Little Steps: eBay

Showing posts with label eBay. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

I AM Back! Yes, I Am!

Fall in the forest!

I am back! Yes, I am going to start working on this blog again. It seems a waste to just let it go. My life hasn't changed much since my last post on here that was way back in 2013. That is sad to say, I suppose. It has changed in some ways though. One thing that is different is that I do not have the Amazon Pro Store anymore. I still sell strings on Amazon, but for the time being, we are focusing on my eBay store, katlupe's Shop and String Baby of course. String Baby is being worked on at the moment so I won't share the link till it is up and running again.

Vintage photo I have listed on eBay!

Some things that have changed too is that now photos are larger. The ones on this blog look so tiny to me now. That is the size that everyone was using back then. I remember how sites would say, "oh no, your pictures too big!" Now they are saying just the opposite. In fact, eBay wants them to be at least 1600 pixels on one side and encourage you to put up 12 photos for every item you list. Now really, how many pictures of a book or a vintage photograph I can do? The front, the back, the sides, on a book maybe the inside pages and table of contents. But a picture??? Front and back and that is about it.

The road in front of my house!

Now that the weather is getting colder again, I will be inside and able to do a lot more writing as well as working on eBay. Much computer work to do and catch up on. I will keep you informed and I have some ideas to share on here of how you can generate a living at home on your homestead too. So be sure to check back with me.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

What Does Many Streams Of Income Mean?

Binghamton, NY

As all my readers of this blog know, I LOVE many streams of income! In fact, that is what motivated me to start this blog in the first place. It has evolved a bit from when I first started it. Not the way I planned it from the beginning, but I like it better this way. My streams of income are doing much better now and I thought I should come back to this blog and let you know how to increase those streams.

1. Open an Amazon ProStore - Sell a product on Amazon. They get the traffic. All you have to do is list.

2. Use Fulfillment By Amazon - Send bulk amounts of products you sell to Amazon and they will send the products out for you. All you have to do is list them and send them to the warehouse. No customer service at all. No contact with the buyers. It is great if you have fast moving product!

3. Become an associate of Amazon by signing up as an affiliate. Include links to the products you think your blog readers will like or interest them. If they buy anything on Amazon after clicking that link, you will get a little bit of money. Maybe it is not much, but it adds up.

4. Be an affiliate of other networks, such as ClickBank, Shareasale and others. Or find sites that interest in that are not in those networks. Like VistaPrint or Netrition. Make sure it is something your readers are interested in.

5. Write an eBook. Yes, it is my favorite stream of income! Do you have an old book you put away because nobody would publish it? Or have a half finished novel or other book on your computer? Get to work on it and publish it in Amazon's Kindle Direct program. Money in your account while you sleep! Just keep writing more books, passive income keeps coming in.

6. Sell on eBay. Everyone does this one time or other. I like eBay and have no complaints there except I wish I could sell everything I list as soon as I list it! LOL

7. Sell a product on your website. I do this. But this is the hardest nut to crack. Pick a product to sell and sell it on your website.

8. Write blog posts for payments. Some companies are looking for bloggers to write about their products. On one of my other blogs, I write a post for a local grocery store and get paid for it. They contacted me after seeing a link to their store coming from my blog from a post I had written about shopping there. I found a wonderful eBook that tells you exactly how to do this and even gives you examples of letters to write to companies. The name of this eBook is Review Bloggers: Get Flooded with Review & Giveaway Sponsor Products written by Bethany Cousins.

So there you have it. These are my streams of income. What are your streams? Do you have some you'd like to share? If so, let me know and I will write about it or have you write a guest post for this blog.

FTC Blogging Disclosure

Friday, November 11, 2011

Don't Give Up!

Selling books is not as easy as it looks!

I may have told you before that I have stopped selling books online. Only certain books that are rare and hard to find are worth selling, for me at least. One book I sold on Amazon for about seventy dollars. It was a book on a business and I paid a lot for it myself. But not as much as I sold it for! The secret to that book was that it was not available anywhere anymore. Not even at the site I bought it from. I think the trouble is that you can buy books for a very low price everywhere. So it is hard to make a dime on it.

That does not mean I have given up selling online though. Nope! Not by a longshot! It is my only way to have an income. I sell guitar strings on two of my websites. The other site, LupeShop was a puzzle to me. I wasn't quite sure which way to go with it. Now I have found my direction, due to a very good friend of mine, Paula. I am making it into a site for selling eBooks. I like eBooks myself and that makes it fun for me doing the listings and all.

The other stream of income is selling on eBay. Now I am not selling books, though I may occasionally stick one on there. I am mainly running auctions of vintage items, collectibles and other items I come across. Now I am actually making sales! So must be it was meant to be.

Times are hard, but there have been harder times in the past. I think it is everyone's survival instinct that will prevail. If you have a don't give up attitude, then you will find your path. We may not be getting rich selling online, but we are able to pay bills and buy food. If I can do that............then I am content.

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.

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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