I Opened My Ebay Store!

I finally took the plunge! One of my goals for the summer is to really step up my Ebay game, so I finally signed up for an Ebay store subscription! Earlier this month, I dogsat for a good friend of mine while she was in Paris (Lucky!) for a little over a week, so I had to end all of my Ebay listings in favor of extending my handling time. This meant that when I returned home from dogsitting, I used up all of my free listings by reactivating the ones I ended. So...this was a good opportunity to go ahead and sign up for a store subscription and start getting a lot more listings each month. I chose the Premium store subscription because that is the level that I am trying to achieve this summer, and I didn't think that the Starter or Basic subscriptions would cover it.

I was still able to source while I was dogsitting. The sourcing was actually great because my friend lives in a a larger city than us and there were plenty of thrift stores and yard sales in the area. I've already gotten most of the clothing items listed, and my goal for this weekend and early next week is to get all of the hard goods listed. Some of my favorite finds included a large box of toys that I paid $10 for. This box included many action figures, and Disney Cars toys, etc. I also found my first Tory Burch item for $10! It was a pair of moccasins that were in very good condition, and they sold within less than an hour of listing them for $50!

My goal for June is to get my active listings up to 500, so I have been listing constantly for the past few days. I think as long as the yard sales are good to me, I should be able to meet this goal and I'm very excited about it! 

I watched a lot of YouTube videos while I was dogsitting, and I'm always inspired by other resellers' inventory systems, and they make me want to revamp my own. One thing that many of them do is put their items in plastic bags and write a SKU number on the bags. One seller mentioned that she buys 100ct. bread bags for less than $3 at Walmart and uses them. I think there would be several benefits in organizing my inventory this way, but I've ultimately decided that the cons outweigh the pros.

Pros: 

~I could fit more items in each bin.

~Shipping would be easier. 

Cons:

~TIME 

~It's just not necessary.

~The plastic bags are terrible for the environment. 

Ultimately, the first and last con really nixed the idea for me. Writing SKU numbers and putting my items in plastic bags would add too much time for each item. Also, the plastic bags are bad for the environment. I feel terrible when I leave my reusable grocery bags at home, I definitely don't want to be responsible for a ton of plastic bread bags floating around! In my current inventory system, I have a letter on each of my bins, and I put this letter at the end of the description in each listing. This system works well for me, and I really don't need to fix what isn't broken. 

Poshmark is still doing really well for me as I share my closet several times a day. It has quickly risen to be my second best platform, under Ebay. Mercari has been dead for me for a while. I've had about one sale a week on Mercari for the past couple months, whereas I was having a couple sales a day at one point. This is a total bummer, but I feel that Poshmark is picking up the slack, so I'm trying not to let it get me down. I've read other Mercari sellers' posts on Facebook mentioning slow sales, so perhaps it isn't just me. This is why I think it is so important to have my items cross posted and not rely on one platform for my business. 

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I've been reading a really great series this month called Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire. It was recommend to me by my library friend who I dogsat for, and I can not stop listening to it. I really enjoy the writing style in this series, and it's been refreshing as I haven't been enjoying the books I've been reading lately. She recommended it to me because I enjoyed Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children so much, and I have to say that this series is actually better so far. 

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Off to another week of listing! Fingers crossed that the yard sales aren't rained out this week!

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“She was a story, not an epilogue.” ― Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway)

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Over and out. 

I graduated!

I graduated from my two-year college last Saturday! The journey was not easy and I feel incredibly accomplished. During the last two years, I worked in the library on campus, and I took a full class load during three semesters. I have to say that the most valuable knowledge I gained during my college experience was from working in the library. I now want to continue my education to become a librarian because I was so inspired every day I was working there. Furthermore, I wanted to write a blog post in reflection of some other lessons I learned during the last two years.

Grit - I learned the true meaning of keeping my head down and working my tail off to get an impossible load of work finished well done and on time. Between working in the library, trying to grow a reselling business, and taking five to six classes a semester, I learned what it meant to have too much work in too little time. I had to learn how to power through and when to stop when I really needed to. Take a breath and then jump right back in. It wasn't easy, but it showed me what I was capable of.

It's a Big World Out There! - I grew up in a rural community. My high school graduating class had less than one hundred students, and wasn't very diverse. While I was always liberal and open-minded, my corner of the world didn't really expose me to different cultures and values. During my time in college, I took a Cultural Diversity and a World Religions class and I like to think that they helped broaden my horizons and give me a better understanding of the world. One of my best memories is when our World Religions class visited a Mosque and we got to listen to their service.

Just Go with It - This is something I wish I had learned in high school. Through college, I learned not to build up situations in my head and to just let things unfold. If I had a presentation coming up or a major school event, I didn't stress on it and play it out in my head beforehand. Doing this made the experiences smoother and easier to take in. I didn't end up disappointed, and I enjoyed the experiences more for what they were.

You Can't Please Everyone - This may sound like an excuse, but it isn't. There are, unfortunately, some professors and others that you just cannot please. I learned to roll with the punches on these, make the corrections they ask me to make, do the best I can, and let the rest play out. Sometimes it's better to move on to another task and achieve it successfully than to pour too much time on mission impossible.

Live in the Moment - It's all too easy to become overwhelmed with tasks in the future. The semester I was taking six classes, I had to focus on the now. I was out of hours and there was no such thing as working ahead. I learned to focus on the tasks in front of me and not become overwhelmed with things to come. This goes along with the grit idea. In the words of Charles Winchester, "I do one thing at a time. I do it very well, and then I move on."

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Over and out.