Nan Palmero, MBA

How to Determine the Sale Price of an Item for Ebay and Craigslist

Learn step-by-step instructions on how to price items for ebay, craigslist, nextdoor and facebook marketplace.

If you’ve ever wanted to sell an item but you didn’t know how to price it on ebay, this blog post will help you determine the going rate on ebay. We will need to assume that your product is not a one-of-a-kind collector’s item. For this example, we’ll use a Zeiss Batis 25mm lens for a Sony camera.

Step 1: Determine the condition of your item. Does it have any scratches, scuffs or damage that could reduce the value of the item? Do you still have the original box and instruction manual and all the accessories? People tend to believe that items have more value if you have the original box and accessories, except for my wife, who is sick of closets overflowing with them.

Step 2: Search for this item on ebay to see if others are selling your exact item right now. If you see a Buy It Now for an item that is identical to your item, with the similar wear, packaging and details, it will be difficult to sell your item at a higher price. If you like the price you see, try to undercut your competitor by a few bucks, choose to accept a Best Offer or provide a faster shipping experience. If you have no competitive edge over the existing competition and you don’t like the price, wait for the existing listing to end and then list your item.

Step 3: If you search for your item and there are no competitors selling the same product or others have listed an auction-style listing with the same product and you’re ready to list today, you can also select an auction-style listing and the high bidder wins or this research will help you determine a Buy It Now price. Once you’ve searched, you need to see what prior items have sold for on ebay.

On mobile: search for your item, select “Filter” then choose “Sold Items.”

On desktop: search for your item, scroll down, then choose “Sold Items” on the left menu.

Step 4: Now that you know what an item sold for on ebay, you still want to know how much money you are going to make after the ebay, PayPal, and shipping fees. Shipping fees will be the most variable, so try to figure those out or ball park them by checking FedEx, USPS or UPS. Order some boxes from the carriers for free if you plan to sell a lot. I like to use finalfeecalc.com to see what I’m going to get in the end and see if it’s worth it for me to sell the item on ebay. If I see the average sale price of the Zeiss Batis 25mm is $900, I can enter that into finalfeecalc.com. Then I’ll guess that shipping is going to cost me around $25. If I provide free shipping for the item, finalfeecalc.com tells me ebay gets $90, PayPal takes $26.40 and I end up with $758.60.

Step 5: We now have a clear picture that the lens will net me $758.60 on ebay. Not bad. How do I price it locally? Remember, Craigslist, Facebook Market and Nextdoor don’t take a cut if you sell an item locally (at least at the time this post was written). Now you know that anyone looking to buy this item on ebay will also likely see that the lens is worth about $900, but you know you’ll get $758.60, leaving a split of $141.40. Any price you choose to sell it locally is both a windfall for you and for the buyer. You’ll make more money if you sell it for $800 locally, for example, and your buyer saves $100.

In the end, I typically will list an item for the higher price on ebay and a lower price locally. Good luck!

Get Time Warner Cable Wifi Free for Your Customers

Sharing. It’s the worst. Especially when it comes to internet speeds and having to do so with strangers. I guess it’s a little bit better when those strangers are people who pay you money. I think those are called customers. Nonetheless, slow internet speeds are grounds for breakups and civil wars. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Not anymore.

Time Warner Cable has done something friendly. I know, many of you are shocked, but it’s true! If you’re a Time Warner Cable Business Class subscriber, you can get another hotspot, for free, that gives your customers a separate bunch of bandwidth to suck down while you and your team members cruise along unencumbered by that one clown that has to get on his VPN with his RSA pocket calculator thing.

Time Warner will provide the hardware and service for free. They will also give you marketing materials and provide free support for the device and service. You can even customize the sign on page with your company logo, messaging and a website landing page. You also get free access at over 250,000 hotspots nationwide and a free business listing on TWC WiFi and partner WiFi coverage maps and apps. The device also lets you set how long a person can stay connected to your network, just in case you find you have a few customers wearing out their welcome.

If you’re interested in doing this for your business, then hit the link and get in touch with your internet overlord and ask for more internet porridge. You’ll submit a form to have a representative get in touch with you to get started. If you know your rep, feel free to give them a ring. This offer is new, so they might not yet be familiar. One thing is for sure, your customers will thank you. Your employees probably will as well…as long as you’re not a jerk about this whole thing.

Give me free customer internet with TWC Wifi! (the link is hit or miss in Chrome, you might try a different browser)

How to Unfollow Post on Facebook Mobile

Here’s how to unfollow post on facebook’s app. If you want to stop receiving notifications on facebook mobile, check out this post.

UPDATE: @mrcippy from @cnet shows us how to unfollow a post from the Facebook Mobile App.

You made the mistake again. You’ve commented on some jerk’s status update that is getting a gazillion responses or you wrote “Congratulations!” after someone posted their first baby photo (you’ll be bored of their baby pictures in a week). Now you’re stuck because your stupid phone is exploding from all the follow up congratulatory nonsense making you regret your decision, but you’re away from a computer. As you watch your battery drain from the beating it’s taking from Facebook notifications, you swear that you’ll NEVER.COMMENT.AGAIN. I’m here to save your (battery) life.

Facebook offers the option to “Unfollow Post” so you stop getting harassed with follow up notifications you don’t care about on their website. It’s easy to do on your computer but it hasn’t been integrated into the mobile site yet.

Good news! There’s a magical link that Facebook stashes away deep deep in the internet that lets you access the full desktop version of Facebook from your phone. It works on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and probably anything else. Except Symbian. Even Jesus hates Symbian. Save this link on your phone or tablet for full desktop access of Facebook: http://bit.ly/fullfacebook Hitting this link on your computer is just going to take you to Facebook, there won’t be anything special. Be sure you do this on your phone.

When you need to unfollow a facebook post or untag a stupid photo that your terrible friend tagged you in, hit the link above from your mobile device and correct the situation. Share this with your friends and happy facebooking.

Speed Up Your BlackBerry Messaging

Are you interested in becoming the fastest BlackBerry user this side of the Pecos River? To do so, you need to keep some keyboard shortcuts in mind. Let’s jump right in:

When you’re composing an email, don’t bother typing the “@” or “.” in an email field, instead, use the spacebar, the BlackBerry already knows what symbol to enter.

In you messages list, you can use the following shortcuts to skip the menu and get right to work, the information in the parentheses is for the folks on SureType devices, such as the Pearl:

C (,) = compose new message
R (!) = reply to a message
L (?) = reply to all in a message
F (.) = forward a message
T (1)= top, it’ll take you to the top of an email or the messages list
B (7)= bottom, it’ll take you to the bottom of an email or the message list
Spacebar (9) = page down in an email or the message list
Shift + Spacebar (3) = page up in an email or the message list
P (4) = previous email or previous day’s message (if in the message list)
N (6) = next email or next day’s message (if in the message list)
Hold a letter down to capitalize it

Keep an eye on this blog to get more tips on how to speed up your life on BlackBerry.

How to Unlock a Sprint BlackBerry

unlock-blackberry-tour

Today I received my Sprint BlackBerry Tour and it’s amazing. But, you’re not here for a review, you’re here because you want to unlock your Sprint BlackBerry Tour. Here’s what you do. Thanks to my friend at CIO.com, Al Sacco, I knew the steps to unlocking it. Fortunately, the good folks at Sprint will walk you through the process as well. Here’s what I did to unlock the SIM slot on the Sprint BlackBerry Tour.

Call Sprint International Support – (817) 698-4199, prompt #2
Ask them if they’d kindly unlock your SIM slot on your BlackBerry Tour
Turn off your wireless network connection on the Tour (yes, you’ll have to call from another phone)
Click on Options > Advanced Options > SIM Card
Type MEPD
Type MEP2
The representative should give you a 16-digit code
Thank the representative for their help
Reboot your phone and you’re ready to go

There you have it! It took me about 5 minutes to get my phone unlocked. I tested my Sprint BlackBerry Tour with a T-Mobile SIM card and was able to access the web, use BlackBerry Messenger and send and receive messages.

How to Backup and Restore Chosen Items While on BES

You’ve spent time building up your Autotext entries to make it really easy to fire off a “thank you” or “you’re welcome.” You’ve invested time in building up your Password Keeper with entries for the Jonas Brothers Fan Club and you’ve got 50+ friends on your BlackBerry Messenger. Life is good, especially because you’re on a BES and your contacts, calendars, tasks and notes are being synced back to the server. Now, a new OS pops up and you want to update. You get IT’s blessing to do this, but then you remember those parts of your BlackBerry that are going to be wiped out. When you plug your phone into your computer, fire up Desktop Manager and try to back up certain parts of your device, you get this:

Nan’s Backup and Restore on BES

Turn Twitter Names into Hyperlinks in WordPress

When I wrote my #FollowFriday post I had a ton of Twitter user names that I was too lazy to link. Fortunately, @larsreineke created Twitter Name Replacer, a WordPress Plugin. According to his site, “In every post it replaces @sometwitterusername with @sometwitterusername It recognizes mail addresses and skips them. If you precede the username with an exclamation mark like this “!@sometwitterusername”, the username will be skipped.” Thanks to Twitter Name Replacer, I didn’t have to do anything but add the usernames with an @. The plugin did the rest.

So, if you are a person that likes to include Twitter user names with their links in their WordPress blog posts, have a look at Twitter Name Replacer, it’s excellent.

How to Renew a Blogspot Custom Domain

How do I renew a blogger custom domain? Answers here.

blogger_logo

Last year, a neighborhood association needed a blog to post updates about what was happening with the pool and other extremely local events. In response, I set them up with a Blogger aka Blogspot account with a custom domain. Today, I was going nuts trying to figure out how to renew the domain. After digging for 45 minutes, I came across a post by LMckin51. The suggestion? Use the following address and replace the ending with your domain (no need for the http://www.) – https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/renew-domain/REPLACE_THIS_WITH_YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME You’ll be pointed to Google Checkout to renew for $10. Problem solved.

How to Cheat at Priceline and Hotwire

We were recently booking travel for the Fortune Small Business Sales & Marketing Summit in New Orleans. The rooms at the host hotel were going for $159 per night and we have four people going. Thanks to my secret weapon, we were able to get the exact same hotel room for $60 per night.

What if you knew what hotel you were going to win via Priceline and Hotwire before you placed your bid and sent off your credit card number? Would it make previously impossible trips possible again?

I’ll walk you through the process on how to take the guesswork out of Priceline and Hotwire to make those trips a reality again.

With the Internet becoming an increasingly social place and people being willing to share more about their experiences, there are numerous forums (Web sites where people share information) that provide details on what travel accommodations a person was able to secure.

Two Web sites that I like to use when bidding on Priceline and Hotwire are: Better Bidding and Bidding for Travel.

For a step-by-step walk-through on how to cheat at Priceline with Betterbidding.com, take a look at the video below (full screen is suggested). I use the Marriott in New Orleans as an example.

Are you a fan of Hotwire? To learn how to cheat there with Betterbidding.com, have a look at this video (again, full screen is suggested). This time, we’ll look for a 3-star hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

Now that you’ve learned how to apply these tactics, why not take the time to register on betterbidding.com and post your travel deal wins there? The more people that join and add their information, the better the experience is for all of us!

If you have a question or comment, please feel free to drop me a line here. You can also find me on twitter.

As seen on MySA.com