Every week I get emails from readers asking various questions about how and what I sell on eBay and about eBay in general. Some of them don’t even have anything to do with eBay.
Since many of these questions, and their answers, would be both helpful and of interest to other readers, today I thought we would do something a little different.
If you have a question you would like to ask, use the comment form below and I’ll answer it.
First though, a few guidelines before we get started.
1. Feel free to ask me anything. eBay questions, business questions, Amazon questions, personal questions, things you’ve been wondering about The Auction Rebel or me, etc. I’ll respond to all of them unless I feel they are too personal.
2. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on everything. In fact, I’m not an expert on anything. I’m just someone who is lucky enough to be able to make a living on eBay and who enjoys writing about it and sharing with others. Please keep that in mind when reading my responses.
3. There’s a limit to the number of questions. I’m going to be out of the house until around 11 am CST. After that, I’ll be available to respond to all questions. However, I still have things that need to be done, so I’m setting a limit of 25 questions. After that, I try, but won’t guarantee an answer.
4. I’ll only answer questions left as comments to this post. If you are reading this in a RSS reader or as an email, you will have to log-on to The Auction Rebel to ask a question.
5. There is still a bug in the script being used for the blog. When you submit a question you may be taken to an error page. Just ignore it. Your question will appear and will be answered.
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April 2nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Gary,
I for one would love to know, and I think I’ve asked it before so if you’ve already answered it please direct me to the specific post!
Question — “When it comes to selling books on eBay or Amazon, how do you decide which venue works best for which items?”
Personally, I’ve had very little success selling books on Amazon.com and I need to add that to my income stream… HELP!!
Again, if this question has been addressed previously, please direct me to the archived post!
Do an Amazon.com challenge this summer…pleezzzzzzzzz!!
Thanks for all your insights.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
First off, thank you for your wonderful blog. It is very helpful
The short version of my question is - How do I start as a beginner selling antiques, collectibles, etc on ebay?
To give you a little background on where I am at this time, I have been selling books on Amazon for a year or so. I would like to start selling antiques, collectibles and of course books on ebay. I buy most of my books at estate sales ( I live in Texas ) and see a lot of things at estate sales that I am sure would be good for ebay
I dont have a lot of antique experience but a few years ago I went to a couple or three local auctions a week with a friend of mine for a year or two. It was just to have something to do at a low point in my life but after a while I found myself picking up a lot of info without really trying
So far since I decided to start selling on ebay I have been mostly just trying to do some research by reading blogs like yours, Darrlye Lamberts and some others
I apologiize for the length of the post but I wanted to give enough info about myself so that you could intelligently answer.
thanks
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Stephen A asked - “When it comes to selling books on eBay or Amazon, how do you decide which venue works best for which items?”
I wrote about this approximately a year ago in a post titled Where Do I
Put This Book? Re-reading that post, here are a few things I base my decision on that either weren’t included there or that my outlook may have changed on since writing that.
1. I always put text books on Amazon.
2. For various reasons, turnover time is important to me. If a book has a popularity rating of 100,000 or less and all else is equal, I will usually put it on Amazon because it will likely sell fairly quickly and there’s less ‘administrative time’ involved for me.
3. Some categories of books, such as those with a tie-in to the local history of someplace, seem to sell better, for me, on eBay. I don’t know why, but for example, a small book about growing up in a sod hut in Iowa will almost always find a buyer on eBay quickly but will sit on Amazon for months before it sells.
4. At times there can be a huge difference in what a book will bring on one of the two venues compared to what it will bring on the other. In that case, it goes on the venue with the highest price potential.
5. My experience has been that, as a general rule, books of a technical nature usually sell better on Amazon. Those with any kind of a tie-in to something people actually collect usually sell better on eBay.
Gary H.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Via email Kurt asked - Is best to have a personal business account set up when dealing with ebay. We currently use our joint checking for buying and so on but really have no clue to see what I am making off ebay. I have been told its good to have a separate account What your thoughts?
If you only sell a few item a year on eBay to ‘clean out the house’ using your personal checking account is fine.
However, once you begin to think about eBay as either a part-time or full-time business, I would recommend that you open a separate checking account that you use solely for your eBay activities.
The primary reason is for tax purposes. In the unlikely chance that you should ever be audited, having a checking account just for your eBay business will make the process much less of a headache.
Additionally, it will make it much easier to paint a picture of whether you are actually making money from eBay.
If you haven’t already done so, I would also recommend that you set up some kind of simple bookkeeping system for your eBay business so that you can actually track expenses vs income. This will both provide an actual picture of whether you are making or loosing money; and, make it much easier to file a Schedule C for tax purposes each year, which you should be doing if you treat eBay as a business - either part or full time.
Initially, if you open a second checking account for eBay, you may want to just open a second ‘personal’ account. If you walk into many banks and tell them you want to open a business checking account, there are additonal costs and fees involved, and they may want you to jump through several hoops that you wouldn’t have to do with a personal account.
Then, once your business is more established, you could look into a business account.
Gary H.
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Via email Max asked - “Why do you sell your books on Amazon when there is eBay and abe books to sell, i.e. is the response better?”
Actually, I sell books on both eBay and Amazon.
I don’t use Abe Books or any of the other on-line sales venues just because, for me, selling books isn’t my primary source of income.
I use eBay because I’m already selling other things there; and Amazon because it’s simple to use and it works for the kind of books I sell there. Using more than those two would create too much administrative work than I wnat to take on.
If my primary focus was selling books I would make use of all or most of the other venues available such as Abe, Albris, AddAll, and others.
Gary H.
April 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm
@ BillyW,
That’s a question that probably warrants an entire book to answer, but based on the background you provided, here’s the sort version of what I would do I was just starting and wanted to sell antiques and/or collectibles.
Spend a couple weeks going to as many estate sales and auction sales as possible. I wouldn’t buy anything but rather I would do three things. (it sounds as though you are already attending some of these, so you might be able to skip or shorten this step.)
1. Pay attention to what kind of items the majority of buyers seem to be interested in (the majority of the buyers you see will probably be dealers). Take notes about these items and what they sell for.
2. Pay attention to what kind of items seem to attract the least amount of buyer interest. Make notes about these too.
3. Spend as much time as possible actually handling various antiques. Get a sense of what they look like, what they feel like, etc.
Each day, when you get home from the sales, go to eBay and, using completed sales or one of the research scripts available, see what the interest is for the items you’ve made notes on and what they sell for. To begin with, I’d pay particular attention to the items that didn’t attract a lot of attention. Although there may not be a lot of local interest in many things, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people ready to spend money on them on eBay.
For example, right now in my area of the country (the Midwest), once you get beyond farm implement manuals and sales literature, there isn’t a lot of interest many of the ephemera, or paper items, I see. (Things such as catalogs, sales brochures, old booklets and pamphlets, etc.).
Keep at it until you come up with one or two areas that do well on eBay and then start buying these. I’d wouldn’t go overboard to start, but buy a few things and see how they do on eBay.
At the same time, I’d pick one or two of the kind of things that attracted a lot of interest at the sales, and read everything I could about them (your local library may be a good starting point). Pick something you yourself find interesting, and immerse yourself in it. Learn everything you can from books, on-line resources, etc. As before, using closed auctions, get a feel for what they sell for eBay.
When doing this, narrow it down as much as possible. For example, if you are interested in pottery, don’t just research pottery to start with, choose one particular kind such as Roseville (I’m using Roseville just as an example). Then narrow it down even further to one particular pattern such as Futura (another example).
Again, start to cautiously buy a few items and put them on eBay. Continue to learn as much as you can about what you are buying. Once you are comfortable with the kind of items you have chosen, widen your knowledge base by starting the process all over with something else.
I believe a large part of being successful with antiques and collectibles is knowing just a little bit more about a particular type of item than most of the other people who are your competition when buying. One way to do that is by learning as much as you can about the ‘high end’ and rare items within a collector category.
You may not get a chance to use the information about these very often, but when you get the chance it can be very useful. For example, vintage Fisher Price toys always attract a lot of dealer interest in this area, but few if any dealers are knowledgeable enough about them to know what a “Donald & Donna” FP pull-toy is worth.
Over the years I’ve been able to buy every one I’ve come across (not that many) because to others it was just an early FP toy. I knew that it was one of the more rare toys, was only made for one year, and also highly sought after by Disney collectors because Donald’s heartthrob only went by the name Donna for a very short time before her name was changed to Daisy.
It may sound like a lot of work, but it’s not that hard if you start with only a small number of categories. It will also allow you to make money pretty much right from the start.
Gary H.
April 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Gary
This sounds like a good solid plan. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I am going to start down this path this week
April 2nd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Say you want to start selling glassware, china, dishes, and other similar vintage items. Say you don’t know much, and are willing to spend $100 on good reference books. Which would you invest in?
April 2nd, 2008 at 7:37 pm
@ Christy,
If glassware from the 1940s through the 1960s or so, I’d recommend several of Gene Florence’s books:
Elegant Glassware Of the Depression Era
The Collector’s Guide To Depression Glass
Kitchen Glassware Of The Depression Era
Collectible Glassware from the 40s, 50, 60s,….
Anchor Hocking’s Fire King And More
To that I’d add either Dinnerware Of The 20th Century - The top 500 Patterns by Harry Rinker or The Collector’s Encyclopedia Of American Dinnerware by Jo Cunningham (both are good, but you can get by with just one. Personally, I prefer Harry Rinker).
Then add Pyrex - The Unauthorized Collector’s Guide by Barbara Mauzy.
New most of those cost between $20 & $30 each, but you should be able to pick up good used copies of all of them on Amazon for $100.
I’d use those as starters and then if you found there were one or two manufacturers or specific kinds of glassware you were really interested in, buy anything you found that pertained to those specific interests.
If you are more interested in older antique glassware and dishes, most of the available books are pretty tightly targeted toward individual manufacturers or kinds of glass. Without knowing what your interests are, but some that might be of interest are:
Standard Encyclopedia of Carnival Glass by Bill Edwards
American Historical Glass by Bessie Lindsey
The Collector’s Encyclopedia of Flow Blue china
Johnson Brothers Classic English Dinnerware by Dale Frederiksen
All these provide a good overview of their subject.
Gary H.
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Gary,
I knew you’d written something about selling on Amazon, I just couldn’t remember when, or find the archived post!!
U ‘Da MAN!!
Thanks
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
Via email, Tami wrote -
“I’m a fairly new ebay seller but I get so frustrated with their selling templates. Although I use templates I’ve previously used and edited to my liking, certain fields, or categories on that template never save ! So, I have to change the info on every single item I sell, to make it read the way I want. For example: I sometimes offer world wide shipping. Even when I use a template where I’ve used worldwide shipping and saved it, the next time I open it the template always defaults back to “no international shipping”, so then I have to go through and revise it and revise my insurance options — it doesn’t default to what I’ve used & saved previously, which is “shipping and handling included in the postage charges”. How can I get my templates to COMPLETELY save, so that I can re-use portions of them, from listing to listing ? thanks !”
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t be of much help with this. I haven’t used any of eBay’s listing tools for seven or eight years and I’m not at all familiar with them or how the actually work.
Perhaps another reader, who is familiar with them, will be able to offer some ideas and advice.
Gary H
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Question:
I have an original copy of Microsoft Widows (version 1.01 - the first commercially sold version of MS-Windows. It is still in its original shrink wrap and it even has an inventory sticker.
It is in absolutely pristine condition - zero defects.
I have driven myself crazy trying to find out what something like this might be worth.
I had three of these at one point.
I put one up for sale on EBAY in 2002 and it sold for $100 in two days.
I put another up with a reserve of $300 and it sold in less than 24 hours.
Now, I one left.
Considering the previous two sales, I am concerned that perhaps I should have held on to them, and whether I sold myself short.
Do you have any ideas that would help me out?
Thanks…BTW I have been all over the web about this and the best answer that I have gotten is “WOW, that is amazing that you still have one of those.”
Cliff in MA
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
@Tami,
Switch to inkFrog.com!!
Leaves eBay’s crap in the dust, I’ve used both and there is no comparison…NONE!! You’ll save $$$ too!!
The inkFrog auction management system for $10 a month is in my insignificant opinion, the BEST!!
You can even have a free trial for 30 days to test drive it, I’d recommend you check it out. I’m sure you’ll be pleased.
Gary, what do you think?!
Good Luck Tami
April 4th, 2008 at 8:14 am
@Cliff
Hold on to it and before you sell it build up some publicity about a “pop culture icon”, write a press release about it and send out.
I’d start sending them to the Pacific Northwest and California’s silicon valley. I’d be willing to bet some cub reporter would love to do a public interest cultural history story and who knows if it gets picked up by a wire service (like the guy selling his ex-wife’s wedding dress on eBay), you never know!!
It might triple the value, being it’s in such ‘pristine’ condition.
Actually, I was talking to Terry Gibbs one day and he gave me the idea.
Just a thought, good luck.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
@ Cliff,
I’m pretty much in agreement with what Stephen said.
Based upon what you said about the two you did sell, when it comes time to actually put it on eBay, I would:
1. List it for 7 days in an auction format
2. Decide on a figure that you would like to get for it. Then double or triple that (personally I’d triple it) and using that figure add a Buy-It-Now feature to the auction.
4. Seriously consider spending the money to make it a Featured auction.
4. Once the auction is live, I’d start the whole press release process all over again.
Gary H.
April 5th, 2008 at 8:47 am
@ Cliff,
One last thought. If you’re not accepting Int’l bidders on this item you’ll be cutting the potential end selling price by 60% minimum, maybe more, in my opinion.
This might be an even hotter item in places like Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the UK, Australia, don’t limit your $$$ by closing out the world.
The benefit of eBay is it’s WORLDWIDE presence, not it’s U.S. presence!
Build up interest across the globe.
Good Luck Everybody!
April 7th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I’m getting ready to launch my return to ebay as a part time business after taking several years off because of my little ones.
Do you recommend listing items individually, or paying the monthly fee for an ebay store? The types of items I sell are: vintage clothing, vintage kitchen ware and household decor items, vintage cook books, and the occasional china piece etc.
I’m thinking of branching out to newer clothing if/when I find it in new condition with tags, unusual style/sizing, or something very special.
I’m not sure if I should just pay for the store instead of hoping someone the right size etc. comes along in a weeks time to see the auction listing.
Opinions?
Tiffany
April 7th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
@ScrapsaDaisy
Welcome back to the eBay community, you were missed!!
I’d do both, and here’s why.
Some items need longer exposure than a few 5 or 7-day auction listings to get them sold and the eBay store concept is an economical way to maintain a worldwide presence, even if you don’t have auction format listings going.
I use my eBay store to extend the life of an item and get it more exposure, and in most months I sell enough from my eBay store so it’s paid for, plus I make some $$ too!
… Just my insignificant opinion.
Good Luck Everybody!!
April 7th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Tiffany -
I’d recommend using both auctions and a store for a few reasons.
First, as Stephen has already said, there are some things that need more exposure than a auction listing provides.
Second, the easiest way to drive traffic to your eBay store is to always have at least a few live auctions running. If you only use a store, you will have to find other ways to attract buyers, and most of these will require expenditures of both time and money.
As an aside, I notice you have a blog. Depending upon the interests of your readers, the blog could be an excellent way to attract some traffic to your store by writing about some of your purchases and linking to them in the store (this would work for auctions also).
Personally, I use both. Items that I think will likely take some time to sell go directly into the store. If I feel they have a good chance of selling on auction, I normally list them as auctions. If they don’t sell there, I move them to my store (usually putting them in the store at a higher price than the opening bid I had for the auction).
Good luck,
Gary H.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Came across your interesting site, congrats on highlighting interesting topics.
Have been a successful bookseller for 10 years now on Amazon and other book sites. During that time we have archived old magazines, newspapers, and ephemera that we planned someday to list on ebay and our website.
These include old National Geographics, Architectural Digest, People, TV Guide, Ladies Home Companion (1894), Cosmopolitan, etc. Also have some old London newspapers from the 1940s. Selling ephemera on ebay has been hit and miss.
What would you say are the top 30 old magazines that get the most money?
I’m aware of Vogue, Playboy, 1st issues and such.
What would you say are the top 30 old magazine ads that get the most money?