First Blog Entry!

Hello!  I'm Cheryl...a Christian, stay-at-home, homeschooling, single mom, who has used Ebay and Amazon sales to supplement our very tight budget.  I've decided I need more cash flow.  Then I came across Lynn Dralle's newsletter and past e-zines.  After reading through them, I was motivated to open an Ebay store.

I've had two Saturday's of garage saleing.  (OK...how DO you spell "sale-ing"?)  We live in the country of  NW Arkansas, so going to the city to run errands or garage sale takes a $20 gas budget!  The plus side is that mileage adds up quickly for tax deductions.  But I'm planning on heading to the city every Saturday for the sale season.

One of  Lynn's lessons is that success on Ebay is a numbers game.  You have to list a lot to sell a lot.  In the past, I'd collect a few things, and then every other month or so, list them for a week.  Then maybe re-list them.  Then they went to Recycle.  So last week I opened a store and started to fill it!  Now I could kick myself for some of the items that I recycled.  Two Saturdays ago I  did a big, (for me), garage sale round.  I spent about $20, but had a couple of boxes of items.  I went to two neighborhood garage sales.  Now aren't these the greatest?  It's like trick-or-treat for adults...you go house to house to house, collecting your treats.

Another lesson Lynn teaches is to buy a "lot" of something, and then break it up to sell it.  A couple of weeks ago, while my daughter was at the dentist, I hit a nearby garage sale.  I bought some daisy dishes for $17.50.  I broke it up into several auctions, and several store listings.  That first week of auctions, I sold about $33...three auctions and one from my store.  I had my original investment back, and some profit!  Yay!!! 

I'm spending some mental energy trying to decide whether an item should be auctioned first, or go straight to my store.  Definately the unsold auction items will then go to the store.  But I've put some items straight to the store.  I'm putting some holiday items, (Christmas, Easter, Halloween), into the store, because I figure the Spring season is the wrong time to auction these.  But I have an annoying pattern of forgetting to list holiday items to auction, instead finding them stored away AFTER the holiday!  I have several Easter items that have missed TWO Easters!  They will go into my store this week.

Here's the link to Lynn's site:  www.thequeenofauctions.com

I've had some fun auctions this week.  I'll post about those next.