Rolling with the Punches

It has been a rough few weeks. I was rear-ended by a distracted driver at a red light when Mom and I were running errands a few weeks ago. We were both fine, but this was quite a shock to me. My car was totaled, but I was thankfully able to get a new (to me) one when I received money from my insurance company. I had a 2015 Ford Fiesta and was able to replace it with a 2017 Ford Fiesta with very low mileage. I like this car because it is compact and easy to drive. I often joke that driving my Mom's car is like driving a tank.

 ~*~

In other news, my income from reselling nearly doubled in June. I've been putting a lot of effort into my Poshmark closet and I am definitely seeing results. I have also been exploring other sourcing opportunities as the weather has not allowed for many yard sales. It has been a very stormy summer! I discovered that the Salvation Army near me makes their color of the week $0.99 on Thursdays, so I have been making that my regular Thursday sourcing trip. I've been able to get about thirty more items each week this way.

One of my goals this summer was to get a routine down to amp up my productivity. This is what has been working for me lately...

Sunday = Take Photos
Monday = List
Tuesday = List
Wednesday = List
Thursday = Source Thrift Stores
Friday = Source Yard Sales (Weather permitting)
Saturday = Source Yard Sales (Weather permitting)
Sunday = It starts all over again with pictures!

My biggest hang up with reselling is taking pictures. I hate taking pictures, and I'm not ashamed to admit it! This is why I do all of my inventory for the week on Sunday. I make a day of it and get it all over with so I don't have to do again until the next week. I pick an audiobook to listen to, bring an exorbitant amount of drinks (water and tea), grab my tape measure and hide out in my room until all of the photos are finished. I include measurements in my photos because I find it easier than pulling the item to answer questions later.

~*~

Speaking of audiobooks, I'm still enjoyed the app Scribd. As I mentioned in a previous post, the app has many bad reviews but I am still loving it. It's $8.99 a month and has unlimited books and audiobooks. The reason it has bad reviews is because it pauses your usage if it thinks you're reading too much. I have yet to hit that wall and am still very impressed with it, especially for the price. The only thing I don't like about it is the limited selection. This wouldn't even bother me that much, but it's annoying when they only have the first (or first few) books in a series and don't have the rest. Other than that it has five stars from me!

~*~

I read a comment on my Mom's blog, Frugal Workshop, this week that really bothered me. One of her readers commented that she was told that she was stealing from the government by using the library. As someone with aspirations to be a librarian and who genuinely loves the library, I would like to share this photo I found floating around Facebook.

This shows just a few reasons why libraries are still relevant today, and I wholeheartedly agree with all of them. I think libraries are also great for building communities, aiding college students, and fostering a love of reading in children. I often attend a monthly book club that is held at my local library and I've found that they offer many free resources such as coupon classes, computer classes, Zumba, resume building, etc.

~*~

"I'm in a tank, pal. Come and get me!" - Lorelai Gilmore (Gilmore Girls)

~*~

Over and out.

Reselling Updates ~ Poshmark & Best Offer

A few days ago, I received an offer from Ebay for one hundred free auction-style listings. I always take advantage of these free listing offers from Ebay because I always use up my fifty listings every month. However, I receive this hundred free auctions offer every month and I have decided that I am not going to be using these anymore. The reason for this is that when my Ebay store is full of auctions,  I find that my daily sales drop significantly. Also, most auctions (at least in my experience) don't get any attention and rarely get bids. If they do get bids, it is usually just the one and it usually happens the first day of the auction so the buyer and seller have to wait until the end of the auction for the item to be purchased. I believe that most people shopping online do not want to wait for an auction to end to purchase their item. They also do not want to hit Buy It Now on auctions because the auction price is cheaper and they will feel like they overpaid. With this being said, I am only running auctions on particular items and not using these free auction offers.

Speaking of Ebay, I have also decided to take Best Offer off of my "bread and butter" items. As I've previously mentioned, I follow States Place on YouTube and Instagram and take most of her advise on how to run a successful Ebay store. Recently, she mentioned that she had taken Best Offer off of her listings and that it was one of the best things she had ever done for her store. I have been frustrated by the Best Offer feature on Ebay for a while now, so I have decided to give this a try as well. It has only been a couple of days, but I am pleased with the results so far. I will continue to update on this topic as I go.

States Place also has weekly webinars with a new topic each month. I purchased this month's batch of webinars because the topic is BOLO (Be on the look out!) brands, and I feel that more knowledge in this area is beneficial to me. So far, I have watched the dress and blouse webinars and I love watching them, however, I fear that the brands she is mentioning are not brands that I can find in my area. This makes sense though as she lives on the other side of the country. This information is still beneficial and if I ever do happen upon these brands, I will know that they are worth a grab!

~*~

Another YouTuber/Instagramer I have been following is Solange Mina. She focuses on Poshmark rather than Ebay and I have been able to gain some valuable information from watching her videos. From her I have learned the value of self-sharing on Poshmark rather than spending time sharing other people's closets. She tells her followers the importance of sharing your own closet constantly to gain sales. I have taken this advice to heart this week and have been using The Simple Posher to share my own closet multiple times a day especially at peak times (during parties). This has been working really well for me! I've had almost daily sales on Poshmark since I started aggressively sharing my own closet, and this is definitely something that I will continue and implement into my daily routine.

~*~

"If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle." - Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

~*~

Over and out.

Cat Cots and Other Critters

Happy Easter! It's finally April, and now the yard sales are starting up again. I've been able to go two weekends in a row now. I've been on a vintage toy kick lately and have managed to find some 80's Care Bear toys and a Cinderella Ugly Step Sister Barbie doll. I enjoy watching States Place videos with a Mighty Mushroom because they talk a lot about researching different things and expanding your knowledge into different areas. I think vintage toys are a fun thing to look for and sell, and it's something that keeps my interest.

Some other finds include a sewing machine I picked up for mom at $60. It is a techy sewing machine that is almost $200 at Walmart, and it had all of the accessories in it and everything was still in the Styrofoam. The guy I bought it from said that his wife bought it to make clothes for their daughter but then she never used it. We've had it in the house for two days, and Mom has already used it a ton. 

I also picked up a nice fan for $2. We pick all of these up when we find them cheap because our air conditioner is elderly and doesn't cool like it used to. I also picked up this "cat cot" (as I'm calling it) for $1. My cat, Polka Dot, thoroughly sniffed it out before laying on it and now he and Miss Kitty love it. A dollar well spent!

Also, there was one yard sale that had some decent clothes and I was able to pick up a few pairs of jeans. When I got them home and was tagging them, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. One pair of jeans had a huge centipede in it, and I am a huge bug-aphobe! I ran the pair of jeans out on the porch and tried to shake him out. The centipede won that battle and I ditched the jeans on the banister. I then brought out all the other pieces I'd gotten that day and shook them out as well and steamed them for good measure. Did I mention I'm not a fan of bugs? The next day, Mom had the pair of jeans and said she was able to shake the centipede out. I was just going to let him have them at that point, but I washed them and they are good as new now. 

~*~

In other news, I signed up for this program called Scribd because I think Audible is crazy expensive. The reviews of Scribd online weren't very good, but the idea of unlimited audiobooks for $8.99 a month is too good to not give a chance. I'm still in the free 30-day trial period, but I really like it so far. I finished Unwind by Neal Shusterman, but they don't have the second in the series which is super disappointing. However, I looked up all of the books in my Goodreads "Want to Read" list and there were many available on Scribd, so I'm not giving up hope yet. 

~*~

Poshmark has a new feature where you can send a private discount to people who have liked a certain item. I have mixed feelings about this, but I've been using it and it's had good results. I've been running these private discounts every Friday, and last Friday I had four sales because of it. When the feature first launched, I had many sales the first day. This feature has been helping me move things in my Poshmark store, however, in order to sell using this method the price has to be marked down significantly. It requires that you send the buyer a discount AND a shipping discount. This means that on lower priced items, this takes at least $4 off the asking price, which on a $12 item is pretty significant, not to mention Poshmark's fee. I've also noticed that buyers simply buying items for the asking price are becoming less and less common. Most, if not all, of my recent sales have been due to some type of discount, so I've started adding $5-$10 to the asking price of my items on Poshmark because after discount and fees I'm not making nearly as much on Poshmark sales as I would if I sold the same item on Mercari or Ebay. This way, I am able to make closer to my asking price and still enjoy selling on Poshmark. 

~*~

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" 

- T.S. Elliot

~*~ 

Over and out. 

Exciting Poshmark Sale!

I had an exciting Poshmark sale this week. It was a bundle of six items! The bundle included several items that I'd had for a while including a Lilly Pulizer Coat and a Free People Dress. It's always nice to sell things that I've had a while. She also purchased several "bread and butter" pieces, and I was happy about that because it's almost better to sell these items in a bundle so that they are worth the shipping cost.

I've noticed a lot on Poshmark that buyers will bundle items and then send offers for half the price of the items, and it's easy to get discouraged by this. This sale really boosted my spirits on this matter. I have an automatic discount of 10% set on bundles, and I usually throw in a little extra discount for encouragement, and this buyer bought the whole six item bundle with no fuss over price. It was great!

In other news, Ebay sent me an offer for 50 free listing, so I've been working on getting those uploaded. I love Ebay's offers since I haven't purchased a store subscription yet. I can see doing that in the near future though.

Over and out.