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.