This is the day I started to sell for a living. I have sold before but just odds and ends for fun. Now it was time to get serious. I decided to look around the house and came up with empty baby food jars. I had sold lots of these earlier in the year to recoup some of the cost for buying baby food. Every listing I put up had sold. So this time I was able to put up 4 listings of baby food jars. Next I go to the basement and get all the Halloween decorations I had and didn't sell at our yard sale this past summer! I find 5 Avon Halloween decorations to sell. I used to work for AVON in human resources and I got these for super cheap back in 2006! I also find an old plastic electric fabric flame cauldron I bought several years ago at the after Halloween sales at Target. I listed them all for the standard 7 days. All my listings sold! I did 4 different versions of the baby food jars to see what sold best. It seem lots of (50) 4oz jars bring in the best money. I had done smaller lots of 25, 20 and 15 and only got the asking bid on those! The best lot sold for $13. I used large box flat rate rating shipping and charged $14.95 but since I did online postage I paid $14.20. I didn't intend to profit from the shipping so it was a bonus! So using USPS online is the best shipping option for me.
So how much did I profit from these 7 sales? I don't know! Since these were around the house items what I paid vs what I made is a bit difficult to determine. I look at these as sunk cost items so the amount sold is the total profit since I hadn't intended on selling these for profit when I got them. However I did meet my $100 a week goal of sales but I didn't take out fees, etc....yet. Plus I started hitting auctions and yard sales for future sales.
The sales I was most happy with was the baby food jar lot that went for $13. I figured bottom line I got 21 cents for each jar. I paid 46 cents a jar so each jar of baby food cost only 25 cents! What a way to keep you baby cost down!
Next best sale was the black fabric flame cauldron that went for $10. The price tag on the box said $14.99 so I know I didn't pay more than $7.50 for it at the after Halloween sales. Plus I had it for a couple years. SO I got paid for that!
Lessons learned:
1. Scrutinize what you throw away! I know I threw away tons of baby food jars before I realized how much I could get for them. So every now and then I look at what I am about to throw away and do a search for it on EBAY. If I don't see it worth my while I go ahead and throw it away. If I can sell it, I clean it up and keep a box in the pantry to put these things in for me to list later.
2. Don't try and profit from shipping and handling! To me its just an ethical thing to do. I HATE when I would see listings for 99 cents only to see a $25 shipping and handling fee! That's just poor salesman ship.
3. Take advantage for regional a and b shipments from the USPS! When I price shipping I take my zip code and how much it would cost to zip 90210. I figure that to me my highest POSSIBLE shipping cost. I have unexpectedly profited from selling such an item priced for California shipment only to send it to Indiana. I live in Ohio. When I was able to fit that item in a regional A box and did all the online postage stuff I profited over $5. I did think about doing a small refund but I am small potatoes for now and can't afford to. One day I hope to ship just for actual cost. But that's just me! So go online and order these FREE boxes along with the priority mail boxes and do all your shipping from home in your PJ's and have the post office come and get them from your porch the next day! I think you are silly not to take advantage of this!
Fiddler out......
No comments:
Post a Comment