Sell Your Own Stuff

I've started selling a few things over ebay.  I'm not that great at it.  One reason may be that I'm actually selling stuff for my brother.  He's trying to save up enough to get a car.  I know that the younger children in my family have gotten more leniency and such that I never got, but I got the car.  My first car wasn't fast or "hot", but it was cute and got me from place to place.  A White '89 Buick Century.  When my little car got crashed into on December 18th of 2004, I was sad.  From the wreckage of my totaled car, I got money enough to buy another one.  A Maroon '99 Chevy Lumina.  Since then, I've had to pay to get him taken care of (now and then), but he's stuck by me.  My sister and brother haven't had that luxury.

I thought I'd be nice (since it was his idea to put them on ebay).  See, if you've never sold anything online, I would like to be the first to say that its not all its cracked up to be.  The first time I submitted these eight items, it charged me little costs at a time so that it totaled around $7.  They only last for a week and then you can relist them if they don't sell.  I've relisted mine three times (which equals me paying them $21 --for nothing).  I actually sold one item.  I had guessed about costs for shipping and paid around $10 (when I had asked for $7 for shipping).  When something sells, ebay also takes a couple of dollars because they "helped you sell it".  So with something that had costed the buyer $42, I got $40... and when taking into consideration the other costs, end up giving my brother $11.  He told me that he'd paid $50 for that item (even though he told me to sell it for $35).

On top of everything, the buyer received it and said it wasn't like I had described.  I didn't know much about it (since its my brother's and his descriptions of each item weren't very descriptive), so I used this thing on ebay where you can look items up.  It showed a picture that looked just like it, so I thought that description had to be like this one.  Nope.  The buyer was very nice about it and wanted $15 refunded to him.  I told them what had happened and that my brother had paid $50 for it and that I could refund him the total he paid if he'd just send it back.  He said he'd just keep it and not worry about the $15.  I think he felt sorry for me.

After the time runs out (tomorrow) for bidding, I'm taking the items off and giving them back to my brother.  He can sell them for more with his friends.  Actually, I might go ahead and cancel my stuff to ebay now.  Its just best to sell your own stuff.