Okay, I just had a duh moment!

I've been trying to take advantage of the new free auctions. But I've been having a hard time with figuring out what I have relisted and what still needs to be relisted after the auction ends. I've had many of my items listed twice or even three times in my store. Something that freaks me out because of ebay's duplicate listing policy. I don't want to get in trouble to listing the same thing twice, when it's just because I can't remember what I listed and what I didn't. (I'm going to blame it on the new baby sleep deprivation experiment I am currently taking part in)


But tonight I discovered- totally by accident- that when you go to your unsold page, under status is a place to select relisted- and all of the items that you already relisted will show up there so you can delete them.

This will seriously save me hours!


So, now I am wondering if there is an easy solution for my other time consuming task-

Is there someway to select free shipping or take away free shipping with bulk items instead of individually?


Hope you're all having great sales. Things have been steadily picking up for me. Auctions and Best Offer have helped, as well as listing daily. My current goal is to list at least 10 new items a day (not including relists) and to make a profit of $200 a day. It's a very lofty goal for me right now, but it helps to know what I need to do.

I'll be back later on this weekend to share some of my recent sales.  Talk to you soon!

BOLO and helpful for the ebay mommy

Moby Wrap

sells new at retail stores for $54.99 and up.

sells used on ebay for $30 and up

excellent way to keep baby happy and warm and your hands free to shop at yardsales, thrift stores, or while you pull and pack your ebay packages.

Just sayin'

What else is there to do at 3 am?

I've been spending a lot of time awake, when the rest of the world is asleep. Little one's favorite time to be awake is 2 am -5am. She will be fast sleep in her swing, next to my recliner, but the minute I move her to the crib she's wide awake and screaming. It's harder for me to fall asleep for a few minutes and then be woken up again, than to just stay up.

In the past few days I have been able to list about 50 items, and have done some "remodeling" of some of my listings on Bonanza, etsy and ebay. My store was sold down to 430 items and I have been able to get it back up to 480. My goal was 500 items by the end of the week, but things keep selling, so I'm not able to get there- which is a good thing!


I know everyone says it, but it's true- the more you list the more you sell!

Here's a few of my sales for the week:



Jones New York Raincoat  pd 6.99 sold for $20 plus shipping
please excuse the horrible picture- this was the best I could do while my room was being built.


Non fiction book set pd. 3.00 sold for 12.00 plus shipping


1980's prom dress pd. 2.99 sold for 50 - shipping (within an hour of listing it!)

and my favorite new item I've listed in my store

https://www.etsy.com/listing/129005914/copper-carafe-corningware?ref=pr_shop


My goal for today is to list 30 new items.  My challenge to you is to list something new today, even if it's only  one item. It will help your sales.

And now for a Serious Topic

My very sweet hubby posted pictures of our little one a few days ago to let everyone know she was here. I'm so thankful to have him and the rest of my family here to help with little one and the baby while I recover. We are all doing well. I am resting a lot, and Olivia has been sleeping between 3-4 hours at a time. I have also been able to list a few things each day and reopened my stores a few days ago. I already have a few orders to pack and am getting back into the swing of things slowly. I feel very blessed with the family God has given me.

My hubby also mentioned that I had some complications that we weren't expecting, and this is actually the topic I'd like to touch on today.  My complication was that a few hours after the delivery I started hemorrhaging and they had a difficult time getting it to stop. It happened so quickly that my they were unable to take me out of the hospital room and my family had to listen to what was going on behind a closed curtain. Thankfully my hubby was there to hold my hand.  I ended having to get a blood transfusion of several pints and had to be closely monitored for several days.

Why am I telling you this?

Because for me it made a lot of things much more clear. Life is short and for me, being able to be a stay at home mom is a top priority, if only for a few years until both of my kiddos are in school. This is a dream of mine since my son was born 3 years ago. My hubby has not on board with this dream of mine all of this time, he didn't think that I would be able to sell enough to make up for my teaching salary. However, since we have come home from the hospital he is backing me one hundred percent. I'm very excited to sit down together and make a plan so that dream can come true one day soon.

I also thought about what would have happened to my family had they not been able to get the bleeding stopped.  There were a lot of things left unsaid and unplanned because you don't think of things like this happening to you.  My hubby has no idea how to access any of my online accounts, how to close my selling accounts, etc.  What would he do with all of my stuff?  If I left it for my children, who would run it until they were old enough to? If I had been too sick to run things for more than a few weeks like I had planned, I didn't have anyone trained to ship, list, etc for me.

It's not something that I want to think about, but something that I need to think about.
What would your family do if something happened to you?

My first plan is to train my step daughter and my hubby how to pack and ship items for me.
Then I would like to make a business notebook for my family that tells them:
where my items are stored "listed and unlisted"
where I sell things, and what the passwords are
how to put my account on vacation or how to close my accounts
bank information
tax information


Do you have a back up plan for your business?
Suggestions for something I missed?

Another blog post I've read about preparing for the unexpected
http://www.fruziescollectibles.com/staying-business/
http://www.fruziescollectibles.com/staying-business-physically/

She's Here!

Welcome the newest addition to the family.

Olivia Grace

Born March 20th 

8 lbs 12 oz

20" long 

Melissa had some serious complications and is taking some extra time to recover, but everyone is home now and doing much better. 

Does it ever end . . .

A quick recap of my last 9 months of pregnancy:
Months 1-5 morning sickness
Months 5-10 back/walking issues
Month 7 failed glucose test/borderline diabetic
Month 8 RSV
Month 9-10 Quarantined from family due to everyone having influenza A except me, hubby is at his mom's and little one is with my parents, and yes, we all have had our flu shots.

there are days I think it will never end!

So, while I have the whole house to my self for the next 5 days, I decided to list as many items as I can with what I have in the house- since it is blizzarding outside and there are 8-10" of snow outside my front door. I have also washed 10 loads of laundry in an attempt to disinfect the house. I have also clorox wiped the phone, remotes, door handles and anything else I could think of that might be contaminated.

So far today I have listed rubber stamps, clothing, some books I cleaned off a shelf. Tomorrow my plan is to  go thru little one's toys to see what I can downsize and sell, finish putting the baby's clothes away- a friend at school just gave me 3 huge totes of clothes so I now need to put away all of the 0-3 month clothes and just put the newborn clothes in the drawers for now. My son only wore newborns for 1 day, since he was almost 10 pounds when he was born. Our new little one will be born sooner and my belly is way smaller than it was last time, so I am guessing she will fit into newborns for a longer period of time.

Sales have been steady but usually small amounts, I'm usually selling up to 20 items a week, which is still way better than last year. I'm hoping to sneak in a few more sales before I close up everything for maternity leave on March 15th.

I don't usually do a lot of auctions, but I decided after looking at the completeds to try my rubber stamps at auction for now to try and get some fast money out of them. So far I already have 2 bids on the stamps a listed just a few minutes ago. Yay!  My mom has a ton of stamps she never uses/never used, so maybe while she is helping with the baby I can get her to bring some and I can list them. I took my photos of the stamps while sitting in my warm cozy bed, so they are very easy to list and ship- something I'm going to need for a while. If you have any rubber stamps around your house, be sure to check them, if they are PSX they are worth some money!

Hopefully the next post you see from me will be a photo of beautiful baby girl.

counting down  . . .

ugh, negative feedback

I was less than 2 weeks away from having my last neutral feedback removed (after a year) and getting to be 100% positive feedback only. Then I checked into my ebay account today. The buyer left negative feedback saying that it was not the shirt he ordered. Did he contact me first? No, of course not, that would make it too easy for me to fix things for him! I packed the shirt myself and it's the only shirt I have like that, so I'm doubting that it even was the wrong one.. . but whatever. I contacted and offered a full refund so we'll see what happens.One negative isn't so bad, right?
 On to other news....... having my stepdaughter come and take pictures for me has been a great help. I have been able to get my store back up to 500 items, and I still have a whole pile to measure that she has already taken photos of so I figure I should go into c-section recovery with about 200-300 more items ready to list! Hopefully there will be a little bit of time between holding the baby and being too sleep deprived that I can list some things. Sales have been slow, but not as slow as last year for me. I was reading Lynn Draelle's ezine a few weeks back and she mentioned that having best offer on your items would help traffic pick up. I bit the bullet and tried it on all of my items, I just raised the price to adjust for the difference. And I must say it's really been helping. I get at least 3-5 offers a day and while some of them are totally lame, and I reject them right away, there are plenty that I have counter offered and they have sold for equal to or more than my original asking price. I'm just happy to have some traffic to help with the fees during this slow time. 

And in Baby news. . . The countdown has begun. I am down to 16 days at my teaching job and 33 days until my scheduled c-section. I thought she might be arriving a little early as a few weeks ago I was having contractions that started 10 minutes apart and were down to 6 minutes apart when I woke up my hubby. I never went into labor with my son, so I wasn't sure if they were contractions or not. I had been sick for a few days with what I thought was a cold with a fever of about 101. My poor hubby was very freaked out, especially since we live almost 45 minutes away from the hospital. He called the doctor and he sent us in to get checked out. It was confirmed that they were contractions but they were able to get them calmed down and we found out they were most likely from me being sick. After the test results came back I was told I had RSV. Let me tell you, you don't want it! Most people my age are not at a very high risk of getting it, but working around a lot of small children exposes you to things other people don't get. I've spent the last 3 weeks trying to get over it. There is no antibiotic etc to help it and since I am pregnant my medicine options are limited. I have been trying to deal with the coughing with hot tea with a little bit of honey (as I also flunked both my glucose tests and am now on a diabetic diet) My doctor finally said this week that I could take some mucinex DM which has helped a lot with the coughing and congestion. Thankfully neither my hubby or my 3 yr old caught it from me. I am so thankful for that. We are in baby mode around here, trying to get everything organized, packed and prepared for the new arrival. I can hardly wait to meet her and see what she looks like. From the ultrasound profile she looks just like her big brother! I will keep you updated, but hopefully not too many posts from now I can post a picture of her.


 And finally, some sales from this week:

wire planter- horrible picture from my beginning ebay days.

paid 5.00, sold for $30

Ralph Lauren XXL shirt, paid $3.00, sold for 25.00

book lot of 15, paid around 7.00, sold for $40.00

I could have held out for more on these, but they are difficult to store and have been sitting for a while. I'd rather have the money and shelf space now. 

I am going to spend the rest of my day packing boxes for amazon FBA. This will be my last shipment to them for a while.  Hope you got to spend the day thrifting, garagsaling, or otherwise enjoying the hunt!