Over the last few days I’ve been putting books and games on eBay.
I don’t think I’ve listed anything for less than fifteen dollars ($15). Mentally, that just feels like the right cut-off point to me. Lower than that seems like it isn’t worth the effort.
Back when I was doing this more regularly, when I was cleaning out my house and selling things off, I was doing fairly well. I’m guessing they have algorithms (doesn’t everybody these days?) that show your stuff to more people the more active you are on the sight. Now that I’m getting more things up to sell on there again, I’m starting to get eyeballs on the listings. More eyeballs will hopefully lead to more sales, thus getting more stuff out of the house.
I am surprised at some of the things that sell. Things you would never expect to sell in a million years, like a wind-up Nun that walks and shoots sparks out of her mouth, sell. (Don’t ask me how I ended up with that toy. I don’t remember.) Other things that I’d think would be popular and sell, don’t. Go figure.
I’m certainly not making a living by doing this. Between the postage (eBay is notoriously low on the amount of shipping they calculate for one of my packages to go out as compared to the Post Office actual costs) and time and gas to drive to the Post Office, I might be breaking even. But making tons of money is not the point. The point is to get stuff out of the house. If I make a little money from it, well at least I can buy a chocolate chip cookie now and again.
Oh, and I have found a use for generative AI in this process. I’ve been using ChatGPT to write short descriptions of the items I put up on eBay. They are short, accurate, and I don’t have to spend a lot of time trying to come up with a suitable description for the listing. It’d be nice if I could get an AI to take all the photos, crop them, upload them to eBay, and add the ‘specific item details’ eBay requires on all the listings these days. Now that would save me some time. As it is, I’ll take the time saving of having the descriptions written in a matter of seconds.
Ultimately, if the books and games don’t sell, they’ll be pulled off eBay and taken to Half-Price Books. I certainly won’t get nearly as much for them at Half-Price Books as I will selling them on eBay. And there is the drawback that I have to wait in the store while they calculate what they will give me for my items. These folks at Half-Price ain’t stupid. They know I’m likely to spend my windfall in the store buying more books. Which of course is not helping clear out the house. (I reiterate – it’s not hoarding if it’s books.)
The struggle continues. Send prayers, good vibes, positive energy, or whatever my way, my Hordeling.
If you’d like to support my efforts, why not buy me a chocolate chip cookie through my Ko-Fi page? https://ko-fi.com/jhusum