Keep Calm and List On: A Message for eBay Sellers

When you are stuck at home like millions of people around the world are right now and you are an eBay seller with a backlog of unlisted items, you might as well Keep Calm and List On.

My eBay store is closed. We are 100 percent in support of physical or social distancing and the effort to flatten the curve here in Canada. Doing so should reduce the immediate pressure on our medical system and our front line workers, like our nurses and doctors. Hopefully, it will also lower the mortality rate of the virus that is making the whole world sick right now.

I am trying to remain focused on my business because it fills time. Routines are good for us, giving order to our lives. My daily routine includes listing items on eBay so I continue to do so. However, because my store is closed, I schedule new listings to appear at an unknown time in the future. When the world goes back to normal, hopefully sooner rather than later, I will be ready with new items for my online customers.

I am writing this post on March 21, 2020 from Ontario, Canada. The province of Ontario is under a State of Emergency. This means that many establishments must be closed including bars and restaurants (except for takeout and food delivery), indoor recreational programs, public libraries, private schools, licensed child care centres, movie cinemas, live theatres and concert venues. Regular schools were previously closed for three weeks. With the major exception of grocery stores and pharmacies, many businesses and retail establishments are closed or are closing their doors. Everyone and anyone who can is highly encouraged to work from and stay at home.

We are still allowed to walk in our neighborhood, which feels pretty good right now. My husband and I take two walks every day. As part of our walks, we are participating in the Orléans Neighbourhood Window Walk 2020❤️, which encourages people to decorate their windows with an item for walkers to to find. On St. Patrick's Day it was shamrocks and more recently it was silly faces.  Originally intended for people with children, it makes you smile when you find a window full of silly paper faces no matter what age you might be.

Every day we are reaching out. Talking to family and friends on the telephone. Posting and sharing positive and helpful posts on social media. Helping those who do not know how to use video chatting to figure it out though we are rather new to doing so ourselves. Doing so is good for the recipient and good for us, too. We are still laughing, trying to focus on the positive rather than dwelling on the negative.

At home, I could be spring cleaning but I am instead choosing to Keep Calm (Be Positive) and List On!  My goal is ten new listings a day. That's not a lot for some sellers who manage to list 30, 40 or 50 items a day but that is what works for me.

What about you? Are you an eBay seller? Is your store still open? Are you still listing? What is your listing goal normally and what is it now? If you are not an eBay seller, are you working from home? What are you doing to fill the hours?

Take Care and Be Healthy!
Brenda

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The Pitfalls of Shopping For eBay

The danger with being an eBay seller is finding too many great items that you want to KEEP. I won't be the first nor the last eBay seller to buy something and want to keep it but last week I had a fantastic shopping day that yielded more than the average number of items that I would like to have in my home.

The images in this collage are but a few of the 'finds' I had last week.  They're all great candidates for resale but some of them will not be resold.  Can you guess which items I want to keep and which items will be placed on eBay for resale?

The large pictures of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Drame in Paris, France are signed prints by Ortiz Alfau and quite sellable on eBay.

The stained glass window is very, very nice. So nice, in fact, that it was gathering comments as I was headed for the checkout with it.

The hat is unlike any I have seen before. It is a LEATHER baseball cap from the Toronto Maple Leafs. How cool is that?

The skates are actually a wall hanging designed to hold keys or whatever else you might need to hang up. It's an unusual piece and the cashier chuckled after realizing that these flat Montreal Canadiens 'skates' were not really skates at all. 

The red Cars jacket is an adorable item from the second Cars movie, Cars 2, by Disney-Pixar. It's a winter coat done in a leather-like fabric designed to make it look like a real racing jacket and it is new.  

So, have you guessed which items I will keep and which I will part with? 

Friends and family will know that I love travelling and have been to Paris, France, which makes letting go of those pictures difficult for me even though I have a number of paintings and pictures that I have yet to hang. 

Friends might also know that one of my favorite colors, as evidenced by the walls in my kitchen and family room, is a warm, ochre or amber yellow, which is much like the color in this handsome piece of stained glass, making it another difficult piece to part with.

The bottom three items that is the leather hockey hat, the Montreal Canadiens wall hanging and the Disney jacket are nice items but definitely not subject matter that I am interested in and, therefore, will be sold on eBay. 

Of course it is probably a good thing that I am interested in keeping the LARGE items, since they would definitely pose a challenge for shipping from within Canada.   

Would you be tempted to keep any of my treasures?

Brenda
Treasures By Brenda
You never know what I
might have in store for you!

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