Tuesday, March 27

On Spring Vacation

The kids and I are on Spring Break Vacation but lucky for me, all the family has computers! Sales have been going well. I have sold almost $4000 in product in my first two months. My profits haven't been that high because of some initial costs I have had to pay but I am not in the red. I have weeded out two drop shippers who were not very good. I have acquired two new drop shippers and also bought some wholesale goods from two others. I don't have a very large home so I will keep my wholesale orders down but it is nice to handle what you are selling before you sell it.

I really wanted to talk to you about International Shipping today. I have been having some issues with the swords and weapon related items and international shipping. I have to ship most of them UPS because of their size and it is expensive. I just had an order that was $160 for shipping! Well the biggest problem is convincing buyers you are not trying to rob them. My point of this is, sometimes with large or heavy items, International Shipping is more of a hassle than it is worth.

Now for items weighing less that 13ozs, like clothes, you can ship Internationally for a dollar or two more that you can ship it in the U.S.. This makes selling clothing great on eBay. The best shipping costs for International Orders I have found are through the USPS. Don't forget to tell your customers they are responsible for any customs or tariff fees related to their order or you could end up losing money.

Well that is it for today!
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Tuesday, March 6

What to Sell

When starting a new business in retail the first question you have to answer is, what do I sell? On Ebay this question is really a never ending question. You are constantly trying to figure out that product that will make you a profit. I started off with about 3 drop shippers that I listed items from. Only one of them, who carries swords & weaponry brought me sales.

I will tell you, selling swords was not really my first choice. I am a mother of three children and not really the violent type. I do like the whole fantasy genre and my husband has a couple swords around the house so it wasn't to awkward. It does seem wierd that my primary auctions are children's clothes and swords!

This seems to be a regular event on Ebay. There are many sellers out there who sell a variety of items and that is OK.

So my advice for this week is to not go crazy and buy $1000 inventory on something that you don't know will sell. Buy a small amount of product and test the waters. In addition, do your research. I will list some sites that I found helpful in my next blog.

Until then...
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Thursday, March 1

Googlebase

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So far this week has been pretty uneventful. I have been busy with sales, mostly swords and some clothes that I had bought last year when I thought I wanted to sell clothing on Ebay. That is a tough market. There are a lot of WAHMs who do it but the loss potential is huge. I am starting all of clothing auctions at $0.99 to save on fees but am losing a lot of money on my initial investment. I just want all the clothes gone so for me it is a pay off.

My whole family has come down with the flu the past two weeks so it has been interesting caring for the sick and running a business.

This Blog Tip:

GoogleBase
Some of you have heard of Google Base I am sure but I didn't learn about it until a week and a half ago. For free, you can upload your whole inventory into GoogleBase and your products show up in Google searches and Froogle for FREE!!! This is a must for any business owner. If you are a EBay Store owner, go to listing feeds and get the listing feed that is Google Base specific. EBay makes the file available for you (how nice). If you are not an Ebayer go to the Google Base and read the instructions.

Hope this helps, it helped me for now my products show up on Google (at the top).

Till next time.
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