers what buyers are willing to pay, and surprises create returns and arguments.

Kleinanzeigen vs eBay

Where you sell depends on what you are selling.

Kleinanzeigen is especially useful for local transactions, bulky products and anything you would rather not ship. You can deal directly with buyers, negotiate and arrange pickup. It can also work very well for normal electronics, but expect more negotiation, low offers and people who message you and then disappear.

eBay gives you a much broader pool of buyers and is usually easier for products that can be shipped. It is also useful because you can look at completed sales when researching market prices.

For products with a clear market value and steady demand, a fixed-price listing usually gives you more control over the sale price. An eBay auction can make more sense when demand is strong, the item is harder to price or you deliberately want the market to determine the price quickly.

For some products, neither is ideal. Industrial equipment, specialist electronics, collectibles, machinery or professional tools may have dedicated marketplaces where the buyer already understands what you are selling.

The question is not:

“Which marketplace is best?”

It is:

“Where are the buyers for this exact product?”

Pro tip: your listing is market research

Once the listing is live, pay attention to what the market tells you.

Views, saves, messages, offers and time-to-sale are all useful feedback. If you expected the product to sell in four days and three weeks later almost nobody is interested, something in your original assumption was probably wrong.

Do not immediately conclude that the product is impossible to sell. Test the obvious variables first.

If you are getting views but no messages, try lowering the price slightly. If almost nobody opens the listing, replace the main photo, improve the lighting or rewrite the title so the exact model and important specification are immediately clear. If buyers keep asking the same question, that information probably belongs in the description. If one marketplace gives you nothing, try the product on another relevant marketplace.

Change one thing, give it some time and watch what happens.

Maybe your original price was too high. Maybe the market is less liquid than you thought. Maybe your photos were simply bad.

That information matters because the next time the same product appears at an auction, your Max Buy is no longer based only on internet research.

It is based partly on your own sales data.

Packaging and shipping

Do not wait until somebody buys the product to start thinking about packaging.

Before you list it, you should already know approximately how large and heavy the finished parcel will be, what shipping will cost and whether the carrier has any restrictions that affect the item. Batteries are the obvious example: depending on the battery type, size and destination, carriers can have special rules.

For normal shipments, keep the basics available: strong boxes, good tape, protective material such as bubble wrap or foam, void fill, small bags for accessories and labels. If you regularly sell products, keeping packaging material around saves a surprising amount of time.

The main rule is simple:

The product should not be able to move freely inside the box.

Movement is what turns a perfectly good laptop, camera or drone into an insurance claim.

Protect fragile parts separately. Do not let heavy accessories move around next to the product. Cables, chargers, batteries or detachable parts can be packed separately inside the same parcel so they cannot scratch or damage the main item.

With particularly fragile or expensive products, stronger internal protection or double-boxing can be worth the extra few euros.

Use tracked shipping, and for valuable products use an appropriate level of insurance. Keep the tracking information until the transaction is fully finished.

For expensive shipments, I also photograph the product immediately before packing it and take a few photos during the packing process. If the buyer later claims that something arrived damaged or was missing, you at least have a record of the condition and how the parcel was prepared.

Packaging is not where you make money.

But bad packaging is a very easy place to lose it.

Taxes and records

If you repeatedly buy things specifically to resell them for profit, this starts looking very much like a business because it is behaving like one.

Keep records from day one:

• purchase price
• auction fees
• VAT
• transport
• repairs
• storage
• shipping
• selling fees
• sale price
• dates
• receipts

And do not confuse DAC7 platform-reporting thresholds with a magical universal tax-free allowance. Reporting rules and actual tax obligations are separate things.

Your real profit is what remains after the whole transaction, not “sale price minus the number I remember bidding”.

So where is the profit?

Mostly here:

Sourcing.

Finding the lot. Understanding it better. Checking the market. Estimating liquidity. Calculating risk. Including every cost. Setting Max Buy.

Then the rest is execution:

source → analyse → shortlist → understand the auction → bid → pay → collect → transport → prepare → sell → ship → record → repeat.

Once you do this at scale, the annoying part is not understanding the process. The annoying part is repeating it across dozens of auction websites, languages, filters, fee structures and closing times.

That is what we're building Xpact for.

One place to search the auctions. Better filters and sorting. Lot analysis. A proper pipeline instead of tabs everywhere.

You can absolutely do it manually.

You should understand how to do it manually.

We just do not think opening thirty auction websites every morning should be a required business skill.