Tip Tuesday # 3 test it yourself

Have you ever been to a garage sale and found a great electronic item, asked the seller if it works and they say yes?  But then get home and discover that it doesn't?

save yourself a lot of money and bring along some batteries with you.
I keep some AA's with my garage sale money and C's and D's in the car that I can get to if I need.

Sometimes I get some weird looks, but I get tired of wasting my money on things that don't work.

If it requires a plug, ask nicely if you can check and see. If the seller doesn't want to, I'd pass on purchasing it, unless you know that the parts sell well, or if the item is really cheap.

It will save you a lot of money in the long run!
How about you, do you trust the seller?

Update on Seller Status

So, I called ebay a few days ago again to see if I could do anything about my defect rate.
I actually was on hold less than 10 minutes and got the option to have them call me when there was a rep ready. It was only 15 minutes later and she called me back. She was very nice and said that I was doing a good job and there wasn't really anything she could see I needed to change. She also said that since I wasn't actually below standard yet, there wasn't anything that she could change ratings wise to help me out yet. She said I wouldn't lose my ebay account next month, so we'll see. But I was able to sleep that night, so it made me feel better.

In the meantime, I changed all of my shipping times to 2 days- I kept thinking I was going to get my TRS back and wanted to keep my listings ready for that. But I figured if I have the 2 day option it should cover me in the case of a USPS fail again.


When I checked in again today, my defect rate has now dropped to 5.10% and my overall shipping rate is 98%, and my trending data is back up to 89.9%, so hopefully things will continue on the upward trend and I will be at 5.00% or less by the time August 20th rolls around. I just hope and pray everyone is happy with their items for a while. If I can make it to October the flood issues should drop off and I should be okay again.


I am feeling better about making this work. My weekly profit for the last 3 weeks is pretty close to what I need to replace my school paycheck, when added with our rental house money and the money I make from doing books for my dad, which we had planned on from the beginning. My listing everyday is really paying off and I am having multiple sales everyday usually from 2-5, sometimes a little more. When you combine that with my etsy and amazon sales I do pretty well. I am really wanting to get to 1,000 listings in August, so I have doubled my daily listing amount from $300 to $600 a day not including etsy or Amazon or multiples of an item. I have listed almost 100 new items this week! I'm going to keep plugging away and hope that things continue on the upward trail.  Thanks for letting me freak out with you earlier in the week, it's so good to talk to people who understand!

Tip Tuesday # 2 get the family involved

I love my family, they rock!  Everyone chips in some way to help me make my dream of working from home a reality.
For example:
my 70 year old parents save me coupons, watch for /buy items I can resell when they are traveling and in different places, call me when they see a yard sale, thrift store sale, pick up craigslist finds for me ( I live about 45 minutes from the nearest "big" town and try to only go to town once a week, so if they are in town they pick things up for me)
my brother and sister in law- save me shipping supplies, my brother also lets me have my uline orders delivered with his workorders, so I don't have to pay shipping! (my dad and brother own the family business)
my husband- watches the kids on Saturday nights so I can list/pack, pushes the extra cart, puts boxes in our package box on his way to work, tells me about sales and auctions, helps carry heavy boxes when he is home, works very hard to support our family and my dream and gives me pep talks when I get down

my 5 yr old son- helps me carry light packages, puts amazon FBA labels on items, colors on my packing paper :), loves to garage/yard sale with me, tells me the name of characters of kids TV shows, remembers MOST of the time not to tell people I am going to sell my purchases on ebay!

1 yr old daughter- hands me supplies, carries things to the trash, reorganizes my boxes and shipping supplies (mostly by throwing them on the floor) and likes to add her own toys and any other random thing she finds to my FBA shipments :)

Everyone helped me over the 4th of July weekend by putting puzzles together to make sure that they have all of the pieces.

I have awesome friends who save items for me, give me coupons, items to sell, share their knowledge of fashion and expensive brand names, things of which I do not personally know about.  


I am very blessed to have a family who supports me, even if they don't always understand what I do or how I do it.

Do you have some one who helps you, in a little or big way?

USPS don't do this to me!

AHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I just went out to put my packages from my sales last night in my box for the USPS to pick up.
Only to discover that they didn't pick up the packages from yesterday!
I called the Post Office, they said they didn't have a message that I needed a pick up.
even though I have an email confirmation from the USPS site.

That makes 6 dings to my shipping, seriouysly people, I can't take that many dings right now!

I am now going to call the USPS everyday to make sure they are coming to pick up, as even though I have shipped out packages almost everyday for the last 3 years, they won't just lift up the lid and check unless I have a pickup requested.

So frustrated that my livelihood is in the hands of other people!

I'm thinking of calling ebay again to see if I can get any other answers.  I have the confirmation email from the USPS, so maybe I could send that to ebay to prove I did it?

I know that God is in control and it will work out how He wants it to, no matter what I do, it's just so hard to let it go!

Update: Trying not to Panic!

Well, what a big waste of time!
I spent over 4 hours on the phone to ebay- mostly on hold.
I talked to 4 different ebay people for a combined 2 minutes or less.
The first guy said he would look at my account and then put me on hold. 10 minutes later he came back on and said that my rating was off due to an ebay glitch and it really should be 24 defects instead of the 21 my dashboard says.
what?!?
Then he said he wasn't able to help me and would switch me to another person who could.


After another hour waiting on the phone- while I put my kids to bed, cleaned off my dresser and started packing my order for tomorrow.

Another guy came one, with a heavy accent that made it difficult to understand, said he would look at my info and come back on, waited another 15 minutes and he said he wasn't the right department and wouldn't be able to help me and transferred me

another 45 minutes later a lady gets on, says she will look at my info, another 20 minutes, then says I shouldn't lose my ebay account, but my listings will be limited and then was going to transfer me to an account specialist- and before I could say anything to stop her, was transferred again.

Another hour later, and was finally transferred to someone who said they, surprise, needed to look at my info, put me on hold and then proceeded to hang up on me.

UGH! What a waste of time!

All I really wanted to know is can I still sell on ebay
when will my rating improve
could they remove a neutral and a negative from the time when the flooding affected us, which they promised they would do,
is there anything else I could do to help make sure my rating was better come August
I got none of that answered, but got to listen to the lady on the message tell about 4,000 times how important my call was to them.

And they expect me to provide excellent customer service?

And I have been checking my dashboard and my numbers never change until the 20th of each month, even though they say they are updated daily, how can I tell if I am doing better if they only change after a new rating?

so frustrated. I decided to just open another account and start listing some items on there, hopefully I can get some good numbers there and no lose that account too, should they decide to close my other account. This is not the stress I need right before my last paycheck from the teaching job !

Trying not to PANIC!

Ugh, opened up my seller dashboard today to discover that I am set to be below standard on August 20th. My defect rate is 5.24, and needs to be 5.00 or less to be above standard. 

My tracking for this month is at 93.33 for me, but only 83.33 for the USPS.  What the heck!
I am really trying not to panic, but I am very worried that I am going to get kicked off of ebay permanently. My last 9 months have been better, there were a few late shipments and open cases around the time that my little one was in the hospital and I ended some listings and checked the wrong reason, instead of no longer for sale, I think I checked out of stock- DING!
They won't disappear off of my dashboard until October.  I think I got an email a while back from ebay that said they wouldn't take away my account until next August to protect me from the new ratings, but I'm not 100% sure.
I'm not sure what to do, anyone have some advice?  I am thinking about opening another account, but am not sure if they would close both if I lost my first account?  I am going to call ebay tomorrow, I'll see what they have to recommmend.

Any one have some advice for me?  Anyone else in a similar situation?  Thanks for letting me panic to you, my family just doesn't get it!

600 listings

After several months of listing like crazy I finally reached 600 listings! 

I started May with 420.

My goal is still to be at 1,000 come August. 

Hopefully I can be at home more this month so I can get more listing done. 

August is my last paycheck from my old job. I'm starting to get nervous about it. But I'm going to keep listing and hopefully sales will pick up even more soon! 

Headed to bed for an earlier night tonight. I have been staying up until 2-3 to get more listing done. 

Talk to you soon! 

What's Happening Wednesday

Hello all,
I apologize for not getting my FBA series posted on Friday. My parents invited us on a last minute camping trip, so we went!  It's taking a little longer than I thought to write up each post with all of the screen shots, so it might be a few weeks before I post another one again. I was able to get 20 boxes sent to FBA last week, and they are all checked in now and the sales are ringing up, love that!  My goal to get 13 boxes a week sent out until October and then hopefully double that a week until Christmas. That's gonna mean a lot of shopping for me!
In case you are wondering why  I chose 13 it's because USPS charges me $13 for each weekly pickup, so I figure that's only a $1 a box, so worth not hauling them in 4 at a time myself! I'm not sure if thats a standard charge for pick up or not?

I am happy to report that the magnets from my last post made it safely to England, he left postive feedback and told me to let him know if I ever get anymore. Yay!

I have been listing and selling like crazy! I'm so glad, as I still hear some people are not having good sales.  I had 10 cha-chings from 12-2 am last night while I was up listing. Not really even summer stuff, just a little bit of everything.

Even with all of the sales I have been able to get my listings up to 570, I am still hoping for as close to 1,000 items as I can get by the end of August.

I have been listing some teacher items, and will continue to as I come across them.

I ended up having to do some major bookwork for my dad's business  this week (there went 30 hours of my life that I will never get back!) and will spend I'm sure many hours next week getting a new software program up and running for him- sometimes it's not good to be the only one in your family who knows how to work a computer. It's not the computer that's the problem for me, it's all of the math!  There was a reason I taught kindergarten, you only have to count to 100!

I have been keeping up with all of the talk on facebook groups and blogs about the new rating system and also the good 'til cancelled debate. I was doing 30 days, but have decided to go back to GTC.  Right now it is mostly my new listed items that are selling, but it sure is a time suck to list them each month and try to keep track of dupplicate listings. My new plan is list it and forget it, for at least 6 months to year, then re-analyze about what to lower the price on and what to dump.  I am also headed towards a below standard rating for August, I am working my tail off to fix it, but the numbers don't move up very fast. I had a few late shipment times last year due to the flooding, which are dinging me really bad right now!

On the home front, I signed up on the FLYLADY site again. I used to do it when I was single and it helped alot. For those of you who don't know, it's a great declutter and cleaning plan. I love that she tells you everyday what to clean and what to declutter to get your house in order.  My hubby and kids are already noticing the difference and I didn't even tell them I was doing it. Once the house is in order, I plan to start the same system on my storage shed to help me get rid of some extra stuff.

I am still looking forward to having a whole week at home without anything extra to do. August and school starting is right around the corner, so hopefully we can get a better ebay schedule going then.

Baby girl had her 15 month check up yesterday and Dr. says she is doing great and right on target, what a relief from where we were at last time this year. She is running a fever today and is cranky from the shots, so I am signing off for now.  I hope to have a post about the I did sourcing while on our camping trip later in the week. I tell my family, I can source anywhere, and I think they are finally starting to believe it.

Follow up to List it now- teacher supplies

I got this in my inbox today from one of my favorite teacher blogs.  I thought it might give you some great ideas for items teachers are looking for.
http://www.clutterfreeclassroom.blogspot.com

Happy hunting!

BOLO: Edward Gorey

I picked these up on a whim at a little Thrift Store not too many people know about yet. I hope it stays my little secret! I researched and discovered they are Edward Gorey Opera Singers magnets.

They were priced at 1.99 for the set and it was half off day!

I didn't find any thing else like them so, I priced them at $24.95, which I thought was a little high.
Apparently, I priced them too low!~ They sold in 12 hours and the buyer paid another $16 shipping to the UK. I would definetly look up any other Edward Gorey items I found in the wild, these were a keeper!

I've been listing at least $300 worth of inventory everyday, and it has really been paying off! I woke up to 8 overnight sales and have continued cha-ching all day today. Just put the littles down for a nap, so a very quick lunch for me and then listing until they get up!

If you sales are slow right now, take advantage and list, you'll be so happy you did when August rolls around.

Tip Tuesday: # 1 Tools that make the job easier

I sell a lot of gently used toys and other small hard plastic items. I also have issues with tendonitis in my thumbs and hands that can making scrubbing small things difficult. Here is my favorite go to cleaning tool that gets the job done quickly and effortlessly. I am not getting paid for endorsing this product, just sharing what works for me. It's also great for household cleaning, like the hardwater mineral deposits around all of my faucets and shower heads.

http://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-Reveal-Power-Scrubber-Grout/dp/B00IIVM2UE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403810080&sr=8-1&keywords=rubbermaid+power+scrub+brush