Finance Gets Personal

OK, I’m officially OBSESSED with snowflaking my way to a new mattress.

First, we had a garage sale, which netted us about $240, plus I went ahead and snowflaked the $60 I took out for making change. So that’s $300.

Then, I started selling the books that didn’t sell in the garage sale on Amazon.com. Apparently, this is what I should have been doing all along! Within the past week, I’ve snowflaked $196.56 to the mattress fund from Amazon.com sales.

Of course, $196.56 is not my true profit. I’ve sold 25 items for a total of $182.76. Amazon took a commission of $85.95, and gave me a shipping allowance of $99.75. My actual shipping costs were $56.42, plus the bubble envelope mailers were about $25. Additionally, I did a little hustling on Craigslist and bought someone’s Marketing textbook for $35 and turned around and sold if for $66. Sooo…my net profit is actually $80.14. Not amazing, considering all the trips to the post office and Walmart, but much better than $1 per book at a garage sale. Plus, I’ve been paying the shipping and envelope costs out of pocket and snowflaking those too, so my mattress fund is up to about $529 now.

If you’re considering selling books (or CDs, or DVDs) on Amazon, here are my tips based on what I’ve learned this week:

Do a search on Amazon for your book’s ISBN (the number on the back of the book) to make sure you are listing the book under the correct edition. It’s easier to find the book you have for sale, and you won’t make anyone mad when they buy the wrong book from you.

Describe your item’s condition accurately. Amazon has standards for its condition options (New, Like New, Very Good, Good, Acceptable), and you want to be sure to follow them to avoid negative feedback. If you’re unsure, it’s best to be cautious with your item’s condition - for example, I usually put “Very Good” even if I think the item is “Like New.” That way, your buyer will be pleasantly surprised.

List your item at least 25 cents lower than the current lowest price. Unless your item is in a MUCH better condition than the lowest priced item, you need to have the lowest price in order for anyone to buy your book. This is especially important if you are a new seller because you don’t have any feedback about how trustworthy you are.

Don’t select any shipping options besides Standard Shipping at first. Amazon gives you a standard shipping allowance based on the type of item and the shipping option. You don’t want to offer international shipping only to find out the order you need to ship to China is going to cost twice what Amazon is going to reimburse you.

Speaking of shipping, you’ll find that many items are sold for 1 cent. However, it’s generally not a good idea to sell books for anything less than $3.50. Experienced sellers can nearly give away books and make money on shipping. You see, Amazon gives you a $3.99 shipping credit for standard shipping of books. Unless you’re a large seller with barcode discounts and access to very inexpensive shipping supplies, your actual shipping cost will be between $2.23-$2.58. Add another 50-99 cents for a bubble mailer, 15% Amazon commission, 99 cent transaction fee and $1.35 closing fee, and you’ll soon be paying to sell your own books if you’re not careful.

Monitor your inventory often to make sure your item is still the lowest priced one available. You’ll find that your item typically won’t sell unless it’s the lowest price, and even one penny can make the difference. Other sellers will get into pricing wars with you, so here’s another hint: If there is an unrelenting seller that keeps lowering the price but doesn’t have any other advantages over your item (such as a better condition or higher seller ratings), price your item the same as theirs. That way, their inventory page will still show that their item is the lowest price, even if it is just one of the lowest priced. Other people may do this to you to, so check out the individual listings once in a while to be sure.

Buy bubble mailers from Walmart and use the smallest envelope your item will fit in without damaging it. The larger the envelope, the more expensive it usually is. Walmart sells 5-packs of envelopes for decent prices, and I’ve found them to be a little cheaper than Target. Note: Only use new shipping materials - it’s Amazon’s rule, not mine.

You’ll usually want to ship your items via Media Mail, but with smaller books, First Class may be cheaper. Just tell the postal worker that you want Media Mail or whatever’s cheapest.

Reselling books you buy at garage sales or on Craigslist can be profitable, but be careful! I’ve been watching the books section on Craigslist for items that are worth a lot more than they’re being sold for. I bought a textbook and resold it, but I knew exactly what is was worth. Still, after it hadn’t sold within a few days, I began to worry - what if no one buys textbooks in June? In general, I’d suggest spending $1 or less on hardcovers at garage sales, and saving textbook buys for July/August (unless you’re not eager to recoup your money right away). In either case, try to bargain down the cost of the book - the textbook I bought was priced at $50, but I offered $35. Most people are desperate to get rid of these things unless they’re Amazon-savvy.

Are there any experienced sellers out there with additional tips on what worked for you?

Photo Credit: happy boxes by dchico, used under Creative Commons licensing.

I am sunburned, tired and sore. I’m also about $240 richer.

That’s right…we had a garage sale.

Given that my goal was to make at least $200, and that I declared I’d be pissed if I made less than $100, I’d say things went pretty well.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been reading garage sale tips from places like the Yard Sale Queen and Get Rich Slowly (click here and here). Here are some of the tips that I used, along with how well they worked for me:

Have a Group Sale - We held our sale during the annual neighborhood garage sale. This was probably the best thing we could do, because the homeowner’s association paid for advertising and had signs you could see from the highway. Best of all, there were two other garage sales within houses of ours, so you could park and hit three sales at once. We had a ton of traffic!

Advertise - I posted two ads in the garage sale section of Craigslist, and the people running the neighborhood sale posted one too. I’m not sure how much traffic came from Craigslist, but it did lead to our Playstation 2 getting sold first thing that morning because a lady had seen my ad on Craigslist and emailed me back with some questions. I’m also still getting an occasional email asking if we sold our microwave and video games. Since the homeowner’s association took out ads in local papers, we didn’t have to pay anything for advertising.

Play Music - I burned a CD of songs to play during the garage sale, but people started coming half an hour before the garage sale was supposed to start, and I didn’t even have time to go to the bathroom for three and a half hours, let alone get the CD out of my computer! So, the Spongebob CD player sat on the ground with no CD in it for half of the day. I could have sold that CD player at least 15 times, because everyone wanted to know how much it was. I do think people tended to linger longer once we turned the music on though.

Price Everything - While this took a lot of work, I think it saved us a lot of time answering questions. I had some clothes on hangers that we planned to make a rack for but didn’t have time, so they were just lying on a table. The clothes kept coming off the hangers though, so I was answering a lot of questions about these.

Have Some Free Stuff - Our most popular item was a basket full of stuff with a sign on it that said “Free!” I put burned CDs, coupons, magazines, McDonald’s toys and other stuff I didn’t think people would pay for in there, and almost everything was gone by the end of the day. People would sometimes ask, “Is this really free?” and I’ve never seen kids get so excited - “Look, mom - FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Sell Drinks - This was another one of our most popular items, mostly because it was 84 degrees outside. I purchased a 24-pack of bottled water for $3.98 and sold them for 25 cents each. I probably could have charged 50 cents, but we didn’t get the cooler outside until around noon, so they weren’t that cold. Still, we sold at least 20 of them.

Don’t Use a Cash Box - I think this is very important. We bought a bankers bag at Walmart, and I carried it around with me everywhere I went. When we started getting a lot of cash in the bag, I took all the twenties in the house. Things can get hectic, and you won’t be able to watch your money all the time. Unfortunately, my husband lost $20 out of his pocket during the garage sale. Someone found it on the ground and asked if it was ours, but he didn’t think it was at the time (realized it later when he counted his money). So, the woman then said she thought it was hers because she couldn’t find her keys - I don’t blame her, but you’ve got to be careful!

Place Your Best Items and “Manly” Items Near the Street - The items we placed closest to the street were the “Free” basket, a child’s art desk and chair and our electronics table (DVDs, CDs, video games). While this might have helped with traffic, my husband thinks a couple teenagers walked off with some video games. So you might want to keep your valuable items that can walk easily closer to where you’ll be sitting.

Organize Your Items into Groupings - For example, keep all the kitchen stuff on one table, all the home decor stuff on another, etc. This seemed to work fairly well. Actually, the way we laid out the sale made it so everyone saw all the items - we lined tables/items down each side of the driveway and in front of the garage, like an upside-down “U.” We tried to place adult items on higher tables, while a lot of the toys were placed on coffee and end tables that are on kid-level. In the afternoon, we went through and re-folded clothes, filled in blank spaces and put items back where they belonged.

Make It Easy for Shoppers to Test Electronic Items - The most frequently asked question of the day (besides, “Will you take a quarter for this?”) was, “Does this work?” Luckily, I had just bought a ton of batteries, so I got those out so people could test the items. We also have an outdoor plug-in by the garage. However, that wasn’t enough for some larger items. We ended up getting out some popcorn to show that the microwave worked, and hauling a TV down from our bedroom to demonstrate the Playstation 2. I also had to get out my stepson’s Nintendo DS to show that a game worked (although I struggled with figuring out how to turn the thing on and where the game goes!). We probably could have prepared better for this.

Price Your Items Slightly Higher to Account for Haggling - I did this for our larger items, but didn’t really think it would be an issue for items under $1. Boy, was I wrong! All day long, I was asked if I’d sell 50 cent items for 25 cents. I usually said OK. There were a few times when I didn’t accept a lower offer, and I ended up selling those items for full price later in the day.

Make Everything Half Price During the End of the Sale - Our garage sale was set for 8 a.m. - 4 p.m., but by 1:00, things were pretty much dead. At 2:00, I put out a big sign that everything was 50% off. This helped move a few things, but there weren’t any large purchases in the afternoon. If we do the sale again next year, I think we’d probably make more money if we were only open from 8 a.m.-12 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, instead of 8 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday.

Be Prepared the Night Before - We did OK with this, but at 2 a.m., there were still some items without prices. We got most of these priced in the morning, but still ended up not putting out some of our items until noon due to all the early birds. I realized later that we never even put out a bike we were going to sell. Bottom line - get started early in the week!

Get a Roll of Quarters, 25 Ones and a Few Fives Before the Sale - This was the guideline I used, but I ran out of fives fairly quickly. So I’d recommend getting at least $40 in fives. We also used the change from our change jar since we had a few items priced at 5-10 cents.

Don’t Diss Your Items - I didn’t really have much time to interact with the shoppers since I was so busy answering questions and taking money. I was honest, but positive, about all the items…with the exception of a talking Bob the Builder doll that I said I hated as I was putting it out on the table - it sold later that day for $2. Unfortunately, the Bob the Builder DVD didn’t sell.

Have Some Shopping Bags for People to Carry Their Items In - I had quite a few, but don’t usually save plastic bags. So I ran out fairly quickly and only had trash bags. Practically EVERYONE wanted a bag, so I’d recommend you start saving them a month or two in advance.

Keep Track of the Items You’ve Sold - IMPOSSIBLE! Of course, we only had two people, and my husband spent most of the time helping people test electronics, carrying items out to people’s cars and working on his laptop (”What? They want you to work from home during our garage sale?!?!”; “Excuse me, is that laptop for sale?”). I tried to keep track of how much my stepson sold for a while, but it was just not possible. We estimated that he made $35 from his toys and books, so that’s what we gave him (side note to stepson in case he ever reads this: sorry - I know you thought that number was exact, but it’s actually more than the $20 you were expecting - besides, who bought all that stuff?).

Put Any Items You Don’t Want to Sell Away - We tried our best, but still had multiple requests to purchase our CD player, my husband’s laptop (which he was working on), our TV (which was only out to test the PS2) and our coffee and end tables (which were displaying toys). Strangest request: We have an Irish beer poster that’s been folded up in our closet for a few years, and at the bottom it has a spot for the bar to write its weekly special or whatever. Well, I wrote “Garage Sale” and taped it to the garage door with painters tape. Within an hour, the sign had been purchased by an Irish guy for $2.

The Bottom Line:
I’m pretty pleased with our sale. Our best-selling items included DVDs, CDs, video games, kitchen items, jewelry, Yu-Gi-Oh/Baseball/Football cards, small toys, children’s books and the bottled water. Even after ordering pizza, buying signs/price stickers and paying my stepson for his items, we ended up with about $240 to use toward our new mattress. Although that night I decided we’d never have a garage sale again, I think it’s something I could handle once a year. I’m going to list a few of our more valuable items on Craigslist and take an expensive dress to the consignment store this week, then donate everything else to charity. Hey, I think I’m halfway done with organizing my basement now!

(This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Mrs. Micah.)

Photo Credit: Garage Sale by Lance McCord, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Welcome to the eighth installment of the Carnival of Snowflaking!

Today we’ll be taking a look at infamous quotes from some famous “flakes.”

Jessica Simpson

Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says ‘Chicken of the Sea.’

I’m not anorexic. I’m from Texas! Are there people from Texas who are anorexic?

Is it kinda weird that I’m getting a little bit emotionable?

My Editor’s Pick for this week’s carnival is The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Snowflaking posted by Kelly Faysash at DEBT SMACK. Kelly presents a snowflaking tip that’s so simple, even Jessica Simpson could do it (you know, instead of dropping $800 for bra and panty sets that she can’t be bothered to ask the price of)! I chose this as an editor’s pick because it’s a tip I’ve started using myself. Sometimes, I also snowflake the amount when I do buy something.

Paris Hilton

What’s Wal-mart? Do they sell like wall stuff?

What is the Wall Street Journal? Is that good?

Ah, Paris Hilton. She may not have to keep track of her money, but snowflakers do. Amy shows us her method for Tracking Every Dollar at My Daily Dollars. It’s a highly efficient system. Perhaps Paris employs a similar one for her “little black book.”

President George W. Bush

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

We got issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OBGYNs aren’t able to practice their, their love with women all across this country.

Wait a minute. What did you just say? You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gas? … That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.

Rachel Anne Williams shares her Snowflakes in June posted at The Roost. Looks like Rachel sold a lot of books on Amazon - I doubt W. was one of the buyers, though.

Britney Spears

I’ve never really wanted to go to Japan, simply because I don’t really like eating fish, and I know that’s very popular out there in Africa.

I get to go overseas places, like Canada!

I always listen to ‘NSYNC’s Tearin’ Up My Heart. It reminds me to wear a bra.

Poor Britney could use a little guidance these days. Given her penchant for spending money, some retirement savings tips might help. Retire Happy has a Warning About Snowflaking into Roth IRAs at My Retirement Blog. This is good advice, but keep in mind that non-working spouses are also eligible to contribute to Roth IRAs. Which, ah, would have applied to Kevin Federline…

Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt

I would do reality TV forever. It’s so much cooler to have people come up to me and be like, ‘Spencer Pratt!’ and know my name, than to be Orlando Bloom, who’s famous for being some pirate. (Spencer)

I plan to win an Oscar. I’m very ambitious. (Heidi)

Well, I’m trying to be a billionaire before 30…I definitely want to go into politics later in my life. I plan to be governor, at least, and president if possible. (Spencer)

Oh, to be young and ambitious… But I guess if W. can be president and Marisa Tomei can win an Oscar, there’s hope for all of us. Anna’s off to a great start with snowflaking, as seen in Snowflakes in May, posted at To Be Debt Free.

Thank you for joining me in this oh so hot edition of the Carnival of Snowflaking. Keep snowflaking, but don’t be a flake when it comes to your money!

I will be hosting the Carnival of Snowflaking this Thursday. Snowflaking, of course, is the concept of using small amounts of savings or earnings beyond our normal budget to meet our financial goals.

If you’ve written a post about snowflaking in the past month, please submit it here by Wednesday at noon Eastern time. In order to be included, your entry must not be submitted to any other blog carnival, should have been posted within the past month and must be about snowflaking (duh!).

I’m looking forward to all the great submissions! For more information about snowflaking or the Carnival of Snowflakes, please visit the Snowflake Revolution homepage.

Photo Credit: tongue catching snowflakes by petit hiboux, used under Creative Commons licensing.

I am $15 closer to being out of debt after reading the “wanted” postings on Craigslist.

Although I’ve been selling things on Craigslist, there are some things I hadn’t gotten around to posting, had forgotten about or didn’t think anyone would want.

But then I started reading the wanted listings, and have had a wanted item almost every day.

Day 1: TV Rabbit Ears - $10 (I have some in the basement that I didn’t think anyone would be interested in)
Day 2: Baseball Tee for 2-Year-Old (I have one in the garage that is no longer used)
Day 3: Plastic step stools for potty-training (I have two, but didn’t think they were worth listing)

I emailed each of them with a picture of my item, the price and the parts of town I’d be willing to meet in and waited to hear back.

Although the TV rabbit ear guy had already found one by the time I emailed him, and the potty step stool lady never emailed me back, I made $15 by selling the baseball tee. Hooray!

I am kicking ass on the whole snowflaking thing this week. Here are the snowflakes I’ve applied toward my credit card balance since Friday:

$10 - Decided not to subscribe to Money, despite the awesome senior citizen offer (?) I got in the mail
$30 - Sold a fireplace screen on Craigslist
$15 - The baseball tee
$5.18 - Surprise! The Neutrogena bodywash I bought at CVS is going to be reimbursed under my health care FSA since it treats acne

Not big amounts, but everything helps! I’ll definitely be scouring Craigslist’s wanted section daily…

(This post was included in the Carnival of Snowflakes, hosted at How I Save Money.)

Photo Credit: Wanted - House Clearances - Single Items and Antiques - For Cash… by hugovk, used under Creative Commons licensing