In these times of economic uncertainty, many people are actually looking at ways of either reducing their spending, increasing their income, or a bit of both.
The current economic climate means that people all around the world are feeling the pinch and trying to find better ways of managing and making do. Many people over the past couple of years have been subjected to a pay-freeze. This might protect your job in the long run and probably make good sense. However, the cost of living is still rising and a pay-freeze can actually seem like a pay cut!
One way of raising some money is to try to sell stuff that you no longer need. We all have plenty of items lying around the house that we no longer use. Electronic and digital gadgets, in particular, seem to accumulate in cupboards and drawers as we upgrade to a newer model with better features. Rather than leaving these gadgets and gizmos stashed away gathering dust, why not try to turn them into cash?
Selling on Ebay
One of the best places to get rid of these items is eBay. If you already have an account that you use for buying, it’s a really simple step to start selling as well. Even if you’re only making enough to cover your purchases, every little will help and reduce your outgoings — not to be sneezed at these days.
Before you start, it’s worth gathering together all the items you want to sell. Make sure that they’re clean and in working order and then take photos of everything you would like to get rid of.
Then, you just need to spend a bit of time listing all the stuff you’d like to sell. If you’re starting price for an item is $0.99, then you get to list it for free and just pay eBay a percentage if (and only if) you sell the item. However, be prepared to accept $0.99 for that item if only one person bids on it. If you have anything that you don’t think it’s worth parting with for $0.99, then it might be a good idea to wait until eBay hosts one of their regular free listing weekends. This happens about once every six weeks or so and it can be worth holding on to your gear and listing it on one of these weekends. You get to choose the starting price (the very least you would be willing to accept for your item), list it for free and only pay eBay their percentage if it sells. Do be careful though, if any of your stuff doesn’t sell within the specified time. You get the option to relist your unsold stuff, but this time you will have to pay the listing fees. If you really don’t want to do that, just leave all the stuff unsold and relist on the next free listing day.
Another tip when selling on eBay is to make sure that you know roughly how much it will cost you to post the item and set the postage rate accordingly. It’s no use selling something for a reasonable sum and then finding that you’re actually getting a bit less of a return than you would like because the parcel is heavier than you had anticipated and is costing quite a bit of money to post to the buyer!
If you haven’t sold on eBay before, there is an busy community section on the website where you can ask questions (or see if anybody else has asked that question and had it answered). The people here seem to offer quick responses to all types of questions and some of them have been successfully selling on eBay for several years. They are willing to take the time and trouble to help “newbies” to get started and are a great source of information on selling on eBay.
So, what are you waiting for? Go raid all your drawers and cupboards, check out the stuff you have stashed in the attic and start selling on eBay. You never know, you might enjoy it so much that you decide to make this a regular habit. Instead of discarded tech gear cluttering up your house, you could be selling it and using the proceeds to buy the latest gadgets.
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The writer Debbie frequently writes about finance topics such as starting a business, personal finance and currency exchange.
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[…] out your closets or yard sale for amazing goods that you can sell on Ebay. I did this for a long time and it truly helped. Amazon often has free ebooks filled with tips to […]