My eBay Store Is Open for Now

I am in the process of activating my eBay listings.  My Etsy shop will remain closed indefinitely.

Jennifer's Series Books on eBay

I am slightly over halfway done.  This is a slow process since I'm relisting the items manually.  I am changing my boilerplate text that is in each listing.  I want people to leave me alone and not try to pressure me into lowering my prices.  

My mental state was not that great last week.  "Mentally stressed" is how I would describe it.  I am on spring break, and I just finished doing my taxes.  Now that I'm past that and am not feeling too stressed at the moment, I am willing to try to sell again.  I think it could be good for me to return to selling.  This is a trial run.  If I get too stressed next week when I return to work, then I will close the store immediately.

Etsy will remain closed since I have to pay for each listing.  I need to see how selling on eBay goes first before I consider paying to reactivate any Etsy listings.  

My new eBay boilerplate text is as follows.

"I do not accept offers.  My current best price is the price on this listing."

I have had the text about not accepting offers in my listings for several years.  The problem is that those people changed to asking me for my best price.  Now my listings will state that my price is my best price.  It will be interesting to see what they try next.  Some of these people struggle to understand that I mean what I say.  I do change prices, but on my own schedule.

Some of my prices are being reduced as I activate my listings.  In most cases, they remain the same.  Bear in mind that online sellers pay rather high fees.  I pay a lot of money in fees.  I won't say what the dollar amount was for last year, but it was substantial.  I do make a profit overall, but most of what I bring in is cancelled out by fees, supplies, postage, and what I paid for the books.

My free shipping promotion now requires a $40 purchase.  As I proceed, I will reflect on whether I raised the amount enough.  I found it interesting that eBay had $50 prepopulated in the form.  I want to see how the numbers crunch in the few weeks, then I will decide if I should raise the order minimum to a higher amount.

Raising the order requirement to $40 solves a problem that I've had.  I like to price many of my books at $34.99, which was just one cent below the requirement for free shipping.  With the minimum raised to $40, the $34.99 books are no longer problematic since their cost with shipping will still be slightly lower than the threshold for free shipping.  I tend to price fewer books at $39.99, and I will try to avoid pricing books at that amount.  Tonight I lowered the price of a few books that I just reactivated from $39.99 to $34.99 to avoid that conflict with the threshold.

I have more to share about what is going on, but this covers the basics.