Tomorrow, August 15, 2007, eBay is running a free listing fee promotion.

The promotion is valid for Fixed Price or auction style listings. For a listing to qualify, you must use a Gallery Image and the starting price must be $9.99 or less. As long as your listing meets those two criteria there will be no insertion fee.

As is normally the case when eBay runs one of these promotions, some type items are excluded. You can read more about $0 Listing Fees on August 15 if you want to take advantage of this promotion.

Popularity: 4% [?]

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

It’s Tuesday which means it’s time for round two of ‘Weekly Winners.’ Once again, the idea is to provide readers a venue to do a little bragging by sharing their eBay triumphs from the previous week. Hopefully, at the same time, others will be able to pick up some ideas for new things to keep their eyes open for.

These don’t have to be three or four-figure, mega-buck, items. Did you sell something for $20 or $30 that you paid one or two dollars for? These are the week-to-week, bread and butter items, everyone needs. Share them with everyone.

Once again, the guidelines are pretty simple.

• Use the comment section of each week’s Weekly Winners post to tell everyone about your winners.
• Please limit yourself to four items a week.
• I encourage you to include a link to the completed auction (if you don’t know how to do this, see below).
• Share some information about the item with everyone - what it is, where you got it, what you paid for it, what it sold for, etc. Remember, links to closed auctions disappear after a few months, so the more you share regarding price, condition, item description, etc., the more useful your information will be to others once eBay deletes the item from their database.

To insert a hyperlink to your eBay auction simply insert the following code (with your auction URL and item name) where ever you want it in the comment box.

<a href=”CUT AND PASTE THE URL TO YOUR AUCTION HERE”>INSERT DESCRIPTION OF YOUR ITEM (i.e. 53 Dr. Suess Books)</a>

Popularity: 19% [?]

Recently a small group of mechanical bank trade cards were offered by The RSL Auction Co. in a live auction on eBay.

Nearly all trade cards are collectible to some extent, but mechanical bank trade cards are deemed by most collectors as the most desirable of all trade cards due to their rarity and exquisite graphics.

Here is what was offered along with their final selling price. You can click on the name of each card to see what each looks like. Note: the pictures are not of the actual cards sold.

• Watch Dog Safe mechanical bank trade card - sold for $6000.00
• Bad Accident mechanical bank trade card - sold for $3250.00
• American Eagle mechanical bank trade card - sold for $2800.00

Continue Reading

Popularity: 16% [?]

A couple days ago Sydney Johnston, in a post titled Stress Management Article: Stress Management Tips For The eBay Seller, said in part:

“Let’s face it … selling on eBay can be a nail-biting experience….“

Reading this, I was left scratching my head. I’ve been making my living selling on eBay since 1998 and I can honestly say I have never felt any stress from eBay. If eBay were to ever become ‘a nail-biting experience’, I’d stop selling there immediately.

If selling on eBay is that stressful for Sydney, my immediate question is - Why in the world is she doing it?

What about you? Is eBay adding stress to your life?

Popularity: 5% [?]

The thirteenth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge is now history with the auctions that ended on Sunday evening. There were thirty-three Challenge items listed and twenty-three of them sold for a total of $740.75. The sell-through rate was 70%.

Similar to the last three or four weeks, the number of garage sales this week was way down. In previous years Fridays and Saturdays during July and August would each have thirty-five to forty-five new garage sales. Often there would be as many as sixty or seventy. That definitely isn’t the norm for this year.

Originally, I thought the decline in the number of sales was largely a result of the higher-than-normal temperatures and humidity we had for several weeks. However, the last two weeks our weather has returned to normal for this time of year and this hasn’t brought the increase in sales I would have expected.

As it looks right now, unless the number of garage sales increases dramatically, or I stumble upon three or four items that individually bring $400 to $600 profits, my $10,000 goal for the Challenge looks to be in danger. I would estimate that, right now, I’m running approximately $1500 to $2000 behind where I thought I would be. With seven weeks left, I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

After twelve weeks of sales, here is how things look to date.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 11% [?]

Welcome to the first of what I hope will become a weekly feature of The Auction Rebel. Each Tuesday readers are invited to share their most profitable eBay auctions from the previous week with everyone.

The idea is to provide readers a venue to do a little bragging by sharing their eBay triumphs from the previous week. Hopefully, at the same time, others will be able to pick up some ideas for new things to keep their eyes open for.

The guidelines are pretty simple.

• Use the comment section of each week’s Weekly Winners post to tell everyone about your winners.
• Please limit yourself to four items a week.
• I encourage you to include a link to the completed auction (if you don’t know how to do this, see below).
• Share some information about the item with everyone - what it is, where you got it, what you paid for it, what it sold for, etc. Remember, links to closed auctions disappear after a few months, so the more you share regarding price, condition, item description, etc., the more useful your information will be to others once eBay deletes the item from their database.

To insert a hyperlink to your eBay auction simply insert the following code (with your auction URL and item name) whereever you want it in the comment box.

<a href=”CUT AND PASTE THE URL TO YOUR AUCTION HERE”>INSERT DESCRIPTION OF YOUR ITEM (i.e. 53 Dr. Suess Books)</a>

Popularity: 21% [?]

Weight Watchers cookbooks frequently show up at garage sales and thrift shops. Here’s a random list of 10 Weight Watchers cookbooks that can bring between $20 and $40, or more, on eBay.

1. Slow Good - Super Slow Cooker Cookbook
2. ust Like Home
3. In Good Time - 123 Slow Cooker
4. Cream Of The Crop
5. In One Pot
6. Stir It Up - Super Skillet
7. Five Ingredients - 15 Minutes
8. The Really Contented Tummy
9. Simple Classic Home Cooking

10. Simple Goodness

These aren’t the only Weight Watcher titles that will garner bids individually. Do a little research and you should be able to find more.

There were a lot of different Weight Watcher cookbooks published and even those that don’t sell well individually can often be grouped into lots of 10 or 15 books and bring $2 or $3 each or more.

These are worthwhile looking for and picking up when you can get them for $1 or less.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I would like to say “Thank You” to all the readers who took the time to comment or send emails with your recommendations and ideas in response to the post Help Me Improve The Auction Rebel.

Based upon the ideas you provided, you can expect to see the following in the coming weeks:

• More posts about selling books on Amazon. I guess I don’t talk about this all that much because I view it as more of a “pay for the gas” thing rather than a major part of my business. However quite a few of you expressed interest in Amazon, so there will be information coming soon about setting up an Amazon account, what kind of books I find work best there (this may vary for some of you), and the tools I use.
• More posts covering specific items I buy and why I buy them. I used to do this on a regular basis on a membership site, but have gotten away from it since that site shut down and more emphasis has been placed on this blog.
• A series of posts about bootstrapping an eBay business. This will be written with the beginner in mind, but after the basics are out of the way, there will be some information that should be useful to most readers.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 6% [?]

During the month of July one-hundred-nine Garage Sale Challenge items sold on eBay. Here’s a list of the top ten items along with some thoughts on each.

1. A lot of 13 Rich Dad Poor Dad books - I paid $20 for these and they sold for $172.50. I’ve already commented on this series of books in Rich Dad Poor Dad On eBay. Even smaller lots of six or seven books from this series often will bring $50 to $70 on eBay. The fanatical interest in them isn’t really surprising given America’s thirst for almost anything in the “make money” and “self-improvement” genre.

Following The Trail Of Bread Crumbs from this auction can alert you to many other items you may run across at garage sales that are worthwhile picking up. For starters, there are many real estate investment courses and self-improvement audio books/courses in the DVD or CD format that will do very well.

2. Lighted Smoking Stand - I paid $25 for this and it sold for $130.50. These don’t normally appear at garage sales, but if you should run across one for $25 or less that is complete and in good condition they are worth picking up. If you should run across one with either an airplane or a boat/ship on the top, grab it and run.

Continue Reading

Popularity: 14% [?]

The twelfth week of The $10,000 Garage Sale eBay Challenge is now history with the auctions that ended on Sunday evening. There were thirty-two Challenge items listed and twenty-six of them sold for a total of $531.80. The sell-through rate was 81%. Four of the eight items that were re-listed sold, which I thought was pretty good.

Once again, the number of garage sales this week was way down. On Friday, there were only eighteen sales in Grand Forks. This is way down from previous years when there would have been at least forty or fifty fresh sales on a Friday in July. Historically, Saturday would have seen similar numbers, but this week Saturday produced only 23 new sales.

Several of the items currently on eBay came from the city-wide sale held in Manvel. If it wasn’t for those items, things would be even worse this week.

After twelve weeks here’s how things look:

Continue Reading

Popularity: 10% [?]