Posts Tagged ‘sales’

Snowflake Idea: Selling My Used Books

Today is Internet Sunday chez moi, and I’ve spent most of the day doing things online. Everything from working on my freelance website to listing used books I have for sale on Amazon.ca. This last one is a new idea I had just this week. I was originally going to bring the books to a used bookstore, but I was lazy and didn’t want to bring the box down to the car. So instead today I remembered that I can list things on Amazon.ca as well, so I just spent the last 40 minutes and listed about 15 items on there. A few of them are books from my university career that I no longer want, the rest are just books I’ve accumulated along the way. Again, they’re all books that I don’t want any more. The books currently in my library are ones that I want to keep, but not this box. I’m excited at the prospect of selling them, although I do realize that most of them will probably not sell at all. But I figure I’ll keep them up for 4-6 months, and if they don’t sell by then, I’ll make the trip to the used book store.

Have any of you had any success selling used books on Amazon?

Don’t Talk Bad Behind My Back!

A few weeks ago I sold some unused items on eBay. Usually things run smoothly for me, and 95% of my items this time sold without any problems. One item in particular has me puzzled.

I sold a book for $0.01, with shipping charges of $10. Now these shipping charges were clearly stated in the auction, so anyone looking at the listing would have seen this. I checked my feedback rating this week, and while the buyer gave me a positive rating, he gave me a backhanded slight that I thought was rather funny. Buddy wrote “book perfect, shipping charge borders on fraud.”

Let me get this straight: someone who was trolling for a cheap book was upset at the shipping charge that was clearly stated on the auction?? Give me a break.

It’s one thing if I did not state the shipping charge on there, and suddenly tell him it’s gonna costs $20 or something. Except the charges were clearly stated, and were actually rather cheap, considering I was shipping it from the East Coast of the continent to the West Coast.

But what had me even more puzzled was that he left me positive feedback. I mean, if he objected that much to the charge, why didn’t he: 1-complain to me directly about the charge, and 2-leave me negative feedback instead? I’ve had people question the shipping charge in the past, but after I explain it they usually understand (or at least give up trying to get the already cheap item for even cheaper.) But this guy did the passive-aggressive thing by not even saying anything to me. I dislike it when buyers do this, because then it makes me feel like I’m charging absurd shipping rates, when I’m actually not. In my opinion these people are just trolling for a super-cheap deal, and then get mad when they actually have to pay something for the item. If they want a 50 cent book or dining room table, then they should be trolling the local garage sales, not looking on eBay. I’ve often discounted auctions on there that had shipping rates I didn’t want to pay.

To each his/her own I suppose, but I just think it’s strange that people behave this way. Don’t you?

Extra Income Tracker

Observant readers will have noticed that there’s a new bar chart in the sidebar here at AinD.com: Extra Income. What could I possibly be tracking with this one? Well, to state the obvious, it’s to track any extra income I’m able to bring in over the next while. Whether that’s from selling household items on eBay, or on Craigslist, or to my friends and family, or by doing surveys/focus groups, and so on. I thought I’d track it from now onwards and see how much I’m able to raise.

Last year I went on a “sell everything on eBay” kick, and was able to make about $300-400 after all was said and done. Not a bad little sum. This spring & summer I’d like to turn that up a few notches because:

1. I’m sick of having a lot of this unused stuff in my house.
2. I could always use the extra cash.

These days I prefer to use eBay rather than Craigslist simply because there’s more accountability, less anonymity involved. Even though eBay takes a small commission off my auction (the seller fee), that is a worthwhile expense, in my opinion, for the accountability it affords me and the buyers. Some types of items don’t actually sell on eBay though, so I am going to have to go the Craigslist route. I’m not able to do a yard sale myself as I live in an apartment building, however one of my friends said she was going to have one this spring/summer, so I’m going to tack my items on to hers, and do it that way.

So keep your eyes on the bar chart, and hope that it goes up to a nice big and fat number.