Okay, you have scoured the flea markets, garage sales, attic, and neighbor’s garage for those one-of-a-kind, unique items to resell on Ebay. Now what?
I typically store all of my items to sell in large Rubbermaid tubs. Since I buy and sell weekly, my tubs get full, are emptied, get full, and on and on. Here is the process for sorting out and organizing the items in the Rubbermaid tubs:
1. Take stock of what you have. After a week’s shopping adventure, I look at everything I have accumulated, laying all items out on my New Inventory Table or NIT for short (lest you think I am some big time operator, this is just my dining room table which becomes part of the business operation during the week).
2. Everything gets checked over, removing price labels and marker prices (use Goo Gone and Rubbing Alcohol for this). I do not do deep cleaning, this is just a waste of time. I do not buy extremely dirty items – no dirty clothes, no grease-laden kitchen tins, no water-spotted pottery, nothing wrapped with shipping tape. You do not want to hear my horror stories of how I have ruined inventory trying to get stuff off of items! You do not have the time to polish silverware, either. If you persist in your cleaning fetish even after all of my warnings, all that will end up happening is that you will take off a hundred-year-old finish that the collector wanted on there anyway! And of course, always, always always have a disclaimer on your listing that the item came from a garage sale and will need to be cleaned.
3. Take a photograph of the item in a simple setting with a simple backdrop, preferably with natural lighting if possible and no flash.
4. Put back on NIT for further processing.
5. If something needs further research such as finding the pattern name for flatware, put aside in a separate location in a specially designated Research Area. This can be done with your laptop in front of the television, not something you do during your workday or worktime allotted to Ebay. It takes up too much time and we Ebayers tend to get lost in the process so make that HOBBY TIME, not work time.
6. Have some type of listing form made up ahead of time (see my photo of my A2A Lister Blaster pages – so named because they help BLAST through the LISTING process.
7. Number your Lister Blaster Pages with date and number of item and also location where you will be storing the item. I store everything for that week on one shelf and my shelves are alphabetical. So, for example, my number for my page would be 09 (year) 11 (month) 02 (week in that month) space 01 (item number) space J (Shelf Location). Altogether it would be 091102_01_J. That number can be placed somewhere in your listing where you can refer back to it when you sell the item.
8. The NIT should have a measuring tape and scales on it or somewhere handy nearby.
9. Give your item a tag on the Lister Blaster page such as “Brown Teddy Bear Dundee Toys,” the number, and find the photo number of the item on your camera and put that on your Lister Blaster page as well. It helps to go in the same order that you took the pictures for continuity.
10. Go ahead and start filling out your Lister Blaster pages with tags, number, and photo number.
11. Now go back and start measuring and weighing each item. Write down how much you paid for it and how much you want for it. The base auction insertion fee cuts off at $9.99 so there is not much point in listing an item for less if you can help it. I listed a bunch of stuff for $4.99 when I started out in Ebay but when they sell, it is hardly even worth it to package up and ship after paying Ebay fees and Paypal fees. Much better would be to save the item back until you can get a group of like items to list for $9.99 or more.
Now fill out all your pages for each item.
12. Be as complete on your Lister Blaster pages (LB) as possible – list all marks, dimensions, color, size, maker, manufacturer, every piece of info you have on the item. Be sure and list all deficiencies, too – every crack, chip, flake, loss of glaze, loss of finish, wear, holes, tears, stains, marks, everything wrong with the item that you can find.
13. As you get the pages filled out, start putting the items away on their specific shelf. I have plastic shelves purchased at Home Depot for $49.99 which are 6′ high, 4′ wide, and 2′ deep which hold 100 items if I am lucky and stack carefully. One bedroom in my house is used for all my shelves which are alphabetized A – ZZ (there will be enough shelves to have about 52 shelves or one year’s worth of inventory – after one year I will rotate old stock out and start putting new in weekly).
14. The title on the LB should be written now while you are calmly sitting and thinking – not when you are listing. The title should list what it is, the maker, color, year, pattern, model number, artist, manufacturer, everything you can fit in the title that is important to know about the item. Once you get in listing mode doing Ebay, you will forget important info if you DO NOT WRITE IT DOWN NOW. For example – “OLD Blue Pottery Mixing Bowl Vintage Crazing HELP” indicate you don’t know the maker. Great Ebay readers can help you with the maker or what an item is.
15. At the end of all of this process, you should have a big stack of LB pages and all the items carefully put away. Now you can leisurely list from these pages all week! I have insomnia so will list at 3:00 am during the week!
16. But first, before you can list, you need to go into your photo program on your computer and resize and crop your photos. Try to crop when you take the photos – it will save you this step. You will still need to resize so the photo does not have too many pixels or your photo will get hungup when you download to Ebay.
I go into photo program and “save as” with photo number and a name such as “Rogers Flirtation Sugar Spoon” and then I resize to about a third of what it was originally.
17. I make a folder in my computer for that month’s photos in My Documents folder. Or could be saved to a CD if you don’t have much room. Save your photos! You find you will use them again and again for all kinds of things.
So that is my process for listing. I usually do all of my photos and list blasting on one day while the light is good since I take most of my photos outside. Then I can list on Ebay during the week after work into the wel hours of the night or on weekends in one fell swoop. At least that way I don’t feel like I have to spend all day Sunday listing. I can even do this on the road if I download my photos to my laptop or to my flickr account (great way to retrieve photos on the road!).
The LB pages are a lifesaver because everything can be put away in the inventory room and work can be done from the LB pages, which are easier to carry around and deal with than 100 various sized items. You can do it in front of television or middle of the night, easy to pick and leave off. Super easy!
