Throughout the last few years, I’ve had my ups and downs with selling online. The thrill of finding an amazing deal at the thrift store gave me so much adrenaline. That high would last the entire day and even a day or two afterwards. I would tell my friends and family about this awesome item I found. Slowly, the adrenaline starts to fade and I was left with the no so fun part of photographing and listing the item. This part is a love hate relationship.
My passion is photography, I went through college and focused on product photography. However, pictures for online marketplaces don’t have to be that great. When I started my journey, I would take photos with my big camera as I call it, upload the photos to my computer and do a simple color balance on them. As I’ve collected more items to sell, this process became quite tedious. While I had a system down, it still took time. I eventually moved to just using my phone as that seemed to be good enough for these market places and a much quicker option too.
At the prime of this time, I would start a draft listing with the details I knew from the item I had just purchased, before I even left the parking lot. This way, alot of the basic info was already ready to go, once I had the photos done.
As the months went on the joy started to fade and the motivation was not as active as it used to be. The amount of items I had became overwhelming, and with that, I shut down. Along with this, sales started to slow down as well. Which was to be expected. From my experience in the past, if one is actively listing new items or even re-listing, that make the algorithms happy. When that stops, so do the sales.
I’ve been thinking during this time of what it is that I truly want to do. What direction do I want to go in with selling online. It turns out, starting my own business is what was in my future. That is where I found my joy again. Now I get to create and design ideas to sell on online marketplaces. My goal has shifted from trying to find deals at stores to now creating my own ideas or being able to bring to life an idea that someone has.
While this newly discovered goal has become my primary objective, I still have a side quest of selling the current inventory I have. Just because a goal has shifted, doesn’t mean the original purpose has vanished. I will sell the current inventory I have (clothing, shoes, bags, etc), to make room for the new items that I will create with my laser and 3D printer.
This blog will be a reminder for my future self that it’s okay to be unsure at times especially when things aren’t looking great. There’s always a light somewhere in the tunnel, it just may take a little longer to show.
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