Going Once, Going Twice

And just like that... our 2-week ebay spree has come to an end. After I taught Bethany how to post items initially, I stayed pretty disengaged from the selling frenzy. But over the past week, I started getting into it too. I would help to post some items, and then eventually help pack them up and ship them out. All week long, we're constantly updating each other (sometimes every 10 minutes!) on auction status.

"Woah, somebody else bid on the RAM. It's up to $7.09!"

All in all, we sold 29 items. Five of those items we had to list a second time before they sold. There were 18 items that didn't sell, but we have already found good homes for most of those items (BTien... enjoy the dart board!).

Was it worth it? Well, for the scale of operations that we've got going, we realized that we can't be doing it for the money. And we're not really into it for the money. It was more because we didn't want to just throw stuff away and add to the landfills. And we also didn't want to pass-the-buck to someone else to make them throw it away.

But if you want to know if you could earn a living selling on ebay (some people do it!), I think I can tell you right now that you won't be able to do it just by selling the junk in your house. Here's a practical example...

One of our most surprising sells was the 3 sets of 4-each chopstick rests in the shape of edamame. I remember trying to sell this on ebay over a year ago. No takers. But this time, they sold for $7.95 total. Since they didn't sell the first time, I thought we would sweeten the deal with free shipping/handling. The shipping cost us $2.37. The ebay listing fees cost us $0.45. The ebay final value fee, after the sale, cost another $0.70. The paypal fee for receiving payment was $0.53.

So, after shipping and fees, we earned $3.90 on this transaction.

Not to mention that we bought these sets for $1 each from Williams-Sonoma two years ago. So, that was $3 on product. So technically, we only earned $0.90 on this sale.

And that was after spending... about 10 minutes posting the item, 10 minutes wrapping the item, using paper/ink to print the packing slip and the shipping label, and then dropping it off at the post office.

$0.90 well earned.

So, you might be looking around your home thinking, "I wonder if I could ebay this..." Oh, and if you start ebay-ing, you will start to see everything around you as potentially ebay-able ("Hey honey, do we still need this jewelry box from your great-grandmother...?"). I would recommend that you only take on this venture if you have a few big items to sell first. And at those times, you can take a little bit of extra time to sell the small items, since you would be taking pictures, posting, and going to the post office anyway, to take care of the big items.

Our biggest sell was a Nikon Mf-26 multi-function back, for use on the Nikon N90s (film SLR). I remember buying this for about $100 back a few years ago, when we were about to get engaged. I figured... nobody uses film SLR's anymore. Maybe I can get $25 for this hardly-ever used item. But since it was in near-perfect condition, and I still had the box and manual... it sold for $65 after a down-to-the-wire bidding war.

So, interested in ebay-ing off all that stuff in your home? Send us an e-mail. We have a pretty good idea now about what might sell and what might not, and about how much you should charge for shipping. It's better than throwing it away! But if you have someone you could give that item away to who would enjoy it, that might save you time and energey.