The Daily Mail has a rather odd story about selling your entire Christmas – decorations, half-eaten choccies, unwanted CD – on eBay. It’s an amusing idea, along the lines of All My Life for Sale, but I can’t help thinking the sale itself would have raised so much more for the unnamed charitable beneficiary if the writer had known what she was doing.
A one day listing, beginning Boxing Day, for Christmas decorations is never going to be the most effective. Selling off your own old tat just when everyone else is selling the same thing will never get you the best price. If you want to make a real killing on Christmas decorations, sell them in August (believe me, I’ve seen it done).
Then we have
I spend ages trying to decide how much to charge for postage. There’s an awful lot to mail out and the tree is quite heavy. I think it would cost about £10 to post, but am worried it will put people off bidding. I opt for £2.50 and hope I don’t have to pay out much more than that.
Never, never, never guess at postage. By all means, subsidise it within the item cost if that’s what you choose to do, but make it an informed decision to do so.
Still on the postage theme, we have this interesting ASQ a bit further down:
Q: is the posting a mistake at 2.50
A: No, the postage is not a mistake – it is £2.50. I have a job that means I can get things delivered cheaply. Thank you
You see, you can make the postage too cheap: buyers don’t mind paying what postage *costs*, what they object to is sellers making a huge profit on it. And if you *are* using your post room at work to ship your eBay sales, it’s probably best not to advertise it on a public forum.
Of course, if you can seriously write “an hour goes by without a bid I must admit I feel despondent”, then you obviously haven’t a clue what you’re doing, and should probably stick to earning your living writing idiotic articles for tabloid newspapers.
