OK, since I’m already all mixed up and doing “Wordless Wednesday” on Thursday…I might as well totally blow it and add words. 
First Photo: Listed Inventory- neatly stored and easy to find things.
Second Photo: Unlisted mess!
Just another reason to keep listing!!!
Let’s get busy!
It’s nearing the end of the school year. Soon the kids will be home wanting all of your attention and warm weather will be beckoning you outdoors. You know there won’t be as much time for you to devote to your eBay store or other online business.
Now is the time to list, list, list! For the next few weeks work to fill your store with all your unlisted inventory. Summer can be a slow time for selling, but you will continue to get sales trickling in…if you have fresh inventory in your store.
Need some motivation?
Reasons to list now:
So, put in a few hours a day now so you can better enjoy the weeks to come.
Got a tip for listing? Leave a comment and let us know!
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Yard Sales, Garage Sales, Tag Sales…whatever you call them.
They are great sources of inventory for your eBay store. People everywhere are Spring Cleaning and getting rid of stuff.
No babysitter? No problem! Bring the kids along (even your husband, too) and make it a family event. There are deals for all hiding amongst that junk stuff. It only takes one great find to make your day.
So get out, enjoy the Spring weather have a great time with your family and get some inventory!!!
It’s Dr. Seuss’s birthday today. Did you know that?
It’s a pretty big deal in our house, but I’m not sure if that’s universal or just my own little weirdness.
I love Dr. Seuss. Love him.
I wrote about him on my personal blog today (with a giveaway!) and as I was doing so, I thought he was a great topic for the HCTS blog as well.
It might sound corny, but I find him to be very inspirational. Perhaps the most obviously inspiring of his stories is Oh! The Places You’ll Go! It’s a book that I love to read to my girls, hoping they will take it to heart, yet I often fail to do so myself.
[Why are children so often smarter than their parents?]
Take this little gem, for example:
And when things start to happen, don’t worry. Don’t stew. Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.
True for life, and true for our businesses. Almost daily I hear from frustrated sellers who don’t like eBay’s policies, don’t like the way Amazon communicates, don’t like the system anywhere. We have a choice – wallow in frustration or accept it and move on. Being light on your feet and ready to course-correct is part of our job.
I’m sorry to say so but, sadly, it’s true that Bang-ups and Hang-ups can happen to you.
Absolutely. They happen to all of us. You will have a hard-to-please customer, an unreasonable return, a lost package, a chargeback, negative feedback, and various annoyances. Unfortunately those, too, are part of our job. I wish I had a magic way to fix those problems, or avoid them altogether, but I don’t. No one does.
And when you’re in a Slump, you’re not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
Just as mistakes and struggles in our personal life help us grow, difficulties in our businesses are part of the growing process as well. From each bad experience there is a lesson to be learned. Look for the learning and you’ll be better off for it. Don’t wallow! Giving in to frustration never equals success.
You can get so confused that you’ll start in to race down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space, headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.
Don’t go to the Waiting Place! If you learn to take setbacks in stride and keep moving forward, your business will grow. You will be successful.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and ¾ percent guaranteed.)
If you’re FLYing with us, be sure to get yourself completely dressed (hair fixed, makeup and shoes on!) and check in on the forums. And if you’re shopping today, keep an eye out for Dr. Seuss items. Many are quite valuable! Would you like to know which ones? Log in, or if you’re not yet a member, join today – I’m discussing them in the General forum right now!
Have a productive day!
Kid, you’ll move mountains!
So…be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ale Van Allen O’Shea, you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!
Are you all exhausted after the 280 Challenge? Do you have ANYTHING left unlisted in your house? Or are you burnt out on listing and looking to tackle a new project? If so, I believe Rebecca has just the challenge for you.
She posted on the forums about joining the Fly Lady program, and has invited our members to participate as well. I plan to do it this month, since I signed up last month but was too busy listing to clean anything!
This could be you!
If you’d like to play along, your goal today is simple – shine your sink. Get it positively sparkly and glowing, right down to every crack and crevice. Bust out the bleach and a toothbrush and leave no crook or cranny untouched – by the time you’re done it should be glistening.
That’s it!
The idea is that one small change leads to other small changes, and they are easy to work into your routine.
I believe the same can be said for our eBay businesses. Sometimes making one small change (like tackling Mt. Unlisted) can motivate you to make other changes as well. In a previous post I wrote about my inventory storage system. Once I bought these new bins, I was thrilled. Ridiculously, embarrassingly thrilled. The kind of thrilled that made me throw open my closet doors and stand back admiring my beautiful new bins for hours minutes at a time. More than once a day. And my closet looked so good that I wanted to make something else look good, too, so I tackled my desk. And my sewing room.
And now I need to do them all over again, but we won’t talk about that.
The point is, you can change. You can change how you run your business, how you care for your house, how you care for yourself. If you are active in our forums you’ve already seen that HCTS helps you in all of those ways (and more!), both personal and professional. And if you aren’t active in the forums or are not yet a member, then don’t wait any longer.
Now is the perfect time to join us. We’ll FLY through March together!
ALMOST HOME!!
Only 3 days left, can you believe it? You girls are sooooo incredible, and have almost accomplished something truly amazing here. You had the ability to do this inside of you, all this time. Why did you ever doubt yourself?
TODAY’S CHALLENGE: A picture is worth a thousand words. Go for 5,000! Good pictures go sooooooo far in getting your item sold. Today, experiment with adding more pictures to something you normally wouldn’t take a lot of pictures of (a shirt, for example)-for today’s challenge, let’s go for 5 pictures. Normally, I would take just one picture of the shirt lying flat. If I were photographing this shirts for today’s challenge-I would 1)take the beforementioned photo, 2)take at least one close-up photo of an interesting detail, 3) take a photo of the shirt on a manne, form or model, 4) take a photo of the back of the garment, 5) take a close up photo of the label. This will only take about 1-5 minutes more in your photography and editing time, but it will go a long way in letting buyer really “know” what they are getting!
Can you believe that we only have 10 more days of the challenge? It’s unbelievable!! We are almost done. Today’s challenge will be about sharing your stats…but first, another inspirational poem for you!!
Words To Live By
It’s not how much you accomplish in life
that really counts,
but how much you give to other.
It’s not how high you build your dreams
that makes a difference,
but how high your faith can climb.
It’s not how many goals you reach,
but how many lives you touch.
It’s not who you know that matters,
but who you are inside.
Believe in the impossible,
hold tight to the incredible,
and live each day to its fullest potential.
You can make a difference
in your world.
~ Rebecca Barlow Jordan ~
What has impressed me THE MOST about this challenge is the way we have all encouraged each other. We have celebrated our sales, pushed one another to complete each day/week, and have just been soooooo positive in general. That’s why I picked this poem, for this line:
“It’s not how high you build your dreams
that makes a difference,
but how high your faith can climb.
It’s not how many goals you reach,
but how many lives you touch.”
Because at the end of the day, if you sell thousands of dollars a month on ebay, but have helped no one else along, it’s not fulfilling to your spirit. You girls TOTALLY get it. I love you!!
TODAY CHALLENGE:
Show me the money/listings! Post about how many listings you started with, and about how much you have sold since the start of the challenge. Doesn’t have to be an exact figure-just a rough guess is good.
me: I’ve done 187 listings since the start of the challenge, and I have had around $1000 in sales.
This morning, as I sit here with my coffee, I am looking through itunes for music to listen to while I list. If you’ve never listened to music while you are listing, in the spirit of doing new things this month, why don’t you try it? It’s not that weird. I mean, people listen to music to exercise, right? It’s motivational!
Today’s challenge is kind of different. I want you to pick three songs that make you feel like moving, or have goal-oriented inspirational lyrics. Post your choices, and then tell us WHY you picked them. Here are my three:
note: these choices are pretty embarrassing now that I think about it, two of them are kid’s songs!!
1. “All Star”, Smash Mouth. My kids heard this on the Shrek movie, and wanted it on their ipods. Somehow, it ended up on mine!! It’s a good “warm up” tune, lol. Profound lyrics include…”Doesn’t make sense not to live for fun, your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb” Huh? That doesn’t make any sense!! But, girls, remember this…”only shootin’ stars break the mold!”
2. “The Good Life” by Hanna Montana. Confession time: I am shallow and materialistic. I like nice stuff, who doesn’t? Now, I’ll never be in Jimmy Choos …lol, but I do like to shop! Let’s face it. None of us do ebay for personal fulfillment or to help society, we do it for money. My dh, who is the sweetest, most quiet guy-rocks out to some EMINEM song about making money on his ipod before he goes to work some days! We all have to feed our inner capitalist, huh? Plus this HM song has GREAT memories attached, Scarlet and I love to sing it together in the car. :heart:
3. The best motivational song of all time, in my opinion- “Unwritten” by Natasga Bedingfield. “Reaching for something in the distance, so close you can almost taste it” LOVE LOVE LOVE this song!!
Have a wonderful day, everyone!!
These daily challenges have brought out *the absolute best* in so many of you! You don’t know what an encouragement it is to me to read your success stories.
But you girls know-that this challenge has not brought you success, right? Your successes have nothing to do with HCTS, the 280 Challenge, or little ole me. If you are confused by this statement, answer these questions:
You are a person who makes things happen in your life, rolls with the punches, and keeps pushing through!!
You cannot tailor make the situations in life, but you can tailor make the attitudes to fit those situations before they arise.
~Zig Ziglar~
I know nothing about golf, but I love me some Zig Ziglar!
Look in the mirror, friend-you are awesome!
Challenge: List something with stripes or polka dots!
Believe In Yourself And Your
Dreams Will Come True
Know what you can and want to do in life.
Set goals for yourself and work hard to achieve them.
Strive to have fun every day.
Use your creativity as a means of expressing your feelings.
Be sensitive in viewing the world.
Develop a sense of confidence.
Be honest with yourself and with others.
Follow your heart and adhere to your own truths.
Know that the more you give the more you will receive.
Believe in yourself and your dreams will come true.
~ Susan Polis Schutz
TODAY’S CHALLENGE: List today with the goal of SELLING the item within a week, or by the end of the challenge at the latest. Sounds simple, huh? Not for me. I always try to go for the highest price, not the quickest sale. Today…join me…in listing something “priced to sell”. Don’t give away the farm, of course-but be purposeful in trying to move an item out of your house!
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