Monday, January 7, 2013

January weather

There's still snow on the ground this Monday morning, but by this weekend it is supposed to be up in the 60's.  Next week back down into the 30's for highs.  No wonder our bodies get all out of kilter this time of year.  It will be nice to turn the heaters off for a few days.

I didn't get the rosemary dug up before the snow, and I wonder if it made it through the cold spell.  I think I will be digging it up on Saturday and bringing it in the house.  I still have some green catnip, poking up through the snow, so the cats are happy!

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Ebay cycles

I'm not sure how EBAY works, and I have been a seller on there for almost 15 years.  Usually the 3 months leading up to Christmas are pretty busy, and the summers are very slow.  In the olden days, when I was keeping listings pretty active, I could easily sell close to $2000 a month, but it cost a lot less to list and the Final Value Fees were a much smaller percentage, so I was comfortable listing things with low prices.  Now the listing fees are higher and auctions pay FVF not only on the ending price, but also on the shipping.  I am much less likely to sell anything for less than $15 because it just isn't worth the trouble.  If I was only selling one item over and over, I could afford to sell cheaply because there would be no effort in the listing process. My items are all unique though, so the process of listing is a little more involved.

Strangely enough, this week between Christmas and New Years has been very good.  I guess people are spending their Christmas money?  I don't know, but I have had several higher priced sales.  It seems like my auctions become much more visible in cycles.  I won't have any sales for a week, and then all of a sudden I will get four items sold out of my EBAY store in one day, going all over the country.  I try to keep a few auctions up all the time, and the rest is sitting in the store.  Unfortunately, the store FVF's are higher than the auctions, even though the listing fees are less.

I have some really nice vintage items listed at ETSY, and when I find a vintage item I list it first on EBAY, then move it over to ETSY if it doesn't sell.

I also have quite a few books listed on AMAZON, and just wait on notification from them.  There is no listing fee there, but they take a chunk for commission.

As I have been going through the boxes of books, I am finding that I saved some that may have been worth listing years ago, but are no longer worth the effort, so they are going out on Freecycle.

Slowly but surely I will get the house ready.  Slowly.  Slowly.