Pimp My Twenty Bucks Part Four
Can we skip any mention of my cat this week? I'm still recovering from the grotty thing he did to me this morning.
Do you really want to know? Yes? No? Well, if you're grossed out easily don't read the next paragraph, but if you're the brave or deranged sort, and can handle nature at its most vile then read on...
I was up watching Sunday morning cartoons at around 6 this morning (don't ask me why) and as I lay shivering in the seemingly arctic cold of my living room, under a thin polar fleece blanket, I become vaguely aware of the scrunching noise small paws make when shifting the crystals in the litter tray. This is Cat for, "Flushing" the toilet. Moments later Felix comes waltzing into the living room as if he's achieved a breakthrough in physical chemistry, jumping onto my cozy spot to snuggle up to me - only he hasn't wiped his furry butt and wants to share the fact with yours truly in no uncertain terms. He's an evil cat and I'm reminded yet again of my dire need to succeed at this epic venture to quadruple my twenty bucks, to have his masculinity cut down to size! Needless to say, he and his stinky brown matted ginger dags spent the rest of the morning outside where I hoped he would die of embarrassment when he discovered his mistake. But my suspicion was that this flash of indecent explosives was a calculated rubbing of my nose in his his preconceived victory and my destiny to fail. In other words he wanted to show me in as descriptive way possible what he thought of my plan to have him neutered.
Wretched Cat. He even dumped a dead mouse in my potato stash as if to say, "I provided this meat that I caught with my own teeth, and the best you can do is write a blog that less than 6 people will read. You pathetic Human." And he still wants me to stroke his back like I'm an astronaut who has traveled 1000 years into our future to discover a world run by ginger cats and an enslaved race of mute sub-humans.
Anyway, that's enough of an introduction don't you think?
I have to clear the air, not just because of the smell of Felix still fresh in my nose but because I kind of lied in my last installment about where I was going with this past week. I had intended to replace last weeks sold items with the addition of another 7 items but I came to the realisation that I was getting myself completely confused with listings that were now utterly out of sink with each other. So I decided to stick with the 18 books I had already relisted and hold onto the ten I had purchased and wait until all my current listings had closed. Which they did last night. I sold three out of that 18, making another $8.50.
And the crowd goes wild! Ok, not really but I'm happy and that's all that really matters. Sort of.
Here's how it went down.
I sold George Orwell's 1984 for $3
When the Lions Feed by Wilbur Smith for $2.50
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for $3
Before going to bed last night I relisted the remaining 16 books automatically for free and listed $5 worth of new stock, totalling ten new listings, costing me $3 in listing fees. Once again, I could have listed them for free also but I took advantage of the special gallery offer, being that for 30 cents per listing I could feature a picture of the item in the search gallery and will be able to do so for up to 3 times should the books fail to sell.
Notice how I only pay for new listings and not for previous unsold items. My logic, if it can be called that, is that if I keep paying for items that don't sell by the time I've listed it the third time I've already spent more on trying to sell it than the original cost of the book, and I just think that's bad business. Well, for what I'm trying to achieve at least.
So now I have 26 items listed and more than a pinch of faith that this is going to work! It appears I'm going to need it.
The recent sales and relistings took the $9 I had left in my Trademe account down to $4.50 so I will need to top that up again... the question I suppose is whether to do that now or wait and see if I sell anything this week?
You might remember from my last rant that the old Dog Ears bank account had a grand $2.50 to prove that my quadrupling system was working at all. But I fudged the numbers by adding the outstanding $6 to my profits, but really I've known all along that that $6 will ultimately end up as food for the fees.
Mathematically speaking (and that's a language I don't actually speak very often) There is:
$8.50 in Dog Ears from last week.
$8.50 of profit from yesterday's sales
$4.50 remaining in my Trademe account.
Put together that's $21.50.
From where I'm sitting that looks like I've gone backwards. I now have the original $20 with a remainder of $1.50. But don't write me off just yet - I have 26 books listed when I started with only nine. Surely that's got to count for something? I can't shake this crazy notion that the more stock I have the more sales I will make, and yes I know that's probably wishful thinking but I'm not going to stop until this $20 has had its $100 face lift!
The other thing to remember too is that during the past week I was running on old stock and nothing fresh. That could have contributed to this weeks small returns... well, it could have!
In any case I've decided to keep my Trademe account at $4.50 to cover any sales I make in the next six days, while banking the remaining $8.50. At least that way when I check my Dog Ears account I can smile at my $17 and make myself believe that this is working well beyond my wildest dreams.
Having just injected ten new items into my stream of listings I will also hold off on buying anything new to add until next week when I feel better about where this ship is heading!
I hope you will keep reading to see how I fail.... um, I meant to say succeed!
Until next week...
Click here to read Part Five in this series
Click here to read this series from the beginning!
Click here to view my listings
Click Here to follow my progress on Facebook!
Click Here to listen to a totally random piece of music by me that has nothing to do with this series!
Do you really want to know? Yes? No? Well, if you're grossed out easily don't read the next paragraph, but if you're the brave or deranged sort, and can handle nature at its most vile then read on...
I was up watching Sunday morning cartoons at around 6 this morning (don't ask me why) and as I lay shivering in the seemingly arctic cold of my living room, under a thin polar fleece blanket, I become vaguely aware of the scrunching noise small paws make when shifting the crystals in the litter tray. This is Cat for, "Flushing" the toilet. Moments later Felix comes waltzing into the living room as if he's achieved a breakthrough in physical chemistry, jumping onto my cozy spot to snuggle up to me - only he hasn't wiped his furry butt and wants to share the fact with yours truly in no uncertain terms. He's an evil cat and I'm reminded yet again of my dire need to succeed at this epic venture to quadruple my twenty bucks, to have his masculinity cut down to size! Needless to say, he and his stinky brown matted ginger dags spent the rest of the morning outside where I hoped he would die of embarrassment when he discovered his mistake. But my suspicion was that this flash of indecent explosives was a calculated rubbing of my nose in his his preconceived victory and my destiny to fail. In other words he wanted to show me in as descriptive way possible what he thought of my plan to have him neutered.
Wretched Cat. He even dumped a dead mouse in my potato stash as if to say, "I provided this meat that I caught with my own teeth, and the best you can do is write a blog that less than 6 people will read. You pathetic Human." And he still wants me to stroke his back like I'm an astronaut who has traveled 1000 years into our future to discover a world run by ginger cats and an enslaved race of mute sub-humans.
Anyway, that's enough of an introduction don't you think?
I have to clear the air, not just because of the smell of Felix still fresh in my nose but because I kind of lied in my last installment about where I was going with this past week. I had intended to replace last weeks sold items with the addition of another 7 items but I came to the realisation that I was getting myself completely confused with listings that were now utterly out of sink with each other. So I decided to stick with the 18 books I had already relisted and hold onto the ten I had purchased and wait until all my current listings had closed. Which they did last night. I sold three out of that 18, making another $8.50.
And the crowd goes wild! Ok, not really but I'm happy and that's all that really matters. Sort of.
Here's how it went down.
I sold George Orwell's 1984 for $3
When the Lions Feed by Wilbur Smith for $2.50
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for $3
Before going to bed last night I relisted the remaining 16 books automatically for free and listed $5 worth of new stock, totalling ten new listings, costing me $3 in listing fees. Once again, I could have listed them for free also but I took advantage of the special gallery offer, being that for 30 cents per listing I could feature a picture of the item in the search gallery and will be able to do so for up to 3 times should the books fail to sell.
Notice how I only pay for new listings and not for previous unsold items. My logic, if it can be called that, is that if I keep paying for items that don't sell by the time I've listed it the third time I've already spent more on trying to sell it than the original cost of the book, and I just think that's bad business. Well, for what I'm trying to achieve at least.
So now I have 26 items listed and more than a pinch of faith that this is going to work! It appears I'm going to need it.
The recent sales and relistings took the $9 I had left in my Trademe account down to $4.50 so I will need to top that up again... the question I suppose is whether to do that now or wait and see if I sell anything this week?
You might remember from my last rant that the old Dog Ears bank account had a grand $2.50 to prove that my quadrupling system was working at all. But I fudged the numbers by adding the outstanding $6 to my profits, but really I've known all along that that $6 will ultimately end up as food for the fees.
Mathematically speaking (and that's a language I don't actually speak very often) There is:
$8.50 in Dog Ears from last week.
$8.50 of profit from yesterday's sales
$4.50 remaining in my Trademe account.
Put together that's $21.50.
From where I'm sitting that looks like I've gone backwards. I now have the original $20 with a remainder of $1.50. But don't write me off just yet - I have 26 books listed when I started with only nine. Surely that's got to count for something? I can't shake this crazy notion that the more stock I have the more sales I will make, and yes I know that's probably wishful thinking but I'm not going to stop until this $20 has had its $100 face lift!
The other thing to remember too is that during the past week I was running on old stock and nothing fresh. That could have contributed to this weeks small returns... well, it could have!
In any case I've decided to keep my Trademe account at $4.50 to cover any sales I make in the next six days, while banking the remaining $8.50. At least that way when I check my Dog Ears account I can smile at my $17 and make myself believe that this is working well beyond my wildest dreams.
Having just injected ten new items into my stream of listings I will also hold off on buying anything new to add until next week when I feel better about where this ship is heading!
I hope you will keep reading to see how I fail.... um, I meant to say succeed!
Until next week...
Click here to read Part Five in this series
Click here to read this series from the beginning!
Click here to view my listings
Click Here to follow my progress on Facebook!
Click Here to listen to a totally random piece of music by me that has nothing to do with this series!
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