May 28th, 2009 by Skip McGrath

When business is slow you need to watch your pennies. Here are some tips from our readers.

Mark from Connecticut, eBay ID Skyboss, has two eBay money-saving tips.

If you host your images on eBay it can get expensive. eBay gives you one photo for free, then charges 15¢ for each additional image. If you are using three images in each listing, that is 30¢ per listing. I do about 150 listings per month, so that would cost me about $45 per month –actually more, because I often use 4 images in some auctions.  Mark uses a low-cost photo program called Corel PhotoPaint that can combine several images into one image.  So you can have 3 or 4 images for free. Here is a link to Mark’s listings where you can see what it looks like: http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/skyboss_W0QQ_dmdZ1QQ_ipgZ50QQ_sopZ12?_rdc=1

Mark also saves money by reusing boxes that are in good condition. He simply takes the box apart and reassembles it inside out, so the original printing on the box is on the inside.  He uses a hot glue gun to quickly reassemble the boxes.

Jeanne S. from Vermont gets loads of free bubblepak and small boxes from a local large gift shop in her tourist town. They happily give her the shipping supplies rather than pay large local recycling fees. She tosses any boxes or materials in poor condition, but usually ends up with a full week’s supply of good boxes and materials with each trip to the store.

In news from eBay:

A few weeks ago Amazon announced that they were putting restrictions on collectible book sellers to limit the sellers who could sell collectible books to large experienced sellers. eBay is taking advantage of those lots of small unhappy sellers by announcing a listing fee discount to 5-cents per listing in the collectible books category from now (May 27) through June 9^th.  The categories that are eligible include:

• Antiques – Books & Manuscripts
• Books – Antiquarian & Collectible

Used, including collectible books are a great business opportunity for eBay sellers. Our best-selling book, How To Make Good Money Selling Used Books on eBay, Amazon and the Internet gives step-by-step instructions to this great little online business. We show you which books to buy –and more importantly, which books NOT to buy, where to find them and how and where to sell them at margins of 500% or more.

See Also

• Try A Complete Professional Internet Marketing Course for only $2.95
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• Learn About Ten, Little Known, eBay Niche Businesses Anyone Can Do for Immediate Profits
  These are ten great little eBay business opportunities hiding on eBay…And, you can source the products locally for pennies