Shop Smart & Make Money Too!

New blog - follow me this way!

2012-08-05T23:23:00.000-04:00

To my readers at the mom shops smart blog - I've decided to start a new blog over here. Similar, but better! Please follow me at this link: http://ramblingsofathriftaholic.blogspot.com/
See u on the flip!

Ok, time for me to get serious!

2011-10-27T15:56:00.001-04:00

If you have read any of my previous posts, you know that I love selling on eBay and online, and I sell a lot. But if I'm honest, I don't consider this a serious job.

Well, my 3 year old daughter has been in preschool part time and next week she starts every day. So that's 4 hours, Monday through Friday, that I need to get serious. Especially since this is practically the holiday season, the best time of year for big sales!

If you're like me, I have a hard time setting daily goals for myself. But I know that without this, eBay and other online selling is a mere hobby for me. And my family can't really afford for me to spend 20 hours a week on a hobby if you know what I mean...

So this is my promise, my commitment to my family and myself. I'm putting it in writing for anyone to see. This makes it real. At the beginning of each week I will set goals on how much and what I will sell. This will be a serious supplemental income to my family's budget and I will make a legitimate and steady part time salary.

If you are reading this and you are a mom who finds herself in a similar situation, I hope you will become a follower of my blog and join me on my serious journey selling online!

"How do you know what to sell???" - Part 1

2011-03-02T12:27:00.008-05:00

My husband read my blog today for the first time and really liked it. I was so glad to hear his approval and when I thanked him, he told me he had posted it to his Facebook page. A little apprehensive that now his potential 500+ friends will be scanning my entries, I decided to write about a topic that could be beneficial to the masses. I put the title of this post in quotes, because this is the question that I am CONSTANTLY asked, by friends, family and other curious folks, "How do you know what to sell?"

Well, I could write days and days on the details of "how" and exactly "what" to sell. Although I hope to not be too long winded, I have decided to break up this topic into different parts. How many parts there will be, I can't say for sure, but at least a few. There are a variety of avenues you could take to break into the business of eBay and or selling online in general. First you need to ask yourself some questions:

1. Why do I want to sell things online? (clear clutter out of my house; make some extra spending $$; work from home with a sustainable income; start a legitimate business and make big bucks!)

-So depending on your answer to the above question, your path could follow any direction. But for the sake of this being hypothetical, I'm going to sort of combine the first two examples (if you are really serious and have the ability to start a business, email me at kimmy8251@aol.com and we can talk, though I recommend starting small to see if it works for you).

2. Now that I know what I expect from my online selling adventure, where do I start?

-Well first there are all the semantics - IMO the boring stuff - but you need to deal with the details up front in order to ultimately get paid. I can't go over each step in this post, but if you are familiar with the Internet, go to eBay.com and sign up for a user ID. You will need to provide your credit card and all personal info, but don't be afraid. As long as you are aware of each step, you'll be safe - I've been doing this for 8 years and never had a problem. Don't worry too much about what you will call yourself. Your name can be changed in the future. Once you have an eBay account, you will need a PayPal account - this is how you will get your payments. Again, go to Paypal.com and click on the link to sign up for a personal account. There will be prompts to walk you through the process. Paypal transaction fees have gone up over the years, but I still think Paypal is one of the greatest tools out there - I could be sleeping and get paid; I can be out to dinner in a restaurant, playing with my daughter, on vacation or even in another country and $$$ will just appear in my account!! And now paypal sends alerts right to my Iphone so when I get money, a sound happens and a box pops up on the front of my screen! I also have a paypal debit card so I can immediately use those funds - totally amazing - again IMO - I know there are Paypal haters out there...

I'm going to end here for part 1 of "How do you know what to sell???" Part 2 will follow and include how to determine specifically what products you want to sell. In future parts, I'll share about photography including uploading and editing photos; how to write product titles and descriptions, packing and shipping; and customer service. Please DO NOT be intimidated! If you want to learn right and take a lot of the guessing out of this process, there are quite a few steps to follow, but believe me it will be worth it! I hope those of you interested in online selling will become an official "follower" of my blog so you can get email notifications when I've posted a new message.

Regardless of whether you aspire to be either a large or small seller, I am so excited for you! The Internet is a wonderful platform to make $$ and who knows, maybe you'll even change your career!

PS - check out my eBay store to see the variety of products I sell and feel free to make a purchase!

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Dirt can be your best friend!

2011-02-28T22:09:00.003-05:00

It's hard to believe that we are well into 2011 - most New Year's resolutions have bit the dust and tax day is looming. I did not make any resolutions - I rarely do. But one thing I can take into this new year is an excellent lesson, though you've heard it before - "things are not always what they seem."

A couple weeks ago I was driving along a busy local road. I had just come from browsing a new vintage shop and getting my car washed. As I was headed home, my eyes wandered to a piece of land at the side of the road, that is well known to frequently have "free" items out on a makeshift table. I saw quite a bit of glassware and thought, I better just take a look. I turned my car around and pulled into the slush and mud filled area, not really happy since I had just got my car washed!

There were several glasses on the plank of wood and I proceeded to look up one type on my Iphone which I found out to be not worth my time of bringing home, cleaning and eventually selling. There was another group of light blue glasses there and I figured I couldn't sit at the side of the road and look up everything so I decided to take the set of 5. They were water goblets, covered in old dirt and sported a floral like pattern. I figured, if they were from the dollar store, I could just throw them away, since they were free and I didn't really invest anything - except I needed another car wash!

So... I get home and clean them up. They really are gorgeous! They are a beautiful light blue with pretty details. I took photos and posted on an eBay message board, asking people familiar in glassware if they knew who made them and what pattern it was. I find out they are the Mayfair pattern by Anchor Hocking and made only in the 1930's AND Mayfair is one of the most popular depression glass patterns today AND the light blue color is very hard to find AND they are selling for $250 EACH on replacements.com!!! Holy cow, it's like I just won the lottery!

To shorten this long story, I sold all 5 to one buyer within 3 days on eBay. I sold four of them for $180 EACH and one (because of a small chip) for $100. A total of $820 is not bad for half a day's work!

My tip to anyone reading and the lesson I learned - I ultimately picked up these glasses BECAUSE of the dirt. Now it just wasn't any dirt, it was OLD dirt. Like the kind that has been there awhile. So, when you are out treasure hunting, consider everything and don't be too quick to turn your nose up at something. AND don't be afraid to get a little muddy! (I seem to talk a lot about dirt, but hey, it's part of the job!)

For your knowledge bank, here are some pictures of my best sale yet!

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It's a dirty job, but I'm happy to do it!

2010-10-05T22:58:00.000-04:00

Wow, the days just get away from me! All of a sudden it's October and I haven't posted an entry in 2 weeks!
I have been so busy getting new items up on eBay and shipping orders, that's it's hard to find time to do any thing else (aside from spending time with my family of course) - including clean my house!

So, aside from neglecting my house, eBaying can be a dirty dirty job. From sourcing the items in the store or at a garage sale, to cleaning them and then shipping them with packaging materials, (I use newspaper, which is cheap, but nasty) at the end of the day I am longing for a hot shower.

Though there can be several dirty steps to the eBay selling process, I want to make sure to mention the messiness of the initial sourcing step. More often than not the phrase, "you get what you pay for" stands true - and generally in thrift stores, the cleaner the facility and the items they sell, the more you are going to pay. So - since I am cheap, I prefer to shop at the dirty ones!

Now I am not going to single out locations, but there is one thrift store I frequent that is just dusty, dirty and dingy. AND if you get a "RIPE" customer in there, it's 10 times worse! Like today for instance this fellow smelled so bad he basically dusted the entire store with his unfortunate body odor. Even if he had left the aisle, the smell lingered and was so potent I could practically see it! - ok that's getting mean and I digress, but it's so distracting!

Anyway... if I know I am going to this certain store, I am sure to pack loads of handi-wipes (my mother in law would be so proud). I literally get into my car and wipe down my hands, arms and my steering wheel!

The moral of my story is this - it's a dirty job, but if it means finding a $80 teapot for $2 or a $240 set of dinner plates for $6, then I'll smell body odor and handi-wipe down my entire car, any day!

Donations / Tax Write Offs

2010-09-18T09:44:00.001-04:00

I'm sitting here at my own garage sale right now. It's 9:15am and I've sold $0.50. I'm realizing that it is hard to get traffic down my street. We live off of a busy road but you can only get to us from one way because the bridge at the other end of our street has been closed. Unfortunately pretty much all GPS and online map programs don't know about the bridge being closed - though it has been for several years! So people can never find us! I put out signs at the end of the street, but it seems people are going to fast to stop and make the turn. Oh well - so, I thought, I can write my blog while I am sitting here!

Anyway - I thought to write a topic on write offs and donations because I think I am going to have A LOT of it after this lousy sale!

Another way you can save $ is by tallying up the worth of your items if you make a donation to a non profit organization. Now don't quote me on everything because by no means am I a tax person but I do know that donations are a tax write off. So if I donate all this stuff that doesn't sell, that will deduct from my income (in some form) and I will owe less taxes. Always talk to your accountant about donations and tax write offs.

Don't get me wrong, I would rather sell every last piece in my sale today, but at least I know I can recover the $ in some way!

PS - I finished writing at 9:45am and I've sold $15 - at least it will get me a couple Starbucks drinks ;)

Craigs List - an excellent resource

2010-09-16T22:19:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in the previous post, garage sales are a great resource for sourcing goods to sell on eBay. Another excellent avenue to purchase goods is Craigs List. Though it has become ridden with scammers as of late, if you search smart and ask the right questions you can usually weed out who is legitimate and who is not.

I have had mostly positive experiences on Craigs List. I purchased an 82 piece set of vintage Noritake China for $60. I had put a wanted ad on Craigs List and a woman responded. Turned out, she lived 1 mile from me! She and her husband were moving across the country and needed to sell it (*moving sales are a great source too - and usually you can get items at a low price). I was honest with her that I was going to resell it. She didn't know the pattern name, but knew it was from around the 1930's. Finally about two weeks later I started to list the china set on eBay. I had put up the tea cups, bowls & dinner plates. Within a couple days a woman in Wisconsin offered me $700 for the 82 piece set, plus shipping! She has a set in the same pattern (it was her grandmother's) & she is always trying to add to it.

Here is a picture of the gorgeous china:

It took me a week to package the set for shipping and I hired someone to help me, but it was worth it! AND - not one of those 82 pieces broke during transit - I was so proud! You too can turn $60 into $700 with a little research and determination.

*Helpful tip - many people selling items on Craigs List have a personal attachment with what they are selling - but "have" to sell it for one reason or another, whether moving, need money, etc. The more endearing and personal you are (be sure not to go overboard though), the more likely they are to give you a good deal and sell the item to you. Like I have said before, I always hear "I'm glad it's going to a good home" or "I'm so happy it's going to a person who can get it to someone who will enjoy it". And remember the art of negotiation - if you buy a lot from one person, offer a bulk or lot price instead of individual item pricing. It's a win for you and the seller!

The million dollar question - how do I start selling on eBay?

2010-09-14T21:42:00.000-04:00

All the time, I have people asking me - "how do I start selling on eBay?" Or, if they have sold on eBay once or twice, many people want to know how to take the next step and become a more serious seller.

There is soooo much information out there it's hard to know where to begin. I guess the best advice I can give is to be a detective - research, investigate, read, learn and obtain as much knowledge as possible. Read eBay message boards, google trends in toys, fashion, collectibles, pottery or whatever interests you. If you're not sure what you want to sell, think about what it is you enjoy - if you have an eye for interior design, you may want to focus on items for the home. If you love dogs, you can sell pet items and products for the dog lover. I even know of sellers who's inventory is based on a color - for example they sell everything pink - no matter what it is, if it's pink, it's on their site!

So how do YOU start? Put the pedal to the metal! Even if you don't know where you're going, most likely you won't ever hit a brick wall - very likely some sharp turns, winding roads and hopefully some freeways. Gather as much information as you can through message boards, websites, potential competitors, pod casts, friends, industry magazines, etc. Through your research you'll learn about yourself, what you're good at, not so good at, what you like and don't like. If you have the motivation and desire - you're halfway to the finish line!

As promised - secrets of the "sale"

2010-09-13T15:30:00.000-04:00

Secrets of the Sale

In the art of Garage Sailing – the saying “The Early Bird Gets the Worm” is an understatement

Look for sales posted in your local paper, Craigs List or other forms of local advertising (dailygazette.com, timesunion.com) – for Craigs List – when doing keyword searches, include terms like: “tag, yard, barn, garage, rummage, church and estate” with “sale”

Go through the sales and write down each one that interests you – try to keep them in a certain mile radius from your home in which you are comfortable

When making notes, be sure to include the address, time / day it starts and a quick little reminder why you liked the sale – did it have “jewelry” or “lots of kid stuff”

Try to go on the first day of the sale – IE if a sale is Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and you can’t go until Saturday – don’t make this sale a priority – not to say that it won’t be good the second day, but usually they get “picked over” pretty quickly

Number your list of sales according to time and location. Sales usually start between 7am-10am so if there are two sales in Albany, NY and one sale in nearby Delmar, NY, you will want to hit the two Albany sales close together (if the sale time frame allows) and then move on to the neighboring town.

Map your route – if you have a GPS in your car, that would be best, or you can mapquest your stops and print it out before you leave home. Be sure to check that your route has a nice flow and maximizes your time.

Make an offer when appropriate. If a seller has $5 on something, they are probably willing to take $4 – unless it is the very beginning of a sale, or if you really want something and don’t want to offend the seller. Also, if you are nice / endearing, the seller is more likely to go down in price because they like to see their items going to a “good home”.

Buy in bulk when you can – if someone is selling 10 Starbucks coffee mugs at $1 each – offer to purchase all 10 for $7 – remember people are having sales to get rid of things and make a little money – buying in a “lot” is usually a win for both parties

Be quick! Unless you are looking for a social event, don’t hang around and chat it up with sellers and other buyers – shop quickly and move on – you have a lot of deals to steal!

Don’t let an unorganized sale get you down or overwhelm you – sometimes these are the best ones to uncover that valuable treasure! Don’t turn your nose up at sales that are just thrown together – a bunch of boxes overflowing strewn about the yard – quickly scan / rummage through the boxes – you never know what you can find

Remember that buying “used” is buying “green” and in turn you are $aving “green” too!

When you get home – go through all your newly found treasures – call a friend and share stories of your winnings and the interesting people you met – it’s so good for the soul!

It's been a while - a quick recap of summer finds

2010-09-12T16:52:00.000-04:00

It's been quite a while since my last post. I had a busy spring and summer but now that my eBay business is growing, I hope to post on a regular basis.

Fall is upon us and we are seeing the signs here in the great Northeast with several changes - the leaves turning color, the temperature cooling down and the biggest one for me - the unfortunate end of garage sales :(

A fairly obvious way of sourcing deals & bargains is garage sales. Most people have them in their local towns & cities, but in locations that have cold winters, they usually only happen during the warmer months. Finding a garage sale is usually not an issue, it's finding the "find" that requires persistence, knowledge and the art of negotiation.

I did have some great scores in the past few months and I would like to share some of my garage / estate sale highlights from the 2010 summer and what they sold for on eBay. Hopefully this can give you some ideas on what to look for when you are out on your treasure hunt!

*1st edition, 11th printing of Alcoholics Anonymous book - paid $0.25, sold for $360 (here is a link to that completed listing.)

*Villeroy & Boch Design Naif Fine China Set - paid $25 for 20 pieces, sold for $275+

*Royal Staffordshire Clarice Cliff China Set - paid $10 for 16 pieces, sold for $156

*Warner signed rhinestone pink Cat face brooch - paid $2, sold for $46.55

*Weiss signed rhinestone AB blue green brooch - paid $2, sold for $70.99

And the list goes on! Those were just from garage sales - and there are lots of more avenues in which to source. I'll write about those in future posts.

I have recently received several questions about "how to garage sale". In my next post, I'll include my short how to article on the secrets of garage sailing - stay tuned!

See all our eBay listings here - or click our logo below!

Snowed In

2010-02-25T11:14:00.000-05:00

So today is the second day of a major winter storm here in the northeast. Got 13" yesterday and then half of it melted. We're set to get another 8" or so today and then wind. Needless to say, we're probably not going anywhere today, so while my daughter watches "Curious Buddies" on the Farm, (an awesome children's DVD series I might add) I thought I would start getting into my new blog.

Since I've really been ramping up my eBay business lately, I wanted to write a little about that. With jobless rates at an all time high in this struggling economy, selling goods online is a great way to make money and fairly fast. My business is Clothes Horse New York and my eBay name is clotheshorsenewyork. I sell everything from vintage items and collectibles, to men, women and children's clothes to toys, pet items and everything in between. Selling personal items that you don't need or want anymore is a great way to get started and get the cash coming in.

In the coming days I will share some tips on how to get started with selling on eBay and even share some of my secrets along the way.

Welcome!

2010-02-25T11:05:00.000-05:00

If you’re a stay at home mom who experiences challenges and triumphs both big and small every day, this is the blog for you. You will laugh, possibly cringe and hopefully learn and be inspired through this blog. I will chronicle my daily life as a mother to a toddler, wife, daughter, daughter in law, sister, sister in law, friend and entrepreneur. I will share how I make money from home, how I save money and shop smart, post coupons, recipes, photos, product reviews, household tips and everything in between.
I look forward to writing for you and maybe even learning more about myself in the process.