| Will Crochet for Money by Jannet Harris |
| Imagine yourself standing on a busy intersection with a cardboard sign that says "Will Crochet For Money" Have you ever wanted to do that to feed your yarn addiction? Well, you do not have to go to that extreme. You can just make and sell your items on Ebay. There are also some Free auction sites but since I do not have any experience with that I am not going to comment on that area. I do have some experience on Ebay and will share all I know with you. The first thing that you need to do is to figure out what you want to sell and at what price. Open your mind and expand all of the possibilities. you may want to do a single item, kits, or multiple items for one low price. Think about what you enjoy doing the most and also what other people have complimented you on in the past. That should give you some idea of what to sell. Next you need to figure out what price to sell it at. The basic formula I usually use is double the price of the supplies and add in a minimum hourly wage. You might look at this price and think wow that is low, then add some more to it. If you think that the price is too high, I want to encourage you to keep it the same, because we all need to make a living and Ebay is not a charity. You worked hard on the item and you deserve to get what it is worth. The second thing that you will want to do is to look on Ebay for the item that you are selling. Do a search on your item to get a basic feel for the price, quality and quantity of your competition. What is going to set you apart from your competition? Is the price competitive? Maybe your items is much higher quality or you can offer more for the same price. Do not let price be the deciding factor for this comparison because we all know that price does not always win out. You never know what the bidder is concidering when making the final purchase. The third step is to list the item. That is not too difficult and can be done with a step by step tutorial on Ebay. Due to the necessity of specific information I am not going to spend too much time on that. Ebay also have a LIVE HELP button for 24 hour a day help to answer any questions you may have. Start out by listing a few items and if all works out as planned then you can open an Ebay store. I will go into more detail about that if I am asked in the next newsletter. (A quick note is that you need to list the starting bid. Some people say that a .99 bid does the best to attract new bidders but remember that if the auction ends with just a .99 bid you have to see it for .99. The only way to stop that from happening is to enter a minimum bid that you are willing to live with.) Lastly you ship the product to the highest bidder. I also like to enclose coupons and candies to attract them to come back for more purchases. Ebay has hundreds of thousands of sellers and it is far easier to keep a customer than to draw a customer in from another store. Please visit my store and I will give anyone who mentions this article a 10% discount on any item purchased. Clothes and Crafts Toner and Mor |