Starting again, 1% at a time. 100 ways to make £80!

Decluttering · 10 December 2012 at 12:36AM

unoriginal_uk wrote: »

WOW - Had a really amazing money saving two days!!

Found out I won £100 worth of books which I am sending to Fatbrain for money back, then found out I won a competition I found on here for a years free Pizza!

Then today the boyfriend and I went to Bluewater for Xmas shopping and we volunteered at an O2 stand to do a present stacking competition - I won a brand new Ipod and iPhone docking radio/clock speaker station thing worth £50ish!

Had a lucky couple of days! Also lots of my ebay items are on track to sell which is great - and I am about to list a couple of bigger items right now due to the free listing - thanks fedupandskint for highlighting this or I wouldn't have known!

Whoa, what an incredibly lucky couple of days! Congratulations

specialkaye · 10 December 2012 at 11:04AM

Ten days until a pad paid and i can pay off my student overdraft for good. (it is a free overdraft until next sept so going to keep the card for emergencies until then)

Got 20% to go which is £460 that is currently coming out of my wage but i hope to get this down to 15%.

Got another 1% coming from my last weeks cleaning and 1% from a voucher my mum has bought off me. 3% to find in 10 days.

Hmmm will have to rack my brain for this

unoriginal_uk · 10 December 2012 at 12:30PM

Decluttering I know! I should have played the lottery at the weekend with all my good luck!

Just off to the post office to post my first few successfully sold ebay items

I am going to wait until my paypal account says £50, then withdraw it and report back another 1% gained

Specialkaye see if you've got any little items lying around that you could Ebay and list them for 3 day listings - so many people seem to be buying my little 99p items at the moment for xmas presents I guess - so it's a great little money making exercise!

FallenArcher · 10 December 2012 at 1:51PM

unoriginal_UK - I've sold quite a lot of DVDs recently. I first of all listed on Facebook at £2 each and managed to sell a fair few that way. I then looked at the prices I'd get on musicmagpie, for ones that were worth a couple of quid I made a note of that, most were only about 30p. I then took them all down to my local Cash Converters where I got 50p each (plus they agreed to match the two that musicmagpie would give me a couple of quid for). For the next batch I again used musicmagpie to work out the more expensive ones, but went to a different cash converters type shop (can't remember what it was called), they offered me 75p each for some of them (they sort by age) and 25p each for the rest, plus matched musicmagpie for more expensive ones - so I agreed to sell the more expensive ones and the 75p ones. I then took my pile of 25p ones to Cash Converters, he asked me what I was looking for, I said that they'd given me 50p each last time so was looking for at least that - he agreed to that, and I then managed to get him round it up to £10 from £9.50

There are quite a few of these shops around - for me it's easier than posting or courier. Might be worth a try. CDs don't seem worth much at all though (think it was about 5p each, so have decided not to sell these yet and will keep to carboot in the spring).

unoriginal_uk · 10 December 2012 at 2:13PM

Thanks that's so helpful!! I didn't even think about Cash converters - I don't know if there's one near me so I shall look into it!

I just made a real Ebay rookie error and royally stiffed myself - I sold two items to someone at 99p each and agreed to combine postage for the bigger item so all in all they paid me 4.60 for the items plus postage. I just went to the Post Office to post it and the cheapest postage I could get was 5.30!!!!!

:(:( what a stupid idiot I am!!

Oh well you live, you learn - next time I shall have to figure out an easier way of more accurately working the postage out before I list the item!! If anyone has a fairly easy way to work postage out from home please share - the Royal mail website let me down on this occasion as they quoted me 2.70 P&P online and this obviously wasn't the case

specialkaye · 10 December 2012 at 3:55PM

Yeah when my sister returns im gonna get her to help me set up an ebay account/ paypal account. I have a couple of empty perfume bottles and a tonne of samples from when a was an avon lady. (even if i took it back up the samples are most likely from discontinued products).

Trying to scrounge those alessi cutlery tokens that tesco are doing as my parents said they liked them and at £1.25 per item are a good deal for a nice set that will last ages. We are going to have 10 round the table for xmas dinner this year and currently only have a cutlery set of 6!!

Glad my works night out coincides with my sisters 21st - they were expecting people at the pub from 2pm!!!! now i am working until 5, setting up my sisters party at my parents and drinking the drink that they have paid for and then joining work when the party moves to the club at midnight. easily £40 quid saved!!!

Right my gran is returning from scotland today - 85 and still using the trains on her own!! so going to go and meet her and carry her bag.

Itching to get the xmas decs up now most of the people in out street already has but dad has yet to buy the tree :S

Decluttering · 10 December 2012 at 3:57PM

unoriginal_uk wrote: »

Thanks that's so helpful!! I didn't even think about Cash converters - I don't know if there's one near me so I shall look into it!

I just made a real Ebay rookie error and royally stiffed myself - I sold two items to someone at 99p each and agreed to combine postage for the bigger item so all in all they paid me 4.60 for the items plus postage. I just went to the Post Office to post it and the cheapest postage I could get was 5.30!!!!! :(:( what a stupid idiot I am!!

Oh well you live, you learn - next time I shall have to figure out an easier way of more accurately working the postage out before I list the item!! If anyone has a fairly easy way to work postage out from home please share - the Royal mail website let me down on this occasion as they quoted me 2.70 P&P online and this obviously wasn't the case

Did you weigh the items with postage and packaging? If not I tend to add an extra 10 grams onto the weight and then round up the quote to the nearest 50p.

unoriginal_uk · 10 December 2012 at 4:21PM

Decluttering wrote: »

Did you weigh the items with postage and packaging? If not I tend to add an extra 10 grams onto the weight and then round up the quote to the nearest 50p.

I am not sure what I did to be entirely honest, but I am sure it is entirely my own fault!

I have just ordered quite cheaply from ebay one of those royal mail letter size perspex templates so I will use that in future, and I will make sure I properly weigh the item - my normal bathroom scales I think are what let me down this time round as I am sure they aren't designed for weighing parcels!

What do you normally use to weigh your parcels with?

dmptofreedom · 10 December 2012 at 5:30PM

unoriginal_uk wrote: »

I am not sure what I did to be entirely honest, but I am sure it is entirely my own fault!

I have just ordered quite cheaply from ebay one of those royal mail letter size perspex templates so I will use that in future, and I will make sure I properly weigh the item - my normal bathroom scales I think are what let me down this time round as I am sure they aren't designed for weighing parcels!

What do you normally use to weigh your parcels with?

Kitchen scales are quite good - but don't forget people do add on extra as it's for postage and packaging. I guess you can also say it's for the inconvenience of going to the post office to.

I normally get deals because people don't want to do this by buying things on collection only. The moneysaving expert page is great for this - search for money saving expert ebay (I can't post links because I'm new)

[Deleted User] · 10 December 2012 at 7:31PM

unoriginal_uk wrote: »

Thanks that's so helpful!! I didn't even think about Cash converters - I don't know if there's one near me so I shall look into it!

I just made a real Ebay rookie error and royally stiffed myself - I sold two items to someone at 99p each and agreed to combine postage for the bigger item so all in all they paid me 4.60 for the items plus postage. I just went to the Post Office to post it and the cheapest postage I could get was 5.30!!!!! :(:( what a stupid idiot I am!!

Oh well you live, you learn - next time I shall have to figure out an easier way of more accurately working the postage out before I list the item!! If anyone has a fairly easy way to work postage out from home please share - the Royal mail website let me down on this occasion as they quoted me 2.70 P&P online and this obviously wasn't the case

Hi,
I'm a secret lurker on the thread, I'm all prepared to start in January so maybe I could have a number now! lol

I use http://www.seajays.org.uk/postage/ to work out postage costs. Never under or over charged excessively using this! Also I weigh my parcels on some £3.99 Argos value kitchen scales.

HTH

Starting again, 1% at a time. 100 ways to make £80!

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