Before You Ebay First Get Organized

By Douglas M. Dubrish

Before you sell on eBay, Alibaba, Amazon, Etsy, Sell.com, or any other eCommerce site, you need to prepare, and get organized. Being organized is the key to success! Get your items organized before you decide what web site to list on. Prevent being overwhelmed, and use the methodical approach in this book that can save you time, lots of money, and trouble. If you’re looking to clean out a house or garage, basement, retiring from a small gift shop, a small Mom and Pop shop, clearing out a barn or selling those old collectibles on your shelf... being organized before you list is the key to success! This book establishes short term and long term goals with your sales project. How to shelf sale items in a systematic way, how to describe your items, inexpensive ways to box your items, and how to code the packed ready to ship cardboard boxes and more are discussed in this book. Here’s how to do it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas M. Dubrish
• Release date: Feb 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215494127

Douglas M. Dubrish

An author, researcher, and biographer, Douglas M. Dubrish was born in Michigan, U.S.A. He graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science from The U of NY Excelsior College. He is a veteran Air Traffic Controller of the U.S. Air Force; and the U.S. Department of Commerce, N.O.A.A., National Weather Service where he issued media warnings and statements, briefed pilots, and provided weather observations. As a historian, culture writer, and biographer he has authored many family histories and an increasing number of New Age books with compelling subjects.

Book preview

Before You

eBay

First Get Organized!

First Edition 2014

Revised 2023

Copyright © 2014 by Douglas M. Dubrish

Created in the U.S.A.

Contents

Chapter 1 The Long Term Goal

Chapter 2 Short Term Objectives

Chapter 3 Organizing and Maintaining Inventory

Chapter 4 Inventory Pricing for eCommerce

Chapter 5 Creating a Database File for Each Item

Chapter 6 Photographing Inventory in a Systematic Approach

Chapter 7 Describing each item to be unique

Chapter 8 Boxing and Shipping

Chapter 9 The Back Up Plan

Chapter 10 Recapping

Other Books

Believe in yourself!

You will meet your long term goal.

Chapter 1

The Long Term Goal

Perhaps, as a homeowner, sole proprietor, a small limited liability company, or simply as someone who has accumulated an abundance of items over their lifetime, it is time to think about selling all those accumulated items. Yes, all those items that are on your shelves or tucked away in your garage, barn, or closets. And, if the thought of retirement has entered into your personal 5 year plan you may want to convert that warehoused merchandise back into cash in a slow way. In this manner you will receive the largest return possible on your investments, which are just sitting there on your shelves. The key to doing this is to get organized.

If you are a homeowner the same holds true: Once upon a time you paid cash for those items, now it’s time to turn that stuff back into cash! The homeowner can have a yard sale or garage sale. However, you will still have a lot of stuff left over especially on rainy days.

For a small business owner the alternative is to have a one day auction on site where the highest bidder, who just happened to show up while passing by, purchases a particular item. If it’s a rainy day the vast amount of people you expected may not show up at your one day auction, and the few people who do come will place low bids on your merchandise. You would likely have to accept what they offer, according to the agreement that you signed with the auction company putting on the show.

To get the most money for your merchandise it is better to place it on eBay, or another ecommerce site, to a worldwide customer base, which is not affected by the local weather. You can establish your own Buy it Now pricing, or auction it off using a reserve price of the lowest amount that you would accept for a particular item. However, how you sell it is not the intention of this book.

If you have an antique shop, a second hand bookstore, a warehouse full of automotive parts, a hardware store, plumbing company, or a collection of specialty items from a long time established gift shop, the process of liquidating your assets back into cash is going to be basically the same. The key to success is to be organized before you list on any ecommerce site.

This will indeed be a tedious task to be sure. Nevertheless, a profitable one. This is why setting a long term goal of 5 years, to sell off all your inventory items can only be accomplished through reaching many short term goals. These short term goals will ultimately merge together, and by doing this you will reach your final objective, or long term goal, of selling off all your unwanted accumulated items.

Commit yourself to the objective of: More cash in hand and liquidating your assets. This is