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Second Hand Sale Presents...

My ramblings about selling on the internet.

I warned in an earlier post that there could be some rambling going on here!  I suppose this post is for myself or possibly for anyone who has been selling on eBay and pondering their future options.

I've got a lot of stuff built up from estate sale purchases.  It needs to go.  To be honest, I'm tired of looking at it and for the first time I've been considering just walking away from selling on eBay.  Generally, I do my best to have a good attitude, but I've been looking at the numbers and it is getting tough to keep on going.  eBay has instituted many changes over the last couple of years and it seems to me at times that they are pushing small sellers like me out. I do my best to have low prices and still make some money, but honestly, with the changes, I find that I'm losing money or just breaking even more and more often.  I'm not writing this to jump on the complaint bandwagon though.  Listening to people whine while watching them do nothing about their situation really annoys me.

So...I decided that I had some choices in front of me.  When you think about it, you've got tons of choices every day.  Life is really made up of countless little choices (and some big ones).  Where you end up depends quite a bit on the choices you make.  But I digress.  Here is how I saw my choices:

1. Give in to my frustration of the moment and call a charity organization to come pick everything up that I'd bought over the last few years.  This one feels too much like giving up to me though.  I have a problem with that.
2. Continue doing what I've been doing and possibly watch sales on eBay continue to dwindle as eBay makes more and more changes.  I think the economy is playing a part here too.  Some people realize that you can actually find really good deals if you look on eBay and they use that to their advantage, but others are just clinging to their wallets and refusing to spend.  Continuing to do what isn't working anymore seems rather silly to me.  I believe Albert Einstein is credited with defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  This choice doesn't work for me either.
3. Try something different.  Adapt and overcome.  Think outside the box...Fill in your own bit of trite positivity here!  This is the one I've got to go with.  I might sound like an idiot with my head in the clouds, but this is really the only option I can accept for myself at this point.

SO...What to do?

Short answer:  I'm not sure.  What I have done so far is:

• Set up a blog (you're reading it) as a way to attract people who might be searching for the items I have selling on eBay through internet searches.  I just taught myself to do that this year using WordPress (it's very easy).
• I've spent a lot of time researching keywords, search engine optimization and the like (I'm still no expert, trust me).  I managed to make Google's front page within a week of starting this blog.  I suppose that's good since I did it with just organic traffic (no pay per click).
• I've started using "Comment Luv" which rewards visitors who leave comments on your blog with links back to their blogs.
• I've started a big push to list the stuff I want to sell as "buy it now" store merchandise this week.  I think I have about 1/2 of 1% of my total "estate stuff" listed at this point, but I'm still plugging away!
• All of the "buy it now" stuff listed up to this point has been submitted to Google through Google Base to get it indexed.  For now, I suppose the best thing is to get more stuff listed and try to make some semi-entertaining posts related to the items I sell with decent content.
• I'm working on some other things, but it's bit time consuming and this isn't my "real job".  We'll see how that goes.

I suppose this post was mostly for shaking the cobwebs out of my own mind and letting potential buyers know where I'm coming from with this site.  If you are a current or potential eBay seller feeling challenged, I hope you'll take some inspiration from this posting.  My sales aren't skyrocketing yet, but I have sold a few things.  If you read this far and you're still awake, congratulations!  Reward yourself with a link back to your own blog with Comment Luv.  If it helped you at all, I hope you'll take a look around and stop back.  Maybe even throw a social bookmark this way!  More shameless self promotion later.  Thanks for reading.

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