Tag Archives: ebay mistakes

Christmas Ebay Auction Mistakes

by

My mother bought my son that hot, new “Mind Flex” game by Mattel (I have to admit, I want to try it out too).  But, my son already wrote a letter to Santa asking him for one.  I’m sure Santa will fulfilled that request.  After all, he is Santa…  😉

Since I’ve dabbed with ebay in the past, and I know that the game currently sell for a small markup (it’s sold out in the stores), I told her I would buy it from her and try to sell it on ebay.  I bought it from her for $75 dollars, and I put together a quick on-the-fly auction for it on ebay.  Now some of the units were selling for $149 + shipping and handling.  So I thought it should at least sell for $135.  Unfortunately, my auction only went to $117.50…  I was surprised that it sold for so little, I really expected more.  And I was really disappointed after I subtracted the cost of the ebay, paypal and other miscellaneous  fees.  My profit on the auction was only $26 dollars.  Hardly worth the 2 hours I put in posting the auction, packaging it, and driving it to be shipped…

So what did I do wrong?

  • My first big mistake was that I didn’t spell the name like it was on the package!  I listed the package as MindFlex, but on the package it’s “Mind Flex“.  WOW, talk about a rookie mistake!  I should have known better!  Ironically a lot of other people spelled it the same way I did.  Still I cut down my audience by at least 50%.
  • My second mistake was that I posted the auction late on a Sunday night (well at least after 8:00pm)…  This isn’t the optimal time to list an auction one ebay, especially at that hour.  This cut down the audience too, although the customer loss wasn’t near as damaging as my “first big mistake“
  • My last mistake was because I posted the auction to quickly.  I set a fixed shipping and handling cost that I thought would cover any shipping cost in the United States.  Unfortunately, Hawaii is also part of the United States (insert long, drawn-out scream here)…

What I want to communicate with this post is to take your time with ebay and other transactions that involves money.