SheKnows Message Boards - View Single Post

sosoftail · #28 (**permalink**) 11-11-2007, 12:31 PM

[color="Purple"]Hello everyone. My Ebay user name is sosoftail. Right now I don't have anything on there but plan to shortly. I was doing better with yard sales than Ebay but the cold here now may run me inside. I was not doing well on Ebay. Started out really good then nothing and paying those fees and not selling ran me in the red. Maybe I'll do better this time.
I had not been selling long. I did it to supplement my disability. I started with things around the house and things I won on the contests I was always entering the went to thrift stores and yard sales myself to find unique items in good shape to resell so I have a dozen large bins of items right now. I would list them once and if they did not sell I placed them in my yard sale. I honestly did not raise the price of my items more than I paid. Trying to keep the prices low and hoping for bids and rebids. If that happened I did good but if it sold at what I listed it for I made nothing. Plus USPS raised their rates and now have a zoning thing. I used to know exactly what it cost to mail an item but with the new zoning it is nuts now. I was losing money because if someone like in California or Texas bought it the shipping may be much more than I expected and I had to pay it so I lost money. I tried raising the shipping and if it was close and the shipping was not what I said it would be I always refunded the dif. I figured with 100% positive feedback they would trust me on that but guess not.
They have a flat rate box but some items I would sell would not fit in that box. Even shipping small items like a nick nack I always checked for the cheapest rate and it was always just a 0.10 dif in regular shipping and priority mail. it is so messed up now. So I stopped selling for awhile. With Christmas coming I hope to do better.
Oh yeah.....LOL......my name sosoftail has nothing to do with something naughty. I had a Softail Harley when I was a bit younger. When I became disabled I still kept it for a few years not wanting to part with it but when I had my chemo bills forced me to sell it for half what I paid for it and it still had less than 10,000 miles on it. I cried when it sold but what can you do?
Hope to see some of you as a customer when I renew my listings. I have such a huge variety and a lot of small ceramics and stuff. Anything you might be looking for let me know and I'll see if I have it. I have a few boxes that I have no idea what is in them. A church donated them to me full of yard sale stuff. They had a yard sale that was off the beaten path and did not advertise so it did not do well. A neighbor went to the church so asked if I could have what they did not sell and they agreed. They knew I was struggling so thought that was a way to help me and get the stuff off their hands as well. I meant to have a yard sale and go through them but it went straight from summer to winter here at least to me. All my plants had started reblooming after that awful heat wave and within a day of the sudden chill and night frosts they were all dead. What a shame. Because it is a super big chore for me to load all those tables and stuff with all the stuff I have when I do a yard sale I like to load them up and organize some what then cover them with tarps at night. I live on a busy highway. I have a dome tent with a mattress in it and covers so I would sleep in the tent and keep a lantern burning on low at night to keep an eye on the stuff. So far no real trouble for me and then in the morning crawl out of the tent, get some coffee and take off the tarps and ready to go the next day. It scared my neighbors. They worried something bad would happen to me out there.I knew if I put all that stuff away in the storage building I would not get it out the next day for another yard sale. I keep 4 large flea market tables out there along my front yard. I put cloths on them to make them look nicer and put up a couple of folding tables and I still do not have enough room for all the stuff I have so you know I have a lot of stuff. People that stopped by before said I had no junk. It is all in excellent shape and clean. Some items are antique or at least very old but in good shape. If I would not want it myself I would not buy it to sell.
Well now that you know I am long-winded you know a lot about me. If you got this far God Bless you for sticking with this. LOL! When I send e-mails to my brothers they know they need some coffee before reading it because it will be book length. I think one even fell asleep reading one of my e-mails. Blessings to all. CC: thanks3]