Little Steps: October 2011

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Little Steps On Wordless Wednesday

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Change Of Plans

I have stopped selling my books on eBay and Bonanza. Right now I only have my eBooks for sale there. I am using the time to create more of my own eBooks. My books would sell a few at a time, and not fast enough for me. I wanted them out of my house. So I offered them on Freecycle and when I boxed them up, I had 10 big boxes! Luckily my husband was able to pack them into the lady's van who came to pick them up. She seemed very happy with her bounty!

This has given me the time and space to make an organized area to put our inventory of guitar strings. Plus, I have a table up there that I am going to fix for packaging up the purchases. We have needed an area like that and now with no books on the shelves, we can keep the strings there for easy access.

I think maybe too many streams of income is not a good thing. Too many products to try to sell means that you are not giving any of them 100 percent. So I am going to be concentrating on my blogs, my eBooks and my homestead life. Maybe someday, I can get the guitar strings store producing a good income so I can sell it. It is not something I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Fall - Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Choosing A Product To Sell

I have three awesome websites. The only trouble is that selling guitar strings on two is much more difficult than I planned on. For one thing, the first thing I thought of when considering selling them was the fact that there are millions of guitar players world wide. I mean how many guitar players do think live in your city or town? Or how many do you think live in New York City or Houston, Texas? Or in Rome, Italy? More than a few.

The other factor is that my husband is a musician and plays the guitar. Now he is VERY critical of his strings. But since selling strings and learning about them, I have found that not all guitar players are like him. In fact, a family member who plays his guitar all the time, didn't even know about the different gauges or materials they are made with. Then I found out that many guitar players who buy a new guitar just use that set of strings that came on their guitar. They will replace them with the same brand and gauge instead of trying something else. Or they NEVER change them!

Plus, one of the best reasons I liked guitar strings was that they are small and easy to package up and ship. Shipping costs for most items is very high and eats into any profit you can make. Buyers don't understand why they have to pay for shipping. or especially why they should have to cover our cost of the bubble mailers, the labels, the ink and the transaction fees. But if the sale from them doesn't cover that and allow us to make some sort of profit.........what is the sense of selling to them? Just for the fun of it? Hardly!

So when you pick a product to sell on your site, eBay, Bonanza, etsy, or Amazon, what are the factors that help you decide what to sell? And how do you figure the shipping into your product? Then how do you price it? These are all questions I am pondering these days. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Selling On Various Sites

I have been away from this blog most of the summer. My work of gardening and canning has had to be my priority most of the time. That is not to say that I have been lax on trying to improve my many streams of income. That is also an area taking up much of my time. In between my garden harvests, I have been trying to sell various products online.

The last few months I have gone back to selling on eBay. Plus Amazon. Selling books on Amazon is very easy since you don't have to do a listing or photos. Just fill in some blanks and you are all set. As soon as I listed some, I got sales. Quite a few and pretty close together. That is surprising to me since nobody ever leaves me feedback on there. I have 2, compared to other sellers who have over 100,000 and some even more than that! I did get some sales though, so maybe everyone doesn't pay that much attention to how much feedback you have.

I must spend hours scouting eBay trying to figure out why some things sell and some don't. What makes everyone bid on one item and the others don't even get a view? I study the listings, the pictures, the payment and shipping information. I work and work at it, but doesn't seem to help. Sometimes I get the sale. Sometimes not. Luck? Who knows?

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