Thrifty Thursday: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Ebay

There are lots of ways to make a little money from home without costing you anything.  My favorite way is eBay. It is quick and easy to learn how to make money on eBay and it costs nothing....unless you sell something.  I sell coupons that I am not going to use so that I can make a little money on something that costs me nothing.  There are a lot of rules specific to coupons that make it hard to do but I try and it nets me about $50 per month.  I am going to try to branch out and use a few of these helpful hints to make a little more once my son goes back to school.

Make sure you follow some simple rules:

-Free Shipping Not Neccessary: Don't bend to the pressure to offer free shipping if there is a cost for shipping the item unless you think that it is going to be covered in the cost of selling the item because you will quickly see your profits drop.

-No Inflated Shipping: Don't charge more for shipping to cover charges.  No one wants to pay for someone else's fees and will easily not want your item based on the shipping.  If I mail something that only needs a stamp, then I charge $0.49 (currently the price for a stamp) and I don't charge anything for the envelope or other packing supplies.  If you don't know what the item weighs, you can get a small scale to do it at home or you can take it to the self serve section at the post office and weigh the item to price properly.

-Starting Price: Calculate the starting price high enough to cover both ebay and pay pal fees plus shipping.  Ebay wants the starting price for items at $0.99 but make sure you understand what happens when the item sells.  There is a $0.10 fee to ebay (10%), $0.33 fee to pay pal ($0.30 plus 3%), and the shipping for minimum of $0.49 which leaves you $0.07 cash in your pocket.  If the shipping is any higher (and you have offered free shipping), then you could be out money when trying to make some.  Of course, if you set it too high then you won't get a lot of people interested either.

-Pay Pal Account: Set up a pay pal account because this is the way that most money exchanges hands in eBay.  Always leave money in your pay pal account to cover fees and returns that might appear and don't transfer all of the money to your bank account yet.  Even though you are making money, it might not be as fast as you think because the fees do come back.

-Pictures: Take some great pictures of your item and there should be more then one.  eBay allows up to 12 for a listing so it is easy to do some overview and some close up.  If the pictures didn't get close enough, there is editing right in the eBay software to crop and fix the picture.  Make sure you have a plain background so that it doesn't take away from an item.  No one wants to see the entire picture of your basement to get a picture of the one item you are selling so make sure to stage the picture and get good lighting. It helps prove to others that you have the item and what condition it is in.

-Descriptions: Make sure you put a detailed description of the item including any details that the person reading would be interested to learn.  There are tons of different examples on eBay so check it you and make a template for what you think that you will use and adapt it as you find better examples.

-Spelling: Make sure you spell everything correctly.  eBay is based on search engines and if you don't spell the item correctly then no one will find it!!

-Reply to Messages: There are questions that come up and people send you a message through eBay so make sure you check your inbox and answer questions in a timely manner or people will move on to another option.

-Track your sales and profits!!  This helps at the end of the month to know what sold and what didn't but it also tells you how your hard work is paying off.  You may start to think that you are making the amount that ends up in the pay pal account and be upset when eBay comes back to take their fees.

Just like at a garage sale, it depends on your audience because some things sell quickly and others don't because the right person isn't looking at the item so you can always try again later.  Try, try again!!  It is worth the payoff!!  

Do you have any tips that work for you??

Thrifty Thursday: January Ebay Review

Ever wanted to make a little extra money for your family from home?  Do you have extra things around the house that you no longer use? Got any ideas on where to start?  Set up a Craiglist account and an Ebay account!!

What gets sold where?

I sell the things that are cheap to ship on Ebay and the things that are heavy and bulky on Craigslist.  It isn't always the easiest to figure out but you get a lot more exposure through Ebay so you might get a higher price but you also might get a lower price and there is a limit to how many things you can sell on Ebay where there isn't on Craiglist.  I am sure there are some people out there who are willing to spend the higher price on shipping but it is so much easier to do those through Craiglist if you are in a big enough area.


Have you sold anything on Ebay before??

I have never done it before!  I didn't start until the middle of the January.  I decided to sell all of the extra coupons that I didn't use because I figured that if there were ones that others could use that weren't thinks that our family uses, I would sell them at a low cost to others.  Ebay changed the way that they do things from years ago when my husband sold so you get 50 free listings a month.  You pay a percentage to them and some money to pay pal so with shipping, it costs me about $1 for each shipment so as long as I make more then that, I am making some money for my family.

Did you run into any problems?

Yup! Isn't there always a learning curve?  I set the price for the first few low and did free shipping.  I would say that the best advice that I have to give is to either set the price really low or provide free shipping.  There were at least 5 transactions that I just broke even and that is not exactly worth the effort if I am not going to make money.  On anything that didn't fit into a normal envelope, there was shipping charges to be calculated and ebay doesn't provide labels printed for normal mail so I went to the post office and lost a little on the shipping but at least the pricing on the rest made up for it and I didn't end up in the negative.

My second problem was specific to selling coupons because there is a limit which had wording that I didn't understand but turns out that you only get 25 listings for the month to sell no more then 25 coupons per transaction (at least I think because it is hard to understand the way that it was written).  I got to that point and  it wouldn't let me put up any other auctions or sales.  I tried to make a few things and schedule them for February so at least I could get the work done ahead of time but that didn't work either so I guess I have to wait and see if I reset on February 1st to sell a few more.

For the most part, I got really prompt payments (except one) so it was easy to get things out to the post office every day before they took the mail.  It is hard to wait patiently for someone to pay for me to send it but I did great and didn't run into too many problems.

I also had three things that didn't sell at all but since I didn't have to pay for posting, it wasn't a big loss to put up something that didn't sell even though my time could have been a little better spent picking something that would sell better but I wasn't really sure (and I didn't know there was a limit).

How did you do this month?

 

Isn't this what everyone wants to know?  I had no money out of pocket to start on this new and interesting business plan and I was hoping to make about $50 after I made my first few sales and realizing how much time it takes to get each post up.  I figured that if I was doing something like a garage sale, it takes preparation and something to sell but I normally make about $150 so I was thinking that I would base it on an easier online garage sale so it would be a third of the sale.  The great news is that I almost made it to my goal because my calculations have my profit at $45.57.  I still have two payments that I am waiting for to get the final guaranteed tally. After I pay ebay fees, pay pay fees, postage and envelopes, I should come out pretty good for a little work.

Will you continue to do it?

I think that I will!!  I will try another 25 transactions next month and see if I can sell some of the stuff that I wouldn't use and would otherwise be recycled.  I am not sure if I am in for this every month to add to the budget but for now, it is worth the time to add a little money.  I bought three books of stamps so that should last about three months so I will try to use up some stamps to make some money in the process.  I might try to sell a few other things too since I get 50 free listings a month and haven't really figured out what I am going to do with the other posts but might as well make an attempt to clear out more stuff in the house.

Do you want to add a little more money into your budget?  Check out ebay and remember to calculate the 10% to ebay, $0.30 plus 3% to pay pal and postage into the cost so that you make sure that you make a little bit of money for all your hard work.  Good luck and happy selling!!!