July Goals: Aiming High! Hello Third Quarter

Everyday I get up and have good intentions of growing my eBay business. Then I get distracted. And it does not take much to distract me. Usually it is Facebook. It is so easy for me to waste a couple hours a day on Facebook. Meh.

Let's change that Lisa. Set your goals and put them where you have to look at them everyday. The refrigerator will be a good place. I am in that thing several times a day.

 

1. Increase listings to 1000. Currently I am at about 485. I probably have more than enough stuff to list to accomplish this goal, but I will give myself two months to get this completed.

I finally hit 500 listings tonight!!! Woo Hoo!!'

2. Raise my average selling price to $35.00- $40.00. They may not be the easiest thing for me to do, I have a lot of items that are priced at 19.99 to 29.99. There are also a dew higher priced items to balance things out. More planning required

 

3. Gross $3000.00 for July. Did you stop laughing yet?? Aim high or not at all!! Today's sales: $1.49. I have a ways to go!!

Yes, this is my 1.49 sale. I started with 125 of these Care Bears. They were 0.10 a piece. I initially tried to sell them in lots of ten. No sales. So then I started selling them for 0.99 each. Sold one.

Then I changed the quantity from 125 to 10. That is when I stated getting watchers. Right now there are 7! Crazy, right? Then I raised the price to $1.49. I sell a few of these a month. Go figure.

 

 

4. Tweak and improve my store categories. For the most part they are very general and do not have sub-categories. The first category I worked on was women's wear. At first it was just women' clothing.
I have added the following sub-categories:

Dresses skirts
Blouses shirts
Purses
Shoes
Pants
Lingerie
Scarves
Plus size

There is one more but I can't remember it. I am thinking about adding jewelry to the women's category. Right now, jewelry is a primary category.

Do you make use of your store categories and sub categories??

What are you July goals?

 

Money Monday: It pays to list

Following along with Kim from Garage Sale Heaven, I wanted to keep track of my weekly sales,weekly listings and challenge myself to get both my profits and listings up.

Active listings: 468
Items listed this week: 23
Value of items listed this week $522.00
Cost of items sold: $28.50
Number of sales: 15
Total sales: $550.00
Amount spent on new inventory: $37.00
Average selling price: $37.00
International sales: 1
Returns: 0
Feedback: all positive this week


$37.00 is the highest my average selling price has ever been. It would be nice to keep it that high, but I know that it was because of the Mickey Mouse Body Parts Dinnerware sales

I sold two sets at $74.99 each (fs) to same buyer last week. There is one more set left that I am going to break apart and send to auction.

Last week I mentioned that I bought a fill-a-bag of clothes for $10.00. I managed to stuff in about 26 items in that bag!

I have already had two sales from those listings.
Rima beachwear caftan. For $24.99

And this Alfred Dunner blouse with attached tank top for $19.99

After going through all the items I stuffed into that bag, some were not going to be sold due to condition. This raised my cost per item from 0.48 cents per item to about 0.75cents per item. Still not bad!

And just when I think my plush items will never sell out of the blue comes this sale.

It is a Dan Dee plush valentine bear, sold for $24.99 fs

You just never know!

Hope your sales were awesome!!

Jaguar,Thunderbirds and Villeroy and Boch

Coffee cups and mug sales ( and a glass) for last week. I am drawn to coffee cups and mugs when I go to thrift stores. It's a rare occasion that I leave a thrift store without at least one coffee cup in my bag. They are a cheap investment from as low as a quarter to as high as a dollar and sometimes I spend more depending on what it is. For me, mugs are an easy flip.
I've included my coffee cup mug sales from last week to show you what has been selling for me. Sales are slow since I'm coming off a month-long vacation. But now that I'm back to listing almost every day my sales are picking up.

Villeroy and Boch coffee cup. Paid .79 cents sold for 23.00 dollars (fs)

I know, this is not a mug, but just about anything military will sell.
Thunderbird 2005 schedule glass, paid .79 cents sold for 24.00 (fs)

Saving the best for last! A Jaguar coffee cup. I paid .35 cents and sold it for $32.00 (fs).
Yes, mugs are a slow dime, but for me they are easy to store and I don't mind hanging on to them for a while. I would say I have had these mugs for at least a year.

Cleaning Up My eBay Store

I have been working on cleaning up my eBay store. My first step this morning is to work on all my categories. All of my category titles are in capital letters. I have gone back and edited a great majority of my category titles and changed them from capital letters to regular.

Now I am going to go to each category on a daily basis and tweak, cleanup and evaluate each listing in that category. I am also going to add subcategories in each category. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what category the item I am listing is going to go into. So I have added four additional categories to help with my listing process.

 

The categories I have added are the following; for her, for him, for children and special values. I think that this will cover just about any item I am listing and that I have a hard time putting into a particular category. It always seems like I have items that I can't find a place for And end up in the "other" category.

Today I am working on the "Women's Clothing" category. I have added sub-categories to include shirts-blouses, pants, dresses-skirts, shoes,plus size,scarves , purses,and lingere.

 

Now to get busy listing and fill up the sub categories with my latest haul from a local thrift store. The store was having a fill a bag for 10.00 ( with clothes). The bag is similar to the cloth like grocery store bags you can buy for 0.99 cents. This thrift charges $2.00 but you can use the bag again and again.

 

I managed to stuff the bag full of 26 clothing items that included name brand dresses, Levi jeans, scarves,and a couple of men's jackets and shirts. When you break it down, I ended up spending about 0.50 cents an item.

 

Clothes are not my favorite things to list, as you have to include measurements. I hate to measure anything. But, I love to ship clothes, slip them into a poly bag and off they go!

 

Look Up

Thrift it To Flip It: A Rebirth Of Sorts

Hi all!  My name is Lisa and I am a thrifter!  I sell online at www.happygirlthrift.com.   (It is my eBay store). I use to run a blog called Happy Girl Thrift, but when I switched to Wordpress I lost interest in blogging because I was not comfortable with the Wordpress platform.

So I ditched it and now I am starting over.  I am still thrifting and listing like crazy.   The goal is to build my online business to replace my salary.  This is necessary since I was laid off in January.  But, all things happen for a reason, don't they?

Back to the premise of this blog.   I want to share with you all things thrifted.  Things I have found and flipped for a profit.  I will also share what did not make a profit.

I really wanted to get back to blogging on "blogger" too.