Tale of a Shooting Star…

Yes, it’s official. I’m hooked on selling on eBay. As long as I can move stuff out of my house and make a little bit of money, I’m happy, so three more items went up for bid tonight. One watcher on an item already (of course, no bids), so it’s a decent start. We’ll see where it goes. 🙂

Okay, I’m officially pleased with my eBay selling experience to date. I managed to sell all 3 of my last set of auction items. One didn’t get an actual bid until 2 minutes before the close of the auction – I’ve never seen someone snipe an open auction before. 😉 And one of the others had a little sniping war between two bidders at the end. I think the winner was using automated snipe software, so may have had an unfair advantage. And the third auction went to a person from Spain, so my first international sale makes me a little nervous.

It’s not like I’ve never mailed anything outside of the US before… I have a secret stitching friend in Canada to whom I’ve mailed packages every month since April or May and I’ve had swaps and exchange gifts go out of the country as well. However, SELLING to someone outside of the country (i.e. exporting commercial goods), as opposed to sending a gift, is a totally different ballgame. Well, not totally – same customs form, just filled out slightly differently. However, as a seller on eBay, the unknown variable of possible customs duties and/or taxes that the buyer must cover is a little nerve-wracking. I’m sure there are sellers out there who are marking sold items as gifts with no cash value so that all duties, tariffs, etc. are generally waived. HOWEVER, being the honest person that I am, I want to be a reputable business person and not cheat the governments. Even if it seems dumb to have to declare an item worth only $6.00. I’m just hoping that all international buyers are reading the line in my auctions that reads “International buyers will be responsible for any applicable taxes and duties.” Otherwise, I’m going to have the potential for negative feedback. And that would be bad for me at this point in the game. If I were a big seller, a false negative or two wouldn’t hurt, but for a brand new seller with a feedback rating of … 2 … I can’t afford it!

No point in borrowing trouble, though. That’s why eBay gives you the right to respond to feedback. If it happens, all I have to do is restate my posted position on duties and let buyers draw their own conclusion. As long as they bother to actually read my feedback and not just check the percentage and run away… I have to STOP this line of thinking. It is what it is.

In the meantime, I have two more listings written up and ready to submit tomorrow when I get home from work. I’ll write up a third one at that time, as well. Selling in groups of three seems to be working for me. Can’t wait to sell off more of this stitching stuff that I will never use!

I didn’t implement the anti-spam comment moderation plugin, but I did force some fields that weren’t being filled out before, so I’ll leave it and see what happens. In the meantime, I have disabled trackbacks (even moved the file), since that’s what they’ve been using today and I never get trackbacks, so it’s not functionality I’m going to miss! I also put a spam word filter on the comments, so it may nail some of these guys if they try again.

And actually, I need to correct myself. I did TRY to implement the anti-spam comment plugin but it made a holy mess of my blog and I couldn’t even get into the admin section to deactivate it. After a lot of screwing around and manual file editing, it’s back off. I may try it again sometime later… or not.

Okay, since I don’t allow comments anymore, I have no idea who, if anyone is really reading this, but I’m taking the blog down tonight for an upgrade. I started getting trackback spam early this morning and the whole not being able to accept comments, either, because of these jerks is really starting to tick me off.

Looking at the WordPress site, it looks like they’re supporting a lot more anti-spam plug-ins by default with version 1.2.2, so I pulled it down and will upgrade tonight, then install and activate at least one anti-spam plug-in and see how it works.

If all goes well (cross your fingers), I’ll actually be able to turn the commenting features back on! 🙂

Wow, I guess I neglected to mention trying my hand at selling on eBay for the first time the other week. I have to admit, they kinda bribed me into doing it. They offered three free listings (including the Gallery extra, for a total of $0.60 per item) for first time sellers. So, I figured, what the heck, I have nothing to lose! I listed a pair of earrings, which didn’t sell, didn’t even get a single hit, but that doesn’t surprise me terribly because the jewelry market on eBay is totally flooded. I listed a highly collectible Longaberger cross stitch ornament kit, which has gone for upwards of $20, but only sold for my opening price of $5.95, but I wasn’t terribly disappointed because I had gotten it for free. 🙂 And finally, I listed a matching, handmade kit of needlework tools – a two-piece dololly, two large marking pins and two small marking pins. And it sold well! I listed it for $9.95 and it ended at nearly $18.00. Not too shabby.

So, I was sitting here tonight, looking at my pile of old stitching stuff that I’ve been trying to trade for a while and decided that I pretty much had nothing to lose in listing a couple of things. They’ve already been long paid for, so if they manage to sell, anything I get is just gravy. I listed two older booklets and an older kit and will see how things do. Selling in threes seems to work so far, so if sometime this week I get at least one bid on at least one item I just listed, maybe I’ll list three more. If I don’t add too many “extras” into the listing, it’s not terribly expensive, so I might as well sell it to someone who will make use of it, right?

We got some more snow last night, an inch or so. Enough that Terry went out again with the snowblower to make sure the driveway was clear. Those bad (in a good way) neighbors of ours across the street where kind enough to snowblow our driveway after Terry left yesterday morning, once they had finished their own, just for good measure. They were so quick that I heard something while I was in the shower and by the time I got out, they were nearly done. It’s nice to have good neighbors.

And that made me realize that no matter how bad some of our neighbors may seem, we actually have it pretty good. We have the wonderful guys across the street, the quiet couple around our age with the two little ones to our left and the family to the right. As much as they seem to be nouveau riche rednecks, they really have been better over the past year than previously. With the exception of the golf ball they drove through the siding on the side of our shed facing them. And the couple other assorted golf balls of theirs that Terry has encountered while mowing the grass through the year. But that’s a relatively minor grumble. No rumbling of a cherry picker for hours upon hours as they string up half a million lights and that infernal plastic Santa and reindeer taking flight between the trees for Christmas. In fact, I don’t think they had any lights on at all this year. Perhaps that fine that we assume went along with the arrest for threatening the detective down the road hit a little harder than we thought. Oh, and there’s the gaping huge hole in their backyard that was probably intended to be the start of a swimming pool last spring. But hey, at least that overgrown, weedy cesspool isn’t on our property, right?

Yep. A big part of the workbook I’m going through this year is about learning to acknowledge the blessings in life. And once you really start to look for them, you realize that we all have quite a few things to be thankful for, no matter what our current situation. That’s proving to be a real eye-opener for me and is helping me to change my attitude.