Friday, October 17, 2008

eBay stuff and a weird dream

So I haven't been listing as much stuff because a couple of family members have medical issues and it's absorbing a lot of my time and energy to assist/cook for/ and generally deal with that.

But my stores sales keep creeping along.
Now I've run out of "new" auction boxes to list so I'm "relisting" stuff out of my ebay store into auction again. Or in some few cases into fixed price listings. And I was working out the numbers on the fixed price listings to compare them to stores. Guess what? Stores are still the better bargain if you can run a few auctions or a few fixed price items to lead people into your store!

Here's my math (with the definite possiblity of flaws since I'm TERRIBLE at math!

Fixed price - random item (not media!) costs $.35 for 30 days. Ebay just announced NO relisting credits. So $.35 EVERY 30 days.

Store item. (assuming you have 1595 items which is MY goal)

$.01 for the store fee ($15.94 divided by 1595 items)
$.03 listing fee - assuming you list every item for $19.95 or under
$.04 per month (also assuming you have only 1 (one) picture per item or that you host the extra
pictures off ebay

So why the flood to Fixed Price? Because those show up in search obviously but does that negate the use of stores? Not for me. I can keep 8.5 items in the ebay store for a month for the cost of one fixed price item. So I'll take out 8 items from my store - put one in Fixed price, auction the other 7 (or donate 'em to the Sr. Citizens thriftshop in my township) and see what happens.

That's my plan for the next 3 months anyway.

Now about the weird dream. I had this last night. I don't even remember what the dream was except that is came in staticy. Remember TV sets with "snow" in the picture? That was my dream. (so what, Beth? Who cares??) well the reason I mention it at all is, it triggered the thought that there is a whole generation of deprived children and even young adults. My son thinks "snow" comes from bad tracking on a VHS tape and he only remembers VHS cause he was an early fan of Japanese Anime and Godzilla movies.

There are now 2 generations of people (most of those under 40) who have NO clue what a horizontal hold button is, or a vertical hold button is or how to get the "snow" out of a TV picture (aluminim foil wings on the TV antenna-rabbit ears)! They think, if the picture is bad it's a bad feed from the Cable company or the Satellite company. In my childhood, Satellites were something we used to spy on the Russians and vice versa. Now we just co-opt them with our TV shows. I didn't get to see Elvis swivel his pelvis on Ed Sullivan cause our TV couldn't be tuned at that point. It needed a "picture tube".
Ah the good old days...

No comments:

Squidoo: My 2008 reading list