Make It Happen Monday

Wow. I had The. Worst. Sales. Week. last week. It was horrid. I just barely reached HALF of my goal for the week. And I wasn't alone. So many of our members on eBay Underground said they were also having their worst week this week. Can't really figure it out, but it stinks.

I spent MUCH of last week feeling really nasty and bitter toward eBay. It's extremely irritating to me that I am PAYING for a month of listing, I am PAYING for a month of store fees. And yet, all signs point to the fact that my listings are NOT showing up for that entire month. I was grumpy and moody most of the week. But you know what? I may not have reached the thousand that I was hoping for, but I do have $500 more than what I had a week ago. So why am I complaining?

We are very fortunate in that my eBay income isn't a requirement. Yes, since I've started selling, our quality of living has increased. I've gotten lazy with my coupon shopping (higher grocery bills). I've gotten lazy with cooking (higher restaurant spending). But we've also gotten to do some stuff we hadn't been able to before (taking the kids out for one-on-one evenings, redecorating bedrooms, etc). None of those things are necessities. I don't HAVE to make $1000 a week selling on eBay. I seriously need to keep things in perspective. We have a comfortable life. I need to learn to be grateful for the sales that I do have, and not be so grumpy when I don't reach my high, self-imposed goals.

Don't get me wrong - I'll still set high goals for myself, and I'll still strive to reach them. But I'm no longer going to let it get me down and make me snap at my family when I don't have a good sales day.

Someone hold me to that?

Fantastic Finds Friday

We want to hear all about your Fantastic Finds! This features isn't about your exciting sales. It's about your exciting finds! There are so many places to find inventory: your closet, your garage, a yard sale, thrift stores, a consignment item you're selling for someone else. What did you find this week that you are excited about? It can be something you're excited to get listed OR something you're excited to keep! You can even post to your listing, if you'd like. Free advertising!

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Well I must say that I'm pretty proud of myself right now. Not because I found anything great to share with you, but because I'm updating this blog from my iPhone. If you know me than this is a big deal! :)

I have a big shopping trip planned in 1 weeks. I will be heading down to VA and am already mapping out some hot spots. I hope to find lots of great things to share here with you!

In the mean time...happy eBaying!

Lesley
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Yay for road trips, Lesley! I've got one planned for next week too. I'm almost caught up on all my unlisted items. Surely I'll get them done in the next week before leaving.

I just found a bunch of my regular run-of-the-mill stuff this week. A few turntables, several pairs of shoes, another Alf.  I guess I'm most excited about the Alf, because he's always good for a quick 30 bucks or so. But I'm also pretty excited about my suede mary jane Keens. I don't know that I have ever found any Keens myself. All the ones I've sold have been ones my sister-in-law found for me. And these are cute!

Jessica
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What about you?  If you found something this week that you are excited about please share your enthusiasm here!!

My Top eBay Moments This Week

Last week, I mentioned that I didn't have any deadbeat buyers, and it was so refreshing. I wish I had savored that at the time... I also mentioned last week that I had 3 pending returns. Only 1 actually returned the item! Yay! Apparently the other two were put off by my restocking fee and decided to keep the items. One left me positive feedback, and I would prefer if the other just kept quiet. She's trouble waiting to happen, so I'll not be contacting her for feedback or to find out what happened with the return.

I did have 2 problem buyers this week. One says that his/her ivory shoe cream is "too thin and doesn't cover the scuffs on my ivory leather shoes. Please send me a thicker product."  uhh... The product is what it is. I don't have thick and thin versions. I explained that and offered to accept a return, but he/she decided it wasn't worth the trouble and expense of returning. Also said that they would be leaving me a neutral "for the product," but I never got any feedback from them at all. Phew.

The other buyer lives less than an hour from me. She offered me $10 + $2.50 shipping for a Care Bear. I accepted and shipped it out. She write me and said, "I just got the bear. I don't think it cost you $2.50 to ship it from so nearby. If I return it, will you be keeping a $2 restocking fee?" (I do have a 20% restocking fee on returns that aren't my fault.) I replied that it actually cost me $2.09 plus the cost of my packing materials and labels, and yes I charge a 20% restocking fee. Is there something wrong with the bear that you wish to return it? She said, "I guess it's my fault. I didn't read the description. I just saw the bear and bought it. I was expecting full size." (It was 10")  I replied that the measurements are in the title and description, but she could return it if she wanted, and her refund would be $8. She replied that after she paid to ship it back, she'd be down to $6, which is half of what she paid. Um, yep. Read the description next time, lady. So she asked me yesterday to just give her a $5 refund. haha. No. So we'll see where this goes...

Anyway... I had 54 sales this week, only 7 of which were shoes. I have a road trip planned for next Thursday, so hopefully I can get my shoe inventory back up a bit. The highlights:

I sold this for my mom. She had it in our yard sale this summer for $5. No one bought it, so I offered to try to sell it on eBay for a few bucks. I was pretty surprised to see that they were listed for a high price, so I priced this at $21.99 with free shipping. It sold! And I was able to fit it into a box in a flat rate priority envelope, so shipping was only $4.90!

I'm having a grand time with the things I bought at this yard sale! These Pittsburgh Steelers medical scrubs pants (new with tags) were from there. I bought 4 pairs for $3 each and already sold one pair for $21.99.

I bought this about a year ago, because I remembered my brother having one when we were little. Turns out his was the red LED display, not the grey and black display that this one has. I decided to keep it and let the kids use it for math review. Well, with most new things like this, they were excited about it for about a month. I just found it in the back of our math manipulatives drawer and decided to list it. It sold the next day for my full asking price of $24.99! I had listed it with free US shipping, but it sold internationally, so I didn't even have to pay the shipping :)

Remember when I bought 6 pieces of Revere Ware at this yard sale? I paid $40 for all of it and immediately sold the large skillet for $40, so the rest is straight up profit. I sold this 2 quart saucepan and lid for $29.99 with free shipping. I lucked out, because the buyer was in my shipping zone, so it only cost me $5 to ship.

I love selling Clairol Kindness Deluxe 3-Way Hairsetters. This is the 3rd or 4th one I sold, and it was no exception. This was the very first hot roller set I sold. It was back before I knew that BIN listings were the way to go. I auctioned it and it went for $51! I haven't sold any that high since. They usually go for $30-35. I paid $6.25 for this one and sold it for $30.

This Columbia fleece pullover was from the same yard sale where I got the Steelers scrubs pants. I had 2 of the exact same pullover, both new with tags. I paid $5.50 each. I listed them for $30.99, free shipping. I sold them both to the same buyer! And that buyer was international, so yet again - I didn't have to pay shipping :)

I bought these without looking them up. I had no idea, but they were pretty, so I thought surely I'd do ok with them. I paid $5 for them, and as soon as my sister-in-law saw them, she wanted them. Her husband seemed to feel that she already had enough stuff laying around their house :) so I told her that if I still had them at Christmastime, they were all hers. Well ... it was looking good for her until this week. They sold for $45 (sorry, Paula!)

One last sale from the scrubs and Columbia yard sale. I paid $9 for this new with tags men's Timberland coat. I accepted an offer of $62.99 + shipping to Canada. Yay!

I bought 120 items at that yard sale, all new with tags. I paid a total of $717.75 for it all (I know - it stung at the time...). So far, in 13 days, I have sold 21 of the items for a whopping $532.61!! So I have 99 items left to sell, and I'm only $180 away from fully recovering my investment!

The lesson? Yes, $700+ was a huge, scary investment for me. That was a big fat check, and I was literally sick to my stomach about it. What if I had made a huge mistake? And where on earth am I going to store all this stuff? And how am I going to get it all listed?? Panic, panic, panic. But ... I don't even have it all listed yet and I'm doing quite well with it. Sometimes you just have to jump. You'll land on both feet ... eventually :)

This Week's Shopping Trip

My friends! I am so sorry to have neglected you so long. This has been a strange week, and blogging has taken a back burner. But I am back! I managed to get to Goodwill THREE times this week! And I found lots of goodies each time.

My top priority over the next couple weeks is to restock my shoes. I don't usually find more than a pair or two at a time at my Goodwill, so I was pleased to find FOUR pairs of Clarks there, and some Capezio tap shoes. Also found a turntable (half off color of the week) and yet another Alf! This is my 4th Alf, and he was the cheapest one yet at 50 cents! Total paid: $16.01

The mission on this trip was to find church shoes for my 4 year old and a plaid shirt for my 11 year old daughter's school picture. Mission accomplished, but not with the blue shirt. She already took off in the one she liked better. The shoes were too big. For eBay purposes, I found a NIP Spiderman costume, a Butterfly Gold Pyrex casserole, a beautiful (!) wool blend Rothschild coat, and the Prep School Gymboree dress and sweater. Retail for that outfit is $65! I'll never understand Gymbo moms... Total Paid for resale: $10.02

Having been there twice already this week, I needed something new to look at, so I've decided to start collecting kids' books for in lots. I'll only buy the half off color of the week, so that pile was 25 cents each. Found some goodies: Indian in the Cupboard, Magic Tree House, Last of the Mohicans ... Also some Bloch tap shoes, some I-swear-they've-never-been-worn Birkenstocks, a pair of black suede Mary Jane Keens, and the brown Softspots. These are NOT on my BOLO list, but I was drawn to them last week for some reason. Not drawn enough to pay full price though, but they were this week's half off color, so I went ahead and got them. Decided to risk $1.49. I see this brand all the time, so if they do well, it will be nice to have a new name to add to my BOLO list. Total Paid: $14.71

I really hope to get some time today to get these shoes cleaned up so I can list them. I've gotten a bit of a stash, but they won't sell sitting in my to-be-listed pile!

My Top eBay Moments This Week

I had 46 sales this week. Only 10 of those were shoes. I'm starting to feel a little bit panicky about the level of my shoe inventory. I am currently at about half of the most shoes I've ever had. I seriously need to get out for a road trip. One good road trip can get me anywhere from 30-70 pairs of shoes, depending on where I go. I didn't have ANY deadbeat buyers this week! I didn't have to open ANY unpaid item cases. What a breath of fresh air! I did have a woman buy a puzzle and pay for it, and then she immediately wrote me and said never mind, her son already has that one, so she needs to cancel. I also got notified of 3 pending returns. One was absolutely my fault. Turns out the "S" in a shoe size means "Slim" and isn't just part of the style number. Oops.

My favorite sales this week weren't necessarily high dollar amounts, but I'm happy about them for one reason or another:

This vest was my daughter's. She hardly ever wore it. It's really cute, so I'm not sure why we never put it on her. I would have stuck it in the yard sale for 50 cents or a dollar, but I thought I'd give it a shot on eBay. I wasn't sure how it would do, since it's not a brand name (I think it's Walmart, in fact). It sold for $8.99 with free shipping. Shipping was only $1.92, so I came out pretty far ahead of where I'd been by putting it in the yard sale.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about the sale of this game, but I wanted to share the backstory. This was part of a big lot of board games I bought at an auction for $3. There was absolutely nothing exciting in the box. Pictionary, Scrabble, HuskerDu, Yahtzee, blah blah blah. Run of the mill games, but for $3, I bought them. I have sold 6 of them for $54.96. That's why I wanted to write about this game. If you can get a box full of games for cheap, even if they are super-ordinary games, go for it. People will still buy them. I listed these low ($7.99 - $12.99) so that they would sell quickly. Because my investment was so ridiculously low, selling these games at rock bottom prices has still netted me a very nice profit. Oh, and the auction was in August, so they've almost all sold in a month and a half.

I'm sharing this sale as an idea of what NOT to buy. I paid a dollar for him. He's a Mt. Vernon George Washington bear. I thought for sure he would be a good seller, but no - not at all. I listed him for $9.99 + shipping and got VERY few hits. After the first couple months, I changed it to $12.99 f/s and he sold immediately. So I guess that's not terrible, but hardly worth the storage space.

Remember this yard sale? I paid $6 for this one and sold it for $26. Not quite as high as I wanted, but with all the stuff I bought at that sale, I'm going for a quick turnover, so I took the offer. I bought 6 NWT Jansport backpacks for a total of $31.75. I have sold 3 of them so far for a total of $90.99. So I've tripled my Jansport investment and still have half of them to sell!

Here's one of the other ones. Paid $7.50, sold for $30. Again, not fabulous, but good enough for me. The retail value on this one was $65, so I'm sure I could have held out for more, but they are bulky, and I quadrupled my money. Sometimes you just have to take the quick nickel instead of waiting for the slow dime.

The broken NES system that I mentioned here ended up being an unpaid item. I relisted it (accidentally at auction again) and had no bids. Then I remembered I could do a second chance offer since there was more than one buyer the first time it sold. I contacted that buyer and he said yes, he definitely still wants it, but he's out of the country right now and could he buy it on October 2nd? I told him yes, I will relist it on the 1st. He also told me he would pay $30 for it (the original winning bid was only $27, so naturally I was fine with $30). On October 1st, as promised, I relisted it, but I was skeptical, because it had been about 2 weeks since our conversation. But on October 2nd, also as promised, he bought and paid for it immediately! So I paid $15 for the whole Nintendo lot. I sold 3 Mario games for $23, the other 22 games for $51, and the broken console & accessories for $30. I got a total of $104 out of that $15 investment. Not bad :)

I was literally just wondering why these hadn't sold yet. Clairol Kindness is always a good seller. The Clairol Kindness Deluxe usually does better, but this one still should have sold. But I hadn't even gotten any offers on it. The day after I wondered why it hadn't sold, it sold. I paid $1.95 in May and they sold this week for my full asking price of $39.99!

I was very excited about this sale! This is a set of 22 Help Me Be Good books by Joy Berry. It's not a complete set. The complete set has 29 books, so I wasn't able to get top dollar for them. I bought 21 of them for $5.99 and then found another one a couple weeks later for 50 cents. So altogether I paid $6.88 (tax) for them in June and sold them this week for $45. I had free shipping on them, but media mail shipping was only $5.06, so I still did well!

And this!! I didn't even look this up on my phone before I bought it. It was only $2.99, so I figured I could make at least some sort of profit. Imagine my excitement when I saw the current listings! When I just got that link, I see that there are some listed for higher than mine that weren't there when I listed mine. No matter! I listed mine for $69.99 or best offer. I took an offer this week for $59.99 plus shipping. It's going to New Zealand, to a mother who is "desperate to find this" for her daughter's first birthday. Oh, and it was listed for 3 days!

How'd you do this week?

Have you visited eBay Underground this week?
And have you heard all about our new EBUG Classifieds? It's pretty bare-looking now. Come and post a few things for sale so we can get that filled up and exciting-looking.

This Week's Shopping Trip

I only had one shopping trip this week. I have GOT to get a road trip planned. My shoe inventory is getting desperately low. So I stopped into Goodwill in the hopes of finding at least a couple pairs. Well, wouldn't you know, I found zero. But I found some other goodies, so all was not lost!

I found a soft bonnet hair dryer (back left). I have another one of these listed, but no bites yet. I'm hoping a production company will buy it. I haven't tested this one yet, but it was only $1.99. And on the very next shelf, I found a hard bonnet hair dryer (back right). It was also $1.99. I have another one of these be get listed (paid $1 for it), but it needs some repair. It runs, but it doesn't blow any air out. I'll have to have my HVAC brother look at it.

I also found 3 more microwave turntables. I told my husband I wasn't going to buy anymore of these unless they were in perfect condition and didn't need cleaned. At the time, my stack of turntables was all the way up to the shelf above it, so I had no more room for any, and I refused to start a second stack. (Seriously, isn't 30 enough?)  However, I have sold quite a few of these over the last couple weeks, so I have room on my pile again. These were $1.99 each.

I was so excited to see the green box full of Alpha Omega Lifepac social studies homeschool workbooks ($4.99)! When I picked it up to look at it, I realized that the box that it was sitting on top of was full of 90+ more Lifepac workbooks!! I've sold these before with good success. These sets aren't complete (neither were my others ones), and the tests are missing, but I think for an investment of $9.99, I'll still do well!

Of course none of this stuff is listed yet, because I've been focused on getting my NWT yard sale finds listed. I'm a little over halfway done with that stuff. I hope to get it done by the weekend. Then I'll focus on this stuff and some other odds and ends. Hoping for a road trip on October 13 or 14, if everything falls into place.

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Speaking of listing, have you joined our October listing contest yet? The contest started on Monday, but you can join up til the 10th.

Listing Contest on eBay Underground!

Who needs a kick in the pants?! I DO! I DO!

eBay Underground is having a month-long listing contest, starting this Monday, October 3rd! To keep the playing field level, the contestants will be split into two categories: part-timers and full-timers. The goal is simple - be the contestant in your category who lists the highest number of new listings during the month of October.

The prizes haven't been decided yet. We are taking donations (see our fanpage for information on how to donate to our group Paypal account) and hope to build up a huge kitty for an awesome prize or two! There is no fee to enter, and a donation is not required to enter. But the more donations we get, the cooler the prizes.

So come on over - sign up - get your rear in gear and let's bombard eBay with a zillion new listings during October!

Oh - and thank Adrienne for running the contest!