What better day to add to my Etsy store that I created a few weeks ago?  I still have some tweaking to do but I’m pretty happy to be moving some invisible items from eBay to Etsy, which plays much nicer with Google from what I’ve read.

Here’s my new store.

I’ll be posting my results here if they’re blogworthy.  Several of my friends do very well on Etsy.  Even though nothing in my store will be handmade, every item will be vintage, unique, and quality.  Any of my ephemera, cabinet cards, photos, books, etc. that were languishing on eBay will hopefully get some new life on Etsy.  I have some prints that will go directly to Etsy since I think they’re a better fit there.

I won’t be delisting many items yet because I still hold out some semblance of hope that eBay’s new search might actually be better than the current abyssmal one I’m suffering with right now.  You never know with eBay though.  They’re such a wild card right now with their Core Search that I’m just about worn out from trying to constantly “please” their Search Gods.  Their algorithm changes with the wind and quite frankly, I’m tired.  It’s still in the back of my mind that if things remain the same as they are now, I’ll close my store and just use the 100 free auctions and also list some FP.  Move the rest elsewhere.  The deadline for that decision is three months, possible two if there’s no significant change upward.  Just typing out loud at this point.

So I wanted to share my new store with any reader that wanted to take a look.  It feels good to breathe some fresh air into some listings and also have a place to move eBay listings to.  The price is the same (.05 per month) but I suspect that the search on Etsy is WAY better since they were one of three venues that originally partnered with Google in December 2009.  On that note, I got an email from eBid.net that it’s my one year anniversary today on that venue which is one of the three also (eCrater being the third).  I’ve got so few listings on eBid (one maybe?) and I’ve done close to nothing there even though I bought their $49.95 Lifetime Membership last year – free listing for life? I think.  This is another place that I’ll be investigating closer.

How will it turn out?  Your guess is as good as mine (might be better), but you’ll hear it here first.

Related posts:

1. Lessons Learned From My Cats It’s a new year!  Happy 2010!  With every new year...
2. Lessons About Business That I Learned From My Cats – Part II Yesterday I posted about some challenges that I’m having with...
3. Why Is My Head Spinning? ECommerce Vertigo With a Dash Of Insomnia Warning:  There are a lot of references to Me, I,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This went to a 14 year old whose father told me that the piano on the cover was a 1923 just like the one he just purchased for his son who would be thrilled to get the piano book that matched it.

Estey Piano Book

This little item went to someone who was very pleased with it according to the feedback they left.

Pioneer Blackstone Washing Machine booklet

This buyer collects menus and was thrilled to get this one.

1944 Thanksgiving Menu

Even though I screwed up this sale and had to mail each item out separately, I had the most wonderful, understanding buyer from Canada that really loved both of these vintage items.

Cake Decorating Set and Aluminum Measuring Spoons

This was one of four yearbooks that a customer purchased from me.  I’m sure there was an upcoming reunion.

Yearbook 1957

Do you sell vintage? Don’t you love the stories that go along with the sales?

What’s your favorite one? I’d love to hear it.

Related posts:

1. My New Store on Etsy is Open Since the new eBay store fees change tomorrow – in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Believe it or not, in a roundabout way I got some business ideas from watching my cats deal with a recent dilemma.  Sounds silly but stick with me and let me know what you think.

Rewind to a few months ago when I started seeing my cats looking under my stove and sitting for hours just staring.   It went on for days and I thought it was odd but I wrote it off as a new cat “thing” that this lowly human would never understand.

A few days later my husband pulled a pan out of the bottom drawer of the stove and was met by a little fuzzy beast who squealed and ran back through the electrical cord hole to the basement.  Yes, we have a mouse in the kitchen and the cats had heard him scratching.  The mouse had probably been waiting every night for the lights to go out to make a mad dash Tom-and-Jerry-style to the cat’s food dish and then back under the stove.

So far the mouse had been successful because the cats were still on the job a week later.  Well, one cat was anyway.

It started out with three guardian cats day and night watching for the beady-eyed intruder.  Three cats with a mission all lined up staring at the most fascinating challenge that they’ve had in ages.  It was highly interesting for all three.  For a while.

Smoky was the first to give up. He’s a tail chaser from way back that gets distracted very easily.  He lasted at the stove front for a few days until he walked away for the last time to peruse a box, a ball, then a wood chip by the fireplace.  Any new object was fair game and he looked at them all.

Bear is a very laid back cat that is as sweet as he is lazy.  A good day for Bear is a 23 hour nap followed by a cuddle session then a feast.  He watched for the mouse for about a week because it didn’t require much effort and he really didn’t have many plans anyway.  After that week, he walked up to the corner of the stove and, much to my disgust, took a territorial pee and walked away for good.  He was done.  That mouse wasn’t coming out.  Buh-bye.

Tiny, the third cat, is an odd little character.  I found him in the yard 5 summers ago teetering on the edge of a cinder block by my garage.    He was all of a few weeks old and his mother was nowhere to be found.  I would never have seen him if my husband hadn’t pointed down to the ground to show me.  There was this little bag of bones kitten that ended up shunning the bottle that I initially tried to feed him with, and went straight to lapping from a saucer.  He was a scrapper even when he was a kitten and to this day I have no idea how he made the long trip from the neighbor’s barn far behind us to our yard.  But he got where he needed to be and he’s been happily spoiled ever since.

It seems to me that there are at least three ways to handle a problem and I have three cats with very different personalities that just happen to make this lesson clear to me.

When faced with a challenge I can do one of three things:

Try different things that might be more productive. Instead of just relying on eBay and Amazon for most of my income, I can put some effort into other venues that I list on and try new venues too.  My Google Analytics tracking tells me that eCrater and Bonanzle are getting more traffic all the time (especially eCrater).  I have accounts on both but I don’t spend much time on either one.  EBid.net just partnered with Google a few months ago and I’m a lifetime member (no fees) there even though I’ve not done much with it yet.  In the past I’ve gotten off track chasing every new venue under the sun so there’s a fine line between diversifying and getting distracted, but the aforementioned venues seem to be worth their weight these days so I’ll consider doing more business there.  I can also continue to try new ways to make money such as blogging and writing articles.

Say “Piss on it” and give up. Some venues were a total waste of time (OLA anyone?) and I’m glad I walked away from them.  One of my favorite book sites, Alibris, has just raised my seller fees to an amount that may make it unappealing for me to sell there anymore.  I’m also getting away from selling books in general since many are going digital, I’m running out of room, and local buying options are getting scarce.   As much as I love bookselling, common sense tells me that I should just phase myself out of it.  I have plenty of backup plans for that if the time comes.  EBay is one venue that I’m constantly reviewing to see if it’s still profitable.  Although it’s number 1 for me in income, the fees have become so expensive that when I really sit down and do the math, the big venue isn’t so big in my book anymore.  Giving eBay up may free up a whole lot of time to sell on less expensive venues.

The third option is to persist with a laser-like focus. This isn’t a strong point for me and my plan is to try harder on this one.  The first two options are much easier to put into practice.  Those options aren’t wrong in some cases but I wonder sometimes if things would be different if I only focused on one venue.  I read a lot of blogs (to the point of distraction) and I’m not so sure that my fellow eBay sellers who limit themselves to just eBay are feeling really great about the venue either.  Persistence can sometimes be confused with beating a dead horse.  I’ll know in a few months whether I will continue on eBay or pull the plug.  If they take away eBay stores, they will have made the decision for me.  Without my store I would have to run continuous auctions and if my sell through rate is what it is right now then hello dead horse, goodbye eBay.

Ask Tiny about persistence.  Look.

He's focused.

His gaze is laser-like.

He’s still there.  He’s in the kitchen right now as I write this.  Focused.  Persistent.  Taking on the challenge.  Bear’s snoozing in front of the fire.  Smoky’s playing with a new dustbunny.

Where’s the mouse?  I don’t know, but if he surfaces Tiny’s going to be the first one to greet him.

Have you changed your business model this year?  Does it include eBay?  Are other venues working out for you? I’d love to hear from you.

Related posts:

1. Lessons Learned From My Cats It’s a new year!  Happy 2010!  With every new year...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Business was OK for my Christmas sales, not jump-up-and-down wonderful like some months in the past, but just OK.  I had happy customers and lots of sales and I’m grateful for every one of them but… I’m not quite where I want to be yet.

I’m feeling the slow and steady demise of eBay in my big picture.  Seems like I’ve been wanting to spend less and less time there even though it’s still my #1 venue for sales though not as much as they used to be.  Without spending much time at all on my Amazon listings, my sales there are slowly stealing eBay’s hold on that #1 spot.  It’s not difficult at all to do business on Amazon either.  EBay, however, is fraught with hoops to leap through, feedback issues, frequent price increases, lower traffic, and daily changes that require complete overhauls on a regular basis.  On Amazon, I list a product, reprice if needed, and wait for it to sell.  Period.  On eBay I’m constantly trying to figure out it’s latest search formula and then tweak my 1000+  listings to accommodate this mysterious, ever-changing algorithm.

Change isn’t easy but the writing on the wall is telling me that if I don’t change my business model soon there won’t be enough hours in the day for me to continue to do all that is needed to make a decent living.

So what does all of this have to do with cats?  Nothing, so far.  Because I haven’t posted in 5 weeks, I’ll squeeze another blog post out of all of this in tomorrow’s Part 2 story.

Alright, I just mentioned what I wasn’t going to mention.  Why haven’t I blogged in 5 weeks?  I read a LOT of blogs and I intensely dislike posts that invariably start with “I know I haven’t posted in ages but ….” while the author blathers on about being (lazy, busy, sick) fill in the blank.  My readers are smart enough to figure out that December is a busy month for online sales, hence “I’ve been busy” seems to be the main reason.  But you knew that.

I’ll continue this too-long post tomorrow and it really will be a post about what I learned from my cats about my business.  Captivated yet?  Here’s a precursor to what you won’t want to miss:

Is it just me?  Are you feeling a major change coming too?  Is eBay becoming less of a player in your online business?

Related posts:

1. Lessons About Business That I Learned From My Cats – Part II Yesterday I posted about some challenges that I’m having with...
2. Why Is My Head Spinning? ECommerce Vertigo With a Dash Of Insomnia Warning:  There are a lot of references to Me, I,...
3. When Is Free Not Free? Ask Ebay. If You Can Get Them. I think that eBay is run by monkeys.  But let...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My best friend of over 25 years is a diehard Buffalo Bills fan.  She grew up in a rural area where there were two channels on TV and she just fell in love with Sunday football games (probably out of necessity but I think she’s got the football gene anyway.)  She understands the rules, knows all of the players names, and grew up watching OJ Simpson (when he was the great icon) and later on adored Jim Kelly.

I, however, was never a football fan.  I still don’t understand it and could care less about the Super Bowl or the dumb commercials that get so much attention.  No man in my life has ever converted me to even liking football and I ended up marrying a non-sports guy that will on occasion watch a basketball game (now you’re talking).

Enough about husband.  Back to my friend.   When we were in our twenties my Bills-loving friend would get me to make a yearly pilgrimage to Rich Stadium in Buffalo to see a game.  She usually went to several home games and knew that I would be good for about one a year.  Did I hate it?  Hell no!  She always drove the 5 hours and braved the gameday traffic and I got to be in the midst of 70,000 fans jam-packed into the stadium which had unlimited beer, hot dogs, popcorn, and thousands of cute guys.  (I was in my twenties, remember.)   I didn’t mind doing a food run during the game.  I didn’t understand what was going on anyway.  When the crowd roared, I had to look at the scoreboard to see if there was a TD (touchdown, see it wasn’t completely wasted on me).  If the Bills scored, yay!  If the other team did, mutter and boo.  I learned fast.  I always loved the excitement.  It was what was totally missing from watching it on television.

What does any of this have to do with recent events?  As recent as yesterday?

Have I been transformed into a football lover?  Ummmm, no.  Not at all.

Yesterday we traveled two hours to an auction (stay with me here)  and I didn’t think I would need to bring my camera since I wouldn’t take pics at the auction (not too exciting to photograph used merchandise) and I didn’t think anything too photo-worthy would be happening out the window from the passenger side of the car.  As usual I was wrong.  Not only was it the most beautiful and picturesque day we’ve had so far this summer, but as we pulled into Cortland we were bombarded with signs everywhere.

Let me just say that Cortland is a very small town that is known for a reputable state university and a small college and not a lot else.  It’s one of those little towns that if you blink it’s gone by.  Not today since the main road through town was under construction.  What would usually take us five minutes took us about 30 yesterday.  We got to see all of the local businesses signs as we crept along.  They all had the same theme as the huge sign that greeted us as we took the Cortland exit.  The sign that said:  Welcome to Cortland New York Jets Fans! 

When we passed the first sign we said “Hmm. Wonder what that’s all about?”  It wasn’t a second before we saw the next bazillion signs that all said “NY Jets this way”  with an arrow and eventually “NY Jets Training Camp.”  Get out.  The New York Jets are in Cortland!  For a training camp?!  Every business along the main road was welcoming the Jets to town.  Even the NY State Department of Transportation building was flying their US flag at half staff (we couldn’t figure out why and thought for sure this couldn’t have anything to do with the Jets. Half staff is bad, right?)  The Jets flag was right below the US flag though!  This was the biggest thing to hit Cortland (ever, I can assume) and I didn’t bring my camera!

Now you could fill a thimble with what I know about the Jets but I was kind of excited to possibly see some pro football players yesterday.  I don’t know Bart Scott from Jim Leonhard from Mark Sanchez but I would have been taking as many pictures as a real fan.  I said to my husband after lamenting the absence of my camera, “With my luck, a bus full of Jets will drive by and they’ll be hanging out the windows waving at the fans…”.  What do you think happened at that exact moment?  No it didn’t but it could have.  What really happened is that we moved another 5 feet down the main road and read more Jets signs.  There was not really much else to do and I have to say that I was impressed with the number of signs, banners, and flags that were flying in this little town.

What do I know about the New York Jets?  Very little.  Just that when I was a kid, Joe Namath was the hottest man alive and he made very sexy commercials for aftershave.  He was Number 12 on the Jets team whose colors are green and white.  Do I know that from watching him play football?  Hell no.  I had a pair of #12 green and white underwear that I absolutely loved and I knew that was cute Joe Namath’s number.   Too much information?  

Speaking of information, I just had to use wikipedia to verify my scant knowledge of the Jets above. I’m good.  Well my information is anyway.  Wiki also told me that training camps are usually at university campuses for a few weeks in July.  (Or August even.)  “ Training camp is divided into several different components. The first is scrimmages. These are pseudo-games where teams run nearly full games’ worth of plays. Sometimes, two practice sessions are held on the same day. This concept is referred to as two-a-days. Other parts of training camp include drills, meetings with coaches and other players at one’s position, weight training, and pre-season games.”  Isn’t football fascinating?   This info ties in with what I overheard at the auction (when we finally got there.)  I heard a guy talking to someone about the Jets scrimmage game that he went to the day before and how it was like “old home week” since he saw everyone he knew.  He also said that the scrimmage game was “no big deal” and that his friend “didn’t miss much”.  Do you think he’s a Jets fan?

Wiki also advised me that the training camps are held in cooler areas to avoid heat stroke and dehydration.  Makes sense.  No one’s getting overheated in Cortland, New York.   

I thought that this little piece of wiki wisdom was funny.  “The Jets are often nicknamed “Gang Green” due to the color of their uniforms, and possibly a play on words as well.”  You think?

Wiki was also kind enough to tell me that Joe Namath is now 66 years old.  Thanks Wiki.  Too much information…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Lately I’ve had trouble with my Google Base feed (I won’t go into that fiasco right now) so my page views have been down which of course translates into fewer sales.  That is now fixed after I did a lot of research and also got some help from a few generous sellers.  In the process, I learned a lot more about the importance of search and as a result started to delve into researching which of my products were being seen the most on eBay and what type of listing was performing for me.  

So today I started putting up listings with this combination: 30 day Fixed Price, Free Shipping, Best Offer.  In less than a day these new listings are all on page 1 of Best Match.  These brand new listings have already surpassed the “old” listings for the same products that have been on Fixed Price or perpetual auction for weeks, have some sales, but have shipping charges attached.  Free ship does seem to make a big difference.  I will also state that my DSR’s (Detailed Seller Ratings) are very good which helps to further push me up to the top of the search over other sellers with lesser DSR’s.  I used the same titles for my new Free Ship listings that were previously keyword optimized on my old listings using eBay tools. 

There are really no differences between my old listings and my new listings other than Free Ship.  Since the old listings actually have had many sales they technically should be moved up the ladder for that reason according to eBay.  Free Ship seems to have trumped multiple sales.  EBay is weighting free shipping much heavier than repeat relists. 

Is Fixed Price with Free Ship the answer?  I guess it’s no secret that eBay has been pushing sellers to free shipping.  This seller has dug her heels in resisting this ‘suggestion’ because I personally feel that nothing is free. My reasoning in the past has been the following:

• The Post Office charges me so it’s not free.  There’s no such thing as free shipping at the Post Office.
• Why should eBay get more Final Value Fee?  This is just one more way for eBay to grab a bigger piece of the pie. 
• The asking price seems to inflate the price of the item and therefore wouldn’t be competitive.

I can see from my research today that Free Shipping deserves a closer look.  If eBay is going to push my item to the top of the search when I offer FS then that’s what I’ll offer if I get more sales that way.  If my brand new listing can kick my old one’s butt in less than a day then I need to change my views.  Fast.

The best example I saw today:

Old listing – fixed rate shipping on a new product – very competitively priced and with Best Offer – I gave up trying to find it after page 8.

New listing I created today for same product, same title, description, Best Offer, everything the same except – Free Shipping.  Yep, Page ONE with 897 items.  About halfway down on Page ONE of Best Match after a half day in existence. 

Ok eBay, I get it.  For now.  Until you change the formula again. 

Needless to say, I’ll be listing more using Free Shipping. Never thought I’d say that.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Most people might see this guy as a henpecked husband.  I don’t see it that way.  My guess is that God and Man might not know the whole story here.  I’m betting this guy just spilled his fifth beer and second bag of Cheetos on the floor and walked across the stains with his muddy shoes (see ‘em - he’s still wearing ’em) that his wife has told him ten times today to leave at the door.  But I’m just guessing.  Maybe it’s because I’m a wife.  By the way, a husband wearing an apron with a bucket and and a scrub brush is a handsome, handsome man. 

How about some hillbilly outhouse humor? 

What is it about outhouses and hillbillies that people find funny?  Better question – What is that elf doing sitting on the mailbox?  Is he actually sitting there wearing long pointy shoes criticizing the mountain people for not using real toilet paper!?  Maybe I’m a bit slow but it took me a minute to understand the humor of the first hillbilly card.  “Many moons.”  Got it.

The humor on this card didn’t escape me for a second:

Tied up unhappy kids? Mom and Dad walking away going golfing?  Now you’re talking funny!

Still funnier…  Saggy boobs.  I kid you not.  I listed postcards with a sagging breast theme today on eBay.  Seriously.  No, humorously.  Check this pair out.  Not those.  The postcards, silly.

Growing old and baggy is really funny especially when it’s someone else. 

If you’d like to check out the auctions, just click on the photos. 

Have you sent a postcard recently?  Now that we have email, cell phones, texting, Tweeting, and Facebook I’m thinking that mailing anything is becoming obsolete. 

What do you think?  I’d love to hear from you.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Over 500 Metal Buttons

Colorful buttons

Retro - Fun - Unique buttons

So many.  Some vintage, some antique, and some unique.  All in one lot.  Just click on the pictures to see the auctions.  If you sew, collect, do crafts, or just lose buttons frequently give this auction a go.  At this price, why not? 

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

 As with most things in my life, I have learned this business the hard way.  From my mistakes, from others’ mistakes, from reading incessantly for hours, and from trying a variety of new things as I went along.  Some attempts were successful and many were abyssmal failures but all were necessary to get where I am today – a mild to moderate success with much improvement needed. 

I still feel like I don’t know a lot about this business but there are a few things that I feel that I know for sure.  These thoughts have occurred to me a lot in the last few weeks so I felt the need to write them down.  You may agree with some of these things.  You might strongly disagree but this has been my experience.

1.)  Online selling is a numbers game.  All the studying, Tweeting, webinars and podcasts do NOT replace listing and more listing.  The more I list, the more I sell.  Period.

2.)  Surround yourself with whiners, complainers, and do-nothings and that is what you become.  There are plenty of capable, successful people on the internet that are more than happy to be an example of what works and will share many helpful ideas on their blogs or on Facebook/Twitter.  There is a disproportionately large number of disgruntled negative sellers that feel the need to channel all of their energy into “not selling so that I may complain.”  Avoid them.  They are everywhere.  Especially in chat forums.  Enough said, until you get to Number 4 anyway.  But first, Number 3… 

3.)  Put the Best Offer on your eBay listings and OBO (Or Best Offer) on Bonanzle.  Not everyone will be a lowballer and I can always reject any offer.  It’s also FREE, so why not?  This single item is the best thing that I’ve done for my eBay store this year.  Not every buyer uses it but many want to haggle and succeed in getting an even better deal.  Some offers get declined but I wake up to a few of these every day.  In a tough $$$ week, I’m happy to see these offers because they represent to me “money in the bank.”  If I accept an offer on eBay, it’s an automatic sale.  Craig Stark of BookThink just wrote about this feature and his experience was similar.

4.)  Chat forums are, by and large, supreme time wasters.  Hours can go by while I read about the latest “controversy” on each venue.  I use the chat rooms now as a water cooler (with time limits in place) or as a place to go to find answers.  Working at home is isolating but I don’t need to have hours of online conversation either.  Don’t even get me started on the people who spend all of their time Tweeting news stories all day…  :-(

5.)  Be flexible.  As much as it pains me to constantly change and ‘roll with it, baby’, it’s a fact of life online.  Things move fast here and when you sell on many venues there is always a “major change” ahead.  Each venue is constantly improving themselves (or they’re trying anyway) and that means CHANGE.  Whether I like it or not.  Will I complain if I don’t agree with the change?  Yep, but hopefully not for hours in a chat room and not for long.  I will tell myself to get over it and plan accordingly.  It’s their sandbox and I’m not taking my toys home unless it causes me to lose a significant amount of money.  Then I’ll just leave. 

Many MANY people criticize eBay.  I have many not-so-nice opinions of the way they’ve done business over the last two years.  I’ve never left them though.  It’s where I have made a large amount of money and their traffic still can’t be beat.  When I tell people that I sell on Bonanzle, they’ve never heard of it.  This is changing and it’s why I stay even though my sales there have been poor.  I have faith in Bonanzle and the people that run it.  When I tell people that I sell online, they say “You sell on eBay?”  It’s still the synonomous word for “online sales” and that is where the average internet buyer will go to look for a deal.  So I stay there and roll with the changes, for good and for bad.  Which brings me to…

6.)  Sell on various venues.  Don’t get roped into believing that one venue is the answer.  Always have an alternative site or, in my case, many sites.  I’m not so enamored of eBay to not realize that they can shut me down in a second.  I’ve read all the stories and heard all of the tales.  If Bill Harding at Bonanzle was offered a mega-million dollars to turn over the keys to Bonanzle, would he be foolish enough NOT to take it?  Even if it happened to be from his competitor?  And I wouldn’t blame him one bit for taking it and running.  These types of things happen all the time in business.

Spread yourself around and try to stay away from trouble.  Read the guidelines of each site and try, although this one is tough, to keep up with the ever-changing rules of each site.  Don’t try to cheat the system.  Don’t give a venue a reason to shut you down.  If you get an offer on eBay, keep it on eBay.  If you’re not allowed to direct a buyer to your blog off-site, don’t post your website on your listing.  When you get a sale from Borders through Alibris, don’t tout your own site in your packing materials.  “Dance with the one that brought ya” as they say. 

7.)  Sell a variety of items.  Having a mix of new, used, collectible, and rare items is a good plan for me.  Used books are becoming harder and harder to sell for any real money.  This is the market that I started in and it is becoming the part of my business that I’m spending the least time with.  The Kindle is here whether we like it or not.  Used books donation bins are becoming a business model for more and more megasellers.  Friends of the Library sales are increasingly rare and usually picked over by the libraries themselves, who have finally figured out that the books they were selling for 25 cents are worth a lot more to keep and sell on their own.  Amazon is continually hawking how easy it is to “Sell Yours Here” to anyone that pushes the button.  Anyone can be a bookseller on Amazon, just hit the button.  Many wholesalers are now competing against their retail customers too. If I stayed with the books I would be very much worse for the wear right now.

These are just a few things that I know and I have so much more to learn.  For now, I’ll be listing auctions for the rest of the day because –  8.) Blogging  doesn’t make me money despite what I’ve read on Twitter…

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The latest “big announcement” is that eBay will, as of June 16th, 2009, be allowing the first five auction insertion fees to be waived and the Final Value Fees on those auctions be lowered to either $20.00 or 8.75% whichever is lower.

Hardly a big deal for those of us who list many auctions per week.  For me this new procedure will save a measly $1.75 per month (.35 x 5) in listing fees plus a few percent of the FVF which has lately been a low selling price (assuming that those five auctions result in a sale.)  It’s a start and it’s heading in the right direction (down) but I can’t even begin to feel excitement about this change.  Also part of this new offering is that in order to get the five free insertion fees the seller must use the Sell Your Item or Simple listing tool.  I use a third party listing program (Inkfrog) as many store owners do, so I would have to go outside of my inventory management program to save a few dollars.  Probably not worth the trouble for a few dollars.

Why is eBay appealing to the very casual eBay seller?  What do they gain by targeting this customer?  Not much from the looks of it.  Anyone who sells just a few items a month on eBay may not be aware of this change or may not care enough to  increase their auction listings.  Isn’t that what the intended result of this change was?  To increase listings thereby making more money for eBay?  If so, why not serve casual and mega-listers and make that magic number 20 free auctions?  That way the casual listers can still list a few per month, possibly list a couple more things from the basement, and megalisters can actually get a bit of a break on a larger number of auctions and actually be happy to see their monthly bill go down a notch.  Here’s an even better scenario:  the first fifty auctions per month free.  Watch the auctions go up, up, up and eBay can collect all the FVF’s they want.  Ebay and the sellers are happy as clams.

I can still dream, can’t I.

Related posts:

1. My New Store on Etsy is Open Since the new eBay store fees change tomorrow – in...
2. When Is Free Not Free? Ask Ebay. If You Can Get Them. I think that eBay is run by monkeys.  But let...
3. Lessons Learned From My Cats It’s a new year!  Happy 2010!  With every new year...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.