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Meet Ambassador Aaron Severson
Easysale Ambassadors are independent business people who are combining the ability to work from home, with a flexible schedule, with their passion for helping others discover the value of the collectibles and clutter in their homes. Aaron Severson was one of the first Easysale Ambassadors, and is entering his third month with the program.
If you ask him what he does, his answer is straightforward. “I help people turn their unused or unwanted items into money they can use. Whether the stuff is in a home, a garage, a storage unit, or a workplace, if it’s not being used, and it’s worth over $50, I can probably help you sell it on eBay,” Aaron says.
As an Easysale Ambassador his role is to set up the initial appointment for the person considering consignment, and then a valuations expert comes out. “The moving truck and expert show up, and as each item is valued by the expert – who brings along a laptop connected to both eBay and the Easysale databases and reference guides – and if the individual decides to consign it, it’s loaded into the truck, and delivered to the warehouse.”
Once it’s there, professional photos are taken, the item is described by one of Easysale’s listing experts, and it’s posted on eBay for sale. During the listing, Easysale answers any inquires when the listing ends, items of any size are professionally shipped, and a check is sent to the family or business that made the original consignment.
“I have always had the ambition and mind-set to become a successful entrepreneur, but I never had the money to start my own company,” Severson says. “This gave me that opportunity. It was easy to get started. I had the option to buy business cards and brochures for less than $40, but it’s optional – if you don’t want to buy them, it’s a totally free business start-up, backed by a professional company with a good reputation in the marketplace.
“I also chose Easysale for the fact that it is a company that has only been in business for 3 years ran by former Fortune 500 executives. They plan to expand into multiple markets within the year, so when it comes to opportunity, the sky is the limit.”
He likes the fact that there are no set rules on how to generate the appointments, so he is in charge of, and responsible for, his own marketing techniques, work schedule, and success. Overall, he adds, “Success isn’t measured by how I do compared to others. It’s measured by how I do with my abilities that I have. After all, who doesn’t enjoy earning extra income that’s easy?”
For more information on the Easysale Ambassador program, visit the Easysale Ambassador Program overview on the Easysale website. For more information on how you can sell your unwanted items for higher prices by using an eBay consignment store, visit the “How it Works” section on the Easysale website.
There are current openings for additional independent Easysale Ambassadors who want to work full-time, part-time, or even sometime in Addison, Arlington, Dallas, Plano, Southlake and other North Texas cities and suburbs.
Profiting from Fashion Vault
eBay officially launched its new Fashion Vault service this week, after running the system as a trial for several months. How do you sell on eBay Fashion Vault?
Chances are you can’t – unless you’re what eBay calls a “trusted seller” who are “authorized by the brand to sell their merchandise. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t profit from the new “flash sale” site where designer fashions are on sale at fixed prices for 48 to 72 hours.
How? By giving shoppers a taste of the same big-name clothes that start at prices of 50% or more off retail. eBay said recently that it already shifts more fashion than any other website.
According to eBay’s president of marketplace operations, Lorrie Norrington, the new Fashion Vault service helps to “position eBay as a premiere fashion shopping destination for customers looking for incredible selection at great value.” So here are six tips on how to sell designer fashions on eBay, so that you can profit from the huge advertising spending eBay is investing to bring fashion-conscious shoppers to the website this spring.
1. Sign up for the Fashion Vault newsletter, for advance notice of the brands that are going on sale on eBay. If you have the same brands in your closet, list them at the same time as the scheduled Fashion Vault sales.
2. If you have similar fashions from another maker – for example, if you can offer a lower price on a strapless print dress with the same look as the Woven Poison Ivy dress featured in this week’s Fashion Vault sale, mention the Fashion Vault price with a link to that auction in your listing.
3. Watch the brands and styles that are selling well in Fashion Vault – and look for similar styles from the same or similar brands when you’re scouting for items to resell on eBay. Use the “show completed listings” function in eBay’s search function to show you what sold – and what didn’t.
4. Take advantage of the need for fashion-forward style in sizes you won’t normally find on the Paris runways. Most of the items in the Fashion Vault come in sizes 0-10 only – but the average American woman is a size 12-14. So if you can offer high-style in larger fashion – especially designer labels in large sizes – you may be able to reach a large audience who can’t buy from the Fashion Vault.
5. The photos featured in the Fashion Vault listings are sometimes provided by the designer label, so they’re a good example of the kinds of photos that help to sell fashion. Don’t have a high-fashion model to wear your clothes for the photo shoot? That’s ok – but notice that most clothing photographed for the Fashion Vault listings are taken against a neutral background, where nothing competes with the item being sold.
6. Check out the expert advice on what sells on eBay, and consider consigning your designer clothing and accessories to maximize the selling price and give them the benefit of expert listing writers and photographers.
The experts at any of the five Easysale consignment stores in Addison, Arlington, Dallas, Plano or Southlake can help you sort through your designer items, to select those that have the best chance of selling on eBay – and make sure that each item is a legitimate, real item rather than a knock-off. (You can’t always tell by looking at a label, but the experienced valuations experts at Easysale can tell by matching the item against the known qualities of a genuine designer item.)
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/weddingdream/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
Buy a town to work at home?
If you want to work at home, eBay offers several ways. One of the more unusual is to buy a whole town, complete with a post office (with its own zip code), a gas station, a grocery store, a “Spaghetti Saloon” restaurant and a four-bedroom house. You can lease the Washington state commercial properties or run them yourself, and the minimum bid is about $350,000.
Too rich for your budget? How about an eBay store? You’ll need an inventory of items you bought at a price low enough that you can resell them at a profit on eBay, a digital camera to take high-quality photos, and the shipping and packing supplies to make sure your stuff gets to its destination in good shape. Experts say that a budget of $2,500 to $5,000 is realistic for a first-year investment in an eBay business that earns three to five times the cost of inventory, eBay fees, and supplies – if you pick the right category, of course.
Still too expensive? Then perhaps the Easysale Ambassador program is for you. There’s no investment, and no fees. You can work sometime, part-time, or fulltime, even if you already have another job. There’s nothing to sell. It’s the first work-at-home job that rewards people for helping their friends and family de-clutter their homes and cash in their collectibles. All you need is a phone, an Internet connection, and good contacts in your neighborhood.
“We have worked with the National Association of Professional Organizers, for several years,” explains Easysale executive David Goldstein. “When someone calls an organizer, they are often ready and eager to get rid of clutter, so they’re perfect candidates to consign unwanted items.
“Getting organized is just one life event that makes someone a perfect consignment referral. Consignment is a great option for families who are moving, retiring, remodeling, sending kids off to college, making room for a relative moving in, or planning some other change. But these families may not know that there is a business out there that will come to their home, help them identify saleable items, and then sell them for them on eBay.
“That’s where the Easysale Ambassador’s program comes in. It’s perfect for realtors, teachers, moms who are active in their churches or communities, neighborhood watch volunteers, mail carriers, or anyone who keeps up with what’s happening in their neighborhood,” Goldstein adds.
Easysale, Inc., the North Texas eBay consignment store chain with locations in Southlake, Plano, Dallas, Arlington, and Addison, is recruiting work-at-home consultants to help them reach people in these areas who are interested in selling items on eBay, but don’t want to invest the time or money to set up their own auction business. The new consultant program is unlike multi-level marketing programs which compensate people for recruiting other people – Easysale Ambassadors are compensated for setting up an appointment for a potential consignor to meet with an Easysale representative.
There are two levels of Easysale Ambassadors – those who work part time or even “sometime”, and set appointments and those who take a free training course to become a Certified Ambassador who can meet with potential consignors on their own, and give them a general idea of how their items might sell at an online auction. Current postings for this very real work-at-home job are now on the DFW edition of craigslist and other job boards, and complete details are on the Easysale website.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
Collectibles That Aren’t
It happens pretty often. A customer walks in to an Easysale store. “Can you tell me how much my collection is worth?,” they ask, setting a box filled with treasured items on the counter.
The answer is that, of course, we can help them determine whether the items they think are collectible and valuable really are – or whether they’ve fallen prey to “Antiques Roadshow syndrome”. That’s the belief that everything is collectible. While that may be true, many of the boxes that find their way into our stores aren’t exactly filled the treasure troves their owners were expecting.
As David Goldstein, vice president of marketing at Easysale, explains it, “The basic guideline I give people is this: if, when you bought the items, they were marketed as collectibles, they probably aren’t. True collectibles are valuable because they were not recognized as worth anything at the time they were widely available. Therefore, most people didn’t keep them. That creates scarcity later on, which creates value once enough people are seeking the item.”
The classic example? Beanie Babies. First-generation Beanies are actually incredibly valuable, because they are incredibly rare. Although 37 different animals were made that first year, and they have a distinctive “hang tag” that’s different from those that came later, Easysale has purchased tens of thousands of Beanies without ever finding a single first-generation toy.
Second- and third-generation Beanies are nearly as valuable. But it was in the fourth year of Ty’s production that Beanies became a craze. Everyone bought them, and Ty ramped up production and flooded the market. Fourth- and subsequent-generation Beanies are called ‘commons’, and (with a very few exceptions) have no collector value.
Similarly, Franklin Mint and Danbury Mint items that are marketed for their collectible value (“buy the whole set, because when they’re gone, the molds will be destroyed’) usually end up being worth less than the buyer paid. “But, there are a few items from these issuers that do have value,” Goldstein adds, although they don’t really appreciate much.
Baseball cards are another primary example of items that are probably not collectible – although there are significant exceptions. “Why is Mickey Mantle’s rookie card so valuable? Because when he was a rookie – and remember that the cards are issued at the start of the season — nobody yet knew that he was destined to be a superstar. If you happened to get and keep that card, you were either unnaturally prescient or very lucky. His later cards are worth much less, because everyone flocked to get them once he was famous.”
How do you know if your collectibles are valuable? Ask the experts at the Easysale locations in Addison, Arlington, Dallas, Plano or Southlake.
They’ll give you a pre-sale auction estimate, at your home or in any store, and will take care of all the details from photography, listing and answering questions from potential buyers through packing and shipping. For more information, see the How it Works section of the Easysale website.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlehet/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
Recycling ROI
Most people think of recycling as something they “ought” to do to help conserve natural resources. But maybe we should start thinking of it in terms of ROI. That business school term for “return on investment” takes on a whole new meaning in light of a recent Nielsen/eBay survey found that found that the average U.S. household has 52 unused items worth more than $3,100, just gathering dust.
So just what is the clutter in your home worth? You just may might be surprised at the value you could get by recycling your unwanted items by reselling them on eBay.
Here are some items that were unused by North Texas residents until they were sold by Easysale within the past two weeks.
- A Bose CD player/radio with remote control – still in its original box. eBay selling price: $430.
- A Nikon camera body. eBay sale price: $85.
- An Ovation acoustic guitar in its case. eBay sale price: $120.00
- A vintage Chanel leather handbag. eBay sale price: $640.00
- A Lladro Angel figurine. eBay sale price: $49.99
- An Elsa Peretti sterling silver necklace from Tiffany & Co. eBay sale price: $81.00
- A pair of black leather Harley Davidson chaps (Size XL). eBay sale price: $99.00
- Sony Vaio laptop. eBay sale price: $400.00
- Vintage Louis Vuitton garment bag. eBay sale price: $700.00
- 16 pc. Set, Aynsley “Cottage Garden” china. eBay sale price: $80.00
To find out if your clutter should be resold or recycled, call or come by an Easysale location in Addison, Arlington, Dallas, Plano or Southlake. If you have only a few small items, you may prefer to come by the store to get a pre-auction estimate from one of the listing professionals at Easysale.
“But if you have a storage unit, or a number of items such as furniture, exercise equipment, or home electronics, we’ll schedule a time to come to your home and evaluate what you have to sell,” says David Goldstein, vice president of marketing at Easysale. “If you decide to consign it to us for resale, we’ll load it up and take it away with us on the spot.”
For more information about using one of the eBay consignment store locations in North Texas, or to see what sells best on eBay, visit the Easysale website.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ndevil/ / CC BY 2.0