I wear many “hats” here on the Internet and one of them is as a seller on eBay. I must say that of all of the things I do and duties I perform for any of my businesses, maintaining my eBay store is, to me, the most time consuming and frankly, boring!
I have over 500 movies, mostly videos but also a few DVDs, probably as many or more books and some memorabilia listed on eBay.
My number one seller was my Betty Boop items, which is why I am down now to very few of them. These were also the most fun for me to list and describe. I am a HUGE Betty Boop fan, I even have her in my kitchen and bathroom!
Next, as far as fun goes, is my Barbie doll collection. I enjoyed researching for the rarest ones I have and writing creative and enticing descriptions.
I started out doing this with the movies and books as well but there are just so many of them that it became so much easier to just use the “stock photos and descriptions” that eBay has for us to use.
Listing all of these books and movies was a chore in itself, BUT once they go past their 30 day time frame and have to be RElisted, it gets to be a boring, blah ritual.
However, I have done this for clients and found it to be more interesting and fun because they offered different things than I have AND I felt more creative when doing it for someone else.
eBay has made a bunch of changes just this year – some are making it better, but, in my opinion, some are making it more work for less profit, or if not profit, at least a teeny bit of cash flow.
Until the past couple of months, if I had 100 things go off list, I could just go to my handy account manager and click a box to RElist all items. They would have the same information as the original listings, same prices, descriptions, etc. and be complete with pictures of the items.
My main concern NOW is that the listing FEES have changed on some items while staying the same on others in the same category! Plus some items get a description line for between free and .02 while some are automatically $1.50 for that same line AND there is no way to tell prior to hitting “RElist”, so I am back to checking each one, one at a time, before I list again. This is VERY time consuming!
Also, some of the items no longer have a description in the database even though MY listing DID have one and the items do not all list again just as they were! These items, not in the database any longer, are .20 per listing instead of the .05 I have as a basic per item list fee with paying a monthly fee for my store.
Needless to say, with all of these changes and having to check each listing one at a time before deciding whether or not to RElist and having to research the items again if they are no longer in the database, I am spending a lot MORE time to make a lot LESS with running my eBay store.
If you have items listed on eBay and/or an eBay store, you might want to consider looking into a Virtual Assistant to help you with YOUR listings and maintenance.
I have LOTS of great classic or hard to find videos and DVDs, books, cd’s and some great memorabilia items. I combine shipments to save you money, each item after the highest postage rate is only $1 per item to ship – check my eBay store out now!
Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing , proofreading and
transcription assignments!
Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance
573-775-4520 jan@tallentagency.com
