Wow, thanks for the couple of comments that came my way, I really should kep this up...just finding the dedication to do it...

OK, so I did manage the July cheap day run & all was going really wellish, until ebay hit me with 10 listing withdrawals due to 'keyword spamming'. It appears that my use of 'AS NEW' on used listings is prohibited, which is news to me as I have used this for years with never a problem & feedback speaks volumes. I have objected, but do see it can be misleading, although innocently, & no more so than used 'NEW LOOK' branded items coming up on a new search, which I pointed out. Suffice to say I will amend my listins as it was never my intention to mislead.

Ebay did say they only act when an item is pointed out to them by another user, so they are reactive & not proactive. Interestingly I did a search on used items with 'NEW' in the title & about 14,000 active listings came up under clothing with about half (rough guess) comomg up as 'NEW LOOK' & the other half coming up as 'AS NEW'. I have been very dissapointed with the slowness of ebay to respond to emails from powersellers & with the auto replies that seem to always come back & always from a different rep & with no correlation to my series of emails...

On to more interesting things, I think my conversion rate was down a bit, but a day before the listings finished (Sunday), on the Saturday, I get a call to say the family home was on fire. Problem was the fire was in Bristol & I was in Ilfracombe...house hunting..& nobody else could be reached. Several frantic calls later & all was swung into action. 1 Upstairs bedroom gutted & 3 other upstairs rooms, on account of the doors being ajar, heavily smoked damaged. Luckily Ebay listed items were unaffected. They were bagged in the Attic above & some smoke did get up there, but it was very minimal. I rewashed a few items to be on the safe side, so hopefully all was OK...feedback's comomg in...

Meanwhile I really need a penny listing day, or better still the half-price listing day that happened a couple of months ago, with free gallery, as that was 7p a listing & really worked out well. Looks like I will be relisting only for a while as my four main sources of 'AS NEW' items will effectively dry up for a while as a result of the fire...might give me the time I need to sort out my move to Ilfracombe...although with todays 200 point FTSE 100 drop rocking the boat...I might be a bit delayed...catch u l8r 

I started selling on ebay, about 3 or 4 years ago, got the bug from my flatmate, Sacha, who had just started selling off some 'as new' clothing, I think. I had some cheap summer 'Replay' T-shirts that I had picked up from 'Emporium' in Newbury for a fiver each (bargain bin) . Summer was over, so I thought I would put them on ebay. They went for more than I paid for them, so that got me thinking. Straight away I ransacked my wardrobe for 'as new' items I had hardly worn or would not likely wear again & surpirse surprise they all flew out at amazing prices. I then found myself searching shops for bargains & taking a chance on ebay. Thsi proved successful, so much so that for a couple of years I had myself a second income & developed a good instinct for what sold well. The only problem was that listing items was a bit time consuming, so when I moved from Newbury to Bristol I lost interest a bit...although I also moved on to selling off my parent's 50's & 60's 45rpm vinyl collection...

Now recently I found that ebay listing had improved dramatically & with a large extended family all searching for a bit of 'pin money' I challenged them to pass me their unwanted clothing, & some other items I knew would resell well, & I undertook to generate some cash for them through ebay. This has worked out really well for them, as it's a sort of 'life laundry' that has positive benefits all round...

Firstly, they have all been sorting through the 'stuff' that our western consumer society wills us to collect. We've all heard of the 80:20 rule, i.e. we wear 20% of our clothing 80% of the time. So the nack is to idently the 80% of our wardrobe that we only wear 20% of the time & sell it off. This then applies to the rest of our consumer items & so the same thing applies across the board, although some things, e.g. videos, CD's & DVD's dont tend to sell too well - there are too many sellers & not enough buyers. Computer games & consoles are pretty good bets though.

Secondly, the cash generated provides an incentive to keep up the good work, which is where the 'life laundry' bit really kicks in, because it reinforces the habit & also tends to identify some bad habits, i.e. the overpurchasing that we think makes us all 'happy'. This happended with me when I started out at the very beginning. I am very much now a bargain hunter & am always happy to barter in the retail world...although that doesn't mean I never make mistakes...

In the case of my pregnant sister with a fast growing 17 & a half month old son, she now uses some of her 'cashback' to purchase better quality clothing that then resells well on ebay, after well looked after use ofcourse. In the case of my other sister who has dropped several dress sizes in recent months, she has been able to lose huge chunks of her wardrobe, which is a great way of saying there is no going back. My teenage nephews are also learning the value of looking after their clothing to benefit from reselling then a little later down the line.

I myself have found a new impetus for this activty, mainly fuelled by an impending move down to North Devon...cross fingers...although I don't know if I can trust my extended family to keep up the good work, so I can see me doing this part-time for the foreseeable future, but that would provide a good excuse for my family to regularly visit me, bringing down the cast-offs of life...

OK, so what of today, well I have managed to knock up about 35 new scheduled listings...waiting for the next cheap day on ebay...otherwise the fees can outweigh the benefits. That's on top of around 110 items that did not sell first time round, all from these family members & a few of my nephews friends ( I tend to limit this). I will be watching the Frenc Grand Prix tomorrow...come on Lewis Hamilton...& scheduling some more items, so I hope to have over 200 items for the next run, early July, on a 10 day listing strategy & the conversion rate last time was about 60%. I also don't mind some bargains going out the door & start most listings at 99p...

I'm not sure If I will keep this blog up, but it would be good to do so, as it will likely regiment my selling activities...until next time, cheers, G