Two Years Before the Yahoo Mast!!!!

For the first time in what seems like weeks My auctions and my e-mail box are both silent and I thought I would take advantage of this time to say a few words about where I,m at in the wonderful world of Yahoo auctions.

In a few days I will have been participating in Yahoo auctions for 2 years. For the first year I was preoccupied with closing down my brick and mortar store and trying to stabilize my finances which the store adventure had nearly destroyed. I was able to get a few listings on and was at least learning how things worked.

The big turning point for me was in April of 2005 when Yahoo did away with all of their fees and became a totally free site. This was crucial to me because most of my merchandise shares two distinct characteristics that make it important that I have as low an overhead as possible. First, it is almost all very inexpensive which means that even small fees take a big cut out of profits. Secondly, more than 50% of my auction listings are replacement china. This is a line where a dealer must assume that he is going to have to wait 6 months or longer to find a buyer who needs the particular pattern that you are selling. Put these two factors together and you have a situation where you are selling an item for under Ten dollars that you have to pay around 35 cents every 7 days (on e-bay) for six months before it sells. That equates to $9.00 in listing fees paid to sell a $10.00 item. Then when you add in the final value and Paypal fees you have probably worked 6 months to lose a buck or two and this doesn't even take the cost of your merchandise into consideration. It's a no brainer. You are paying the auction site to let you lose money.

When Yahoo took away their fees (which I have to admit were much cheaper than the E bay group), I was able to start listing all of the rest of my merchandise and eventually sell it at a fair profit. I am now running about 1000 auctions with my only expense being my time (I'm retired) and Paypal fees. In the past year I have sold more than 1000 auctions with many of them for multiple units. A side benefit is that I have made dozens of new friends among my repeat customers. I admit my methods are a little unorthodox. I am of the rare breed (at least on the auction circuit) who believes in the old adage "The customer is always right!!".

It seems to be working well for me and I am looking forward to this next year with anticipation of many more good deals and a lot of new friends to add to my growing list.

thanks for listening.... the old guy

Another Word About Shipping

I have been wanting to say a few words about my shipping policies. As we all know shipping is an integral part of the cost of anything you purchase on line.

I use priority mail for all domestic shipping depending on the weight. Many people have requested that I use Parcel Post and I will normally not do this for several reasons.

1. There is really no savings involved unless you have really heavy items. I get free boxes from the Post Office for Priority Mail that are easy to pack and safely ship to you. If I ship something Parcel Post I would have to pass along the price of the box and the additional time involved in packaging. In 99.9% of the items I ship you would lose money.

2. I do not believe that Parcel Post is handled as carefully as Priority and I want to keep the risk down because most of my shipping is fragile.

3. Priority Mail gets the merchandise to you faster than Parcel Post, 2-3 days as opposed to 5-7 days.

4. Finally, and this is the most important to me, if for some reason a Parcel Post package is undeliverable, it will be returned to me and I have to pay the return postage. If the item goes by Priority Mail and it has to be returned the Post Office eats the return Postage.

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Another issue is Delivery confirmation. I have spent around $350 on delivery confirmation fees in the past year. Up until the postal rates went up I would simply pass that along to you. When the raised the rates I decided that I would pay this fee myself and I have for the last six months. The bottom line here is that in all this time I have never had to use the confirmation system once to track a package. It's a waste of money. I will continue to use and pay this fee whenever someone buys from me the first time, but after that I am just going to skip it.

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Finally, let's talk about insurance. As most of you already know, if there is a problem I will almost always resolve it to your satisfaction. I'm here to make friends and return customers, not enemies and bad publicity. The Post Office will only reimburse you for the amount that you paid me for the item. You are out the shipping cost, even if they accept responsibility for the breakage. Since most of my items are under $10, you will be paying $1.30 to insure a $10 or less item that I am going to reimburse you for any way. I do not recommend insurance on items under $50 and on more expensive items I will normally pay for insurance myself.

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What I am trying to do here is minimize the cost to you for your purchase. As in off-line (brick & mortar) stores, look at the total cost and buy where you get the best value and service.

Thanks for listening.... the old guy

Updated for content 06/09.

Time Flies By Again

It's been so long since I updated this blog that I probably lost all of my readers by now. I am going to try and update every morning before I get sidetracked with the everyday maintenance tasks on the auctions. Even if all I have to say is Hi.

I have reached another milestone and completed another resolution I made on this blog for the new year. I have finally reached 1000 Auctions on Yahoo. I hope to keep things within 10% of this figure for the next few months. I have a lot more merchandise to list for you, but I find that 1000 auctions is barely a manageable number. I do not use bulk loaders so every auction has to be individually listed and re listed.

I will continue to list new auctions, but I intend to start culling some of the items that no one seems to have any interest in to make room for the new.

I think I'm making good progress toward my goal of personal service for everyone. While I am here to try and improve my finances, this is not just a money making proposition for me. I have made many friends while I have been selling here for the past two years and I hope to make many more.

Thanks for listening, the old guy