Lynn’s eBay ezine Volume IV, issue number 9

Lynn Recommends: eBay Live Boot Camp–Payment plan ends soon
Special Announcement: Six Steps Online Course goes up at midnight tonight!
Feature Article: How to Shop for eBay Merchandise While Traveling
The Queen’s Update: We want to hear your eBay success stories!

The eBay Certified Provider fair in Salt Lake City was awesome! Thank you Ginger and Laura for putting it all together. I should probably explain what a certified provider is. This is directly from eBay “The Certified Provider designation helps members of the eBay community feel more comfortable with hiring providers to grow their eBay businesses. Certified Providers are carefully screened to ensure that they can provide eBay members with services and solutions to grow their eBay businesses. Among other criteria, participants must have extensive experience with eBay, pass a strict certification exam and provide a number of proven customer references that are checked by eBay.” And I understand that there are only 35 companies and/or individuals that currently meet these criteria. Pretty neat! There were about 12 of us exhibiting at eBay this past week.

Mo and I had so much fun and it was so great to actually meet and talk to about 400 eBay employees that handle the call and chat center. Here is a photo of Maureen (Mo) and me manning our booth.

What I really walked away with from that day in Utah was how much all the eBay employees care about US–the Sellers. These people spend hours on the phone and in the live chats trying to help us. They were all so passionate about what they do for eBay. They were also very excited about the rate rollbacks and how it is going to affect us positively!

One sweet employee actually ran to her desk to pull up my October sales figures and came back with a scrap of paper showing that I would have saved over $600 in eBay fees for that month alone–without the extra discounts for having over a 4.6 or 4.8 DSR (Detailed Seller Ratings). Now that is amazing!

For those of you who haven’t actually run your own numbers and you have an eBay store…call the eBay Store help number at 1-866-322-9105 (24 hours a day/7 days a week) and let them figure out your savings for you!

I also got the sense that eBay employees understand our frustrations with the shipping/handling DSR and the no negatives being left for buyers. I was also told by some employees to hold on–nothing has been set in stone–and to watch for an announcement soon. That negative feedback policy doesn’t go into affect until May 1st and murmurings are that it will most likely be modified.

So don’t jump off the eBay boat yet. Come on guys, where can you sell a honey pot (that cost you $15) for over $140 in just one week?

For those of you who were watching my Wedgwood Honey Pot–you saw how high it went! For those of you who weren’t watching–it sold for $142.50!!!

Click here to learn more.

My sales have been incredible this month and I know that eBay is doing their best to come to a happy compromise. One that will continue to bring the buyers to the site and one that will keep sellers like you and me happy. It is a fine line and I wouldn’t want to be the one making those critical decisions.

I do want to tell you about a really neat employee that Mo and I met. Turns out her name is Maureen also. She was already an ezine subscriber and so enjoyed my ezine sent out with the subject line “How can no negatives be positive?” that she printed it out and showed it off around the eBay offices. So you see, eBay employees are people just like us. They are trying to do their best, and often getting the brunt of negativity from both angry buyers and sellers. I thank Maureen for sharing that ezine with her co-workers. Her positive spirit really won us over.

Photo of Maureen (Mo), Me and Maureen The 3 M’s!

All throughout the day at the Certified Provider Fair we kept hearing from eBay employees about this amazing chain of thrift stores. They are called Desseret Industries (popularly known as DI’s) and are run by the Mormon Church. More employees than I could count told us to check them out. So you know Mo and I–we love a challenge– so we hit the closest one before we had dinner with the guys from Auctiva.

Mo and me with Mike Davies and Kevin Kinell from Auctiva at dinner.

Read more about that amazing thrift store chain in my feature article, “How to Shop for eBay Merchandise While Traveling.” You won’t want to miss this article–it is a lot of fun!

Speaking of a lot of fun, that is what you will have at the Live Boot Camp experience for those of YOU lucky enough to attend. We have already sold six seats!!! And with almost six months until the event–you know that this will sell out completely. Our six-month payment plan ends soon and I don’t want YOU to miss out–please read more here.

In the Lynn Recommends section, I am very happy to announce that after two years, I have completely re-written my original basic ecourse. You should have received your FINAL special invitation yesterday. Price goes up at midnight tonight. Check it out!

Here’s to Successful eBaying!

Lynn Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions,’ Creator of the best-selling eBay Boot Camp in a Box and Boot Camp in a Box Lite.

As ecourse student Auntie Suzi says:

Click here to order now!

‘How to Shop for eBay Merchandise While Traveling‘

by Lynn A. Dralle, ‘The Queen of Auctions’

All day long at the Certified Provider Fair we kept hearing from eBay employees about the Desseret Industries (DI) Thrift Stores. Most of the stories involved clothing and purses that were bought for pennies on the dollar. Not really my area of expertise but the stories were so good that I got on my laptop and found the closest store. And then there was the story about the guy who bought a bobble head for 50 cents and it sold for over $3,000. That was enough to make us late for dinner!

Once we closed up for the evening, Mo and I somehow navigated our way through the snow to the thrift store on 9600 N or was it 9400 S? I can’t remember and it would have been funny just being in the car with us. We got soooo lost! We did find our way to the store at last.

Anyway, as we got out of the car, we both grabbed shopping carts and raced into the store. I guess we are a little more competitive than we care to imagine!

We were running up and down the aisles–it was hysterical. The store was huge and my basket was overflowing. I was grabbing purses, clothing, dinner plates, smaller china pieces and non-breakables.

Me and my cart.

Tip #1: Always look for items that will be easy to transport and not break–especially if traveling by plane. I figured that I could get about 15 dinner plates in my carryon computer bag so that was my limit for breakables.

Tip #2: Buy items that you can use as padding/packing materials. I bought the purses because I had heard such good things about them and also because I knew that I could use them to wrap the breakables. I also bought a plastic Disney lunch box that I knew I could pack the five bone china coffee mugs inside of and still put it safely in my checked baggage. Always be thinking!

Mo and I finally meet up and she only has 6 things in her cart to my 36 items. So far on the scoreboard, I am winning 36 to 6! Just kidding.

Mo and her shopping cart.

I asked her, “Why aren’t you buying any more stuff?” She said, “My suitcase is full.” I said, “Buy a suitcase!”

Tip #3: Bring an extra suitcase or leave plenty of room in the one you are bringing. When I packed for the trip, I brought a larger suitcase to carry all the products we would need for our display (in addition to my clothes). We gave away all the extra books so I knew that I had quite a bit of room to take things home.

When my grandmother used to travel around the world on buying trips she would take one large suitcase. Inside would be two smaller suitcases and about 3 outfits. Buying resellable merchandise and bringing it home cheaply was more important to her than fashion. I don’t think I am so much like her in this case because whenever I travel I take about eight pairs of shoes and only wear one or two. Oh well!

Tip #4: Buy a suitcase at the thrift store if you find enough great merchandise. That was my advice to Maureen and she even found one that she thought she could resell. Then she realized that there just wasn’t that much stuff she wanted to cart home so she just decided on the six pieces.

I ended up spending $33.50 for 37 items and Mo spent $4.00 for six items. When we tally up final profit margin percentages, Maureen will probably win. She is a much more savvy shopper than I–I go for the numbers and she thinks about each item more carefully. But don’t forget–it is a numbers game!

So, after dinner with the Auctiva Boys, we showed them all our purchases and how to research them. We did this to weed out items that we didn’t need to cart home.

Tip #5: Do your research before packing unsaleable items and carting them home. Most of my items looked pretty good. If my dinner plates had listed on Replacements for less than $10 each, I probably would have left them. I decided to leave one vase when I just couldn’t squeeze it in my suitcase the next morning.

Mo decided to hand carry her set of four Poppytrail plates in a double plastic Desseret Industries bag onto the plane. I couldn’t stop laughing at her. I know it was not nice but it was so darn funny. My bags were splitting at the seams but at least I wasn’t hand carrying anything.

Well, there was one item I couldn’t get into any bag so it was in my purse.

Here is that item.

Not such a great move with heightened security–wouldn’t you think? Well, the Salt Lake City Airport security line is the longest I have seen in any airport in my life. It took us 40 minutes to get to the front. They didn’t give a rip about my mask–but they didn’t like the 11 dinner plates in my computer bag.

“Bag check for plates on #7.” “Bag check for plates on #7.” Just what was I going to do with those plates anyway that would be a breach of national security? Hurl them towards the pilots? I just don’t know but it took at least five minutes for an employee to show up to hand check my plates. (She was actually on a break and was so sweet to help)

Here is my bag check for plates—not the scary mask!

And why did Maureen get through security with her plates loose on the conveyer belt? Only in a double or triple plastic bag? I will never figure this all out but we were laughing so hard!

Tip #6: Always hand carry dinner plates and keep scary masks in your purse. Just kidding. I couldn’t resist.

Anyway, I have those 36 items now all listed in 36 separate auctions. I know that I will eventually get at least $9.99 for each one–so on a $33 investment, I am hoping for a $360 gross or about $330 return before eBay fees. Not bad! That will almost pay for our plane tickets to Salt Lake City.

Here is a breakdown of what I did buy. You can view some of the auctions and I will update you next week. Also, remember I broke them all out individually.

Tip #7: If it isn’t worth at least $10 leave it there. This same advice goes for any sale in your hometown. It isn’t worth listing if you can’t get $10 for it.

3 Studio Nova Plates

1 Studio Nova Paris Napkin Holder

1 Savoire Vivre Gravy Boat

8 Rosanna Shoe or Dress Plates

1 Zuni Coffee Mug

1 Disney Lunch Box

7 Bamboo Plates

1 Baby Mug

1 Baby Pair of Jeans

4 Purses

5 English Bone China Mugs

1 Trivet

1 Set Dansk Vases

Here is what Mo bought:

4 PoppyTrail dinner plates

1 Starbucks coffee mug (how did she find that before me?)

and

1 Mickey Mouse Coffee mug!

Here is a link to Mo’s Starbucks mug.

Salt Lake City and being at the eBay Certified Provider Fair was a blast. We always have fun wherever we go and part of that is to make every trip memorable by shopping local garage, estate and thrift stores. The eBay lifestyle always makes for amazing memories!

Happy eBaying!

Lynn

We are looking for your eBay success stories to share with our ezine readers and possibly make it into a book of our reader’s best eBay stories.

eBay PowerSeller and third generation antiques dealer, Lynn Dralle, is the creator of Boot Camp in a Box, the home-study course where you can learn to implement the Dralle Method to maximize your eBay profits.

If you liked today’s issue, you’ll love this step-by-step course that is guaranteed to be the most complete and enjoyable guide to selling on eBay that MAKES YOU MONEY.

Read all about it here.

The Queen of Auctions also offers articles, teleseminars, how-to books, tracking guides, DVDs, eBay Boot Camp training and other resources to help entrepreneurs make their eBay business a six-figure sales machine. Click here to learn more.

The Queen of Auctions/All Aboard Inc.

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Palm Desert, CA 92255

760-340-6622

Lynn@TheQueenofAuctions.com

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