Shipping:

Contact your postman to schedule picking up your items to be shipped. Log on to usps.com up to the day before and scheule a pick up. It's free of charge & what do you save? Gas

Print your shipping labels from usps.com also. This just saves having to take a car full of boxes, unloading them all and standing in line at the post office. Have the pleasure of your postman knocking on your door for pick up. You can set up to have them knock at your door, or even leave them out on your patio.

Templates:

Auctiva is a completely FREE template hosting service. You get to choose from hundreds of templates. You can even schedule a certain time to have your auction post, for FREE. E bay charges for that. 10 cents. E bay also charges to have pictures on. The first is free and each additional is 15 cents. Well you can have as many as you need on Auctiva and yep it's FREE! Usually insurance for the buyers is $1.35, well on Auctiva they can save a nickel. It's $1.30. You create your entire auction page in Auctiva and then click a button that says upload and WAHLAH, it's posted to e bay. They give you step by step instructions on how to get started. And all this for FREE!!!

Packaging Supplies:

 Log onto usps.com to order all of your boxes, priority envelopes, and global shipping products. This too is free, and it is sent right to your front door. No need to wait in line at the post office to ask for boxes, have them come to you. You can stock up so you have all your shipping supplies for months to come.

 Flat rate boxes are the best! Get as much as you can in them for one price. $8.10

Advertising/Promoting:

I want my buyers to remember me and refer there friends to me. Ever heard of vistaprint.com? Is it free? Sure! This is where I order all my business cards and postcards to stick in my shipments. 250 business cards for free. You do pay the shipping and handling of a few dollars. They have really cute designs to choose from. Once you order from them, you will receive E mails on special offers, like free upgrade to glossy cards. I received two free address stamps from them. You get offers for buy one get one free, matching brochures and so on.

Buy off season: Buy off season and store your inventory so you can sell it at a time when most of your customers will actually want it. And when you buy off season this allows for getting good prices. After halloween grab those 50% off costumes to sell next year. After Thanksgiving sale, those are always great! And of course you can't miss the after Christmas sale! 50-75% off. Buy tubs that seal and put them away. You will be all set for the following year to come.

If you sell used items hit those yard sales and second hand shops for the best bargains. When a yard sale is over ask them if they want to donate the rest. Advertise in your local paper that you will pick up unwanted items.

Clearance Savings
 

Schedule your sales:

(Just some ideas I got from my handy HOW TO DO EVERYTHING WITH YOUR E BAY BUSINESS BOOK)

What I mean by this is schedule them to start and end at the best time.

*sales that end on weekends are more likely to get bids because many more bidders have time to shop.

*Some sellers start sales on Thursdays and schedule them to last for 10 days, this way the auction goes through two full weekends.