152: How To Sell Costume Jewelry On eBay - Melody Purdy

Melody started selling part-time on eBay in 2013 while still employed as a receptionist. Although a bit sooner than planned, in 2016 she left her office job to sell full-time on eBay and Facebook. Melody's passion and main selling focus is vintage costume jewelry. She has plans to begin offering local group and individual eBay Selling Classes later this year. Interesting Notes Melody's husband had sold on eBay before. Within a couple of months of their marriage in 2015, they decided to get started together on eBay, part-time. They started out selling books. They wanted to add more so they sell dollhouse miniatures and a lot of variety of things. Two years ago, they went on a vacation. They normally use their vacation as a time to reflect and plan for the future. On that vacation, they made plans that Melody will go full-time on eBay by the year 2017. Their plans were changed a bit. On the first day at the office after their vacation, Melody was called to her manager's office. The manager informed her that her position was eliminated. Melody always loved jewelry and made it her niche. She has two stores. The bigger one which she manages is called Melodys Uniquely You. Her husband manages the other one which is a bit hodgepodge. She transitions all the non-jewelry things to the other store. She loves to go to garage sales during summer. She gets a lot of jewelry at the garage sales. She also goes to auction and estate sales. She started buying estates. She put a word out there that she is looking for estate jewelry. People who are getting rid of their jewelry started to contact her. Her working hours depends on what she plans to do on the day. But most of her days, she starts on shipping. As much as she wants to go sourcing and shopping, she cannot because she has a lot of inventory. Her husband has a full-time job but he sometimes goes with Melody to source. He also helps Melody takes the packages to the post office. He also does listings now and then. She uses a digital camera and a lightbox in taking pictures. She takes several pictures at a time. If she goes garage selling, she tries to take all those pictures within a reasonable amount of time. Then she will sit down and list. Melody learned everything about costume jewelry by selling. She immersed herself in researching. She owned 50 books about vintage jewelry and use it all for her references. In costume jewelry, a lot of pieces has a signature on the back. She researched her pieces before she lists them. She knows a lot of signatures now. Still, she watches out for the fake pieces. As far as precious metals and precious stones, she does not have to watch because it is costume jewelry that she sells most. Melody thinks ahead of time what boxes she is going to need for her shipment and keeps stock of it. She also takes advantage of the free shipping supplies eBay gives to the sellers. Jewelry is so easy to pack and ship. It is one of the reasons why she chose jewelry as her niche. It takes her five minutes to package and ship a piece of jewelry. She would take a piece of jewelry and wrap it with a piece of tissue paper. If it is a more expensive piece, she would use a little box. Then she will put a bubble wrap, a shipping box and add some packaging paper and then ship it. Most pieces weigh four to six ounces and so it is not expensive to ship. She can use First Class shipping. Unless the value is over $20, then she ships it Priority. When Melody was selling part-time, she had problems with not being able to find pieces of jewelry sold. To solve it, she purchased wooden jewelry organizers. Every time she bought a new lot of jewelry, she would give the lot a name, put it in a bag and keep it inside the drawers of the organizer. Each piece is put in a small tote bag inside with a date on it. With her new system, she seldom has missing pieces. When she goes for a vacation, she puts a vacation note on her store telling what day she will be back. She also changes her shipping policies. Instead of one business day, she changes it to 10 business days. Then in the middle of her vacation, she changes it into five business days. In her product line, she has a lot of items that are one of a kind. Those are items that you cannot find easily on eBay or on other venues. She prices those as Buy It Now. She sometimes does auctions. But she is still scared to price her items at $9.99 to start when she knows those are worth $129. She has regular customers. She keeps a note of what her customers like. She tries to let them know when she lists a piece of what they want. It may either from the same designer or the same style as the piece they bought. The weirdest thing she had ever sold on eBay is a taxidermied toad. It was big, ugly and scary but she sold it. She did not know that she bought it. It came from a local auction box lot that she bought. Another interesting thing she found and sold is a ticket stub to an Elvis Presley Concert in 1953. It came from a jewelry lot she bought. She sold the ticket on Auction and got $300 from it. Melody has a video in her store - the very first she had ever done. She wants to do more videos. She also wants to start giving eBay classes locally. By October she will offer classes to those who want to start selling on eBay. It would be a 4-hour a day class for beginners and an alternate class for advanced or intermediate. She is also working on increasing the average price of the item she sells. A lot of items she sells now is around $10 range. She likes to increase it to $20 and up. Advice, Tips, and Tricks If you are thinking of starting an eBay business, start however you want. If you are struggling with your eBay business or you are still figuring out your niche, have confidence. Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Learn from others. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Plan big. Think ahead - what is it going to look like six months from now. If you have to look an hour for a $10 piece of jewelry, you are not using your time very efficiently. Make your systems smooth taking flow with your business. Melody tries to keep up with the latest changes on eBay. She goes with the flow and makes it work. If she wants to get people watching her items, she put her items on Auction. That way, when she switched over to Buy It Now with a different price, people still get to watch and the items may sell at Buy It Now. Melody does her research on eBay. If she cannot find a similar piece on eBay, she would check from other similar auctions. If she cannot find at all, she will put the piece where she wants to put it. If her item is not selling, she lowers the price until it sells. Quotes "When you plan on something it never quite works out." "Be careful of what you pray for." "Don't be afraid to step out of your comfort zone." "What woman does not love jewelry!" "Go with the flow. Make it work!" "I love hearing the cha-ching!" "When you sell a product that you love, it is fun!" "The beautiful thing about eBay is you can do what is comfortable for you." - Ron Contact Information eBay Store: Melody's Uniquely You Facebook: Uniquely You Vintage to Modern Jewelry by RolMel Collectibles Sponsors Solutions4Ecommerce 3DSELLERS eCom Chicago Norila Digital Marketing

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152: How To Sell Costume Jewelry On eBay - Melody Purdy is an episode from So You Wanna Sell On eBay by Ali Young & Ron LaBeau.

This episode is 34:40 long.

This episode was published on Jul 31, 2018.

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