Update: Back to my old ways

Back in April I blogged about my SIOC eBay business. For those that didn't read it basically I sold the free Sports Illustrated on Campus' that come in the school newspaper on eBay. Well that business came and went. They don't put them out over the summer (I was in Houston anyways), and when I got back all excited to get things popping again they decided to only put them in the bin in front of Gregory Gym. I decided to scrap the whole project and move on. It was no longer worth the effort although it risk free.

But a couple of weeks ago when I was walking through HEB I couldn't help myself. I saw a stack of the Texas only edition of Sports Illustrated dedicated to the National Championship. Same idea but with a little more risk. See with the SIOC's if they didn't sell no sweat. I lost the $0.70 in fees for listing it and I could chunk the magazine without thinking twice. This time it's a little different. If they don't sell I now have a dozen of the same magazine and I am out those bucks. Well luckily for me they did sell well and if you are interested in bidding on one feel free.
Another cost that I had failed to factor in when I was trying to determine what my break even point would be for this project was the shipping costs. For the SIOCs it was $0.83 and that was what I had used in determining the costs for this project. Well it turns out that the extra weight that is in a real Sports Illustrated jacks the postage costs up to $2.31. $1.50/magazine when you're already dealing with slim margins was kind of a big deal.

If you sell on eBay or plan to sell on eBay here is some advise. If it's possible list for 7 days and have you auction end on a Monday. Using Excel I've crunched the numbers for a couple hundred auctions for Sports Illustrateds and auctions ending Monday averaged the highest selling price. Also, at first I was discouraged to see that other people were selling the same thing I was but I used this info to help me. I searched every way I could think of to try and find the magazine I was selling and I added each auction to my favorites list. When the Auction would end I would put the selling price in a spreadsheet followed by each word in the listing. There was a large discrepancy between the sales price of the exact same magazine and it was because people were using certain keywords to search and find those auctions. I took an average of the sales price for each word and I found out which combination would result in my auction being viewed the most and hopefully bidded on the most.

Anyways, just my 2 cents and a little update. If any of you have clever ebay strategies feel free to comment.

-hj