Daily Archives: January 21, 2010

Ebay

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So I promised this earlier and decided to stick to it and wait till tomorrow to post by good shopping trips! I have used Ebay for several years now(longer than I have been married). I have sold items and bought quite a few things. There are some general rules that I follow anytime I use Ebay.

First selling 1) NEVER pay an insertion fee..currently you are allowed to place 5 items for sell each month with no insertion fee.
2) Never pay for additional anything; pictures, counter, buy it now or anything I don’t have to.
3) Start the bid at the lowest price you will accept for the item, include in the price at least a few dollars more than you think because you have to pay the selling fee at the end as well as a fee for people using a credit or debit card on paypal.
4) Only accept cash if they pick the item up or paypal. This takes away 3/4 of the problems with bad payments and headaches. ( I have never had a problem with receiving money via paypal.)
5) State in your ad very clearly that actual shipping will be paid by the buyer. This saves alot of time and headache! This is especially true for large, bulky items. If you don’t have a box or packing material that you can use for free then I also include that in the cost of shipping. I am trying to make money not lose it!
6)Only sell or attempt to sell specialty clothing ie wedding dress, maternity swim suits etc.
I have had success selling items such as a broken laptops, cellphone, band instruments and game systems, nursery items etc. The key is to be very specific about the item and its condition as well as your expectations.

I buy probably 10 times as much as I sell on Ebay. I do buy clothes,watches, gifts. The first and most important rule for buying is to include shipping in the cost of the items. So if I am bidding on a pair of jeans and I say ok I will pay $20 for them and the shipping is 12 then I only bid to 7.98. I like to decide on a price and place the bid. Other prefer to watch the item and bid at the last minute. Either is fine but remember to include the price of shipping.

Questions?

Week in Review

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Since I didn’t get to post about several of the great deals I got last week and my one not so good shopping trip I am going to update today. I also have a post planned about ebay. Matt and I have decided to try and loss some weight. We are going to use the Atkins method at least this first week to see how things go. He will have an easier time than me but my thought is that I will do my best and not stress over it because when I stress, I eat! Now on to the deals…

On Thursday, the kids and I went to “Goodwill” we were able to find 3 dresses and a shirt for 17.50. We also went over to “Walmart” and purchased 3 pair of tights and both the older girls got tights but $27. and some change. So for $50 we got 3 complete new outfits.

Friday, my friend was helping figure out the decorations for the FLC and we decided that we needed 2 black and white 8x10s of Zach. I uploaded the picture and picked them up from CVS an hour later. I had 8 ECB so the cost of these pictures were $.23!

Saturday’s grocery trip to pick up salad items was not a good. We needed to buy most of the ingredients for both the salads. Food Lion was the closest store but we ended up spending $28.00 on these ingredients.

Yesterday(Wednesday) we made a quick trip to Costco for some basics. I don’t think we did too bad in comparison to our usual trip. We spent $136 compared to our usual $250. But with the extra food we have purchased this month our total grocery bill is almost $700 for the month.