I Have a Secret

One of the things that's been bothering me all this time as I've transitioned into selling new, premium designer items is that I miss the quick petty cash I used to get from selling more inexpensive used clothing.  The less expensive the item, the easier it is to sell, which essentially amounted to quick pocket change when I first started out.  Now I actually have to worry about things not selling (not a SINGLE one of my items this week has bids), and while I have a pile of pre-owned clothes THIS high to sell I don't want that stuff to mix with my designer stuff.  It just feels weird to have my brother's two year old plaid J. Crew shorts mixed in with my brand new YSL sandals.  The other thing is that now everyone in my family knows about my eBay store and can find it through this blog, so I can't put things up for sale that they would give me crap about selling (like gifts I didn't like).

So.... I opened up another store!!  I haven't listed it anywhere, I don't track it nearly as closely and I don't plan on telling anyone about it so I can list as much crap as I want and not worry about:

1) My reputation being ruined by selling a pre-owned item that I disagree with the buyer about.  I'll be the first to admit my standards aren't super high when it comes to pre-owned clothing, and frankly perceptions vary so widely it's just bound to happen.

2) My mom wandering into my store and seeing that I'm selling the shirt she gave me for 99 cents.

The premise of my new store is that every auction starts at 99 cents, no matter what.  Do you guys remember how fun that was?  Anyway, I've already made $14, and it's looking like I'll close the week with some nice pocket cash for my troubles.  But sorry, I can't tell you where this store is or what it's called, because that would defeat the purpose.

Shhhh.... don't tell anyone.

Thinking Outside the Box

I have a creative side.  Those of you who know me know I like doing things that surprise people.  I don't like doing what everyone expects, and that can sometimes get irritating for people who don't like to color outside the lines.

I've been giving some thought to why some of my shoes haven't been selling as well as I would like.  I looked at the number of impressions they got (how many times they showed up in searches), I looked at the number of clicks they got, and calculated my "click-through" rate to see how many people who found my item in their search ended up clicking on it.

I came to three conclusions.  First, some of my items were not titled properly, and therefore not too many people found them.  Second, the price might not be attractive enough to make them want to click through and third, the pictures were not attractive enough to make them click through.  Well, number one and number three are an easy fix.  For number one I subscribed to Terapeak, an eBay research tool, to help me set a better title for my auctions.  For number three, I improved the quality of the pictures I'm posting in my gallery, but I also did this:

I'm using these for my gallery picture, hoping that they will stand out and make people curious, leading them to click through to the item description.  It's a risk, I realize, because some people may be put off by the "weird" gallery pictures, but at the same time I want my listings to reflect my personality.  I want them to be fun, not cookie cutter and boring.

What do you think?  Would you click through if you saw these in search results?

Carpet Stains, Be GONE!

No, I didn't clean (that's not my style).  Instead, I took you all's advice about my nasty carpet and did what Tammy from This Mama Works It suggested.  The result?

TADA!

Oh my God, WHAT A DIFFERENCE!  See? This is why I LOVE IT when you guys comment!!  More, please!

Me and My Crazy Publicity Stunts

I listed a pair of suede and patent Dolce & Gabbana strappy pumps for $9.99.  Brand new, $400 shoes for $9.99.

Go to the Listing

Within 15 minutes, they had a bid.  Ay ay ay.

This Blog is a Marketing Ploy and Other Platitudes

So, I've been working on my marketing strategy, and I gotta tell you I'm getting pretty discouraged. I need to drive more traffic to my blog AND to my items, I can't continue to rely on eBay's rules about listing visibility. They force me to take risks with the price of my items that I don't want to take.

I've tried a few marketing tactics since I started my eBay venture, and I have to tell you, I haven't really found anything that works well for me. I made the collage above to put in a flyer I'm going to be posting around my building. Unfortunately, I tried putting the flyer up on a bulletin board in the mail room but the management took it down. Facebook works to a certain extent, but the people who like me on Facebook are mostly friends and family, most of whom would never buy anything off eBay and many of them who have never set foot on this blog (some of them don't even know what a blog is!).  Twitter is completely useless and I get more and more frustrated with it every day.  I swear to God, tweeting is like talking to yourself.  No matter how much you support people there by retweeting their posts and engaging with them rarely, if EVER, do they return the favor, and few people respond to my tweets, so what's the use?

And then there's this blog.  Now, strictly speaking this isn't a marketing tool, or at least that's not its intended purpose. However, more than one of you has probably peeked at my items after reading one of my posts.  Funnily enough, I've gotten more reverse traffic (eBay to blog) than eBay traffic from this, which means that rather that a means for exposing people to my products, it's been a means of exposing my buyers to my business philosophy.  However, the thing I've discovered about blogging is that there is a lot of etiquette and frankly, a lot of bullshit that I have no energy or patience for.

So where does that leave me? I don't know. I really don't.  I think Twitter definitely needs to go, but not before I unfollow a few people just to screw with them (yes, I have a mean streak sometimes, surprise!).  I mean there's nothing that bothers me more than lack of reciprocity.  Facebook will probably stay.

And then there's this blog. I don't want to gradually abandon this blog, like a lukewarm relationship.  If I'm going to quit, I'm going to say good-bye to you guys and quit.  I don't think I'm ready to say good-bye just yet though.

What about you guys?  Do you think it's time for an amicable break-up?

Why Does eBay Hate Me?

Wow it's been slow.  Maybe it's because I've been listing higher price items.  Maybe eBay in general is just slow because of this weekend's sales.  Who knows, but tonight's auctions were terrible AND I have a non-paying bidder from last week's listings.  Super.

I'm thinking of putting my publicity stunt in play tonight.  Remember I mentioned it here.  I have a pair of Louboutin pumps I haven't listed yet, as well as a pair of $1200 Alaia shoes that I got for... well, I'm not going to tell you, but it's a LOT less than $1200.  I think the Louboutins would get me SO much publicity, but at the same time:

a) Oh my GOD what if they sell for like $9, and
b) Will people think they're fake or that there's something fishy that I'm listing a brand new pair of designer shoes for 99 cents?

What do you guys think?  I'm curious.  If you saw a pair of Louboutin pumps in your size listed for $9.99, would you bid?  More importantly, would you check out the sellers other auctions?

Send me your comments!!

The Ultimate Publicity Stunt

I've started doing something new lately, something I haven't told you about.

I mentioned in one of my earlier posts (or maybe one of my comments - can't remember) that I've noticed that my auctions are a good marketing platform, in the sense that auctions attract your buyers to other auctions.  To try to exploit some of that, I put a scrolling banner from Auctiva at the bottom of every listing, with pictures of my other listings.

That got me thinking.  Not all of my auctions attract massive amounts of attention.  Some of my items are more ordinary than others.  I've been buying to resell a lot lately, so a lot of them are price at lower but not unbelievable prices.  As a result, I only need one or two bids to do well financially, the auctions stay off the eBay "hot item" radars, and fewer people visit.

To test this theory, I've listed my cousin's pre-owned tan Jimmy Choos for 99 cents.  On the second day after listing the item, it's already been bid up to $5.50 and has 15 watchers, so I have no doubt it will sell for a decent price.  Is it having the desired effect of attracting traffic to my other items?  That's yet to be seen, but it's worth a try, right?

Anyway, I've saved the best for last, because you're really going to love this.  I've decided that if the pre-owned Choos have the desired effect, I'm going to auction off a brand new designer item with a starting price of 99 cents.  If I'm right, it will sell for its true market price and drive enough traffic to my other auctions to cover my losses. :)

The Most Fun I've Had Selling Myself

Errr... I think the title of my blog post might be a tiny bit misleading.  I was referring to a new site I found called Shop Style.  Shop Style is essentially an aggregator site for many other fashion sites- department stores, online retailers, you name it.  Not much unique about that.

What's AWESOME about Shop Style is that one of its features is an online forum (ho-hum), as well as a "look builder" that allows you to not only pick out individual pieces from the stores Shop Style covers but also to upload your own pictures and combine them with the pieces you've picked out online to create what they call "looks" that you can then share with the other members of the forums.

At first I had my fun playing dress-up, fiddling around the site, and generally being unproductive.  As I was building my second "look" I had an epiphany.  What a great way to get exposure for some of the pieces I have listed now!  Shop Style works a lot like blogging.  You leave people comments on their looks, and they come by and and leave you comments on yours.  The network effect at its best.  So I built some more looks, and in each look I included something from my store, and already I've had people take a look and comment on my items.

Curious to see the result?  Check it out!  I promise you'll have fun!  You can find my style book at: http://www.shopstyle.com/users/ElisaV.  I'll post a few individually, as well, and save you the trouble. :)

The Pictures I Would Never Post on eBay

I have a confession to make.

Sometimes the clothes I sell don't look as good hung or laying flat as they do on a model. So sometimes I model them and take my own picture... even if they don't fit.

Now that's hard to do with the size 2 BCBG pants I've got up for auction now (over here), but sometimes an item will juuuuust fit me and I will dare to snap a few shots.

Take this dress for example. Laid out on the carpet it looks kind of blah, but it's actually very sexy. I've been having a hard time selling it because it's not a name brand dress and it looks really nondescript next to all the other hot cocktail dresses up on eBay. So I put it on. Even though it's a six. And I'm an 8-borderline-10. The result is a picture that will never see the light of day on eBay.  For two very obvious reasons.

Enjoy.

Back in Business and My New Marketing Plan

Ok, so I've removed comment moderation for now to make sure I receive everyone's comments AND I've got 16 listing in full swing right now, so we're back in business.

I've also decided that in addition to just listing my items on eBay and tweeting about them to my 50 coerced followers, I'd also like to start advertising in more creative ways.... almost like a real shop.  A couple of things I've come up with are creating business cards with my logo (upper right), the URL for both my eBay "store" (not really a store, just a page that shows all the items I have listed), my Bonanzle booth URL and my blog URL.  I've also been thinking about creating a private email address just for the blog.  I know I've shared quite a bit about my identify on here already, and many of my readers do know me personally, but somehow it makes me uncomfortable to share my personal email address.  The other thing I'm thinking about doing is creating flyers and posting them on random bulleting boards in my building (we live in a big apt building), so I spent the day today making a collage of my most representative items.

What's frustrating though is that as much as I love what I'm doing, I simply can't dedicate as much time to it as I would like.  I'd LOVE to pretty up this blog, have surveys and giveaways running all the time.  I'd love to learn more about blogging in general, but although blogging is a great outlet I don't have a ton of time to dedicate to eBay AND blog wholeheartedly.  So I think for now the blog will stay an ugly duckling - I hope you guys don't mind. :)

The other frustrating thing is that as much as I love customer service I'm a TERRIBLE salesperson.  Salespeople as always "closing."  Me, I stopped updating my personal Facebook status with eBay and blog stuff for fear of annoying my friends.  The result?  I have more than 300 Facebook friends on my personal page and only 53 "likes" on the blog Facebook page.

Finally, and I'm sure all entrepreneurial moms will relate to this, it's frustrating that I can't be in two places at once - spending quality time with my son and working on listing and promoting my items.  My baby boy turns two tomorrow, and to celebrate his birthday I'm not going anywhere near a computer.

Ok, maybe just a little...