Remember the friend who told me her sister might be interested in selling me her Mary Kay items? Well, she called me today and told me she would just give it all to me, FREE!
All I have to pay is shipping.
She even said she would just trust me for it and when I got it I could reimburse her the actual shipping. WOW!
I also managed to head out to the consultant's home today that I made the $150 deal with and picked up a few boxes of Mary Kay.
Will list on eBay tomorrow. I did take and edit the photos tonight.
The lot was great, as there were items she never let me know she had!
I opened my eBay store again. I went with the basic store. I started by listing all the homeschooling books I bought earlier this week. 16 different auctions, and I started them all at one cent.
One Cent Auctions
I've been selling on eBay, off and on, for over 7 years. When I hit about the 300 feedback mark, I started selling all of my auction style listings (aside from furniture that was pickup only) at ONE CENT. I did this for the following reasons:
My listing fees are low. Starting an auction at a penny gets me the best listing rates. I don't have to pay several dollars, per auction, just to list the items. Instead, I pay a few cents.
Bidders go crazy. When I list my items at a penny, bidders bid knowing they are getting a great deal. Then, when they are outbid, it starts a frenzy, as the original bidders are still psychologically thinking its a great deal, and the new bidders realize that as well! It becomes a bidding game, and often used items will close for more than they cost new.
But I would not suggest one cent auctions to all eBay sellers. I've seen some sellers try this strategy too soon in their eBay career, and wind up losing money. Don't even attempt a one cent auction until you have at least 100 feedback. People need to know they can trust you. And you better make sure that most, if not all, of those feedback are positive!
Also, realize that sometimes things do close low, or even at one cent. Make sure you keep your shipping prices very low, but add in $0.50-1.00 to cover your eBay and Paypal fees. On average, one in 15-20 of my auctions close at one cent.
And make sure that your description and photos are great! That is the best tip to selling successfully on eBay! The right title, description, and quality pics.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
Got up early this morning and hit a couple garage sales on our way to the farmer's market. I wanted to go to more sales, but my husband was with me and was bored stiff quite quickly. I did manage to spend $9 and got a brand new, with tags fishing shirt and a mosquito bug suit. They looked interesting.
I listed all my Mary Kay items. I came out with over a hundred listings and close to $1,000 worth of merchandise (before expenses) from that $150 purchase!
I'm not happy with the photos I took, but they were good enough to get them up there anyway. I decided to do a strategy I had with my store when I sold free stuff I got using coupons last year: Price it High, Let it Ride.
Price it High, Let it Ride
In late 2006-early 2007, I went crazy with coupons and ended up with literally thousands of dollars worth of health and beauty aids for free. Then I hit an after Christmas clearance sale at Target and got thousands of dollars worth of toys for 90% off. It was so much fun!
I decided to list all my goodies on eBay, and for the first time in my eBay selling career, I opened an eBay store. I did research by looking up what closed auctions for the same items sold for in the last 30-days, and priced my items, in my store, at the top end of the prices. I kept shipping charges at actual shipping.
I was amazed! Some of the items (most I got for free, remember) were priced at 80-90% of retail, plus shipping charges, yet people from all over the world were buying from me! I did have to alter the prices of quite a few items, moving them down over time, but all in all, it was a great stream of supplemental income!
So why did I quit? When I had my store, it was for a brief, 4-month reprieve from our full-time RV living. We had rented a house when all the RV spots in town were taken one winter, and my husband's job had brought us there. When Spring came, we moved back into the RV and lost all the extra storage space for products.
As of this evening, so far two items of Mary Kay have sold, and several books have been bid on! Right now, the books are around $15 for all of them, but that is common in my one cent sales. They usually don't pick up until the last couple days.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
I visited with my friend today (remember, the one who does Freecycle and has the sister who is going to send me MK items).
She had a few very nice sample binders, samples, and a MK tote bag for me to sell.
I'm optimistic and think they might bring me $30-50.
One more MK item sold today.
I had a woman contact me late last night asking if I would consider a Buy it Now purchase on one of my lots of homeschooling books. The item had not been bid on, so I researched it, and felt that it would probably close around $40. I emailed her back that I would take $40, but did not hear from her again.
This morning, I get an email saying that she would pay the $40, but when I looked at auction, it had been bid on between our last email. So I told her that I would be unable to end the auction because it had current bids. She was quite understanding, and joined in the frenzy.
I have no problem doing a BIN upon request like that, but I will not, under any circumstances, end an auction with bids on it for that purpose. Its just not fair to the other bidders.
Monday August 18, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
I had an eBay user contact me today, letting me know there were two products she was interested in buying, but she was unable to purchase them and combine shipping because I had requested that all Buy it Now purchases be paid for immediately via Paypal.
Immediate Payment
When you are creating your auction, you have the option of what forms of payment you are accepting. I would recommend that you NEVER accept checks, only Paypal or money orders. If you accept Paypal only, there is a little box under the Paypal option when listing, that will allow you to request that buyers pay immediately. The item they are trying to buy will stay in your inventory, in other words, will be available for someone else to purchase, unless the buyer pays right that second.
This is good if you do not combine shipping, or have had trouble with non-paying bidders. It is NOT good if you encourage buyers to purchase multiple, different items for better shipping rates!
I was really glad this buyer brought this to my attention. I feel like such a doof. I immediately edited both items she was interested in so she could purchase them, and even offered free shipping on the second item for her trouble. She bought both.
I then began the process of editing all 98 Mary Kay auctions to uncheck that little box, as that is not one of the things you can edit with the multiple editing feature on eBay stores.
I also put in an ad for purchasing Mary Kay makeup at USFREE Ads. This is one of my favorite online classified ads places.
My auctions are up to almost $90 today. I have hopes that that $150 purchase will turn into $350-400 before fees.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
I went through all of our old "stuff" to find things to list on eBay to go along with the fishing shirt and mosquito net I plan on listing soon.
Here's what I found:
A bunch of school uniforms
JUNO DVD
Enfamil Formula Checks ($15 worth)
A Nintendo NES Game System with 2 games
A Sega Dreamcast System with 3 games
Some political bumper stickers that were overshipped (we ordered 5 and they sent 10)
Girl Scout Daisy books (new)
Boy Scout uniforms and books
Some of this stuff, like the kids clothes, I've been waiting for back to school to begin to sell. This is the best time of year for those seasonal items.
I haven't started to list this stuff yet, because I want to complete the editing of those auctions. I did take pictures of all of it, and also of the Mary Kay pictures I was unhappy with.
While further researching some Mary Kay items, I stumbled upon eBay Marketplace Research. I have always had my own system of research, but eBay now offers a pay service to look-up average sell prices within the last 60 days. I decided to give it a try and spent $2.99 for 2-days access.
While there, I was finding that many successful MK sellers were charging higher prices but including shipping for free. This made them stand out with the “free shipping” next to their price, and they still came out a little ahead on fees than the average selling price. Since I was going through each listing anyways, I decided to take a chance and try it.
I went back through each listing (well, started it anyway) and changed them from "discounts on shipping" to "free shipping" basically adding in the price to ship on each item. This is new for me, so we will see how it works.
One more item sold today. It was not one of the new free shipping ones.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
I finished up all the listings conversions today (finally). Boy, was that a mess! I'm glad I'm finally done with it.
The girl I bought the Mary Kay from last week emailed me. Apparently she is moving and found a bunch more samples and another cologne. She offered it to me for $5. I said I'd take it. Ran out to her house this evening and got it. Looks good! I will without a doubt make back much more than that $5!
I looked on eBay for various auctions for MK wholesale lots. Too expensive for my tastes.
Someone contacted me from my US FREE ADS listing. I emailed her with details about the information I need from her. She hasn't contacted me back yet.
I get a lot of that; people who email interested, so I email them back saying something like, "Ok, please send me a list of what you have and how much you want for it all." And they don't reply! Oh well.
I went through the search feature of Craigslist today. Contacted someone who had a post stating they had over $5,000 worth of Mary Kay that they needed to get rid of fast. I emailed her my phone number and said I wanted it all.
She called, told me they had $2,780 worth of product (what happened to the $5k??) and a starter kit which was worth over $220 (um...she paid $100 for it) and would give me a 40% discount.
I almost laughed. Thats HER discount! What did she think I was going to do with it? Wear it all? Even if I was a MK distributor myself, I could have gotten the same stuff for the same price directly through the company. When I told her I wanted an 80% discount, she seemed genuinely confused and told me, "But I'll go in the hole with that."
I told her to call me if she got desperate. That I'd be in the area for a couple more weeks (this is true, we are leaving this town next month). I'd be the one going in the hole on that deal!
My auctions are up past $200 now! I am confident they will break the $350 mark!
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The eBay experiment continues....
Today was a really bad day. None of my MK items sold. No one replied to me from all the MK emails I sent out expressing interest.
And then I got an email. An eBay user sent me a nasty gram. She claimed that the material I was selling on eBay in my auctions, which was notes for moms to go along with the curriculum, was in violation of copyright laws. You see, on the notes, it clearly stated that one may not photocopy the pages and resell them. However, I had not done that. I was selling the original, loose-leaf pages, with the previous owner's highlighting and penciled in notes throughout. It made her mad and she told on me to eBay.
I got 12 of the 15 auctions canceled, but NOT because of the copyright issues she was claiming. It was because eBay chose to view the homeschooled materials I was selling as Teacher's Editions.
eBay Will Not Allow Teacher's Editions to be Sold
eBay passed a rule a few years ago making it impossible to sell teacher's editions on eBay. The theory is that non-teachers are not legally allowed to possess them. They were afraid that students would buy them off eBay and cheat at school. Unfortunately, they chose to make no distinctions between a teacher's edition and homeschooling materials.
Now, I'm sorry, but if my 7 year old can manage to figure out how to go onto eBay, purchase, pay, and have an answer key sent to her, manage to hide it from me in her room while sneaking her schoolwork off to her hiding spot to read, copy and cheat on her 2nd grade work, then more power to her.
Usually you can get around this by calling the answer key/parent's guide exactly what it is: a Parent's Edition. Or you can abbreviate Teacher's Edition TE, which is what I foolishly did. When they went to investigate the fictitious claim of the vicious woman who I will never know why she did it, they pulled the auctions that had TE in them. They sent me a letter saying this. (for the record, they left up auctions that had those notes but NOT TE in them.)
What will I do? I'll give it a few weeks and rephotograph the auctions, relisting them as parent's editions. Its annoying, as when canceled, the auctions with 1.5 days left were almost to $300.
I had two women who were bidding on the items email me directly to make a deal outside ebay to buy them. As ebay will not allow me to list these items, it is not in violation of their rules. Also important to note, if you have never had it happen to you before, when you get an item delisted on eBay, it erases all the contact info of both the seller and of all the bidders so you cannot communicate off eBay. The two that found me had already emailed me asking me questions (one was the one that wanted the $40 BIN deal; we've made that deal now.)
Multiple Streams of Income
Though this was a setback for my experiment, and a big hassle, this occurrence was not devastating to me. But lets think clearly about this: what if my entire business was selling Teacher's Editions on eBay? This rule came into place a couple years ago, and was implemented overnight. Imagine if you were supporting yourself using eBay with this one item. Overnight, your entire income stream would be gone, and you would be stuck with thousands of dollars of merchandise you couldn't sell.
It has happened to many on eBay. Just recently, they decided sellers who sold e-goods only (that is, ebooks, digital downloads, etc) were not allowed to sell them anymore. There were sellers making thousands each month on those products. And one day, they woke up, and it was all gone.
That is NOT the way to build a business! I personally have many, multiple, streams of income, and I suggest that you do as well. My biggest streams of income are this website, my two network marketing ventures, and hopefully, eBay. I have others as well, like savings and investments, etc. If one thing goes bad one month, or completely erases, I still have many other sources to draw from.
This is the same with those who work for an income. What will happen if your husband loses his job tomorrow? Will you be able to survive? We set about creating multiple streams of income a few years ago, and now my husband is able to quit his job.
Protect yourself. Find other ways to earn money in addition to what you are doing now. Don't put all your financial eggs into one basket.
I have put a dispute in with eBay to argue their delisting, but I'm not counting on anything good coming from it. Over the years, I have had about 10 items delisted for various reasons, and only once was my item reinstated. Its usually semantics, not an intentional violation of rules, that gets an item delisted. Oh, and one eBay user who has too much time on their hands, and like to play tattle-tail!
I've decided, based on this incident, not to bother with the homeschooling books at all anymore. I will concentrate strictly on Mary Kay and garage sale finds. I'm hoping to sell these books I've got off-eBay to at least make up the costs of my purchase. Ugh.
I plan on listing all this various stuff I've collected this weekend, and hopefully making another MK deal or two this week. I might get out to garage sales as well.
We'll see! Check back next week as the eBay experiment continues!
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Today was a great day! 
The eBay experiment continues....
The eBay experiment continues....
