( 
)Here's some secrets I've learned:
# Shipping - this is a big issue and being able to print labels and postage conveniently and not use stamps or go to the post office is a big plus:
* The post man has to pick up packages you leave at your mail box even if you don't arrange a pick up time and date.
* If you want to be nice to the post office, you should print out postage at least before midnight for the next day, at which point you can request a special pick up. After Midnight, (or maybe 1 AM), it's no longer possible to schedule a pick up that day. This way it may be someone else from the post office who picks up your package rather than your own personal post man.
* Even if you print postage for the next day, you can still use that postage the day after or days later if you forget, however the post office would rather you have the right day.
* There's always a way to ask for a refund for printed postage if you find out you have the wrong weight, find some cheaper way to ship the product, the postage gets mangled by your scissors or the printer and you already said to the program that it came out OK etc...
* Buying Postage
o USPS.com will only allow you to buy postage and labels for Priority, Express and Intl Express Mail, if you want to use cheaper methods such as First Class Mail, Media Mail, or Parcel Post, you will have to use a different method of printing the postage.
o Stamps.com and Endicia.com do allow you to print out all classes of mail but they charge a monthly fee. Endicia is $10-15 a month and Stamps.com is $20 a month but they give you a free scale and $25 worth of free postage.
o Stamps.com is just Windows, Endicia does Mac too :-).
o Endicia.com now has a deal with Dymo labels that if you use a Labelwriter 400 Duo, Labelwriter 400 Turbo or Labelwriter 400 Turbo Duo, you can print out postage from them for free for !st Class and Priority Mail postage! No stamps (you may have to buy proprietary labels though) , no waiting in line at the post office etc. I just bought a used Labelwriter 400 Turbo Duo for $108 including shipping, woohoo!
o No that it matters much, but if you want to get real fancy about it, there are electronic scales with USB ports that feed right into your PC and the Endicia program. I just bought a 50 lb scale like that for $50 including shipping, woohoo! No weighing mistakes.
o Note another very important fact, if you have sold something on Ebay, Ebay has their own free postage system through PayPal that allows you to buy First Class, Media Mail, Parcel Post
* Packing Materials
o You probably already save some envelopes which things you order come in and throw others away and feel guilty that you are throwing them away and don't have a system or clear rational for keeping some and throwing away others other than it takes too much space and junks your house up.
o Well, you are right in some ways, buying new packing material certainly can seem to be a way to go until you get into Staple or any other office supply store and see that a medium cardboard box cost $1.50 and bubble wrap cost .20 cents per square foot if you can find it that cheap.
o So yes do save old packing material and recycle it. About half the stuff you get on Ebay comes in recycled shipping material. A suggestion is to neatly cut away the parts of the bubble wrap that are torn or taped, and save all the bubble wrap in one or two big boxes. As for peanuts, everyone hates them, so you might want to avoid making enemies by reusing it.
o As for recycling boxes, it's probably a good idea to break them down for storage, and then retape them when reusing them.
o Also when buying new expensive items like computer equipment, keep the boxes they came in. Customers really like to get used in equipment in the original boxes and probably allows you to inflate your selling price by 20%+.
o USPS will send you free Priority Mail, Express Mail and Intl. Express Mail boxes and envelopes for free. Just go to USPS.com and go to their store and order them. They are very sturdy and very convenient.
* Deciding Which Shipping Method to Use
o It's pretty clear that USPS methods are always at least a bit cheaper than FedEx and UPS and are just as fast and reliable, so at this point I'm sold on USPS.
o USPS allows you to ship up to 70 lbs.
o First Class Mail can be up to 13 ounces and will end up to be at least half of the cost of Priority Mail or even Parcel Post, most of the time.
o You can send packages via First Class Mail. These are called "First Class Parcels"
o Parcel Post is only slightly cheaper than Priority Mail, so use Priority Mail if a customer has purchased a valuable heavy item and you want to be nice to them.
o Express Mail is very expensive!! It's almost 3 times more expensive than Priority Mail. Use with discretion. You can offer it as a special option, but the customer will have to pay.
o A good cheap solution for books, software and CDs is Media Mail. What you are doing is assuring the post office your package contains one of these kinds of things and they let you cut the Parcel Rate is something like half. Nice of them to do so.
* So Where Should I Sell My Stuff, Just Ebay?
o Well, you might want to take the route I did, which is to use sites that have ready made entries first before choosing the harder to do free form ads of Ebay. Also the canned fixed price sites don't charge you anything if your item doesn't sell, and can list for 2 months (Amazon Marketplace), no time limit ( Half.com), ? (PriceGrabber).
o The three sites that let you ride on already made up product descriptions are Half.com (an Ebay Site), Amazon and Pricegrabber. Those are the only ones I have found so far.
o Of the three, PriceGrabber seem to get the least traffic, but your product will get list in Google's Product Listing (formerly known as Froogle) if you put it in Pricegrabber. Maybe just nobody is using the Google Product system.
o Next I would try Half.com. Half.com used to sell everything, but no it only sells books, CDs, video games and movies. If you are selling one of these, this might be the way to go. I had some considerable success with Half.com in the past, but am not presently using the system, but will try again soon and report back.
o It's probably OK to list things on several sites if you learn how to manage the inventories on the sites quickly and know that if you sell soemthing, you'll take it off the other sites quick. I haven't done this much yet (I just did the first one today) and I wouldn't do it for popular items like MS Windows or Office software, but slow selling stuff like obscure books are probably OK.
o Amazon Marketplace is a really good well designed place to sell things. The listings are free and you only pay about 7% on the back end. Be careful though about offering expedited shipping. They really only give you enough for Priority Mail, so for regular shipping, take the shipping allowance they give you to buy Priority Mail, Media Mail or First Class and anything extra is the commonly accepted business practice of the handling fee (it will only be 2 ollars or so, so don't feel guilty).
o Amazon Marketplace Fees are: $0.99 per transction for transaction fee + avariable fee from 6 - 12% depending on the kind of item + a closing fee again depending on the kind of item. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/103-2823871-8662263?ie=UTF8&nodeId=1161240.
o I have so far received about 93% of the total raw sales I've made. I've made about $1500 in sales.
o Half.com's fees are: <$50.00 - 15%, $50.01-$100.00 -12.5%, $100.01 - $250.00 - 10%, $250.01 - $500.00 - 7.5%, >$500.00 - 5%.
o PriceGrabber's fees are: $1.50 + 6.75% of purchase price.
* So why use Ebay at all?
o The reason for using Ebay is that you can sell anything. You don't have that flexibility with any of the canned description sites. About a third to a half of the things I try to sell, don't have listings anywhere else, even on Amazon!
o You can sell parts on Ebay and people will buy them half the time if you price them right and almost always if there is an auction.
o Amazon Marketplace, and Half.com won't let you sell cell phones or cell phone equipment.
o Ebay can be very cheap. You item can be listed for $0.60 and you get a free picture and a 7 day listing (but the picture won't appear in the results). There is also a sold fee of $0.0525 times the shipping for the first $25 and $0.0325 times the selling price for the rest of it. That's it though...Pretty good.
o Note however there are many enticing bells and whistles you can add that cost more than $0.60 standard insertion fee and they add up quickly. The best idea is if you are selling parts or cheap items, stick to the $0.60 thing. If you are selling something for more than say $20, starting adding the bells and whistles.
* So what should I do now?
o Organize yourself for selling. Gather together in one place all the stuff you want to sell (remember anything will sell on Ebay).
o Secondly prepare your shipping supplies. Get some good strong clear shipping tape at Staples (the store brand is fine).
o Start listing stuff and get help from the little ones, it can be some fun.
* Note Bene
o With Ebay, you can sell things for $0.01, and get something out of it through the shipping fee. The shipping fee is allowed to include handling, so if you are just getting rid of old stuff, it's OK in Ebay's book to charge a little above what it actually cost to ship in the shipping fee. Be careful though, it's already happened a few times too many where I lost money on the whole transaction.
o If you really get into this, you can find stuff in order to sell it like I am doing. You can buy cheap things at garage sales, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Lots (more than one item of the same kind sold as a unit) of items on Ebay, or broken things you know how to fix and then resell all these things.
o To make this doable, you have to be organized. It's not very pleasant to come back after a day of work knowing that you have to ship things out the next day, if you know in the back of your mind that you will have to scrounge around to find the scissors, the tape, the packing material, the parts of the item etc. not even to mention having to clean it.
o Basically also remember you always have two days from the date of sale to ship something. So if something sells on Monday, it's OK to ship on Wednesday.
o If you have to ship something late, upgrade the shipping. If they paid for First Class or Parcel Post, give them Priority Mail. If something expensive was purchase and it was to be shipped Priority Mail, bump them up to Express Mail.
o Don't worry that there's something wrong if you don't enjoy shipping out items, there's nothing wrong with you. Your new at it, and it will take longer than you think and you will kick yourself for wasting time. Again preparing ahead of time can be a big help. Also not, buying full page labels beats taping plain paper postage+address labels any day so that is a recommended purchase in addition to tape.
o Also note that there are some highly reputable Ebay sellers (we're talking 100% rating over thousands of transactions) who will sell you padded envelopes and bubble wrap for dirt cheap. These are a definitely good investment as a supplement to recycling shipping materials and will really make your job much easier. Even an occasional purchase of the ridiculously exorbitant shipping materials from the office stores is good occasionally.
o If you take things apart and sell the parts, you about double the money you make...
# Shipping - this is a big issue and being able to print labels and postage conveniently and not use stamps or go to the post office is a big plus:
* The post man has to pick up packages you leave at your mail box even if you don't arrange a pick up time and date.
* If you want to be nice to the post office, you should print out postage at least before midnight for the next day, at which point you can request a special pick up. After Midnight, (or maybe 1 AM), it's no longer possible to schedule a pick up that day. This way it may be someone else from the post office who picks up your package rather than your own personal post man.
* Even if you print postage for the next day, you can still use that postage the day after or days later if you forget, however the post office would rather you have the right day.
* There's always a way to ask for a refund for printed postage if you find out you have the wrong weight, find some cheaper way to ship the product, the postage gets mangled by your scissors or the printer and you already said to the program that it came out OK etc...
* Buying Postage
o USPS.com will only allow you to buy postage and labels for Priority, Express and Intl Express Mail, if you want to use cheaper methods such as First Class Mail, Media Mail, or Parcel Post, you will have to use a different method of printing the postage.
o Stamps.com and Endicia.com do allow you to print out all classes of mail but they charge a monthly fee. Endicia is $10-15 a month and Stamps.com is $20 a month but they give you a free scale and $25 worth of free postage.
o Stamps.com is just Windows, Endicia does Mac too :-).
o Endicia.com now has a deal with Dymo labels that if you use a Labelwriter 400 Duo, Labelwriter 400 Turbo or Labelwriter 400 Turbo Duo, you can print out postage from them for free for !st Class and Priority Mail postage! No stamps (you may have to buy proprietary labels though) , no waiting in line at the post office etc. I just bought a used Labelwriter 400 Turbo Duo for $108 including shipping, woohoo!
o No that it matters much, but if you want to get real fancy about it, there are electronic scales with USB ports that feed right into your PC and the Endicia program. I just bought a 50 lb scale like that for $50 including shipping, woohoo! No weighing mistakes.
o Note another very important fact, if you have sold something on Ebay, Ebay has their own free postage system through PayPal that allows you to buy First Class, Media Mail, Parcel Post
* Packing Materials
o You probably already save some envelopes which things you order come in and throw others away and feel guilty that you are throwing them away and don't have a system or clear rational for keeping some and throwing away others other than it takes too much space and junks your house up.
o Well, you are right in some ways, buying new packing material certainly can seem to be a way to go until you get into Staple or any other office supply store and see that a medium cardboard box cost $1.50 and bubble wrap cost .20 cents per square foot if you can find it that cheap.
o So yes do save old packing material and recycle it. About half the stuff you get on Ebay comes in recycled shipping material. A suggestion is to neatly cut away the parts of the bubble wrap that are torn or taped, and save all the bubble wrap in one or two big boxes. As for peanuts, everyone hates them, so you might want to avoid making enemies by reusing it.
o As for recycling boxes, it's probably a good idea to break them down for storage, and then retape them when reusing them.
o Also when buying new expensive items like computer equipment, keep the boxes they came in. Customers really like to get used in equipment in the original boxes and probably allows you to inflate your selling price by 20%+.
o USPS will send you free Priority Mail, Express Mail and Intl. Express Mail boxes and envelopes for free. Just go to USPS.com and go to their store and order them. They are very sturdy and very convenient.
* Deciding Which Shipping Method to Use
o It's pretty clear that USPS methods are always at least a bit cheaper than FedEx and UPS and are just as fast and reliable, so at this point I'm sold on USPS.
o USPS allows you to ship up to 70 lbs.
o First Class Mail can be up to 13 ounces and will end up to be at least half of the cost of Priority Mail or even Parcel Post, most of the time.
o You can send packages via First Class Mail. These are called "First Class Parcels"
o Parcel Post is only slightly cheaper than Priority Mail, so use Priority Mail if a customer has purchased a valuable heavy item and you want to be nice to them.
o Express Mail is very expensive!! It's almost 3 times more expensive than Priority Mail. Use with discretion. You can offer it as a special option, but the customer will have to pay.
o A good cheap solution for books, software and CDs is Media Mail. What you are doing is assuring the post office your package contains one of these kinds of things and they let you cut the Parcel Rate is something like half. Nice of them to do so.
* So Where Should I Sell My Stuff, Just Ebay?
o Well, you might want to take the route I did, which is to use sites that have ready made entries first before choosing the harder to do free form ads of Ebay. Also the canned fixed price sites don't charge you anything if your item doesn't sell, and can list for 2 months (Amazon Marketplace), no time limit ( Half.com), ? (PriceGrabber).
o The three sites that let you ride on already made up product descriptions are Half.com (an Ebay Site), Amazon and Pricegrabber. Those are the only ones I have found so far.
o Of the three, PriceGrabber seem to get the least traffic, but your product will get list in Google's Product Listing (formerly known as Froogle) if you put it in Pricegrabber. Maybe just nobody is using the Google Product system.
o Next I would try Half.com. Half.com used to sell everything, but no it only sells books, CDs, video games and movies. If you are selling one of these, this might be the way to go. I had some considerable success with Half.com in the past, but am not presently using the system, but will try again soon and report back.
o It's probably OK to list things on several sites if you learn how to manage the inventories on the sites quickly and know that if you sell soemthing, you'll take it off the other sites quick. I haven't done this much yet (I just did the first one today) and I wouldn't do it for popular items like MS Windows or Office software, but slow selling stuff like obscure books are probably OK.
o Amazon Marketplace is a really good well designed place to sell things. The listings are free and you only pay about 7% on the back end. Be careful though about offering expedited shipping. They really only give you enough for Priority Mail, so for regular shipping, take the shipping allowance they give you to buy Priority Mail, Media Mail or First Class and anything extra is the commonly accepted business practice of the handling fee (it will only be 2 ollars or so, so don't feel guilty).
o Amazon Marketplace Fees are: $0.99 per transction for transaction fee + avariable fee from 6 - 12% depending on the kind of item + a closing fee again depending on the kind of item. See: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/103-2823871-8662263?ie=UTF8&nodeId=1161240.
o I have so far received about 93% of the total raw sales I've made. I've made about $1500 in sales.
o Half.com's fees are: <$50.00 - 15%, $50.01-$100.00 -12.5%, $100.01 - $250.00 - 10%, $250.01 - $500.00 - 7.5%, >$500.00 - 5%.
o PriceGrabber's fees are: $1.50 + 6.75% of purchase price.
* So why use Ebay at all?
o The reason for using Ebay is that you can sell anything. You don't have that flexibility with any of the canned description sites. About a third to a half of the things I try to sell, don't have listings anywhere else, even on Amazon!
o You can sell parts on Ebay and people will buy them half the time if you price them right and almost always if there is an auction.
o Amazon Marketplace, and Half.com won't let you sell cell phones or cell phone equipment.
o Ebay can be very cheap. You item can be listed for $0.60 and you get a free picture and a 7 day listing (but the picture won't appear in the results). There is also a sold fee of $0.0525 times the shipping for the first $25 and $0.0325 times the selling price for the rest of it. That's it though...Pretty good.
o Note however there are many enticing bells and whistles you can add that cost more than $0.60 standard insertion fee and they add up quickly. The best idea is if you are selling parts or cheap items, stick to the $0.60 thing. If you are selling something for more than say $20, starting adding the bells and whistles.
* So what should I do now?
o Organize yourself for selling. Gather together in one place all the stuff you want to sell (remember anything will sell on Ebay).
o Secondly prepare your shipping supplies. Get some good strong clear shipping tape at Staples (the store brand is fine).
o Start listing stuff and get help from the little ones, it can be some fun.
* Note Bene
o With Ebay, you can sell things for $0.01, and get something out of it through the shipping fee. The shipping fee is allowed to include handling, so if you are just getting rid of old stuff, it's OK in Ebay's book to charge a little above what it actually cost to ship in the shipping fee. Be careful though, it's already happened a few times too many where I lost money on the whole transaction.
o If you really get into this, you can find stuff in order to sell it like I am doing. You can buy cheap things at garage sales, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Lots (more than one item of the same kind sold as a unit) of items on Ebay, or broken things you know how to fix and then resell all these things.
o To make this doable, you have to be organized. It's not very pleasant to come back after a day of work knowing that you have to ship things out the next day, if you know in the back of your mind that you will have to scrounge around to find the scissors, the tape, the packing material, the parts of the item etc. not even to mention having to clean it.
o Basically also remember you always have two days from the date of sale to ship something. So if something sells on Monday, it's OK to ship on Wednesday.
o If you have to ship something late, upgrade the shipping. If they paid for First Class or Parcel Post, give them Priority Mail. If something expensive was purchase and it was to be shipped Priority Mail, bump them up to Express Mail.
o Don't worry that there's something wrong if you don't enjoy shipping out items, there's nothing wrong with you. Your new at it, and it will take longer than you think and you will kick yourself for wasting time. Again preparing ahead of time can be a big help. Also not, buying full page labels beats taping plain paper postage+address labels any day so that is a recommended purchase in addition to tape.
o Also note that there are some highly reputable Ebay sellers (we're talking 100% rating over thousands of transactions) who will sell you padded envelopes and bubble wrap for dirt cheap. These are a definitely good investment as a supplement to recycling shipping materials and will really make your job much easier. Even an occasional purchase of the ridiculously exorbitant shipping materials from the office stores is good occasionally.
o If you take things apart and sell the parts, you about double the money you make...
Guide created: 11/13/07 (updated 05/23/09)
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