#42 – Selling Online (Mp3)
I have a lot of interests so I accumulate a lot of stuff, so, I decided to sell some of my surplus on line. I started first with eBay. Doesn't everyone? I gathered up a collection of all kinds of things – sewing patterns and books and magazines and Golliwogs which are popular with British ex-expatriates and Australians.
I did fairly well with the books on eBay but then I got more professional and moved to an operation called AbeBooks online. They had a wonderful, down loadable catalogue utility program where you plug in the ISBN number. That's important for selling books. Every modern book has an ISBN number. Then you plug in all the other details and upload your listing. People looking for a book can do a search on AbeBooks online and if you have the book it will show up on the website listing and maybe they will buy it.
In one phase of my existence I was accumulating occult books and I had quite a few of them. Also, in Rosedale, which is a high income neighbourhood in Toronto, someone put out boxes and boxes of books at the curb. One of my relatives grabbed them for it and hauled them over and I catalogued them all. My sister reads a lot of mysteries so I ended up with quite a mystery novel collection. I was selling of parts of my collection because my shelves are groaning with books.
I should
emphasize in selling on line that the most important thing is honesty.
You have to be scrupulously exact in describing what you are selling.
I had books I had acquired and books I no longer needed, so I started
selling them. I met a lot of interesting people. These were simple transaction.
You want it. I've got it. You buy it I mail it. I used PayPal, of course.
Credit cards transactions through PayPal are a mainstay of on line selling.
I bought a little postal weighing machine on eBay, so I wouldn't have to go to the Post Office. I'd just set my item on the little scale, then calculate the postage from the Post Office tables on line.
I got a postage meter which was a bit of overkill but I also sell CDs on line for an entertainment group so I needed to have the postage meter for that.
Between eBay and AbeBooks I did about $2,000.00 worth of business. The amount of work that went into setting up listing, not so much on AbeBooks but on eBay, where you need a picture and a description and you have to categorize it and state the time frame of the auction. You have to decide on a price that will attract buyers because they're all bargain hunters on eBay, even the collectors. You set your initial price not too hight and not too low. Then, you wait to see if the fish will nibble at the bait. In the beginning I was looking all the time to see who hitting on my auctions, not bids but traffic which would show up in the counter I had on my listing. Then, I found out that counters make the page take longer to load. People's attention span on the web is remarkably short, s0o the less load time the better. You don't need to know who's looking. You just need to know who's bidding.
eBay has
good software too that too that allows you to keep track of your listings,
if you've got a lot of them.
I had a lot of cloth doll patterns that I was no longer using. The named
designer patterns went very well. The occult books, too, went very well.
There was reproduction item of Crowleyana that was sold to a fellow in
Florida. I think he ran a bookstore. I'm not sure. In any case they were
having a heavy weather event there this was just before Hurricane Katrina
and everything was flooded and discombobulated and so forth. I was just
about to cancel the auction because it was taking too long for him to
pay when a desperate note came from his friend's computer in another State
saying, “Hold on! As soon as the water goes down he's going to pay
you.” He did. He certainly did.
If I was going to give tips for selling on line it would be to have a very clear picture of the item, if you're selling on eBay.
Work on your description and you key words.
Your title
is really important because it's a grabber. Sometimes that's all they
really see.
Research the pricing so your time is placed not too low and not too high.
If someone else is selling the same thing in the same frame of time you
might want to hold off or you might want to price your items a bit lower,
pennies count.
I learned while selling books that the most off beat thing like mountain climbing in Peru will have a niche audience. A little pamphlet about an obscure automobile published by the company with cartoons years ago has someone wanting it because they are a collector. You can look up prices on the Internet to get an approximate worth for your item. The auto pamphlet went to someone in a museum in New Zealand. That's the other thing. You are selling globally. I sold a fair amount to the Far East, to Australia and, as mentioned, New Zealand. I sell primarily into the United States and into Canada, where I live, but I have sold to Britain and to France, parts of Scandinavia, to Holland and so forth.
It's quite exciting when you send your parcel off into the ether. Postal services is quite wonderful. It get there and, there you go.
That's my story about selling on line. Basically, anybody can do it if you just have the patience to list stuff in the database or on eBay in their own special fashion.
It was fun while it lasted but I'm burnt out now and I'm not going to do it any more. I've got over 600 positive responses (called Feedback) on eBay and no negative Feedback on my record. I'm proud of that but, like I say, “Game over.” I still buy on eBay. There's stuff you can get there you can't get anyplace else.
© Sonia Brock 2006
I can be reached on the web at http://www.soniabrock.com
Feed: http://www.soniabrock.com/Podcasts/chatham1.xml