Supplies For Selling On Ebay

If you read my earlier posts you know that I was going to do a post on garage sale tips. Unfortunately, the garage sale I planned on having with my MIL has been canceled due to her being sick, which means I can't get any photos. So I'm waiting on that post until I can get photos, and decided instead to talk about some of the very basic supplies you will need to sell on Ebay.

What You Need

1. Camera - Many articles and such will recommend you have an expensive camera, but really until you know if you plan on sticking with this I don't suggest it. Use the camera on your phone, ipad, etc, or a good basic digital camera. They will work. Just make sure you do some basic editing and cropping before you list to clean them up.
2. Computer/Internet - I know this seems like an obvious one, but sometimes the obvious still needs to be pointed out. Now, they have a mobile app, and you can list entirely from your mobile device, as long as you can take pictures as well with said device. However, there are things I can't find/do on the mobile app that I can do from my laptop, and I personally prefer to use my laptop. That's me though, you could be different.
3. Basic Shipping Supplies - This really depends on what you are selling, but a few good things to have are: bubble mailer envelopes, regular manila envelopes, Sharpie, Labels, shipping tape, small roll bubble wrap. You don't have to buy boxes, I generally use what the post office provides me. Then again I've never sold much that required a box, mostly different envelopes and poly bags. Poly bags are plastic bags that come in a wide range of sizes, and once you get into this more, and depending on what you sell you may want to look into purchasing. I buy mine off ebay, and usually get pretty good prices no more than I need.
4. Mail Scale - This one is not 100% needed, but you can find them for around $15-$25 on ebay and at stores. Once you have one you can weigh your packages and mail them through Ebay. This allows you to print the labels from home, and you get a discounted rate on your shipping. They will easily pay for themselves after a few sales with the money saved on shipping and time. 
5. Printer - If you're are going to be purchasing your postage through ebay you will need a printer to print the labels off of. You can buy special paper for the labels, or you can just print on regular printer paper and tape onto the package with shipping tape. I've done both and they both work equally fine. 
6. PayPal account - PayPal and Ebay go together like peas and carrots folks, they are best freaking friends for life, so if you plan on selling on Ebay you better get a PayPal account. It's free and easy to make, and you can request a debit card for your account to make accessing your money easier and faster.
7. Ebay Account - Again, it's obvious, but you do need it. Once again, it's free and relatively easy. 

There are other things you can get for selling on ebay. I'm sure you'll see lots of posts and people telling you that you NEED this item and that item, oh and don't forget about.......... but to really start the above are all you need. Most of the items I listed you probably already have, and if you don't you can easily get started with $50 or less. Depends on if you buy the scale or not. I didn't by the way, not for first month or so until I made a bit of cash and could pay for it with my earnings. There are also different apps you can buy and download for your smartphone that can help you know what things may be worth on Ebay but I don't have smartphone, so I cannot give a good recommendation on what to us. 

So there you go, a very basic list to get started with. I highly suggest getting items from around your house to start with as well. You ARE going to make mistakes, sell things for less than they are worth, charge to little or to much for shipping, etc. Selling what you already don't want helps take the sting from that a little. Good luck and happy profit hunting. 

How To Sell College Textbooks for Cash

Photo Credit: Logan Ingalls

So, one of the things I did this month, and I do it at the end of every semester, is I sold my college textbooks to a reseller and made $300. Of course, those books cost around $600, but since I had to have them I might as well make a little money back. This post is going to talk about how I do it, a little walk through if you will. It's very easy really, and won't take much of your personal time or any money out of your pocket.

 There are two ways you could go about selling back college books, one is if you are a student and you're looking to recoup some of the money you spent on them. The other is you hunt ebay, garage sales, etc. to buy other peoples books for cheap, and resell them for a profit. I'll talk about how you can take what I've told you and apply it to both situations.

Quick Tips

• Most buyback sites will pay for your shipping. You will just need the ability to print the label they generate on their site for you.
• If you have Paypal choose a buyback site that will pay via PP, because you will get your payment much faster!
• Pay close attention to the reviews of other people that have sold to the site have left. Avoid any that have to many negatives.
• Amazon will buy your books back, but they ONLY offer an Amazon credit to your account. Which if you shop a lot on Amazon isn't terrible, but if you need cash it's not what you want. Remember though that Amazon does sell food, bodywash, supplies and textbooks, not to mention a million other products. 
• Make sure your books are in good condition! If you send in torn, stained, marked up, etc. books the companies can refuse your books AND you WILL NOT get them back. So be careful of what you sell. 
• I have used textbookrush.com many times myself, and I have always been satisfied. Last year I switched to a new book buyback site, bookbyte.com and I DO NOT recommend them. I switched because they offered more than textbookrush but they are terrible! Do not use them.

How To Sell Books You Already Have

1. Gather all your books that you are going to sell. Sit down with them, and your computer, and pull up a website called Book Scouter.
2. Once there enter the ISBN of one of your textbooks into the appropriate spot. The ISBN is generally found on the back of the book, above the barcode. 
3. After you have done this a page will load that will give you a list of different book buying sites that will buy the book, for how much, customer reviews and more. Here's an example of what the page will look like. 

    4. Here I'm going to suggest that you not automatically choose the one that gives you the most money for your book. Look around, click on the links. Read the reviews by other people that have sold to them, check out the features. I'm going to suggest highly that you go with a seller that offers payments through paypal if you have a PP account. 

    5. I also suggest you go ahead and do this will all your books. Write down how much for each book, through what seller, etc. Choose three different buyback sites to compare, and then choose the one you are going to go with. 

    6. Follow the link to their site, and then you'll have to follow their instructions on what to do. Each site is different, and I can't step by step lead you through it. In general though you: make an account, enter in the ISBNs of the books you are selling back, and create the order.

    7. Print the label that they will provide for you, this is key if you don't want to pay for the shipping yourself. (You don't by the way, books are heavy and heavy=$$$$ in shipping). 

    8. Lastly just make sure that you continue to monitor the status of your books. Track the shipping, watch for when they process, and keep an eye on when they issue payment. 

How To Resell Books You Find For Profit

1. Search Garage Sales, Thrift Stores, craigslist, facebook listings, etc. for used textbooks. Be sure that the condition is good, no tears or stains, little to no writing/highlighting. If you have a smart phone you can use the book scouter mobile app. Scan the barcode, and it will bring up the price comparison page for you. 
2. Repeat steps 2-8 from above. 
3. Something to remember if you go this route is that most buyback sites will only buy a set amount of each book from you. Like they will only buy 4 copies in a year of the same book, and 4 copies of another book, etc. So you may need to have multiple sites that you sell to. 
4. You can sell through Amazon and Ebay as a personal seller. If you sell on Amazon FBA then you will get money for your books, because the customer is paying not Amazon, and not a credit to Amazon. Also, you can sell on Ebay, but there are a lot of sellers on there, and many offer the international version of a book, which is usually cheaper and is only slightly different. So many buyers just buy the cheaper one from out of country. 

So there you go. No really a whole lot to it really. I know people really make decent money reselling textbooks. The main difference of selling through Amazon or Ebay vs. selling to a buyback site is you can charge close to retail price on Amazon/Ebay. A buyback site is going to offer you less, because they plan on selling the books themselves, and the are looking to make a profit too. 

Weekly Goals ----- Again!

Wow, hadn't realized it had been 11 days since my last, slightly depressing post. I didn't mean to let so much time go past, but I keep finding as I delve into this $20 a day game that I frequently need to think, reassess and sometimes slightly adjust my plan(s). You see, I've played around at this before, selling on Ebay, selling on Etsy, trying a blog, etc. but I truly think this is the most serious and dedicated I have been to this pursuit to date. This time I'm committed, this time I have a resolve I didn't have before, this time.... well, it just feels different. I feel different this time.

This time, before delving back into this again, I read a little on self help. Oh, laugh if you want to, but I knew that improvement was needed. One book I read, after seeing it mentioned numerous times and from different sources was, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It's a very interesting book, it was written quite a while ago, so some things are not relevant to current times. Surprisingly though, much of it still is! Mostly it talks about the "habits" of wealthy people, one of which is that they make up their mind quickly and change it slowly. Part of my problem has always been that I've had the starting drive, but fizzled out after just a few short months. So this time I'm committed, and every time I start to feel myself slip, I just have to take a break and re-commit myself. Hence, the depressing last post, and the sometimes long gaps in my writing.

So what does any of that have to do with my weekly goals? Not a whole lot really :D I just felt that my last post perhaps needed a follow up. So, what has been accomplished since the last post? Again, not really a whole lot :/

Right after writing that post it motivated me to get my butt in gear and get some stuff done! So, off to take pictures for Ebay I went, and I got a bunch done. My plan was to sell my Ebay stuff, get the $$$ together and start focusing it more heavily on Amazon FBA, which was my plan to start with, I had just gotten a wee bit distracted by Ebay along the way. That night as I was listing items suddenly all the listings disappeared. Unsure of what happened I stopped for the night and came back in the morning. Turns out my account has been suspended. So here's a little back story:

Last fall I was selling some things on Ebay to make a little money before my second son arrived. Huge mistake on my part, I was so tired (3rd trimester) and worn out that I was behind on shipping many of my items, so I got some dings for late shipping. Then I had one customer open a bogus "item not as described" case against for a .99 pair of scrub pants, another ding. One thing I could never figure out how to ship, so I cancelled and refunded, another ding. So why is last fall affecting me now? Because ebay is changing their seller requirements and they made changes in June, so my dings from last fall just now really hurt me. So, I've been mostly dealing with this for the past week. At this point I am left with having to call ebay and try to re-instate my account that way. Wish me luck, considering I've read little positive experiences with Ebay customer service if you are a seller.


So here are my goals for this next week (or so lol)
* Talk to ebay
*Write 2 more blog posts
*Gather up items for a garage sale my Mother in Law is having.

The first goal I already explained, so we'll move to the next. While not much has happened on the ebay/FBA front, I have done a couple things to make money over the last 30 days that I feel I should write about those. One will be a Garage Sale Tips post, and the other will be on selling back your textbooks. Sometimes I get to wrapped up in ebay and amazon that I forget the other things. Lastly, my MIL is having a garage sale, and while I don't have enough alone for a garage sale, I have enough that added to what she has it'll be just fine. Make her sale look bigger, and get my stuff looked (and hopefully bought). So here's hoping for another $40 - $60. Well, that's all for now folks, until next time.

Keep Moving Forward, Even When I Don't Want To

Photo Credit to DanO

So, if you've been reading the posts, you'll see that my last was over a week ago. I have not done my weekly goals, nor did I reach 75% of the ones I set for the week before. Now, I haven't been reaching my weekly goals, but I've doing better, and I've kept working along at them. So what changed the last week and a half?

I had a crappy week, personally and with sales. I found out I'm pregnant with our third child, got in a fight with a family member, barely sold anything on Ebay, had 2 people not pay (one finally did after a case was opened) and I have one return because the item was broken during shipping :/ I've also missed out on a job interview because I missed the initial call, and despite calling numerous times and leaving multiple messages the HR person would never call me back to schedule it. Today was the last day for interviews, and despite trying again today, nothing. It's very disappointing to say the least! Now, I'm not really whining, I'm just being honest, I know there are people that have had far worse weeks than I, but it does point out one of my flaws to myself.

When I get down, or discouraged, I just become overwhelmed and I find it hard to keep moving forward. My motivation just goes down the toilet. I've already mentioned I'm not the greatest at keeping myself to task, and things like this just make me worse. I realize however, that this is not the way to succeed. That the winners of our society have one common trait, and that is they keep moving forward, especially when it gets rough.

So, I need to keep telling myself, just keep moving forward. Like a mantra, I'm going to keep this in my going in my head. Over and over, especially when I feel whiny and don't want to do anything. Especially when it feels like it's accomplishing nothing. Because the truth is that doing nothing is not accomplishing anything, at best, at worst it's making everything worse! So today I'm going to keep moving forward.

I found a Emerson VCR at a garage sale across the street, and when my son wakes up from his nap, I'm going over there and buy it. I looked it up on Ebay and they are selling around $15 to $20, and my neighbors only want $4, of course I'm going to try and get it for $3, but either way the profit is there. One thing I'm learning is that dead tech sells. By dead tech I mean outdated tech that isn't "in" right now. There is still a huge market for many of these items, and they are some of the easiest items to find cheap at garage sales and thrift stores. Here's a great little youtube channel I found, and every Monday she does a special video on what sold well that week. I suggest you subscribe and watch her videos, they really are helpful.

Suzanne A. Wells youtube channel

So as far as ebay sales go I believe I'm going to begin focusing on this little niche and see where it takes me. This leads to my next thoughts on where I'm going with my business.

Some nice sales this past couple weeks have allowed me to build my Amazon FBA items back up, and I still have more to go get. This coupled with my slight bad luck with Ebay recently has reignited my desire to switch fully to Amazon FBA. I'm going to begin focusing more of my energy and attention back into this selling venue. I've been letting the fact that it's hard and overwhelming to start in, while Ebay is relatively easy and familiar to me, to hold me back. The time has come though to suck it up and get it done! I'm never going to learn, or move forward, until I start. Often times it's those first few steps that are the hardest. Much like my children learning to walk, it's hard for them at first, but they want to do it, so they keep trying. Next thing I know, they're running! So time for me to start walking, so I can start to run :)

My plan for today is to work on my house, I know has little to do with my business, but it's a mess and it's distracting. So, I get that knocked out of the way and I free up a lot of clutter, literally and figuratively, so that I can begin working on my business. I work this weekend, so not much is going to get done, but starting Monday my children start daycare and my husband begins working. So days that I have off are going to have a few hours that I can use, without distractions to work. I can't really tell you how excited I am about this. This allows me that precious time I need to drop items off at the post office, shop and source for more items, take photos, create listings, and write for this blog and anything else I need to accomplish.

So, remember when it's tough, when everything sucks, and it feels like it's all falling apart to just keep moving forward. One step at a time, push through, and then you can start to run.

May Earnings and Expenses

    So, my first month of concentrated selling has gone on by and it's time to look at the numbers and see where I'm at. Now, if I had really made $20 a day I would've made $620! I'll let you know right that I did not hit that mark, or really even come close to it. It's okay though, I'm not letting it get me down, or discourage me from continuing to try. I actually made more money than I thought, which is nice, and that keeps me going into next month. I'll briefly list my selling goals for next month, a realization I made coming up with my numbers, and how the different selling formats plays into "making $20 a day" even though I'm not some days.

Profits

Ebay - $107.45
Facebook Group Sales - $70 (baby bassinet and nicorrette gum unopened I had left)
Yard Sale - $113
Money collected for Shipping and Handling - $22.35
Total - $312.80

Expenses

Shipping - $30 (estimate, I'll do a better job of keeping track this month)

Ebay fees - $13.37

Sourcing more products to sell - $31.96

Total Expenses - $75.33

Total Net Profit - $237.47

Over $200 really is not a bad number, and I'm not going to sneeze at it, and it really motivates me to keep going and shoot for a higher number next month. You may see that I have some facebook group sales on there, and that is just a couple items I had around the house that I didn't or couldn't sell on ebay. If you go to facebook, and type your town's name and add buy/sell/trade at the end in the search bar you'll find groups for selling stuff in and around your area. That is what I mean by Facebook group selling. I would also like to point out that the garage sale is a maybe twice a year event, usually only once. So this is not something I can replicate month to month. However, it's those unexpected money makers that are the best sometimes. 

Here's something I realized though going over these numbers. I really don't have much to show for all this money I made. I didn't really pay a bill with it, I bought a small amount of groceries a couple times, put gas in the truck a couple times, but really, not a whole lot to show. In fact, I was shocked at how much I made this month, because I really felt like it wasn't much. Which I know for many people a little over $200 isn't a lot of money, but to me and my budget it really is. I think I found the root of the problem though. The problem is that a lot of times this money came to me in $20 - $30 increments. Which made them easy to spend, on little stuff, without saving up for a larger expense, like a bill. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to remedy this situation.

I already have the money going into a separate account, my Paypal account, not my regular checking, which is something experts say to do. I can't tell Ebay to save my money until the end of the week, and I can't control how many items I sell, and how much I make through ebay each week either. I can make a weekly goal, and try to hit it, but little control. Maybe, I should start posting a weekly sales report, so that will at least keep me thinking about how much I made. I've already been adding it to my weekly goals, so I think I'll just continue to do that. Once again, I'm just trying to build in that accountability factor for myself by putting it all out there. If that doesn't seem to work, then I'll just have to think of something else. I'll give it the month of June and see if I do at least a little better about it before I decide.

Next, I said I would explain how I figure all this fits into making $20 a day. After all, I'm sure you've noticed that I'm NOT actually making $20 every single day. Some weeks/days I made nothing, other's I made $100. In a sense I'm not actually trying to make $20 every single day, not literally. In another I am trying to make that $20 everyday in a more general way. $20 a day, is $140 a week and $580 in four weeks. However, telling myself to go make another $580 this month, or $140 next week is daunting task to put on myself. One that, frankly, would overwhelm me. I wouldn't know where to start, I'd start to feel hopeless, and eventually give up. So telling myself, hey, I'm going to make $20 everyday is a much more smaller and more manageable goal for my mind to wrap itself around. So, income streams like ebay, where I can run a 7 day auction, or Amazon FBA where I could send in products weekly, and hopefully sell weekly can give me that $20 everyday. Maybe not literally, maybe one day I'll make 0 and the next I'll make $40, but the point is to try and average earnings that would divide into $20 everyday. From time to time I will try things that I could do for a quick $20, like exchanging my change bank, or collecting cans, or a lot of other things. Mostly though I'm looking for income streams that will take minimal time, and continue to generate that revenue over and over and over again. Hope I didn't lose you, and I hope that all made sense to you.

Lastly, I'm going to try and a do a quick rundown for my overall goals for June. Now, if I'm shooting for $20 a day, and there's 30 days in the month than that equals to $600. So, there's my sales goals. It's a bit lofty, especially considering my sales from this month, but give yourself a goal that just above what you think you can do, and then you will see what you really can do. The point is to make myself stretch to try and hit that goal. To keep it all simple for this month, I'm saying $600 gross profit. I'm new to this, I don't have a lot of "stock" to sell, so I'm going to have to roll a lot of the $600 right back into everything. I need shipping supplies, I need more things to sell, I would like to purchase a couple different books about Amazon FBA, and so on. Really, if I walk away with $100 of that actually going into my pocket I'll be happy. I figure a few months of rolling at least 50% of my profits right back into everything should give me a good start so that I can start keeping more down the road. Ideally I shoot for rolling 75% back into it, but life determines much more than plans, so we'll see what happens. As far as where and how I would like to earn the money, I'm thinking around $500 from Ebay, and $100 from FBA. Only because my FBA seems to be off to a slow (really slow) start, and I think I'll need June just to get the basics started. 

So, there you have it. What I accomplished this month, and what I hope to accomplish next month. Overall I'm very pleased with myself. I feel that when I first started this blog over a year ago I was not very focused on what I would do. This time I feel more focused, and I also have a better idea of what I'm doing with this blog. I'm finding that it is truly helping keep on task, and keep my thoughts in order. Case in point, I wasn't going to do anything today, period. I was going to just cruise the net, then I read my weekly goals, and realized that I needed to get this post done, and I start my research as well. So there already it's helping me. Hopefully, some day, it'll help someone else as well. Until then, I'm going to keep plugging away at it!

6/7 Weekly Goals

I did quite a bit better with my goals for last week. I actually accomplished almost all of them, I'm still hung up on that first FBA shipment, but I'll get to that. If you want to see what my goals for the last week click the link below and it'll take you to the post.

CLICK HERE

So, I did write two blog posts this past week, which I am super proud of. Writing one of them sparked the idea for a bunch more I need to write on the subject of Ebay and selling. Just some basic stuff that someone new to game might like to know about. I also managed to remember to take more photos for the posts. So goals for the blog were met! If you want to read either of those posts you can find the links below.

GETTING STARTED ON EBAY
MY WEEK OF BUYING AND SELLING

As far as listing on Ebay I actually listed 12 items during the time frame, and I still have 3 items that didn't sell from the last batch of listings sitting on there. So, in total I have 15 items listed for a total of $174 in sales. IF everything sells of course. Right now 1 item has a bid, so barring a customer that doesn't pay, I know that item will sell. So my goals were met, and exceeded on the Ebay front.

Now, Amazon FBA. If you've been following, or have read some previous posts I seem to be having a hard time getting started with this. I started one box, and thought I had a good amount of stuff to send in. Then I found out that a product that made up 75% of my box, they won't take. It was different deodorants, and they are considered a "meltable" and they won't take them :( I also purchased some grocery items to send in instead, some little seasoning packets and such, but I have to make my own barcode for these products. Two problems: I'm out of ink for my printer to make labels, and second I'm not really sure HOW to make my own barcode. I still think Amazon FBA is a wonderful system, and once I get into it it will be great for me. However, I'm finding as I get into this more and more that there is A LOT that goes into it. There are restricted areas to sell in, that you have to apply to get into, there are a lot of rules on packaging, lists of what you can and can't sell, and of course the fees are high. That's the trade for less work, they take more money. Which is fine with me, but I'm finding that there really is a certain profit margin I should be looking for to make a good profit. Which kind of leads me to my weekly goals for this week.

GOALS FOR 6/1 - 6/7

• Research, Research, Research Amazon FBA - I need to watch more videos, listen to more podcasts, and read some more of the blog posts and information through Amazon Seller Central. 
• List the 6 items I still have for Ebay
• Find, either around the house or through sourcing, at least 4 more items to sell on Ebay.
• Learn how to make my own barcodes and get my grocery items marked, and packaged for the FBA shipment.
• At least 1 more blog post. Although I'd like to shoot for two more at least.
• Create a spreadsheet for my Ebay products - cost, sales, shipping etc.

So, there you have it. My ups and downs from the last set of goals. I don't consider not meeting any of my goals a failure, just consider it a learning experience for me. I've already seen myself doing better with meeting my goals. I think the simple act of putting them out there, not on some piece of paper I'll soon forget about, is helping me hold myself more accountable. I've also noticed that writing down what I've been making is helping me stay focused! Soon I'll write my (small) monthly earnings and expenses post. Again, a great way for me to track my progress and keep myself going.