Have you ever wondered how to sell Random Steam Keys? Well, I am going to show you how you can sell any kind of codes online and give you some tips on how to avoid scammers. The Random Steam Keys business is an excellent opportunity for those who want to have a side hustle. In this ebook, I will give you tips to start selling this kind of product.
I will mainly talk about how I used to sell on eBay since it is the platform that worked for me, but I will also mention some other methods. However, as of early 2022, eBay no longer allows you to promote them as “Random Steam Keys,” but you can still find some posts about it, and if you are lucky, you might be able to do it as well.
This document is an advertisement for my page http://www.randomsteamkeys.com but not only that, as I will be revealing to you my best strategies and tips for selling.
It will be a short but precise reading. I want to make it as simple as possible without filler and explaining only what is necessary. I hope you find it very useful and if you have any questions or comments I will leave my contact information at the end of the book.
Table of contents
What are Random Steam Keys?
If you play on the Steam platform and have purchased keys for your games on an external site, you have probably already heard the term Random Steam Key. Simply put, they are “random” keys that players can purchase for relatively low costs. I put random in quotation marks because, in reality, the seller already knows which keys he is selling, but the buyer does not know which one he will get. The seller acquires the keys in advance and knows exactly which title corresponds to which key. When he makes the sale, he just sends the key (with or without the name) to the buyer so that he can exchange it.
These keys can be purchased on many different sites, such as Fanatical or Indie Gala, which sell key packs at very cheap prices. Random Steam Keys sellers buy these packs, store the keys, and then offer them in their publications.
How much can you earn?
It depends on the platform you decide to sell and your strategy. You can sell up to $2000 a month or even more; in my case that I decided to sell on eBay, that has been my highest amount. Below I leave you some evidence of my 2021 performance.
I also used to sell in a Mexican marketplace called MercadoLibre, where I managed to sell up to $700 a month. The figure is much lower because the Mexican market is not very good for this type of product. The best markets to sell Random Steam Keys are undoubtedly the United States, where most of my sales came from, and Europe.
Where to buy keys at low prices?
As I said before, it is possible to buy keys on many pages nowadays. One of the strategies I used when I was starting was to buy key packs on different sites and save the games to resell them later. Some sites where to buy packs are:
Another strategy is to hunt for game deals. When sites have a cheap one, you can go to the site and purchase the games for a lower price. Pages with constant offers:
- www.humblebundle.com
- www.cdkeys.com
- www.instant-gaming.com
- www.greenmangaming.com
- www.gamersgate.com
- www.mmoga.com
Another alternative is to purchase the games on reseller marketplaces such as G2A or Eneba. However, the prices on these sites can vary a lot, and it can happen that a key may fail and unless you have paid the insurance, you are left at the expense that the seller believes you and wants to give you a replacement key. Some examples are:
Finally, the best and cheapest option is to buy the keys at http://www.randomsteamkeys.com. This is my site where you can buy a wide variety of games at very low prices. I have contact with many developers from whom I buy keys in bulk, allowing me to offer my customers these prices.
All keys are region-free unless otherwise stated. Each game requires a minimum purchase because if I didn’t do it this way, it would not be suitable for me to offer them at such low costs. At the moment, all orders are shipped manually, so your order will arrive in no more than 24 hours on business days.
Where to sell?
There are different ways in which you can choose to sell the keys. The one that works best without the need to invest in advertising is to sell on marketplaces such as eBay. This is how I started and from the beginning I did very well because I knew how to differentiate myself from others. However, if you decide to sell on eBay, keep in mind that it is actually against eBay’s terms to sell “random keys” since they do not allow to publish products that can be catalogued as mysterious. Yet there are sellers who do it, including me, and you may never get in trouble for it.
Also, eBay says that unless you are an authorized seller for digital products your listings must be in the Informational Products category and posted as Classified Ad, but again, most sellers of this type are not authorized sellers and don’t do it that way. Despite eBay’s restrictions you can try to sell on this platform.
If in your country there is a national marketplace, like MercadoLibre in Mexico, you can try to start selling in that one. It is a good opportunity and even more if there is not someone selling that kind of products yet. When I started in MercadoLibre nobody else was doing it, and as soon as I started other sellers started to do the same.
The above is the most viable thing that has worked for me so far. I have my www.gamestrikestore.com page and my Facebook page where I also sell these keys but most of the traffic I get is from the same customers I send from eBay or to the advertising campaigns I do on Facebook.
One method you could try, that maybe works for you because I didn’t have much success: is to sell in Facebook groups and in the same Facebook marketplace. I tried several times to get buyers by posting in Steam and videogames groups but I rarely got any interested.
In summary, to start with eBay is a good option and your national marketplace, you can also try your luck creating your own page and marketing it through Facebook Ads.
How to make your listing?
You should take the time to make a good eBay listing. This includes thinking of a good title, writing a detailed description and making the images.
When I started selling on eBay I needed something that would distinguish me from the competition. So I came up with categories for my keys. At the time I played a lot of League Of Legends so I named my keys after the leagues of the game: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond.
Bronze keys were cheap games worth $1.99 USD on the Steam store and I would sell a pack of 10 for $0.99. Silver were $4.99 games. Gold were $9.99 games. Platinum games were $14.99, and Diamond games were $19.99.
So for the bronze title I had written:
10 Bronze Random Steam Keys (+$19 in Value) – Region Free – Fast Delivery.
And for the Diamond ones:
5 Diamond Random Stream Keys ($95 in Value) – Region Free – Fast Delivery
In the title I included the total amount of the individual value of each game, as well as indicating that they were Region Free and that it was Fast Delivery.
What helped me to make people prefer to buy from me over others with just the title had to do with two main things: the fancy name I gave to the keys (bronze, silver, gold and diamond) and that I included the total value of the games. When buyers saw a very large number in the title, they got carried away and pressed the arithmetic to find out what it was. So that was the first thing that helped me differentiate myself over others.
The next thing is to have an eye-catching image, and this is where it will help you a lot to learn Photoshop or have someone who can do the images for you. If you go on eBay right now and search for Random Steam Keys you’ll notice that many of the images in the listings are unattractive and that’s because most sellers don’t know Photoshop or don’t spend enough time to make their image.
Compare the number of sales of those publications with attractive images versus those with ugly images. You will see that most of the top selling publications have well done pictures. So spend time on your images.
There really is no one style that looks good. I experimented with many different styles over several years and with almost any one I had good results.
A few tips:
- Use bold, strong colors.
- You can cut out a character from a video game and include it.
- Clearly state what you are selling.
- Don’t let the text blend in with the background.
- Use a 1:1 ratio.
Examples of good images:
Examples of bad images:
Additionally to the main image you should include additional images like:
- Region Free
- Great Customer Service
- Fast Delivery (1-24hrs)
Now let’s go to the description. Like the previous ones, this part is also important. First of all I tell you NOT TO LIE TO THE BUYER. Many sellers in their descriptions say that you can play games like Rust, GTA, CoD etcetera, when it is clearly not true. This far from helping you is going to hurt you because you will only end up having angry customers who leave a bad review, open a claim with eBay and lose your being (this is a topic I will talk about later). So NEVER say anything that is not true in your listings.
In the description you want to add the following information:
- What do you sell?
- How do you ship and how long does it take?
- Return and refund policy
- Verification of the sale
To read the full version of this chapter please consider buying my eBook. Click here to get yours.
How to send the product?
To read the full version of this chapter please consider buying my eBook. Click here to get yours.
How to deal with scammers?
We already talked about how to avoid sending keys to hacked accounts with the verification process, now it’s time to talk about how to deal with scammers. Very often you will meet someone who wants to take advantage and get free passwords: you send them the passwords and hours later they tell you that it did not work and demand a new one or a refund. From now on I tell you that if one of these people open a claim on eBay you are going to lose your money. However, you can prevent them from opening a claim and “offer to help them”.
To reed this full chapter consider buying the full eBook here.
Where to store the keys?
As your sales increase it is best to have a stock of keys so that you don’t waste time buying them one by one every time you sell. The best way to store the keys is in Google Drive.
I create a dedicated folder in Google Drive and create a spreadsheet where I store all my keys. This way, every time I make a sale I can access them, copy them and send them without hassle. Plus the files will stay up to date and I will be able to access them from any device. This helps a lot because there will be times when you are not at your place of work and you need to send orders from your mobile device.
You can also choose to store them locally in an Excel workbook, however, I do not recommend this method as you will only be able to access them when you are at your computer.
How to make key bundles?
Earlier I told you about how I name my packs: Legendary, Mythic, Diamond, MYLB and so on. Here I am going to tell you about what kind of games I send for each of the packs.
Remember that you can use any name you want, you don’t necessarily have to choose the same ones I put here. The name is merely symbolic and does not mean anything, it is only so that your buyers can differentiate between the keys; besides it gives a mysterious touch.
Legendary Keys
These are keys for games that have a base price of 19.99 USD on the US Steam site. Most of them are from indie developers, but some games from small or medium-sized developers can be included. I offer them at $0.79 per key.
Some examples of games I ship:
- Two Worlds II HD
- Age of Wonders III
- Gunspell – Steam Edition
- Serial Cleaner
- Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
- Figment
- Aegis Defenders
- OVERPASS™
- Snake Pass
- Solarix
- Battle vs Chess
Mythic Keys
These are keys for games that have a base price of $9.99 USD on the US Steam site. Most are from indie developers, but some games from smaller developers may be included. I sell them for $0.69 per key.
- Dynamic Very, Very, Hard game!
- Cavern Escape Extremely Hard game!!!!
- Descent – Silence of Mind
- Stacking
- Battleplan: American Civil War
- Knights of Hearts
- Evergarden
- Two Worlds Epic Edition
- The I of the Dragon
- Planets Under Attack
- X-Blades
- Cube Space
- Toroom
MYLB Keys
They do not have a base price, they are just games from indie developers at a very low price. I offer them in big packs from 10 pieces up to 100.
On my site I currently sell 10 keys for $0.99 and 50 for $4.99. On eBay due to commissions the 10 pack sells for $1.69 and the 50 pack sells for $5.99.
- Leisure Town
- Cat and fish
- SkyTime
- Math Game
- Divan Chronicles
- Rampage Online
To know the price of the game in the US Steam page you can use https://steamdb.info/ just search for the game and in the Price tab you will see the price in U.S. Dollar.
Conclusion
Now you have the basics about how to sell Random Steam Keys. What you have just read on this post will help you to start selling any kind of key on digital platforms. Although I focused on eBay, almost everything can be applied anywhere.
Don’t be afraid to start, the best thing about this business is that you can start without investing a single penny, since you only buy the keys as you sell. The beginning can be very slow, but once you start having sales you get more exposure and you will start to grow. Be patient and don’t let the scammers discourage you, soon you will start having so many sales that you will be able to afford to lose a few dollars.
Remember that if you buy the full version of my ebook you will get more valuable information as well as free and paid tools that you can use to help you in this business. You will also be able to get my advice for any consultation or help you need such as: how to open your eBay account, how to create a store using woo-commerce, etcetera.
Thank you for reading me and I wish you a lot of success.