Selling Stamps, Have You? Would You?

KGV,

500 different Australian decimals of no real cat. value go on ebay for $US 12-18 ebven when sold by sellers with very low feedback counts (see for example: http://cgi.ebay.com/500-Different-A...4aa74a4cfd). They are good sellers and if I were you I wouldn't be put off by selling them. They will consist most of your sales.

In the meantime the more expansive stamps should be listed wherever is cheap to list (so not to pay listing fees). This way you will be able to "harvest" clients with the cheap material on ebay and move them gently to your other store.

In my opinion you have done a tremendous work with these on paper stamps you had bought last year and the www gives you a fair chance to sell them for a profit. It just needs a bit of a strategic attitude and some "computer hours"....

You will do fine with those stamps - I am sure of that !

GoodLuck,

Avi

Avi Seahorse.

My wishy-washy departures into philosophical realms tend to miss the important point of actually making money and making your time spent worthwhile.

I think go with what you have figured out already. Do not deviate from your plan.

My ideas are to be seen as supplementary, as something to try sometime.


Perhaps I could suggest a simpler approach.

Write down, on the night before, no more than four goals you wish to achieve the next day. Four per day is the maximum.

The next day, carry these written goals with you everywhere you go and take them out and read them every 15 minutes or so.

That's it. Simple.

You will be amazed at what you actually achieve.

However, if you are like most people you will find it extremely hard to do this simple exercise. It is a very hard habit to keep.

You accomplish so much more when you constantly think of the goals you want to achieve but allowing yourself to achieve those goals is the hard part. You have to see yourself as being able to achieve those goals before you can achieve them.

Puzzler,

I didn't mean to contradict anything of what you said ! Have I ??

And as for the 2-4 goals per day; I find it to be a useful advice. I am working all day by the computer and by myself and this could be a great way to have some connection to reality, which is very hard to obtain while working with no human feedback.....

Cheers,

Avi

that you are giving much too much for too little.

Know the real value of what you have...
including a value for your time...
Know your bottom line.
Don't undersell your value or reputation.
Make lots of friends.
Have a loss leader,
and sell up to the better quality items.
Above all, keep the postings fresh. Change the look frequently. Keep them coming back to see more.

You have plenty of goods for multiple smaller packets that can be advertised at the same time...

And... make every day count.
Happy New Year all.

Avi, no, not at all. I just sometimes think I wander off into dreamland or dreamtime and lose touch with reality myself. Good to be grounded.

barb, I love your advice! Do you have a book or a TV show or CDs or something?

To KGV - I wish you success and thought you might like this idea as a possibility. A dealer that I do a lot of buy/trade with uses packets of material sorted by catalogue value rather than by country. These are in quantities of 25, 50 or 100 and, for example, contain 50 worldwide with catalogues values between $2.00 and $2.49. Thus a minimum catalogue value of $100.00 is sold for about $20.00. It allows him a quick way to break down collections and the packets offer a good variety and are cheap enough to sell quickly. They also list well on auction and have enough value to justify higher fees. Just an alternate to country collections.

While I might live in So CA,
I don't have Oprah in my back pocket or Dr Phil either...:)
Nor am I certain I'd want to.
Former life experience lends a little,
understanding electronic media is another.

Just like to think I've integrated a few life lessons along the way
The harder part is applying it to one's own life.

:)

I have been buying & selling on "Wensy" and its forerunner for over 5 years with great success.
it is a totally free site which is reflected in the starting prices .
Check it out.
http://wensy.com/storecatalog.asp?userid=7039
David-DJD

In regard to reaching out to your customer base, here at bidStart we help out our sellers to do exactly that with very positive results. If you have a Premium store then you can do a newsletter to your customers and simply point out the benefits of your non-ebay stores.

A classic example is one of our bigger postcard sellers. He'd lost a lot of customers over the last decade for various ebay-related reasons (they didn't like ebay or PayPal, etc.) So in his first newsletter with us he pointed out that he was opening this new store and it featured other benefits like different payment methods, improved searching, cheaper inventory, etc.

That got him a huge number of his old customers back and essentially multiplied his revenue stream as it didn't come at the expense of ebay buyers. Done right any of our sites can very much be additive.

Our view (and sadly it's not one shared by a few of our competitors) is that there's more than enough customers to go around and that we all win if everyone works together. We do everything we can to empower our sellers to offer their items on whatever site they want, in addition to ours of course, and thus maximize their profits. Unfortunately some marketplaces think the only way is to lock their sellers into their site and their site alone. This is bad for everyone--buyers, sellers, the industry, etc.

I'm always surprised when one of our sellers seems embarrassed to admit that they sell on another site. To me that just means more potential. If they're selling more on all their sites they'll likely list more and better items and thus we'll get more sales. It doesn't bother me a bit that ebay might get a bigger piece of that pie. They've earned it. We're fine with earning our portion.

I also have to continually remind people that the reason ebay charges what they do is because they can and they get it. Some of our sellers have eliminated ebay entirely and that's certainly possible. One of our newer large sellers sells as much on bidStart as many of the top sellers on ebay but he has to work at it.

Rich Heimlich
Director of Marketing
bidStart.com
rich@bidStart.com
856-857-1777

Good post Rich! Welcome!

I have been on ebay for ages (small fry that's me) but as BidStart grows and grows I am always watching and planning to expand my customer base.

I like your attitude about helping your customer (me and my customers) achieve their goals as that is friendly and friends help friends so you get the feeling that it is good to be on BidStart.

Working at being successful is what it is all about in life. And helping others and feeling that I am doing the best I can means success to me.