Hi!

As you may have noticed, this is volume 9. I have been writing my ezines for at least 9 years! When we first started over 12 years ago (and I was still living in Bellingham, WA) we didn’t even put volume numbers on them! Wow!

In case you are wondering, OBO is "Or Best Offer" and MM does not stand for Mor Mor (Mother's mother in Swedish) and what my kids call my mom, but rather Markdown Manager. I will explain later in this ezine how both of them can help you increase your eBay sales! And Mor Mor is proof that my OBO and MM strategy really works.

With Indy’s December birthday, the holidays and New Years, I have NOT had time to write an ezine. I have missed you all! But where to begin?

Let’s start with Indy’s birthday. She has kept in touch with many of her friends, from pre-school through 8th grade. Because of these contacts, over 30 girls were invited to the Club House for a day of swimming (yes it was 70 degrees here on 12/15—sorry!).

About 15 showed up and we had a blast. My dad and Houston were busy with a baseball tournament, my brother helped with the food, but basically I was left alone with this group. Luckily, Indy had planned a bunch of games and kept all the girls happy and included. She is amazing!

Check out this photo of all the girls on the ledge. Yes, I got a little creative and asked them to all balance on the ledge!

Luckily, sales were very strong through December and now even into January. We did about $11,000 in eBay sales for December. It was a very good month, considering the economy. One big reason is that I put "...OR BEST OFFER" on every single item.

Here is an item that sold recently for a best offer. Once you get to the listing, you must click on the tab that says “see original listing” or “purchase history” or you won’t be able to see the price I accepted.

Please keep this in mind when doing completed auction research, if it says “best offer” you will need to click on each listing to see what they ACTUALLY sold for, not that higher asking price.

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

I sold 5 of these salad plates for almost full asking price! Quite the score, considering I paid $50.00 for the set and had already sold the dinner plates for $275.00! Love dinnerware.

But let’s talk a little bit more about eBay’s “best offer” . My mom has been upset that her sales are way down and can’t believe that I am selling so much every single day. I keep telling her, it’s because I raise my prices and add “or best offer”. I asked her what percent of her items had “obo” on them? She said about 30% and that she doesn’t like to have it on everything because she gets such low ball offers.

I asked her to please trust me and I showed her how to bulk add “obo” to every SINGLE item. We got obo added to her 3,000 plus listings in about 30 minutes. Then my mom went in and raised some of her lower priced items.

After just 2 days, she was a believer! I am always telling my mom “Just listen to your daughter, I obviously KNOW what I am doing” and we both laugh. Sure sounds like a little bit of a role reversal “Mom knows best” but in a good way.

After our bulk editing experiment, my mom would open her “eBay Selling Manager Pro” each morning with six to ten items with best offers. I told her that she didn’t have to accept them all, but it sure was fun to get them!

Here is one of the items she sold recently for a “best offer” . My mom is very happy with her increased sales and for those of you not offering OBO on everything, I encourage you to add it now!

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

Dinnerware again! China is one of my BEST performing categories. If you don’t have my dinnerware eBook yet, you must consider investing in your business with this purchase.

After Indy’s fantastic birthday using paper plates (all our china dishes are for sale on eBay-just kidding) , it was time to pack and ship the Queen’s Court gifts for this Christmas. Mo came up with a brilliant idea (as she usually does) to send neck ties! Awesome! My mom and dad were both here so were able to gift wrap them and help us stuff envelopes. Yikes! Another huge project.

Here is one of the QC member’s ties that is listed on eBay. Thanks Louise for sharing! Here is the sweet note she sent when she told me about her post.

“Thank you Lynn for the tie. You are always so thoughtful. I listed mine yesterday.”
Louise

One reason that Mo suggested ties for this year’s Queen’s Court gift was because we had recently done Teleseminar #2 with Thrifting with the Boys. As you all know, Jason and Bryan are amazing! If you haven’t purchased their teleseminars yet, you don’t want to miss these.

Purchase Teleseminar #1 here.
Purchase Teleseminar #2 here.

I recently (well December 26th) sold another of my ties for $99.00. Yay!

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

The tie was even better looking in person than the photo—at least I thought so, but the buyer validated my belief. Here is his feedback, WOW!

“Shipped same day as purchase & got it next day-beautiful tie!”

In the last 90 days on eBay, I have sold 18 ties for $690.91. It's easy and profitable! And the beautiful thing about ties are that they are SUPER easy to ship .

On the subject of shipping, during this holiday, I have been OVERWHELMED with shipping. We were shipping about 80 packages a week before Christmas and the week after Christmas we shipped 96 packages!

When I say packages, this does NOT mean items. Each package could contain 1 to 10 items. Yikes! It was crazy. My mom showed up on December 19th and thank goodness she did. She has been a Godsend in helping me ship. Thanks MOR MOR!

Here is an expensive recent score that my mom shipped for me and she did an awesome job! It went to Canada. This chintz vase sold for A LOT. Never pass up chintz items.

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

If you didn’t pre-purchase my awesome shipping video that Indy filmed and produced, you may still order it here. Even though the price has increased, it is still worth every penny. Even one hour saved off of your shipping time a day would pay for this video within a few days.

Here are Mo, Indy and I after the video series wrapped. It was a lot of fun!

Oh, I almost forgot, before my mom arrived to help with shipping, Christmas, errands, misc. etc, my dad was here. We had a wonderful time! One of the really fun things we got to do was to take Houston on a tour at USC of the campus and Dedeaux Baseball Field. I didn’t even know it existed (and I attended USC for six years) before our tour! Yikes—How embarrassing!

In addition to the fun visit to USC, we got to go out to a pre-Christmas Dinner. Here is my dad with the kids. He is sooooo sweet! Such a nice man and it is hard to live so far from my parents. Luckily, they visit often and help me a lot.

After my dad left it was Christmas time. How nice to have a day off and celebrate with my mom, brother, and kids. It was bittersweet this year as last year we were in Bellingham with my sister and her kids, but we kept our chins up and soldiered through.

Here are the kids dressed up in front of the tree in our new house before we went to the Christmas Eve celebration at our church. I can’t believe how fast they are growing up!

Especially when I just found this photo card from our Christmas Party invite during 2001, over 11 years ago.

Fantastic news for January, Kathy Flood is returning for Teleseminar #2! This is the Queen’s Court gift for January and will take place on Wednesday night, January 16th. Don’t worry, if you aren’t a QC member, you can still purchase it here.

Kathy is the jewelry columnist for the Antique Trader and the author of several best selling books on jewelry for Warman's. She is incredible and we are so fortunate to have her share her expertise with us on call #2.

Teleseminar #2 is Pearls of Wisdom for Successful Jewelry Sales! . Here are what my QCers are saying about Kathy coming back for Teleseminar #2:

These testimonials are amazing! If you are not a Queen's Court member, Click here to purchase now. If you aren't available for the live call, don't worry you will be emailed a link to the recording.

Before ending this ezine, I want to mention another awesome tool that is driving my sales higher and higher. Every day, I commit to putting another one of my internal store categories on sale using “markdown manager”. It can be as low as 7% and as high as 11%. I don’t usually ever have to go over 11% to generate interest.

I put all my Christmas on sale yesterday for just 8% off. This morning I got an offer for 7 Christmas items and I had a feeling they were all from the same lady. I was correct! So even though some of the offers were a little low, I took all 7 which added up to $152.00 before shipping!

Hot tip, Christmas sells YEAR ROUND. Don’t ever forget this and right now you can pick up Christmas everywhere at huge discounts.

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

You won’t believe what this one Santa Claus sold for! I picked him up at a garage sale for $1.00. I love my job!

Here is a note that I just got from the buyer of that Santa and the six other items. “Hello, I really love your site and want to thank you for accepting all my bids. The items are treats for me and I am so excited about the Vailliancourt Santa. I have quite a few of your items in my watch list and will be back.” Nice!

As a special Christmas Gift to my kids, my brother took Houston, Indy and my mom to Disneyland for a few days over his birthday weekend. What an awesome Uncle Lee! And, I got some much needed ALONE time. Thank you Lee!

Here is a photo of them at Disneyland enjoying the Holiday decorations.

As I was completing this ezine, two great things happened. First, I got an offer and sold that upholstery fabric that my mom helped me list last July! It really reinforces my lessons from this ezine, OBO and Markdown Manager. The fabric was on markdown manager and I took an OBO. Yay!

Click here to view this auction on ebay and see how close we got to asking price!

Secondly, Lori and Garage Sale Lou’s son, Hunter listed some of his YU-GI-OH! cards. To give you a frame of reference, Indy’s best friend is Paige and her brother is Hunter.

Hunter came to HQ during his college break to help us get organized and was excited to learn more about listing his first item on eBay. We talked at length about his collection of cards and he wanted to know the best way to list them etc. He wanted to list them individually and I said “NO”! As they are only worth $1 to $5 each.

He did listen to me! Hunter ended up spending 36 hours researching and writing his description and it paid off big time for him as his collection sold for over $2,000. Check out the listing and his very intricate description. Congrats to Hunter! Let’s hope the buyer pays .

Click here to view this auction on eBay!

As a treat before the kids get back from Disneyland, Mo and I are going thrifting all across the Coachella valley and then out to lunch. Yes, this is what we do for fun .

You must LOVE what you do every day and be passionate about it or you won’t be as happy as you could. Maybe eBay isn’t for you, just like the corporate world wasn’t for me. Whatever you decide, make sure that in this New Year, you follow your passion!

My grandmother, Cheryl Leaf, always said, “Follow your passion and the money will follow”. She is still right on!

Thanks for reading my ezines! I appreciate it!

Happy eBaying!

Lynn

Lynn Dralle, 'The Queen of Auctions,'
Creator of the best-selling eBay Boot Camp in a Box.