How to eBay those Unwanted Christmas Gifts ...

... and other items you might have laying around the house.

Three months ago, I started working for ChannelAdvisor. Our clients are online merchants who sell through a variety of marketplaces, including eBay. In order for me to get to know the industry and our clients, I decided to put a few items up for auction.

My first auction was for an old IBM keyboard. It was one of those extra-sturdy metal types with the TrackPoint mouse built-in. I have to say that I enjoyed that keyboard for many years and hated the thought of giving it up, but it was a PS/2 in the age of USB. The first few days of the 7-day auction were fairly slow. I checked in on the listing once or twice a day to see that the price had been bid up a few dollars at a time. By the fifth day of the auction, I was beginning to question if the $20 I might get for it was worth all the trouble. Then, on the sixth day, I was surprised to see the price jump to $50.

Later that day - having checked on it another two dozen times, I realized not only how people can become eBay addicts, but also how the free market is supposed to work. I had a product that was essentially useless for my needs. Other people needed what I had, enough to pay good money for it. The auction ended at $122 - enough for me to buy a new, wireless USB keyboard.

Here are a few tips I've learned along the way while selling a few other items:

1. Take a look around for items that you really don't use. Is it worth saving that old TV collecting dust in the attic or can the cash you make on eBay defray the cost of the new flat-screen you're been wanting?
2. Spend a week or more checking out what similar items are going for on eBay.
3. Time your listing. If you have 1 of 10 trinkets ever made, don't list yours the same week as another seller. You also want your listings to end while the most people are watching, so resist the temptation to post at 3:00 a.m.
   
4. Re-use packing materials you have around the house.
5. Use the US Postal Service. They're cheap, reliable, accessible, and offer free eBay-branded priority mail boxes. Send your shipments via priority mail. Your buyers are usually willing to pay for the faster service and it gives you peace-of-mind with free delivery confirmation.
   
6. For more tips, read Scot Wingo's eBay Strategies .

On a separate but related topic, I recently decided to dispose of my Grand Marquis. I got a lot of great use out of the car, but with 171,000 miles, she was starting to show her age. My first thought was to use it for a trade-in, but I'm holding off on a new car for a little bit. Figuring that I wouldn't get much for the car and trying to avoid the hassles of selling, I decided to look into making it a donation. Unfortunately (or fortunately as you'll soon see), the IRS recently changed the car donation rules. Now, if you donate a car and the charity sells it at auction, they send you a receipt for the selling price and that is the only amount you can claim as a deduction. So, the best I could hope to gain was 30% of the selling price sometime when I actually file my taxes next year.

Then it hit me. eBay has a motors section. I figured, "what the heck - I've got nothing to lose." Well, right now, the auction is over $2,000 with another day to go, so it appears that eBay has done it again!

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