I found eBay to be a wonderful way to make some extra income.  For someone just beginning an online business, eBay is easier than setting up your own website and hoping that people will find you and buy your products.

How do I get a lot of stuff listed in one day?  A question asked by those who are wanting to turn their eBay business into a full time job.  I have also been asked about what my typical day consists of.  Another question is how to get myself to think of this as my job and that I need to work like I was at a real job?

It is easy to feel buried by your inventory, overwhelmed by the photo editing, and weighed down with the decision of what to list next – you are not alone.  No matter how hard I try I never manage to get more than 20 items listed on any given day.

Just take it one thing at a time!

Set a pace to work at that you are comfortable with.  A business does not grow overnight.  Staying up all night is only going to leave you feeling overwhelmed and wanting to give up.  You can’t expect to be able to list hundreds of items in your eBay store all in one day.

Start by taking pictures.  I usually photograph 10 items in a row.  That can be about 30 pictures at a time.  Then edit, upload to a photo host, and list those 10 items on Turbo Lister (just my prefered method).  As I list, I weigh and organize the items by putting them in resealable bags and on shelves by boutique designer, alphabetically.  This way the items are ready to ship once they sell.  Once that chunk of work is done, I make sure to upload all of those items from Turbo Lister to eBay, and I’m finished!

Buying in bulkcan make it easier.  If you have multiple items that are the same style but different sizes, it can go pretty fast because you can use the same pictures for all.  If you need pictures for many different items, it can take a little longer.

Spending chunks of time on different things is usually fairly productive.  You may want to spend an hour taking as many pictures as possible, then an hour editing the photos.  Or you may want to just try to get through one tub of clothing and that will satisfy you.  You will quickly determine what method of madness works best for you.  It’s being productive that will keep you motivated to get more done.

These are the methods I find work the best to help me build my eBay business a little at a time.  Hopefully you found it helpful in your business too!

When I was just starting out on eBay I tried a few different things to try to bring in some extra income without having to spend a lot of money upfront.

A strategy that I tried was to become a registered Trading Assistant on eBay.  I found it to be a great way to learn what was selling on eBay and making a reasonable profit, what was good for donating to charities, and what was better off going to the consignment shop.  After all, some money for my stuff is better than none at all.  I did a ton of research and had some trial and errors, but I eventually developed a trained eye.  I also had pretty steady flow of business from repeat clients wanting to sell their things on eBay.

If you decide to become an eBay Trading Assistant, here are some helpful tips you may find benefit from:

When starting a business you need to know upfront that it will take some time to build and become successful, so keep this in mind.  You are never guaranteed to rake in the big bucks, and it can be tough at times.  It is certainly not for everyone.

Can it be done? Of course!

Know your clientele – in the beginning you will need to do your research on what sells and what doesn’t, and this is especially true if you are new to selling on eBay.  Take the necessary time to do this and you will significantly increase your chances of being successful.  I was most comfortable selling for family and friends to start with, because of knowing them personally.  They were very patient with me and some even learned the selling process themselves!

Hold your clients inventory – This only makes sense to do.  Have your client drop off the merchandise at your home or go and pick it up yourself.  This will make it easier for you to take pictures, research, list, answer questions, and ship the item for them.

You may want to offer to the client that if their item doesn’t sell, you can donate the item to charity or return it to them when you give them their payout.

Commission or Resale – To start with I thought working off commission was the way to go.  Then realizing how long it ‘could’ take for an item to sell, I decided to develop a brochure to begin purchasing items outright for resale.  It made the process easier all around.  By laying out the guidelines up front, it took the pressure off and the clientknew I meant business.

In addition, make sure you purchase the items inexpensively enough to make a profit, but without ripping off your clients.  Most of the time people are willing to take what you offer just to get the items out of their home, but try to be fair.  Remember to treat them with the same consideration and respect that you would like in the same situation.

These are a few of the solid methods that I have found to be helpful to my becoming a success at what I do.  By doing so, I have been able to build up enough working capital to purchase items for resale, and build my eBay business without it taking too much money from my pocket.

The Back To School rush is a great time for selling clothing.  However, what do you do after the Back To School season is past?

Shop of course!  There are plenty of Summer Clearance sales to check out, especially at consignment shops.  It has taken me some practice to learn the in’s and out’s of these stores, but the following is some great advice for the thrifty mom:

A commonly asked question when shopping for gently used clothing is what do you look for and how do you know when to be looking for those deals to make a reasonable profit?  Make sure to know the policies, payouts, best drop off days, and especially know when the sales are.

We are lucky to have a very popular consignment shop in a town nearby.  Actually it is one of the only remaining consignment shops in our area.  They only accept the top brands – a big plus when you are looking for the best quality clothing items, and they have sales for every season.  Not only are the items high end boutique and popular designer brands, they are already marked down significantly because they are second hand, but still in exceptional condition.  Most of the time they are 50% off of the already lowered price OR the best deal is when I can fill a bag for just $15!  Now that is a great deal for stocking up on my inventory!

I also stock up on clothing for my own kids and then resell the clothes when my kids have outgrown them.  This is a wonderful way to get clothes for pennies, and you can sell them online for the same price or more than they were purchased for!  I recently came across a complete Oilily set for $15 and purchased it for my daughter, and once I was home I realized the pants were still NEW with tags and they originally retailed for $109!  Can you say Cha-Ching!  I have already sold a Baby Lulu Dress for a little more than I paid for it last season.  It’s incredible what can be done with just a little searching.

We are all passionate about something, or have something that we absolutely love to do.  The choice to make money with it is up to you!

I could never have imagined that my career path would lead me to where I am today.  Also, I never envisioned that my passion would progress into what it is now.  Where I started and where I am currently, is like comparing oranges and apples.

Let me take you back to the beginning:

More than 10 years ago, I was a Retail Sales Analyst working in Corporate Banking with over 500 branches to report on.  At that time, I thought I was at the top of my career.  I was making an excellent salary, was in charge of many, and was well respected in the industry.

At that time eBay, still fairly new, was just a hobby for me.  However, I knew then that as I first joined the eBay community I would be there for awhile.

I soon realized that I had the buying side of eBay down.  As a ‘newbie’ still, I began to investigate the pros and cons of selling.  Then I realized – If there are such great purchasing deals on eBay, then it must be possible to make a profit selling on eBay!

Once I came to this conclusion, all chaos broke loose!  That meant that if it wasn’t nailed down to the floor of my house, then I was selling it on eBay.  A pure addict by this point, the fire was lit and burning out of control.  Everything and anything that had not recently been used or had been sitting around for any length of time, was about to be sold on eBay.  It was such a high!

I was working full time at the bank, making a decent income, and selling on eBay for some extra spending money – life was good!

Then I received a notice that company cut backs would leave me without a job within a year.  That hit me hard, I wasn’t prepared for this to happen in my life.  I loved my job and I hated to even think about being unemployed in the future.  Then, guess what other news we recieved?  We were going to have our first child!  You can just imagine the emotions I was going through at that point.  Having to leave the corporate environment at 7 months pregnant, was difficult for me.  Especially since my future seemed so uncertain.

After my daughter was born, I was torn with the decision of staying home or returning to the corporate world.  After all, both of my parents had full time jobs and we got through it.  My brother and I were latch-key kids and we turned out OK! 

In my heart, returning to work just wasn’t what I wanted to do.

We would survive for a while with one income, but we were not financially prepared to live comfortably on only my husband’s salary.  So my brain began thinking on HOW I could make this work AND still stay home with our new daugter.

So, I made the decision to try and turn my eBay passion into a career!  I began eagerly learning and trying to expand my knowledge base, and trying to figure out the secrets to eBay success.  I started selling everything from Monopoly pieces to my car, selling items for family and friends, searching yard sales, Estate Sales and Thrift Stores – trying to find the perfect profits to be made.

In the end, I kept going back to my passion for boutique children’s clothing.  And not only because we had a beautiful new baby girl!  Have you seen the ending prices on some of these boutique items?  Now THAT’S something I can get used to!  The real Boutique Clothing is an extremely tight market, and it is very hard to find at much less than 50% off retail, and nearly impossible to get wholesale unless you own a retail establishment.  But I was VERY determined to find out HOW to make this work without having to leave my home.

That is when I came across Boutique Bargains.

Boutique Bargains is not a store where you can buy Boutique clothing for boys and girls.  I wish it was that easy!  It is a private membership site where boutique-loving moms seek out mentoring advice and networking to help learn about selling boutique children’s clothes on eBay.  That was exactly what I needed!  Someone to help cut through all the stuff and show me how to make improvements on my money-making venture.  It was fantastic to be able to share experiences with people who had similar interests.

 I was a member for a couple of years, successfully sellling on eBay, and most important – still working from home.  Now, I am owner of Boutique Bargains!  I am passionate about sharing what I have been through and showing you how to succeed.  I am able to help other moms who are in the same situation and who want to learn and grow in their online auction business.

 Join me in Your Work At Home Journey to Success!

When it comes to getting great deals on the Internet there are a few rules to follow.

I want to start by making sure we are all on the same page and understand how this works.  Most of the businesses we find “bargains” at are small and can not afford fancy programs to monitor their inventory.  The MAJORITY of stores online have excellent customer service and will be sure to contact you if there are any problems with your order, and will do so before shipping.  However, on occasion and thankfully not often, customers have bad experiences.  So, please let us know if you happen to have one and what the result is.  We definitely don’t want to recommend a business that has repeatedly had bad service. 

That said, make sure you follow a few simple guidlines to make your experiences more enjoyable.
1 – Thoroughly read the store policies.
2 – If you are uncertain about something, place your order over the phone OR make sure to add something similar to “Please contact me before you bill and ship if you can not complete my entire order as expected”, on the order form somewhere when the order is placed online or in a separate email.
3 – If you do happen to have a bad experience, be sure to contact the business directly and talk to them about the issue.  Talk to them kindly and show concern for their reputation.  Usually kindness works extremely well.

The Importance of Doing Your Homework
Research, research, research, that is the KEY to success!  Prior to investing in anything; find out about your brands, find out the eBay selling potential, and find out what type of sale actually is a sale.  eBay is always a gamble.  Even the best powersellers can sometimes lose money on their auctions.  The goal is to come out ahead more often than not and make a profit.  Resources and Research are the KEYS to success.  Without them it’s like taking a shot in the dark, leaving you taking the long road to success.

If you have spent time surfing the internet, you have probably seen several programs that promise to get you millions of hits to your website, all for one low price.  You may have found sites that will promise you lots of traffic, but is it really worth the money?
Usually not.

Web Rings
Think about this for a minute or two.  For hobby sites, creating a web ring with some friends might be a good idea.  However, if you are trying to make a living off of your site, you may not want to be sending your targeted traffic to other websites.  Web rings aren’t a scam and many are very happy using them, but they are not a truly productive method of generating traffic.

Surf for Clicks
Another method for generating traffic that we want you to think twice about.  Have you encountered these?  You’re asked to view other websites for 20 seconds each on you computer screen, to earn points, so that your site will be included while others view websites for 20 seconds each.  Most people have multiple tabs or windows open, their kids are running around, the phone may be ringing, and so they end up walking away from the computer leaving the ads running.  This program normally doesn’t cost any money and it isn’t a scam, but there are many more productive ways of using your time than this.

Submit Your Website to Search Engines
Please don’t pay to have your website submitted to thousands of search engines.  The search engines are out crawling and they will find your site as long as you work on getting incoming links to it.  This can be done by posting comments on a few blogs, submitting a couple articles, or submitting a press release.  You can even purchase advertising and come out better than if you wasted your time and money submitting your website to the search engines.

Pay for Hits
Now don’t get this one confused with Google Adwords, a pay per click program that is highly respectable.  I am wanting to slam the programs where you pay money and are guaranteed that seven million people will come to your website.  I’m curious, where are these people and HOW are they getting them to your website?

Please stick to the tried, tested, and true methods of generating traffic to your website.  And, spread the word about the programs that waste your time and money, while doing nothing to help your online business succeed.

Watch out, ghouls and ghosts!  October is here and we all know what that means, Halloween is right around the corner and will be here before you know it.  Halloween searches and sales on eBay usually start to pick up in mid-August, with the peak around just before October 31st.  Many parents are looking for fun crafts to keep the kids amused, spooky décor for the house, and of course, trying to find the perfect costumes for themselves and their little pumpkins.  eBay even has a special Halloween landing page, be sure to check it out!

Who or What to be This Year?
The seasonal costume shops can be pretty annoying, with long lines and uninspiring costumes, who wants to endure that.  Fortunately, eBay has hundreds of thousands of unique and popular Halloween costume options for boys and girls of all ages, and pets too.  Whether the brave superhero needs a cape or the pretty princess is in search of a tiara, you can help parents save the day by leading them to eBay.

Kids aren’t the only ones who want to get the perfect costume.  There are lots of adult-sized costumes for men and women on eBay too, from wicked witches and sexy schoolgirls to popular comic book and movie characters.  The do-it-yourself-er can even find a large variety of costume patterns to choose from to create their own costume.

2010 Top Costume Trends
Wanting to find the hottest costumes for this year?  Here is a list of some current favorites for this year that can be found on eBay:
Movie Inspired Costumes
Lady GaGa Costumes
Jersey Shore Cast Member Costumes
1980′s Inspired Costumes
Roman and Greek Goddess Costumes
Vampire Costumes

Seasonal Fun
One of the most fun things about Halloween, aside from collecting that bag full of candy, is taking part in all the crafts and traditions that go along with the holiday.  Many families enjoy carving pumpkins, while other families look forward to making their own sweets or creating things to display in and around their home.  After the holiday, the crafty mom can pick up whimsical papers and embellishments to scrapbook and save those memories.

Décor and More
eBay is a great place to find collectibles, and if you are looking for seasonal collectibles you will find a plethora of Halloween items on the site.  While vintage and modern Halloween items are popular with buyers, current collectibles are the most highly sought after.  Anything from the classic Dept 56 Halloween villages and accessories to skeletons in varying shapes and sizes are selling on eBay.  Buyers will be looking for treats to trick out their homes, including clings and signs to decorate the windows and walls.  There are plenty of kooky and spooky kitchen accessories, and many imaginative items to create an especially ghoulish graveyard in the yard.

Can you believe Summer will be over in a few short weeks?  My oldest daughter will be heading to Second Grade this September.  My days will be filled with running her to/from the bus stop twice a day, with my now 16 month old on my hip.  Nights full of homework, and early bed time stories. 

Let’s not forget that eBay Back To School Sales will be winding down this month!  Get out those costumes and stock Halloween in your store, if you haven’t been doing so already!  Plus, any winter coats or extra heavy clothing items that you’ve been itching to get out of the house to free up some storage will need to be ready to go this month as well.

Finally, be prepared for any HOLIDAY sales!  Yes, Christmas outfits must be ready no later than October for family portraits! 

Happy Selling! 

The dreaded eBay downtime. Unfortunately as the seasons change so does eBay selling. It happens every year just like clock-work.

So What Now?

Believe it or not, there is so much to do now until July!

1) SHOP!!! eBay is slow because stores are marking down inventory and people can get what they want at a good price. Come mid June stores will be clearancing out all of their summer merchandise, making it a resellers “paradise”. A lot of stores even have fall/winter items still hanging around at unbelievable prices. Online “boutique” resources run a pinch differently and are going to be slashing prices in June-Aug. The array of stores slashing prices will be unbelievable. Right now we are in a bit of a limbo, but now is a perfect time to hit leftover fall and winter items online. It just takes a lot more scouring right now. The *bonus* is not having to hold your inventory for more than a couple months.

2) Prepare for selling season. Selling seasons are VERY busy answering bidder emails, creating listings, shipping packages and let’s not forget MORE SHOPPING! To get ahead between now and July, take a few pictures and create a few listings every couple of days. Before you know it you will have all of your items ready to list. If you are using an auction management source like TurboLister, you can store and even schedule your listings in advance. Imagine the work load you will have eliminated when things start heating up.

3) Venture into other avenues. Yes, eBay is slow. It is VERY slow in children’s clothing, but that doesn’t mean nothing is selling well. Parents are in the market for outdoor play toys such as Little Tikes, Fisher Price & Step 2. These items are more difficult to ship, but if you are willing, you can reap fabulous rewards. (Another market that seems to do well is “designer purses”.) Just make sure you do your research before entering into a new market or any market for that matter.

4) Garage Sales! Literally an eBayer’s “gold mine”, you can not only hunt for “boutique” clothing, but anything valuable. (Designer purses & outdoor toys can all be picked up at garage sales for practically nothing.)

5) Goodwill. Hit your local Goodwill, as this is where many people take their garage sale leftovers.

Hmmm….CUTE CREATIVE video!!  I was checking out my email this morning and I came across some creative uses for bubble wrap!  It’s not just for packing anymore!!

Check out the video!

http://www.comcast.net/video/creative-uses-for-bubble-wrap/1500209344