Things You Never Thought You Could Sell

SparklesJD

neverlearn wrote: »

Hiya sparkles,

Thank You for the information. I will try try something small and check out the postal site, may have to come back and ask another question before I finally list it.

:money:

No probs, good luck!!!

Shadow14uk

SparklesJD wrote: »

I was for a while too, but don't be, once you have a system, it's really easy. Get some digital scales, just cheap kitchen ones will do and use Royal Mail http://sg.royalmail.com/portal/rm/PriceFinder?pageId=pc_sltc_rm_search&catId=23500532&keyname=search&_DARGS=/portal/rmgroup/apps/templates/html/rm/search.jsp, which will tell you exactly how much you can expect to pay. Make sure you allow for packaging, if in doubt go up a threshold, you can always refund it if it was cheaper.

I charge cost + 10% of the cost for packaging/my time etc. rounded up. EBay are quite hot on this and don't want you to make a profit on your postage or to cover fees, etc. - that should all be in the item price.

If it's a small item I always charge minimum small packet cost, unless I'm 100% sure it will go as large letter, as there's quite a difference in price.

If what I've charged is substantially different to what it ends up costing, I do a refund. I know from experience how much I hate it when I pay a fortune in P&P and it costs them 74p or whatever! Not everyone does this though, that's just my choice.

I offer combined P&P if buyers buy more than one thing from me at the same time, but no discounts.

Sound advice! I have done really well on eBay the last few weeks BUT I did the rookie mistake of "guessing" postage and I have charged way under! I was charging 50p and 70p for small packages them at the post office they were going for £1.50 etc so cut myself short in the long run I suppose hcepaer posatge is more enticing but when selling but as long as your honest there should be a problem.

I am deffo going to be more careful on the next round of auctions!

jackieb

SparklesJD wrote: »

I was for a while too, but don't be, once you have a system, it's really easy. Get some digital scales, just cheap kitchen ones will do and use Royal Mail http://sg.royalmail.com/portal/rm/PriceFinder?pageId=pc_sltc_rm_search&catId=23500532&keyname=search&_DARGS=/portal/rmgroup/apps/templates/html/rm/search.jsp, which will tell you exactly how much you can expect to pay. Make sure you allow for packaging, if in doubt go up a threshold, you can always refund it if it was cheaper.

I charge cost + 10% of the cost for packaging/my time etc. rounded up. EBay are quite hot on this and don't want you to make a profit on your postage or to cover fees, etc. - that should all be in the item price.

If it's a small item I always charge minimum small packet cost, unless I'm 100% sure it will go as large letter, as there's quite a difference in price.

If what I've charged is substantially different to what it ends up costing, I do a refund. I know from experience how much I hate it when I pay a fortune in P&P and it costs them 74p or whatever! Not everyone does this though, that's just my choice.

I offer combined P&P if buyers buy more than one thing from me at the same time, but no discounts.

I once refunded £1 postage to a buyer. They gave me a really good review. It was worth the £1. I also found a hole in a pocket of a pair of jeans I was selling and didn't notice until I was getting ready to post them. I sewed it up really neatly and told the buyer that if he wanted to back out of the sale I wouldn't have a problem, or if he wanted I would knock £5 off the price he bid (they were designer jeans). He took the jeans and paid the £5 less. He was really happy and was another one who wrote a gushing review.

It pays to be honest!

rdchick

It definitely does pay to be honest, nothing worse than them coming back and leaving negative feedback for something you could have sorted before you sent it... I have a truck load of stuff to send today - I find it hard to remember where I put them all! xxx

SparklesJD

rdchick wrote: »

It definitely does pay to be honest, nothing worse than them coming back and leaving negative feedback for something you could have sorted before you sent it... I have a truck load of stuff to send today - I find it hard to remember where I put them all! xxx

I struggle for space TBH! We only have a small flat and I've always got piles of stuff I'm about to list and packaging everywhere! When I've listed it it's not too bad, it lives in boxes under the bed waiting to be sent to a good home

And my DH thought the point of eBay was to declutter...

Norfolk_Jim

My motivation for this certainly does come and go. I do suffer from depression so that might be partly to blame but I always enjoy this thread and it stirs me up to get a few more 99p's.
What demoralises me is when things do sell for just 99p and after e-bay take a cut you end up with quite a small sum for quite a bit of work - and then if someone diddles you (it does happen) and you take a loss, it cancels out your progress.
What motivates me is when something sells for more than you ever thought it could - and also, since I do this trying to reduce my debt, factoring in the interest saved. So you maybe make only a pound for your widget, but if you pay that to your debt, depending on the interest rate it might be = 1.30 or 1.50 because of interest you have not needed to pay.

My son often asks me to sell his old X-Box games. To be honest I dislike doing this because his games are, worn, very worn - and I value my 100% feedback record. I just know that a % of people viewing those games dont read the descriptions properly and I dread the day I get complaints about how the game is all scratched or the box is cracked - even though I fully describe any faults. E-Bay / Pay Pal almost always side with the buyer. I even had a disc back that clearly wasn't the one I sent out - but you cant prove that and I'm not sure e-bay would care even if you could - so I just have to factor in an allowance for the small % of bad sales. I've been quite lucky in avoiding too many bad deals but do this enough and you will get some. Oddly, things described as "Broken" have never come back to me with a complaint that its broken, but I've read people on the E-Bay board that have.

Also I can never sell clothing, my whole house reeks of dog, so I just don't bother with clothes.

I've picked up some really good ideas on here although I enjoy having anything to do with E-Bay less and less these days. For perfect books I find Amazon is good, but only for some specialist books. For general books I've been happy with Greenmetropolis but you need heaps of patience, sometimes they just sit on their virtual shelf forever.

onlyroz

Regarding packaging, I've found poundland to be best for padded envelopes.

Fredula

I don't quite understand something. I thought I'd set my listings so that no international buyers could place bids.

I've had 3. One wanted shipping to his dads address in England, which was fine. But the other two, I sent the invoices with the postage as described on RM website, and one is saying it's too high - and the other hasn't responded. Obviously if they refuse to pay I can just open cases against them, but why are they allowed to bid on my items if it's set to no international buyers?

jtz

I sold my first 3 items!!! My 4th still is unsold again so will list again when there's free listing.
I was scared I might have calculated the p&p wrong but it was correct. Just got to wait for the items to get to the sellers and get my first seller feedback!
Thanks to everyone on this thread!

Monkeynut

Fredula wrote: »

I don't quite understand something. I thought I'd set my listings so that no international buyers could place bids.

but why are they allowed to bid on my items if it's set to no international buyers?

I'm sure there is a little box to tick somewhere on the listing page that says something along the lines of 'only allow bids from countries I will post to' or something that you have to tick.
Silly really, you'd think it would just be a given, rather than having to specifically tick a box. Would make more sense to have to untick the box if for some reason you didn't want to restrict the overseas bidders.