Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Yard Sale and more Epinions

My current balance for Epinions has been revised; I now have $6.09 in my account. The thing is that only nine cents comes from reviews that I wrote in February. My review of Netflix has gotten me $1.31 so far. My review of “The Automatic Millionaire” has earned me $1.92 since I posted it on August 24th of this year. I’m still waiting for five episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to be added so that I can post those reviews. I may have to send another email to see if they got my first one.

The yard sale went pretty well. I got rid of a lot of books, but I still have a lot more. I’m going to have to repost them since it would have been too difficult to keep track of what I had sold. I had bought a lot of them at other yard sales, the dollar store and thrift shops. I figure that I made a small profit on what I sold, so I can’t really complain.

Books are particularly difficult to get rid of. My only two options are eBay and Half.com. There are some sites that buy and sell textbooks because of the higher profit margins, but the best I can usually do is a site that acts as an intermediary. I could take them to a used bookstore, but all of the places that I know of only offer store credit and I don’t really want to buy more books. Right now, the best option for my needs is Half.com.

Music and movies are a little easier. Not only do I still have Half.com and eBay, but there’s a site called Second Spin, which will buy CDs, VHS tapes and DVDs, although I might not get more than a quarter for them. Also, I have to pay to ship to them whereas on Half.com and eBay, they buyer pays.

Another option is Spec’s, which buys CDs and DVDs. I think they also buy console games, but I’m not sure. They use to pay cash, but they’ve started giving store credit. If I want cash, I can only get 80% of the value. The cash is more useful to me. It’s the same problem with credit for books; I’d have to buy something there and I don’t listen to enough CDs that the 20% would be worth it.

My absolute last resort is a nearby EB Games, which only offers store credit. At least with EB Games, there’s the possibility of my buying something. I recently got a Grand Theft Auto three-pack, which was selling for $9.99. By using the credit I had earned, I only paid $1.92 for it. The reason I had so little credit is that I don’t bring in too many things to them; they basically get what I can’t get rid of elsewhere. The good news is that they take DVDs, CDs and games and will take almost anything that I bring in. DVDs and CDs don’t bring in that much since that’s not their main business, but I’d rather take a few dollars store credit than have to keep something that I don’t want.

I wish I had some way of selling off the books easily. I may try selling a few on eBay before I go and relist them on Half.com. I’m hoping that there will be a few preorders. With Half.com, someone can place what’s called a preorder, which means that when someone lists an item, they have the option of selling it at the requested price or listing it at a higher price. Once an item is listed, I have no way of knowing if any preorders come in later. Relisting will give me the opportunity to see what’s out there, although I’m not holding out much hope. There are a lot of items listed at 75 cents, which is the minimum someone can list at for any item.

I’ll probably put up another post once I get that done.

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