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Post by defiant1 on Jan 19, 2013 17:01:29 GMT -5
Tonight the remaining books I have in my auctions will end and I will move into what I feel will be the worst and most time consuming part. The shipping. In preparation for that, I took the off time to get ready for it. I spent the week periodically cutting out cardboard. This picture doesn't do this justice but I hope I have cut enough out for the first go round. I need to get shipping done as fast as humanly possible and move onto the next stage and that is getting another set of comics up as fast as possible. The good thing is I have already scanned all the books and picked out most of the books for the next offering. Once I get this round of books out, my next step will be to go right into creating auctions. I hope to have another round up within a week. Hopefully, you aren't dealing with non-payers. df1
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Post by G on Jan 20, 2013 12:41:47 GMT -5
Hopefully, you aren't dealing with non-payers. As you can see, I'm having a few stragglers. I'm a bit concerned. Last time in September, out of 34 auctions, I only had 1 person who didn't pay. But it was like a $60 book so it kind of hurt. Pissed me off too. He never did pay. I filed a report on him but its just ebay saying "bad boy". They let the buyer continue to go on bidding. This time I've sold 111 out of 125 books. I have 20 left unpaid for by about 6 or 7 buyers most of who bought multiple items. I've decided I can't wait around for the money to come in. I will report each individual item as soon as I am able to. As of now, I am putting up new auctions. I've scheduled them to come out on Tuesday night. I'm working on doing a better job with the scheduling. I'm also doing a smaller batch of about 65 books. I think I can do this in smaller chunks more often than I can a large chunk that takes up my time to do every step. The packing process was a bitch but I busted them out as fast as I could. Packing looks so easy but there are so many steps in making sure books are sent properly. Here's the output... Here's the load... And here is the aftermath... Other than not receiving my straggling payments, I'm reasonably happy with my results. I was shooting for an average of $10 a book. I really wanted $1300. I fell $106 short of that but that is not far off when you consider it was 125 books. Considering 111 sold, I pretty much averaged just about $10 per sold book. So I'm in the ballpark I want to be in. I feel like I made some drastic mistakes the first time around that likely cost me a couple of hundred dollars. I'm constantly adjusting my thinking and trying to make up for my errors in subsequent runs. Being it was my first go round, I'm not terribly disappointed. I'm adjusting though. The next 3 weeks are really major struggles for me. Other than the money in my paypal, I am broke. And I need to get a mortgage payment in. That's why this non paying is a killer. If those people pay, I can make December's mortgage. I can't wait on it. That's why I'm busting my next batch out. I don't want to get past 60 days behind. I know from being in collections, that's when companies up the heat.
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Post by defiant1 on Jan 20, 2013 22:04:59 GMT -5
As a buyer, I think shipping is too much to buy single books unless they are worth over $150. I'd think sets would entice more buyers.
df1
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Post by G on Jan 21, 2013 0:02:55 GMT -5
As a buyer, I think shipping is too much to buy single books unless they are worth over $150. I'd think sets would entice more buyers. df1 As a buyer, I can see your point. And as a buyer, I may not want to pay those prices myself. As a seller. Those costs are pretty reasonable and don't really pay or just barely pay for my shipping expenses. I'm fairly happy with the prices realized in most case. I've had a few head scratchers too though. A few things I feel like I gave away to a degree. But other books I did WAY better than I expected.
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Post by defiant1 on Jan 21, 2013 5:39:44 GMT -5
As a buyer, I think shipping is too much to buy single books unless they are worth over $150. I'd think sets would entice more buyers. df1 As a buyer, I can see your point. And as a buyer, I may not want to pay those prices myself. As a seller. Those costs are pretty reasonable and don't really pay or just barely pay for my shipping expenses. I'm fairly happy with the prices realized in most case. I've had a few head scratchers too though. A few things I feel like I gave away to a degree. But other books I did WAY better than I expected. Things like Batman #227 had a whole thread dedicated to them on the CGC forum. It's more a matter of whether the books you offered are on people's mind at the time. You and I know what they are, but you and I aren't buying comics anymore. Your buyer is some college kid who couldn't tell the difference between a good comic and a buffalo chip. df1
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Post by G on Feb 23, 2013 5:57:52 GMT -5
I put the 90 books up that started Sunday and then I worked on getting my previous orders out the door and that took a couple of days and since I got done with that, I should have been working on new listings, but I'm kind of burned out at the moment and I took a couple of days break. I don't have time to be that way though. I need to get up tomorrow and get back at it. I just have never done so much eBay for so long. I think what I hate worst is what I have to do next....work on creating new listings. That takes so long. Oh well, enough wallowing. I need to get up tomorrow and get to work.
Another thing that was holding me down is I had been seeing this girl I used to know from High School and we had spent some times together. Well, she took it a lot more serious than I did and was always acting like we had a future together. I didn't see it that way. She even went so far as to change her Facebook status from "Single" to "In a relationship". I couldn't keep up going on with it. Tonight I told her I wasn't into it like she was. She took it okay but expressed sadness saying she figured I wasn't into it, but she opened herself up for it anyway and now she feels like a fool. She's a nice girl and I enjoyed her company, but she's really not my type. She even said so. She's right. I feel bad about it but I didn't feel like I needed to jump into things with her when I wasn't feeling it.
I think that is another reason I kept from working on Auctions these last couple of days. These issues with her were weighing on my mind and I knew I had to tell her. I put it off for days but she backed me into a corner asking questions about how I really felt about her. Since she backed me into a corner, I just decided I needed to come clean and I did. I feel bad about it but in a way, I feel a bit relieved too. I had put that off long enough.
One last note. This last auction had a GREAT start, but the last 3 days has been just going up rather slowly at best. I NEED a big payday on this one and it's not looking like it's going to materialize at this point. Best thing is I have 90 books up all ending on Sunday night, which is supposed to be prime time and actually the 1st time I managed to get an auction to end on Sunday. I'm crossing my fingers that it will pay off, but as it stands, I'm feeling like I'm going to end up way short.
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Post by defiant1 on Feb 23, 2013 17:47:08 GMT -5
I feel like women only are interested in me when I'm perfectly happy and content with someone. Right now, I feel like there are a dozen people I could be seeing... but I'm not interested.
I've never had a problem conveying that I'm not interested in someone. Even women I like think I'm not interested.
df1
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whetteon
New Hire
Posts: 89
I Am Offline!
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Post by whetteon on Feb 27, 2013 14:05:06 GMT -5
What was the cost of shipping per package and which shipping service provider did you use? USPS? UPS? Fedex?
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Post by G on Feb 28, 2013 9:00:13 GMT -5
What was the cost of shipping per package and which shipping service provider did you use? USPS? UPS? Fedex? I'm using USPS. UPS is just way too expensive. I was using both Media and Priority Mail but I discovered I was losing money using Priority, so now I only use Media and don't do Priority unless requested. It costs me on average $2.73 for postage. My bubble wrap envelopes cost anywhere from 80 cents each to a bit over $1 depending on where I shop. Which to me feels real expensive. I have to bug people to keep cardboard for me. I've managed to find packing tape for $1 or less for 50 yard rolls. Regular tape costs just about $1 per roll too. Some places want $3-$5 per roll for each kind of tape. I'm going to have to buy some bubblewrap soon. That stuff is crazy expensive. I think Wal-Mart sells 150 yard rolls for $17. That is going to make me sick to have to buy that. I just had to change the black ink on my printer. My ex-wife bought me 2 cartridges for Xmas. I think those run $14 a pop. I'm also running out of printer paper. I think that's going to be another $4-$6 per ream. In all, when I ship a package, I'm lucky I probably clear about 50 cents per package. That's not counting gas to go to the post office. So typically I try to do all my package runs in 1-2 trips.
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Post by defiant1 on Feb 28, 2013 18:26:56 GMT -5
What was the cost of shipping per package and which shipping service provider did you use? USPS? UPS? Fedex? I'm using USPS. UPS is just way too expensive. I was using both Media and Priority Mail but I discovered I was losing money using Priority, so now I only use Media and don't do Priority unless requested. It costs me on average $2.73 for postage. My bubble wrap envelopes cost anywhere from 80 cents each to a bit over $1 depending on where I shop. Which to me feels real expensive. I have to bug people to keep cardboard for me. I've managed to find packing tape for $1 or less for 50 yard rolls. Regular tape costs just about $1 per roll too. Some places want $3-$5 per roll for each kind of tape. I'm going to have to buy some bubblewrap soon. That stuff is crazy expensive. I think Wal-Mart sells 150 yard rolls for $17. That is going to make me sick to have to buy that. I just had to change the black ink on my printer. My ex-wife bought me 2 cartridges for Xmas. I think those run $14 a pop. I'm also running out of printer paper. I think that's going to be another $4-$6 per ream. In all, when I ship a package, I'm lucky I probably clear about 50 cents per package. That's not counting gas to go to the post office. So typically I try to do all my package runs in 1-2 trips. I have a color laser printer that I picked up for $199 about 5 years ago. I need a toner cartridge for yellow... it costs about $70. Thankfully I don't print a lot. df1
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