Piles to Presents – How eBay Funds My Shopping Sprees

Last updated on March 4th, 2024 at 08:12 pm

Sell on eBay, what, who has time for that? We have washing, cooking, cleaning, blogging 😉 and raising kids to keep us busy enough. Well between all the swimming lessons, spanish tutoring, and music classes, my two kids have and the said list above; this is how I find time to sell on eBay and fund my shopping sprees.

1st Step: PILE UP

 

I start by putting a huge empty basket in a corner, somewhere out of the way and out of sight because it gets ungodly to look at, quick. Throughout the month, I find things around the house that are no longer being used, the clothes that the kids recently grew out of, the clothes I recently grew out of (haha), or clothes that lay dormant at the bottom of Mr. P.’s closet. Whatever it may be, I continue to PILE these items in this basket, as I go along. Once the pile reaches heights that threaten to topple over, which can take a week or over a month, I am ready for step two.

2nd Step: Iron/Organize

I usually do this at my kids’ midday nap-time or after they have both gone to bed. I pull all the clothes out of the basket and leave any other non-clothing items, like the Bumbo you see above, in the basket, for pictures later. If you know me well, you will know I hate ironing, I don’t ever buy anything that needs ironing, and I never iron my kids’ clothes either. So although I hate this step, don’t skip it. You will sell a lot more, if your items look in perfect condition, even if there are not. While I am ironing, I lay each item on top of each other until I am done, ending with a massive flat pile. That’s all I do for that day, otherwise I get sick of it and don’t want to do it anymore.

3rd Step: Taking Pictures/Listing Items

     

Again, I do this during my kids’ midday nap-time or after bedtime but on a different day or rather week than I did the ironing. lol Always put your items on a solid background, whether it’s your hardwood floor, kitchen tiles or a solid colored carpet. It makes the item stand out more. As you can see above, the background of the Bumbo distracts from the product and the Medela’s solid background on the right makes you zero in on just the item itself. Make sure the lighting is bright so they can see details clearly, which will save you time and money on only having to put one or two very clear pictures rather than a hundred zoomed in pictures. I used my iPhone, which is great to take pictures using the eBay app and then quickly typing in the information of each item as you go along.

Some key tips: don’t take pictures of everything then sit down to type out the information for the listings, this way is very time consuming and if you need to stop and finish another day, things get unorganized. I take a picture, then type in size, brand, condition, how much I want for it, etc then click save draft. I will explain this in a minute. Then I do that for all the items in the basket and in my flat ironed pile. Make sure you put duration on 10 days and list on a Thursday night. This way you will hit two weekends, which is when most people are online shopping. You have more of a chance of getting higher bids and selling more. This is only my opinion and I speak from trial and error. This is why I said earlier to save to draft in case the day you do this, is not a Thursday. I don’t recommend using the scheduled listing because it cost more money. I just wait until it’s Thursday night (about 9-10pm)  and click ‘list’ for all my drafts.

4th Step: New Present or £££/$$$

Keep the money or buy yourself a PRESENT with it. I wait a few months until my Paypal account is getting to a nice size then I go on a shopping spree or buy something a little nicer than I normally would, like this Tripp Trapp Stokke Highchair. I bought this off eBay too, click the link to see my review on it. I sold all Buba’s clothes from birth to two years for £1500, and funded Missy Moo’s entire nursery, new stroller and first wardrobe. If you have patience, it’s worth it. Even more of a bargain when you are buying and selling off eBay. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and no money out of pocket. Who wouldn’t want that??

So go, turn those PILES TO PRESENTS.