How to price your item
When possible, I try to start all of my auctions at $9.99. People like to see that there is a chance that they may win something for less than $10. Also, your ebay fees increase incrementally as your starting price goes up. Over the years I have learned that it is only the rare occasion that something will sell for the original $9.99. You may start to fret when your auction only has six hours left and the item is still at $9.99, but not to worry. A good percentage of bidding happens during the last ten minutes of an auction’s life.
Should you list a reserve? My experience has always been, whenever possible, to avoid listing a reserve. Bidders tend to lose interest in items they perceive as unattainable. Also, once again, ebay is going to charge you extra to list a reserve. It never failed on the times when I posted a reserve that within the first few days I would receive an email inquiring what my reserve was. Does that not defeat the purpose of the reserve? My alternative recommendation is to just start the item at the minimun price you would want to get, and still be happy. Don’t forget to factor in Final Auction Value fees and Paypal fees, if any apply to you.
Last, low opening bids make an auction fun. I used to see sellers print “Bid early and bid often!” as if this would make people want to bid. Start low-makes it fun for your bidders and you get to see green on your screen. Always a good sight.
To sell or not to sell: ebay or Craig’s List?
For those of you who are just thinking about dipping a toe into ebay, I suggest that you might give Craig’s List a try. Personally, I have only sold a mattress on Craig’s List, but I must say that it sold in one day. Craig’s List does not charge fees. Selling is fairly straightforward and a quite a bit less intimidating than the ebay sell your item form. This could be a good route if you have a few things to get rid of and don’t plan on making ebay your part time job. Now, the down side to Craig’s List is that more often than not you will be seeing your buyer face to face, which believe me can be a huge down side. I have met some very nice people on Craig’s List, and I have met some real flakes. Go in open minded. Email me with any topics to chat about.
The million dollar question…what should I sell?
Wow…if I had a dollar for every time I was asked this question I would be rich. This question is probably the root of why people across the land are not all quitting their jobs at once to sell on ebay full time while lounging in their pjs. There are many factors to consider when deciding what to sell on ebay. The first, and I think this is true whether it is an item from your home or an item purchased for the purpose of resale, is margin. I can’t say enough about the importance of margin. You need to make something on what you list. Time and again I see sellers who have hundreds of items listed all starting at $1.00. When you go in and look at their completed items they may rack up $500 in monthly sales while having listed 1000 items, leaving 500 unsold. Well, I don’t know about you but that sounds like a whipping to me. Waaaay too much time spent on the computer. Get more bang for your buck. Why list twenty items that may sell for $1.00 each when you could list one item that will sell for $20? Consider also what you pay if you are purchasing something for resale-you can’t spend $15 on an item that will have an end bid of $20 and expect to stay in business long. Buy low and sell high…sounds like the stock market.
Second, think of supply. Can you get enough of what you are selling on a continual basis? This is probably the hardest part, and also the reason why some sellers sell a multitude of items. My personal feeling is to narrow your focus on the items sold. This will help you increase your knowledge of what you can buy something for and still have a good margin. Whenever I venture off of the designer handbag/accessories route it never fails that I tend to purchase poorly with little margin. Finding an outlet where you can get products on a consistent basis is, in my opinion, a learning experience. One alternative is to find someone to shop for you. This is someone who knows exactly what you want and will keep eyes open for you at all times. You will then in turn purchase items from them so that they too will make a little cash. While this is one of my favorite routes of purchase it is also one of the hardest to establish and maintain. Eventually the shopper realizes that there is more money to be made and you run the risk of losing them to do the same thing you are doing. Has happened to me.
Third, you need to love what you sell. Many of my friends ask me to sell their kid’s clothing. UGH! I just can’t bring myself to do it. Suffice it to say that I love handbags and anything designer. I also love nice clothing but have little motivation to list any for sale. If you are going to be typing text day in and day out on an item it helps to like what you are typing about. I could never sell auto parts, computer accessories, golf clubs…the list goes on and on. Just not my thing and I would quickly lose interest.
One last thing, at least for today, consider what it will take to ship an item. Do you have a cheap resource for boxes and packing material? I rarely sell anything glass, because people like to get their glassware in one piece. You needs lots and lots of packing material to ship glassware successfully. Think you can make a living on ebay selling tubas? You might could, you just gotta have lots of very big boxes. My purses go very nicely into the free postal Priority Mail boxes. Just a thought to ponder. Email me any topics you would like me to cover.
One step in getting started
People often ask me how do you do ebay. Ebay has over the years become very simple and easy to navigate. Of course, if it was super simple to make a living at ebay everyone would quit their jobs, put on their pjs and start selling stuff from home. I guess when I think about it there is a bit more involved. When I first started I took the shotgun approach; i.e., I listed just about anything and everything and hoped it would sell. When my parents moved out of the house I had grown up in it gave me a great chance to sell some of my old toys, which because I am 41 are now considered vintage. Which I guess means that I am vintage as well, but let us not go there. There is a huge market for vintage toys. Still today at 41 there are toys that I look up that I never received as a kid, but REALLY wanted to have. I think that is where a huge market was created-people still want that dad gum toy that they never got for their eighth birthday. Ebay lets them find it. Not too long ago, I paid $12 for a mint Whitman Tiny Town book (I think that the original retail was around $.98). You punch out the cardboard houses and the put them together and make a little suburban town. I had it when I was little and I must say that I still love it today. Many collectors pay big money to reclaim lost but loved toys…but I am going off in another direction. How do you decide what to sell? Shotgunning it is one way to find out what sells well.
When I use the term shotgun I mean this: assemble a variety of items from your house, say, those that you were considering selling in your next garage sale. Think in terms of items that were maybe a bit more big ticket…your daughter’s clothes from Gymboree, the Lego set your son no longer plays with, the expensive fishing reel that your parents gave your husband but failed to notice that he rarely goes fishing. That sort of thing. My rule of thumb is that if you paid decent money for it when you bought it at the store, then there is a good chance that someone will pay you decent money for it used. Selling stuff you have in your house is a good way to get rid of some stuff while educating yourself on what you might be a good line of things to sell on a more permanent basis. You have to be able to find a consistent supply of items—but that is a topic for another day. Please send me any questions you may have, I would love to hear from you.
My patent and how it got me on television
You know, I really had to think back about how I started on ebay. My first endeavor on ebay was selling bundles of very small cardboard boxes. Yes, corny as it sounds, I actually sold cardboard boxes. That was back before everyone knew that the Post Office gave away Priority Mail boxes. Everyone knows that, don’t they? Well, the boxes I had were very small…and I had several bundles. You see, prior to ebay I decided that I wanted to invent and market my own hair tool. In addition to being an ebay entrepreneur I am also an inventor (please feel free to re: US Patent # 5,806,538). At first I thought that I would market and sell my product myself. I would be in business and sell something!! That I had invented!! From my house!! So, I put an ad in a hairstyle magazine and sold…hold onto your seats…one. One hair tool for a whopping $19.99. Do you know how much it costs to patent something? A little more than $19.99. Got a little worried, suffice it to say. God love my husband because he never said a word. Had the shoes been on the other feet I don’t think I would have been as patient. Kinda like him saying, “Honey, I am going to quit my job and run for public office.†One of my old neighbors actually did that, and he had five kids (and he lost the race!!). Sorry, I am not that kind of wife.
Anyway, I soon realized that there was a little more involved in marketing a product than just sticking an ad in a low-rent hairstyle magazine. I had the good fortune of seeing a commercial for a company that marketed ideas on television-i.e., one of the ‘AS SEEN ON TV’ companies. As a result of hooking up with them, I had two appearances on QVC and three appearances on the Home Shopping Network. After my first appearance on QVC I went back to the hotel and threw up. Not because of nerves, but because I caught a stomach virus from my son prior to leaving. Just glad it did not happen on the air, live. Now that would have been something.
My first foray on ebay was selling cardboard boxes that I had purchased when I thought I would sell my hair tool myself. People actually bought them, and without a photo. Go figure. Incidentally, if you want to see my hair tool, on the Internet, go to Scunci. Buy one, I still get royalties.
For those of you who have asked me how to do ebay, this blog is for you.
Many of you have dealt with me for years, and for that I am very thankful. I started on ebay in 2000, when my oldest son was just three. All my life I had never had the vision of being a stay at home mom; I always thought I would work even after my kids were born (my Mom always seemed a bit unfulfilled staying home with us). My husband’s career allowed me the choice to stay home or work when my son was born. So, even though I made the choice to stay at home, I never lost the desire to do something on my own. I was growing a bit restless when my husband suggested ebay.
Early on, ebay had a very bohemian attitude. It was also very hard for the computer challenged. Fortunately for me, my husband knew a heck of a lot more than I did. In my early days on ebay I took pictures with my regular camera and then took them to Albertson’s to have put on a DVD. Do you know how expensive that was?? Plus, you did not always get the shot you thought you got. The other thing was that my husband spent his ENTIRE Saturday cropping pictures and uploading them to the Internet. Now, you may ask, an entire Saturday? It took an entire day because that was back in the olden times when everyone had dial-up and you grew new gray hair every time you tried to upload something to the Internet. Now that I have experienced faster connections, I can’t believe I actually survived. When I go to my mother-in-law’s house to use her computer I just want bonk my head on the wall because I no longer have the patience to wait on the pages to load. She still has dial-up.
Ebay has since made it very easy. I learned baby HTML when I started on ebay. For those of you just starting be thankful that you don’t even know what HTML is, let alone try and write it. Computer blah-blah, and if you get one backslash wrong your whole picture won’t load. Life is good now.
What I would like to do on this blog is write about the whole ebay experience. From starting, taking pictures, getting items to sell, dealing with customers, and, and…there is so much to say. People are always asking me, “So, how do you do ebay?†Well, here is how…
Please feel free to email me with specific questions. There is a good chance that it has happened to me or I have dealt with it already.
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