Hey - my online career in a nutshell!! The history of eCommerce!

Hey ! I resemble this chart - (which is courtesy of zippycart) - I told you I'm older than dirt well here's the proof!


[Via: Shopping Cart Reviews]
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eBay meets the 21st century!! MOBILE LISTING!!1

Ok that's some hyperbole up there but really - so many things are now on your cell phone, I've had ebay search for years on a OLD OLD Verizon phone. However, Now I hear that:

A) Apple's gonna migrate the I-Phone to Verizon (HURRAH!!)

B) Ebay has an I-Phone selling App. (and one for the classifieds too!) so now I can sell from any where.. Gives a whole new meaning to "I've got a bridge to sell you!". Cause you can take a picture of the bridge and listed it WAY SIMPLE!! This is sooooooooooooooo NEW SCHOOL...not old school... check this out

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...

Another eBay Faux Pas...do they ever end?

Have you all seen this at the bottom of the eBay search page? I have no clue how long it’s been since I looked al the way down the search page...maybe 4 months – like when I last went to an auction and was looking for comps...but tonight I’m looking for completed prices on some of the less common books we bought yesterday...and found this:

We found other stuff close to what you're looking for

Now, maybe it’s me but...I can call my “stuff” STUFF but I think ebay should be referring to it as “we found more items” or “we found more selections simliar to what you searched for”

And I know I’m being picky when there are soooo many things wrong on ebay right now...but this one, this just annoys me.

I’m not selling STUFF. Maybe John Donahoe sells "stuff" from his closet or his basement. But I go to estate auctions and buy consignments directly from people liquidating estates and my "stuff" is MERCHANDISE and most of it is too expensive to be STUFF. STUFF comes from the dollar store. I’d like to think my “stuff” could go – a lot of it – on Antique Row on Pine St in Philadelphia.

What about the rest of you? Am I just being petty about this? (Don’t answer that, I know the answer...)

So - about ebay & online selling in general

Did I tell you I wasn't good at remembering to post? I'm not. But I'm going to try harder to post at least once a week about some aspect of MY online selling experience. And then you can tell me what you think. Either about that aspect or about some other aspect.

What do I mean by an "aspect"? Any little thing that affects how I sell, when I sell, What I sell or how I get people to see my things so they can buy them.

One concern, for me, is, how do I reach a wider marketplace? I need to figure out who buys the kind of things I sell and where do I find those folks and how do I get them to come look at my stuff.

I sell:
Depression Glass
Depression Era China, Porcelain and Pottery dinnerware
Art Pottery
collectible books

anything that's not nailed down?

Who buys each of those categories? I don't think I'm looking at 20 somthing's as customers. But who? And how to I get my stuff in front of their eyeballs and buying fingers?

I ought to get organized better and sell the things that are in boxes in the garage and the attic and the dining room and the weight room upstairs. Which includes paper dolls, games, more glass, lots and lots, literally thousands of books that are not "collectible" but I bought them, read them and don't need them sitting around collecting dust.

So this week's project, for me, is to figure out some of those question and toput more items into my ebay pro-store and to find a way to publicize that. More on that later this week (when I figure out my url etc. to post a link.)

See you all next time
Beth