According to style.com one of the big new trends for spring 2014 is a global design view they have dub "International Geographic." Heavily weighted with african influiences as well as Asia, Europe and the Americas this look sports bright colors and tribal patterns.
Find your great international look on EBay for less today.
Start here: International Geographic EBay Collection curated by Clothesline Apparel and More.
Happy Ebaying,
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Do you like to dress up for Halloween? Well I do. I don't think I will ever out grow it. It's just fun and silly and I personally wish we did it more than once a year. :-)
Here are some ideas if you have some time on your hands and want to make your very own unique halloween costume.
A couple of years ago I put this costume together from some thrift store finds.
Pan Am Airline Stewardess.
Queen of Hearts Costume
You can read more about how to make this item here and here. Or purchase the original here.
Mini Mouse Costume
You can purchase it here. Or read the DIY tutorial here.
Are you like me? Do you see a black dress and want to paint white spots on it or make faux fur trim out of plastic grocery bags? It's crazy silly fun for me.
Lady Gaga Lobster Hat.
Instructions available here.
Cat Woman Costume.
There are tips for mask making here. The tail was made from and old t-shirt and the sleeves were made from black knee high nylons. There is a black velour jumpsuit available here.
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Cat mask availble here.
Have a Happy Halloween.
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I have taken quit a long vacation from this blog. To be honest I still haven't figured out exactly what I want to do here. Is this space for buyers or sellers? I think both but I am still floundering around with the whole idea.
In the mean time I have created one short video tutorial on how to add promotional boxes to your ebay store.
Happy Ebaying,
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Goodness it is almost Springtime. Daylight savings time is just around the corner and before I know it it will be time to mow the lawn.
I am happy to report that since my last post my sales are back to normal but in a never ending process to try to increase my sales volume I am endeavoring to be more diligent about social media. I have had a Pintrest account for some time and I "pin" mostly craft related projects but I recently added a board for Upcycled and Vintage Ebay Products some of the items are mine but most are things I think are interesting from other sellers. I do most of my pinning from my computer but since I am making an effort to do a little more social media without putting more and more time into it. I am making an effort to figure out how to do more things from my phone.
Here is what I have learned about pinning from my andriod phone.
First you need to have Google Play on your device. After that you should be able to download the Pintrest App.
Once you are in the app it is easy to repin items that have already been pinned. But what about everything else? Well, if you are on a site that has a pin it button on it already it is also very easy to pin but if you happen to find something pinnable that doesn't fit into either of these criteria here is what you do.
1) Go to the page you want to pin from. (you need to be able to see the web address when the page opens)
2) Press the menu button on your device (I have to select the more option on my phone to get to the next step)
3) Click Share Page
4) Click Create Pin (You might need a little patience here. It can take a little while depending on how many images there are to open.)
5) Select your Image
6) Select your board (Once you select your photo you will see one of your boards underneath the photo. There is a little triangle off to the right if you tap it you can select one of your other boards.)
7) Enter your comments
8) Press the "Pin It" button
And you are done.
My phone is a little slow but it is still a nice option to have when you are away from your computer.
Happy Ebaying (and Pinning)
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Hello and Happy New Year!
I don't know about everyone else but I had great sales in October and November, December took me into a bit of a slump and to be honest January has been down right scarey. I am trying not to stress over it too much and have taken to chanting my new mantra. "Stay calm and keep listing." But it does have me wondering what is going on. I have not received any negative feedback. My Top Rated Seller Status is intact. I did list a little bit less in December as the holidays do take over some of my time. But I can't understand this complete drop in sales. Through my years of selling on Ebay I have always had pretty consistent sales. So what gives I wonder? It is a mystery to me and so I can only continue with the part of my business that I have any control over. I can control what I put out there and I have to let the universe do the rest.
So one deep breath and back to listing.
Happy Ebaying (fingers crossed)
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Hello Fellow Ebayers,
Welcome to my little blog. As you may or may not already know I am a small Ebay seller trying to become a bigger Ebay seller and this is the place where I share some of my successes and failures and experiments.
This experiment came to mind when I re-read an article from the on-line seller entitled "Copy Writing Tips to Increase Your Online Sales." I have never put much copy in my listings as you can see from the links above. For one thing I haven't wanted to take the time to write copy for my listings and it has been my experience that even when you keep the information very clean and minimal there are still buyers that don't take the time to read the little bit of information that is there. I certainly do not know it all and so I believe that it is in my best interest to give this copy writing thing a chance.
So here is my little experiment. Two listings for the same items. One with copy and one without. I will be watching these two listings over the next few weeks to see if one of them gets more attention than the other. You can check on the progress here and here if you want to follow along with the experiment.
Happy Ebaying,
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I never seem to have a solid plan or topic when I start these posts but I am trying to push myself to continue posting on a regular basis once a week. So once again we (myself included) will just have to see where this post takes us.
In an effort to gear up for the holiday season I made a rather large on-line purchase of some new items with multiple quantities from Dollar Days. I have mentioned this site in another post regarding where I find stuff to sell. I am a little nervous about the re-sell-ability (is that a word? Anyway you know what I mean) of these items but time will tell. I haven't received any of the items yet they are due to arrive next week.
If you have read my previous post you will be familiar with the pink shoes vs the backpacks competition and you will have a better understanding of good purchasing and bad purchasing decisions that I have made.
Also if you have been following along with my last few posts you will be aware that I have been a little concerned and whinny about my sales numbers and my commitment level. Well I am happy to report that for two weeks in a row I have worked my 20 hours and sales do seem to have picked back up so I am hopeful that both of these trends will continue through the holiday season at least.
Making sure that I put in at least 20 hours per week should be something that I can control. Following are a few small changes that I made that seem to have helped.
1) Of course the first thing I did was to make myself painfully aware of how infrequently I have actually worked 20 hours a week since the first of the year.
2) Rather than just saying I need to work 20 hours per week I broke it down by day. Planning to work 6 hours per day on tuesday, thursday and friday for a total of 18 hours and the remaining 2 hours sometime in the other 4 days of the week.
3) I used to tell myself on a particular day that I would work until a specif amount of work was done. For examples when I had listed x-number of items or photographed x number of things. I think this resulted in my either burning out because the chunk of work was too big or in my skating by because the amount of work was too small.
4) I also used to work on Ebay stuff for awhile and then do something else thinking that I would go back to Ebay later. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn't. For the last couple of weeks I have put in my 6 hours in one chunk of time. Sometimes I don't finish as much as I want to but I let myself stop when my time is up.
Maybe this system won't work forever but for now it seems to be effective.
In other happy news I sold this item (my halloween costume from last year) for a nice little sum. It was just taking up space in my closet.
Happy Ebaying,
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I keep telling myself that I need to, want to, will, take my Ebay business more seriously but today I actually want to sit down and evaluate just how I am going to go about measuring my success. After all it is one thing to say you are going to do something and quite another to actually buckle down and do it. I work from home where there are plenty of distractions and no one but the cats and dogs to give me a performance review. And lets face it as long as the food and water dishes are full you don't really get a lot of feedback. So it is left to me to keep myself motivated and more importantly working.
At the beginning of this year I told myself that I would put in a minimum of 20 hours per week. That is the only real measurable item that I have given myself. It doesn't sound all that demanding really and yet here are my actual numbers.
Week 1 = 20
Week 2 = 20.5
Week 3 = 14.25
Week 4 = 20.75
Week 5 = 15.5
Week 6 = 17.75
Week 7 = 17.5
Week 8 = 17.5
Week 9 = 19.75
Week 10 = 18.75
Week 11 = 19
Week 12 = 12.5
Week 13 = 13.75
Week 14 = 9.75
Week 15 = 15
Week 16 = 16.75
Week 17 = 21.25
Week 18 = 14
Week 19 = 13.25
Week 20 = 11.5
Week 21 = 22.5
Week 22 = 22.75
Week 23 = 6.5
Week 24 = 10.75
Week 25 = 10
Week 26 = 6.5
Week 27 = 9.5
Week 28 = 19.25
Week 29 = 10.75
Week 30 = 18.5
Week 31 = 10
Week 32 = 6.5
Week 33 = 10.5
Week 34 = 16.5
Week 35 = 6.5
Week 36 = 16.75
Week 37 = 19.75
Week 38 = 12.5
Sorry to put you through that long list but it is the first time that I have actually reviewed all the numbers together. Not surprisingly they suggest that I could use a bit more discipline wouldn't you say? This week I am currently at 19 hours so sometime today or tomorrow I need to put in at least one more hour. So I may make 20 hours this week because I am writing a blog post about putting in the hours that I promised myself I would work. But what happens next week? How do I stay committed to making sure that I put in a solid 20 hours every week for the rest of the year and how do I measure the success of that effort?
First to address the matter of putting in the time. I have been keeping track of my hours in my day planner which I will continue to do but I also will now post them on Sundays on my Clothesline Apparel and More Facebook page. Just for th sake of clarity I do not count the time I spend on these blog posts toward my "Ebay time." Even though I am hopeful that in some way writing about my business will help me to improve it. I have read that sharing your goals publicly helps you to stay more committed to them so maybe this will help.
As for measuring whether my efforts pay off, I do have some systems in place for the year to year and month to month comparisons but I imagine this will always be somewhat of a work in progress.
The first order of business seems to be to get myself on track with the one solid measurable goal that I set for myself at the begining of this year. So I had better go and put in that last hour.
Happy Ebaying,
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I saw this quote today.
"You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." Jack London
I have to say that I have always been very passive in my creative ventures and while this is a blog about EBay it is also a creative endeavor to write and more importantly to come up with ideas on what to write about. I have always felt that inspiration was it's own fickle entity and therefore something to be ready and willing to receive when it showed up. But there is of course a problem with this in that it takes away ones control.
For several days now I have been trying to come up with some topic for my next blog post and I have produced ziltch. So this morning with no particular idea in mind I am starting this post with an imaginary club in hand ready to run down those pesky little seedlings of ideas and see if one of them will take us to a completed blog post idea.
I think that part of my difficulty in coming up with an idea stems from the fact that I have been thinking my posts need to be directly about Ebay but that isn't completely true. There is already plenty of information regarding how to sell and what to sell and how to get started selling. I do certainly intend to write about Ebay as it pertains to my life. To share things that have worked for me or new things that I want to try. But this blog in a larger sense is about working from home, working as a solopreneur and working toward financial independence.
Several years ago I was interested in learning more about copy writing and I purchased some materials from AWAI. Well I started the course but I never took full advantage of the program. I do however still get a news letter from them and I usually enjoy reading the information even though it is geared toward copy writing it is also usually geared toward motivation and self starting. Today's letter was about the power of NOW and the detrimental effect that tomorrow thinking can have on the projects that we believe are important.
I believe that this blog is important quit honestly in a very self serving way. I believe that it helps me to look at my business in different ways and to think about ways to improve upon it and to constantly be learning and setting new goals. If if helps or amuses someone else, well that is even better but really it is a place for me to clarify and hopefully improve my business. And remembering the lesson and the power of NOW is a very powerful place to start. Even if you have to chase down the inspiration to get started with a club.
I suffer from being a cronic planner which isn't always a bad thing but as I write this post I am reminded that more often than not we don't get to visualise projects through to their end. Usually we need to start, see were the path leads and make adjustments along the way. For me it remains difficult to start when I can't see the end of the road but I know, that more often than not, it is better to move than to stay stuck pondering which direction to go in.
Sometimes we just have to pick a direction, grab a club and go for it.
Happy Ebaying,
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You would think that after selling on EBay for 6 plus years the answer to that question would be a resounding yes. But self-doubt is a part of life and perhaps it even serves a purpose if we can keep it in check. And as I am feeling a bit of the self-doubt bug right now I will endeavour to find some silver lining in my current gloomy outlook.
The reason for my gloominess you ask. Well I believe that it mostly steams from my underwhelming sales numbers of late. The feeling is compounded by the fact that I am trying to grow and not just maintain my business. It is sometimes a difficult line to tread to keep an eye on your sales but not to loose sleep over them. And so with some trepidation I will face this nagging fear and really examine the numbers for the last two months.
The first bit of news is actually good. Looking at July's numbers and comparing this year to 2011. My unit sales are up 58% and my profit per item is up 1.4%. Comparing August to August the numbers are: unit sales up 14% and profit per item is up 33% over last August. I guess if I left it at that it would sound pretty good. But the down side is that July units sales were down 15% from the average of the rest of this year and August unit sales were down 19%. There is more good news in that my average profit per item for July and August was actually up from the average of the last 6 months. 13% in July and 8% in August.
I used these fancy formulas to calculate my numbers.
Percentage increase = (new amount - original amount) / original amount X 100
Percentage decrease = (original amount - new amount) / original amount X 100
I am sure that this just seems like a big jumble of numbers that you can slice and dice in an infinite number of mind boggling ways. But now that I have forced myself through the exercise I do feel a little bit better as the news wasn't all bad. I do also have to remind myself that the summer months are usually slower and that we are heading into the holiday season which should bring an increase in sales.
That is if I can get myself to get some listing done! I haven't been very good lately about feeding new items into the system so it isn't that surprising that my sales were also a little slow. This is undoubtedly a big contributor to my self-doubt. I know that I should be listing more but I do find it easy to get distracted by other things.
I have read that one secret to success is to state your goals publicly and while I do agree that this is probably a good idea I am not sure that I am at a point where I know what my number goals are. What numbers should I concentrate on? Should I have a listing goal? A sales goal? Should these goals be based on number of units or dollars? Should I work on incremental percentage increases? Should I have a year end goal, a monthly goal a weekly goal? I fear that I should have answers to all these questions but I also fear that it would be easy to get bogged down in all of the numbers and become deeply depressed when I missed my targets. Sometimes (in fact I would argue that most of the time) it is better to keep working on the revenue generating work ie: listing & sourcing new items than it is to worry about how all of your numbers are stacking up. Don't get me wrong I think it is important to track how you are doing but when you are a one person enterprise sometimes you have to forget all about the numbers and just buckle down and do the work.
It's a balancing act that sometimes makes me wonder if I have what it takes to grow my business and be successful. For now I will continue, accepting that I will do somethings wrong and that there will always be new things for me to learn.
And now I will try to take my own advise and go do some listing!!
Happy EBaying,
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