6/23/12 Purchase Summary

I bought three items today: two while out formally garage saling and one later on in the day. I spent $1.90 resulting in a profit potential of as much as $100.

The first item I purchased was a TI-83 Plus graphing calculator. The sellers clearly had no idea what it was ("I'm not sure if we even know how it works!" was the seller's response when I asked if it works) so I got it for $0.50. I have it listed on Craigslist for $60 but I expect to make more in the $40-$45 range on it. 

The second item I purchased was an NES Power Pad -- think a Dance Dance Revolution pad for the original Nintendo except it's not used for dancing games. It came in the original box and appears unused. I couldn't remember if Power Pads are a valuable item or not so I figured I could sell it at my own garage sale which I'll be having in a few weeks if it proved worthless. It cost me $1; if I find a buyer I may get anywhere from $10-$30 for it. 

My last item, a textbook, I purchased later in the day. It cost me $0.40 (all the change on me at the time) and I just listed it on Amazon for $45. After shipping and fees, I will get between $32 and $34 for it, assuming it sells at $45.
I think I will use the calculator as the first item from my $2.65 challenge.

The Basic Elements of Online Selling: Guest Post, Part 2

Basics: eBay

Ebay is largely an auction style format site. A user will typically register with the website which requires basic information such as your email address, name, location, and a created username and password. This gives you the ability to browse the site and search for items. However, to make purchases, a required credit is necessary.

A prostore may also be purchased which is essentially an independent website that is used in conjunction with ebay.

“ProStores offer a fully-featured Web store that can be customized specifically for each online seller. Unlike an eBay Store, ProStores sites are accessed through a URL unique to the seller and have no eBay branding. ProStores sellers are also responsible for driving their own traffic. While items on ProStores sites will sell at fixed prices only, they can also be easily listed onto the eBay marketplace in either the auction or fixed price formats.”

In other words, a ProStores is your own personal ecommerce website. You have your own .com address, your own email addresses and everything is listed at fixed price. An eBay Store is a store within eBay.com. I will address the Pros and Cons of each later in the article.

Pros:

•    Your own website, once a customer is there you have their complete attention

•    No listing fees, no picture fees, final value fee is 0.5-1.5% depending on store level

•    Personalized domain name that looks good on business cards, store receipts and in emails

•    30% discount on monthly ProStores subscription if you have an eBay Store

•    Ability to use Store Referral Credit to refer customers back to your eBay Store

Cons

•    Necessary to drive your own traffic via SEO, shopping comparison sites, etc

More setup required than an eBay Store

There are different forms of payment including credit card, debit card or check deposit. However, most users prefer to use the Paypal service. Paypal is an online credit service that serves as the middleman for payments. Essentially it is like a credit card company but more tailored to online purchases. Typically a person will usually link their bank account to their paypal account and this serves as your cash for purchases. Paypal is convenient as you can send money, create money orders, manage purchases and cash transactions from selling. Your money is stored in your Paypal Account, so this makes it convenient to keep track of your income or easily make refunds. If you choose, you may also apply for Paypal debit card which lets you use your Paypal Balance to make purchase wherever MasterCard is accepted. Paypal is also useful as it has a resolution service that serves to mediate disputes between the seller and buyer. The advantage is that Paypal is weighed towards the buyer with Buyer Protection. This essentially guarantees a refund in the event that purchased item is not as described or there are problems with the transaction, such as no package received or a wrong product was given.

The Basic Elements of Online Selling: Guest Post, Part 1

I've been suffering from a bit of writer's block recently but luckily one of my friends volunteered to do a guest post. He knows far more about eBay and Amazon I do so that's what he'll be discussing. His post is pretty long so I'll be breaking it into multiple parts. Today is obviously Part 1. 
With a growing economy and rapidly developing consumer nations, e-commerce is on the rise. With fuller pockets, the need to spend is becoming commonplace and with it, an excess of material possessions. 

Now in an age of high speed computers and super fast internet, most shopping is now performed online. With retail merchants like Walmart and Target taking to the digital web, consumer spending has increased many times over. Most significant are the rise of pure e-commerce retailers, specifically those of Amazon and Buy.com. With the ability to avoid middleman costs and buy in bulk volume, websites such as these are able to keep their costs low and with other competing websites, it is in the best interest of these retailers to offer incentive deals such as reward points or free shipping to stay ahead in the game. 

Previously, when those purchased goods were no longer sufficient or desirable to the consumer, most gave or threw them away. Reselling old items was unheard of and mostly performed through garage sales. While unloading one’s possessions through this medium was somewhat profitable, the hassles of advertising one’s sale and collecting a decent profit were not worth the trouble to many. 

With the rise of e-commerce websites, online auction and consumer merchant websites arose, where not only could one purchase goods from brand name companies, but also from local merchants, unheard of brand names, and anyone with a computer, a camera, and incentive to sell or resell. Websites including ebay and amazon have creative an online consumer merchant base where the average person can now sell or resell their own products. Online selling can become lucrative for many as the average consumer can not only buy products with the intention of using them but also with the intention of reselling to make a profit.

Confidence

Last week was the first week in which didn't get at least two posts written. Last week was also the busiest week I've had in months. I'll try to get back to my minimum two posts a week starting today.

I'm going to discuss a key attribute of successful bargainers; you can probably guess what it is from the title. I'm rather surprised that I haven't discussed the importance confidence in the past, although it's entirely possible that I have and I've just forgotten.

When I had my own sale a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find that I was selling items more consistently than my friend was; people were buying items from me that I felt were priced unfairly high while he had trouble selling a few items that I felt were actually a good bargain at the prices he was asking.

Looking back, I feel the difference was in how we approached bargaining. When I bargain, I always act like I know what I'm talking about even when I have no idea what I'm bargaining over.

People seem more willing to accept you offers, no matter how ridiculous, if you seem confident. Indeed, confidence works against me as well; when I had my own sale, I found myself giving better deals who were stating a price rather than asking.

Next time you go saling, be confident because you will get better deals.

The Woman I Hate

Last summer, I had a few garage sales selling some a lot of stuff I had gotten out of dumpsters during my university's move out (it was all working items in good condition, mostly appliances, electronics, and other household items). For my second sale, my mother volunteered me to try to sell some friends' garage sale leftovers which, to my dismay, consisted entirely of clothing and the like.

Much of this stuff was legitimate designer wear which shouldn't be at any garage sale, especially mine because I have no idea how much any of that stuff is worth. Most of the items were still priced from our friends' sale and I left the prices on as a guide for myself. Not surprisingly, nothing was selling because no one wants to spend $15 on a shirt at a garage sale.

The Woman I Hate showed up late in the day in a pickup truck with a man I assume was her husband. I guessed they bought items at garage sales to sell at swap meets because their truck was filled with household items and they had bought a bunch of cheap appliances at my last sale.

The Woman I Hate immediately started gathering up clothing until she had a fairly large pile for which she offered me $2. I laughed and told her that items were priced individually and there was no way she could possibly have all of that for $2 to which she got mad. The situation culminated in her telling me that the bag that was priced at $50 -- which I told her she could have for $12 -- was priced at fifty cents, not fifty dollars. At that, I told her she could leave and she wasn't buying anything.

I don't hate this woman because she tried to bargain with me; that would be very hypocritical on my part. Rather, I dislike her because she had the gall to try to rip me off like that. I now refuse to sell her anything whenever I see her at one of my garage sales because she always expects ridiculous bargains (for example, at my most recent sale, she tried to give my friend $3 for the crystal set he sold for $3 per stem). It doesn't bother me that she tries to bargain; it bothers me that she gets mad (to the point of shouting sometimes) when you don't accept her ludicrous offers.

Since my first negative experience with this person, I've started to see her a lot when I go garage saling. I estimate I see her at once two thirds of the days I go garage saling and many days I see her two or three times. She's always the same rude, terrible person to other sellers as she was to me.

6/9/12 Purchase Summary

I didn't actually go garage saling today so instead I did my walk around the neighborhood to look for nearby sales. I ended up stopping at four, all of which were better than the average for my area. 

I purchased two items: an almost new copy of the fifth season of Monk for $1 (birthday gift for my mom) and a kid's night vision set for $0.25. Sadly, as I expected, the night was one of the visible light sets (and therefore not night vision in any sense of the word -- it's essentially a flashlight) and not one of the infrared sets. I would have killed myself had I passed it up and found out when I got home that it was indeed an IR set especially since I've already passed up one IR set this way. So, I wasted a quarter. To the garage sale pile it goes.

The Item of the Day

On many garage saling days -- more often than not, I would say -- you will see an item that stands out as the item of the day. By this, I mean an item that keep appearing at different sales; sometimes you may see it as often as seven or eight times in the day.

The item of the day is usually an uncommon item (which is why it sticks out) and frequently is an item never before seen garage saling. For example, one of the first items I noticed as an item of the day was the original Playstation console: I saw at least six that day at different sales and I have only ever seen one since then. Other items I have noticed exhibiting this effect include Skip-a-Cross board games, plastic pineapples, Kafka textbooks, and toy pianos. Note that for an item to be considered an item of the day the items you see must be identical; for example, the Kafka texts were all the same discussion of his more noteworthy writings and a bunch of different books written by Kafka wouldn't count.

This effect, while interesting, doesn't really impact garage saling in any way. I just thought it was something interesting to write about. It sort of reminds me of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, but not really.

A Quick Public Service Announcement to Every Craigslister and Garage Saler who Thinks They're a Clever Bargainer

"What's the lowest you can go" is not a clever bargaining technique. Don't even bother trying this; nothing betrays your amateur status more than asking a buyer his or her lowest price.

Many Craigslist and garage sale buyers attempt this "technique," I assume because they have limited exposure to real bargaining situations. I refuse to respond to it as the buyer's goal is obvious: to try to worm out what the seller's actual minimum price is and then bargain down from there. 

If someone asks me this question, I invite them to make an offer on the item. I ignore them when they insist I tell them my price; I am not going to fall for a technique as weak as this.

Please, don't try this technique. You will just end up insulting anyone who knows what they are doing and make yourself look bad in the process.

6/2/12 Purchase Summary

We started our day yesterday by going to a nearby neighborhood's annual community sale. This was a new experience for me as this sale was always right before finals when I was in college. I had no idea what to expect but I wasn't too optimistic -- neighborhood sales are usually pretty poor. As it turns out, this sale was amazing; I counted sixty-two houses having sales and that figure does not include houses with just a coffee table or something similar sitting out front. Sixty-two houses is an absurdly large number of participating houses. I think I've discussed this before, but most "neighborhood sales" have maybe six or eight participants if you are lucky. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised.

That said, none of the individual sales at the neighborhood sale were especially good; I would estimate we drove by over half of them. Of my five purchases of the day, only two were from the neighborhood sale: a box of solar panels for $0.50 (fun for projects) and a bust of Julius Caesar for $1.00.

The Nalgene is regular-sized; that bust is 24" tall

Between a late start and the neighborhood sale, we didn't start saling along our normal route until almost 9:30 yesterday morning so many of the sales were already closing up by the time we got to even the middle of our route. My only purchases outside the neighborhood sale were at the first sale at which we stopped along our normal route: two books (The Brothers Karamazov and Ulysses) and a new gaming keyboard (a SteelSeries 6Gv2) all for $0.20. The keyboard sells for $85 on Amazon. I have it listed on Craigslist but if I can't find a buyer for a good price I'll just keep it for myself.

The Noncommittal "meh"

You will find that many sellers who are more interested in getting rid of items than making money frequently resort to greeting everyone who comes to their sale with "Do you want X item? It's only Y Dollars!" Frequently item X is something no one will ever want to buy, but rarely it's an item of interest. This technique frequently works to remove 75% off of the initial asking price without you doing any bargaining.

This technique is similar to the put down/walk away except the seller, not the buyer initiates. When the initial offer is made, all you, the buyer, have to do is make a noise that expresses vague interest: eh, meh, mmm, etc. If you're lucky, the seller will then offer a more attractive offer and you are free to try the technique again. For example, I have seen items start at $20, be reduced to $10, and then to $5, allowing me to finally offer $2, one-tenth of the seller's original asking price.