Ad

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

EBAY (Fundraising). So you want to sell online!

This week we started a new (fundraiser).   Why the parentheses?   At Ebay, you can not sell things and link it to a fundraiser.  That is unless you are a certified charity or a famous person.  I've seen where so-called stars sold their stuff at Ebay and only donated a small percentage to charity while keeping most of the proceeds.  If we used the word fundraiser, we would be flagged and told to remove it.

We listed nine posters for sale.  Most of the week there has been no activity.  Today, time ran out for seven of them.  Of the seven, only one actually had bids for under $10.00.  One of the posters, I started at $75.  I did not want a last minute bid for .99.  A couple had watchers and that gave me hope.  As time counted downward, they started falling off one by one.  When the smoke cleared, two had bids.  A Pulp Fiction for $75 and a Shawshank Redemption for around $75.  All in all, a pretty good take.  Not only that, but we have another person who might be interested in about 30 posters.  Hopefully, we will not scare him away.

I'd love to list more, but since I am new to Ebay, I can only list ten a month.  Hopefully, when we prove ourselves worthy, they will increase or take away the limit.  One piece of advice I'd give you about Ebay is to us Paypal.  That way, you don't send until the money is there.  You don't have to worry about bad checks, etc.  Also, when buying something, read the ratings.  If they have issues, you will see it in the reviews.  Between selling and buying, we have learned our lessons.  By the way, I'm new to it, but my wife had sold things many years ago.

One last thing we discovered.  When you sell on EBAY, make sure you included International Shipping.  We did not.  I think it said only in US, but someone from UK won the bid.  Seeing that it was our error not to add the pricing, we decided to eat the three or so dollars.

Seems like I will have plenty of advice on this one.  I made the mistake of following advice from Ebay.  They suggested I should list things for .99.  I listed one of the posters.  After 60 some views and no bids, the auction ended with three bids and the price went up to 1.25.  This was for an original movie poster.  In addition to that, I did not set the shipping correctly.  In the end, we probably made .25.

Good news!  We now have 10 great ratings.  This will help our sales, as long as we keep the buyers happy.  I just wish they would increase the amount we are allowed to sell.  Right now, we are limited to 10 sales a month or a $1,000.

No comments: