Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge. Twelve readers have registered to take part this year and I want to congratulate them on deciding to participate and chronicle their efforts to reach their goals.

My personal goal for this year will be the same as last year - to generate $15,000 in net profits from qualifying inventory over the five months of the Challenge. Last year I came up considerably short of that figure, but will try again this year.

Tomorrow there will be a FOL book sale in East Grand Forks along with at least two garage sales that historically have produced some good finds so, hopefully, the first week will get me started in the right direction.
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Roughly six months ago eBay launched Fixed Price Format listings. In eBay’s New 30 Day Fixed Price Listing Format I talked about two possible ways I saw to take advantage of the new format.

I’ve been testing both over the last six months. While both methods have proven to increase sales to a degree, a third approach to using Fixed Price Format listings has shown itself to regularly increase my profits with certain kinds of items on a regular basis.

This approach works best with items that appear fairly frequently on eBay in both the auction and eBay store format. I’m going to use an example of something I sold a couple days ago to show what I’ve been doing.
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Yesterday evening I was reading a post on Mitzi’s Vintage+Goodness=Happiness blog titled Too much new on Etsy to fit it into one title!. In it she mentioned a group of 1970’s workplace safety posters she had recently acquired and listed.

Mitzi’s post started me thinking that I have quite a few food related advertising posters from the same time period sitting in that garage that I really should get on eBay. And that got me thinking about the day I threw away forty to fifty old posters that would, today, bring well over $20,000 on eBay.

Sometime in 1959, an issue of the now defunct Sports Car Graphic magazine came into my possession. That magazine spawned what was to become a life-long interest in Formula One auto racing and old sports cars.
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The 2009 Garage Sale Challenge begins one week from today. If you are planning to take part this year, you will need to register by the first day of the Challenge - May 1st.

When I originally asked for a few volunteers to test out the blog for this years Challenge there were several people who wrote test posts making it sound as if they were going to take part. If you are one of these people, registering on the blog to make a test post is not the same as registering for the Challenge.

You can find what you need to do to register either here or here.

Photograph by A. www.viajar24h.com.

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In two weeks, on May 11, 2009, the US Post Office will be implementing rate increases for several classes of mailing along with extra services such as Delivery Confirmation and insurance.

Their new price list is available on-line in PDF format. It includes a lot of information that the majority of sellers will never use, but you may want to print out the sections that pertain to your business and keep them next to your computer for quick reference when writing auction ads.

You should also remember to begin using the new rate chart when writing any auction listing that will end on, or after, May 9th, along with any new store or fixed price listing you are getting ready to write.

Now might also be a good time to begin updating any eBay store or flat rate listings that will need to be changed to reflect the new rates.

Photograph by Kok Leng Yeo.

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Just a few miscellaneous thoughts about my first weekend of serious garage saling.

Friday began at 5:30 am when I left the house for the 110 mile drive to Barnesville, Minnesota for the first day of their Spring City-Wide Garage Sale. It was a little cool when I left in the morning but by the time I got to Barnesville it had warmed up enough so that the shorts I was wearing were comfortable all day.

The “official” sale list and map showed 60 sales, but there had to be at least another 20 to 30 people who didn’t bother to get their sale on the list. While I didn’t buy as much as I did at their Fall Sale last year, there was still plenty of interesting stuff available. It took me between six and seven hours to cover them all and I came home with enough new inventory to definitely make the trip worthwhile.

Saturday was a little different. My list of new sales in Grand Forks contained only three sales. Saturday was a jeans, sweatshirt, and vest day and when I left home at 7:30 in the morning I had to brush the snow off the car windows before I got started.
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With less than three weeks until the start of the 2009 Garage Sale Challenge, I think everything is ready to go.

The blog has been tested by several readers and is ready to go. The forum has been set up, tested, and will go live when the Challenge actually begins on May 1st.

If you plan to participate and haven’t already registered I encourage you to do so now rather than waiting until the last minute. Registration details and requirements can be found at The 2009 Garage Sale Challenge Rules & Registration.

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Conficker, considered to potentially be one of the nastiest worms to hit the Internet in some time, appears to have woken up. It is now downloading updates, which security analysts suspect to be keyloggers or other code designed to steal information from infected machines.

You can see if your computer is infected by going to Conficker Eye Chart.

If you can see all six pictures, it’s unlikely your computer is infected. If you don’t see all six, there is a short explanation of what you may be facing at the bottom of the page.

Photograph by Leonel Cunha.

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There are many things you can do that have the potential to increase your profits on eBay. Here are six simple ones that will guarantee your bottom line increases.

1. Buy More Inventory - If you have been selling on eBay for very long you know what your sell-through-rate is. Increasing the number of items you have to sell will increase your sale resulting in more profits.

2. List More Items Each Week - One of the things I noticed during the 2008 Garage Sale Challenge was that some participants purchased a lot of inventory but never got around to listing it. Doubling or tripling the number of items you list each week will double or triple your profits.
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One of the most commonly heard pieces of advice about selling books on-line is to concentrate on non-fiction. But if you buy much of your inventory at garage sales, thrift stores, or book sales, there are plenty of opportunities to make some money with common fiction too.

A good place to start is with popular, best selling, authors who have written a series of books around one central character or theme. Because of the popularity of the authors and their series, these books are fairly easy to find and can often be purchased for $.50 or less.

The secret to making money with them is to sell them in lots. While you won’t get rich selling this kind of fiction, lots of 15 to 20 or more books by the authors explored below will offer you a reasonable chance of getting between $2 and $7 a book.
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