Happy Day!

 

Yay! My goal was to reach 750 by the middle of the year as my end of year goal is 1000
and I started in January at 500 ish. So yay this morning I hit 750! 

My Best Sales This Week

5 Yards of Vintage Floral Fabric. Paid $2. Sold for $24.99 plus shipping. Went to Australia. Sold a day after I listed it. This was something that had been sitting unlisted for quite a while just because I was too lazy to measure it!

Vintage Mary Poppins Old Maid Card Game.  Paid .25. Sold for $19.99 free shipping. These were a cool find. I could not find any in completeds so I guessed at pricing. Maybe could have started higher but they were pretty soiled. 

The rest of my sales were my usual $10 -15 dollar sales. I'm still working on listing more in the $20 - 40 range. I tried several auctions this week since they were free to list. Didn't sell anything. 

I've also been working on going through old unlisted inventory and getting rid of items not worth listing. I've filled at least 10 grocery bags to donate in the last few weeks. It's hard to do especially at first but gets easier and feels really good after you get going. 

In the news I was reading how Ebay has slipped in Googles search ranks recently. There are several articles out there explaining it but it does not sound like a good thing….I hope it is a temporary and ebay makes some changes to correct the problem. 

In other news I'm sure you all have heard of the breach of ebay security. I hope you've changed your passwords. I know it's a pain. I'd had the same password for many years. My old brain does not like to remember new passwords. Make sure you change other passwords as well if you used identical passwords. I was guilty of that. Ugh. 

What's happening in your store this week? 

My Best Sales This Week

Vintage Baby Doll Nightie. Paid $5 for a box lot it was part of. Sold for $19.99 plus shipping.

Clifford the Big Red Dog Large Plush. Paid .49 at GW. Sold for $18.99 plus shipping.

Mens Pendleton Jacket. Paid $2. Sold for $29.99 plus shipping. 

Update on My Goal for the Year

My goal at the beginning of the year was to get my listed inventory to 1000 by the end of the year. In January I was at 500 something. I'm on track! Slightly ahead of schedule. I'm at 722 today and need to be at 750 by the end of June. No problem. I'm shooting for 800. So I'm on track to hit 1000 by the end of the year.  Did you set business goals in January? How is your progress? 

Watermarks

I've noticed that some sellers use a watermark on their photos. I was wondering today when looking at this seller who's blog I often read, if the use of a watermark enhances the perceived value of an item. I'm not saying that their items aren't worth the price they are selling for. Their photos are also superb. And their items obviously nice. But I think their use of a watermark looks classy. So it got me thinking for my higher priced items if a watermark would make an item look more exclusive. Like it's coming from a high-end shop. It takes seconds to add one.

What do you think? Do you use a watermark? Do you think there is any weight to my theory?

Ebay's Watermark Policy

Watermark policy.

Watermarks are allowed for ownership and attribution, but not for marketing information, specific details about your item, or customer service. Your watermark should be no bigger than 5% of the total image area, have an opacity of no more than 50%, and never obscure the item. Links are not allowed in watermarks.

 

To make sure your watermarks are compliant, use the eBay watermark creation service. You’ll find it in the “Bring your item to life with pictures” section of the listing form. (I could not find this section)

- See more at: http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/how-to-take-product-photos/ebay-photo-requirements/#sthash.PqhHlgYv.dpuf 

This morning I put a water mark on a few of my items. Below is one of those.

Item Without Watermark

Same Item With Watermark

Am I cccrazzzy? I'm pretty sure I am. LOL.

My Best Sales This Week and A Question for Readers

Vintage Black Hole Selectavision Video Disc. I paid $1. Sold for $14.99 plus shipping

Fisher Price Fun Sounds Garage. The buyer hasn't paid yet. I paid $2. Sold for 19.99 plus shipping

Living Without Magazine. I thought I'd have time to read these but they sold a day after listing. Paid $4.50 for 9 magazines. Sold for $27 plus shipping. 

I need to learn to find and buy items that bring in more money. I buy and sell too many things where I make $10 or $15 per item. I'm not sure how to accomplish this goal. I know that I tend to buy items that are cheap (cost under $2) that I know I can make $10 or $15 on but sometimes I'm lucky and they are worth more. I think I shy away from items costing $5 and up because it seems like such an investment. I know that that's not reasonable and many people spend much more on one item. In reality I'm sure I could recoup my $5 investment in most cases. How do I turn this ship around? If you have any tips for me leave them in the comments. 

My Best Sales This Week

Sandra Boynton Mug. Paid .49. Sold for $22.95 plus shipping. I always pick up Sandra Boynton when I find it. It usually sits for a while but sells for a good price. Right now I also have a Boynton table cloth in my store but in the past have sold pillowcases and greeting cards. 

This vintage light globe. I had this forever. I was going to do something with it myself but never did. I don't remember how much I paid for it but I'm sure it was less than $5. Sold for $37.99 plus shipping.

I've heard that these old hand held games are good sellers but never came across any before. I found three at an estate sale last week for a dollar each. One ended up not working. The other is a Yahtzee game which is still listed and this Solitaire game. Paid $1 Sold for $39.99 free shipping.

And last these sundae glasses. Paid a couple dollars and sold for $19.95 plus shipping. 

Tip of the Week

Walgreens is having a sale on packing tape right now (at least as of yesterday). I cleaned out three stores! The Wexford brand small rolls in the dispenser are usually over $3 and are now 99 cents. I love the brown colored as I use it to cover up things on my shipping boxes that I don't want to show…like liquor brands, UPCs etc. They had clear too but not as much. Of course the brown can also be used to seal your boxes. Just doesn't work very well for taping on postage :)

Best Church Sale Ever

We went to a church rummage sale yesterday unlike any other sale I've been too. When we walked in a man came up to us and told us they were raising money for their youth group. Nothing was marked you paid what you wanted. Oh my god! I paid $10 for 2 boxes of stuff. It was hard to decide what to pay. I didn't want to rip them off but also wanted to take advantage and get a good deal. I hope I did okay. They seemed happy when I offered $10. 

How to Customize Global Shipping Program

Did you know you can customize your Global Shipping Program and to some extent choose the countries where you want to use it and those you don't? When the Global Shipping Program first came out I didn't opt in because I wasn't sure I'd like it and really didn't want to use it on every country. I thought it might turn buyers off because of the higher upfront costs associated with buying an item and I didn't like that you could not offer First Class International. The reason I DID want to use it was because there were certain countries that I was not shipping to which with the GSP I could ship to without fear. Namely Russia and Mexico. These were two countries I didn't previously ship to because of things I'd read. Very long times to arrive..stolen packages. There are a number of other countries I exclude from my shop because they are not covered by insurance. But eventually the GSP changed. It now allows you to customize it and use it for some countries and not others. This was exactly what I wanted to do. It took me a while to figure out how to do so. 

Below I've created a little tutorial to show how. You can't actually choose by country in most cases..Mostly it goes by continent or region. You'll see what I mean below. 

It was a lot of work to set up initially because I wanted all of my current listings to reflect the change. I had to go in and individually revise each listing. Going forward from there it knows what I want and new listings reflect my settings.  The reason I like this is because the countries which I opt out of GSP can still choose First Class International Shipping if they want. This is a lower cost option and I hope it leads to more sales. I've used it for a long time and never had a problem with FCI. I insure it through Shipsaver. But now I also sell to Mexico and Russia and have no worries.

Step 1: Go into your account settings and click on Site Preferences. You will see the screen below. Click on Show by Shipping Preferences.

Step 2: On the Shipping Preferences Screen click on Offer the Global Shipping Program. 

Step 3: You must have checked the first two checkboxes: 'Use The Global Shipping Program' and 'Allow Me To Customize International Shipping By Country'. Click Submit. That's the first part.

Step 4: At this point you've chosen Global Shipping Program and it will be applied to all of your listings. What you need to do is modify your listings if you want GSP applied only to certain countries. Each listing is set up separately. Go to one of your listings or start a new listing and go down to the shipping section. Below I show what the International Shipping looks like before you modify it and how it looks after. You can see in the 2nd screen that I have check-marked certain countries. This means I've opted out of Global Shipping for those checked. Global shipping will only apply for Mexico, Europe and Asia. Like I said before it took me a while to get all of the listing I had current at the time set up but now when I start a new listing it by default uses my preferences as seen below. Hope this was helpful!