vendredi 4 octobre 2013

Selling your stuff on eBay

As I was telling you in my last post, my boyfriend and I are currently going through hard financial times as he just lost his job and I've just spent two months in a row not working. Fortunately enough, we aren't to the point that we can't afford food, or anything like that, but it definitely isn't easy as we need to buy a car in about two weeks.

So I had to make some decisions to find money and the hardest for me was to sell my stuff. I started with my collection of CDs. I know it probably sounds childish, but this was a very hard decision to make because the collection was dear to me. So this is how I sold my 300 CDs to MusicMagpie and I am now carrying on selling stuff on eBay.

I had never sold anything before on eBay, so this was completely new for me. I can't explain how happy I was when I realised the process was very easy. It has a lot of advantages, but I did find some bad points to it.

Bad points : 
  • Fees. Although that sounds pretty fair to pay fees to be able to sell your stuff on their website, it's already annoying to know you're selling it for peanuts, but it is even more when a part of the money is going to eBay and Paypal.
  • Buyers who take ages to pay. Although most buyers are serious and pay almost straight away, some others are really not bothered about paying. And obviously, that freezes the whole process since you can dispatch the item until it's paid. 
  • You can't always sell internationally. For me, as a French person living in the UK, I found it pretty annoying that I couldn't sell my stuff in the UK because my eBay account was set in France. You need to have a minimum of sales within your country to be able to start selling abroad. Which I found very inconvenient as a lot of my stuff is French and would interest French buyers only (DVDs for example).


Good points :
  • Easy. As I said, it's very easy to use and it's extremely convenient. You just fill in your advert, which you can do from any device (laptop, iPad, iPhone, anything that has internet basically) and you publish. Done! Altogether, it takes you about 5 minutes to post your ad, which is amazing.
  • Once your item is sold, it's very quick and easy to post. When the buyer has paid you, you get a notification telling you it's done, and you have access to the buyer's address. All you need to do is dispatch the item and confirm it's done.
  • Feedbacks. I love feedbacks, I like the fact that someone can tell whether you're a good seller or not. I personally base myself a lot on feedbacks when I buy something online. So that's why I find it important to be able to give and receive feedbacks. eBay let me do this, as a buyer and a seller, which is great as you can feedback someone who has never paid you or on the contrary, has been a great buyer.
  • Sort your stuff. Although it is a bit heartbreaking for some items, at the end of the day it allows you to sort your stuff out. I had some many things which I was never using and were just standing in a corner gathering dust, so it's quite nice to get rid of them. I got to sell some clothes for example, which made space in my wardrobe.

mardi 1 octobre 2013

I've been a bad blogger

I've been a bad blogger over the past couple of weeks, I just got completely overwhelmed with my new job, a quick return journey to France, old flatmates coming back in the UK to visit and my boyfriend loosing his job.

So far, my new job is going pretty well and it has been a very intense week for us. It is a brand new Starbucks store so we had to get everything ready for the opening and also find some time to deal with all the promotion and sampling to attract new customers. But altogether, it was pretty fun and very interesting to see the process of opening a coffee store. Plus, I really enjoy learning everything and being a barista is a proper art, not just a job.

I also had to bring my car back in France, which wasn't easy because I love my car. But it's a French car, and I could no longer insure it in the UK. This was a bit of a last minute thing as well, so I had to book some time off work and fortunately enough, my manager accepted. The good thing is that it allowed me to spend some days with my mother and sister, which was very nice as I don't see them very often in the year. It's terrible how I miss them. But I'm finally in a good place, in which I feel ok with the fact that I chose to move to a different country. But anyway, it was a long drive but hopefully I won't have to do it again for some time. 

Now. Let's go back to the subject.
I can't believe I let so much time since I last blogged. Life can be so hectic sometimes that I forgot how easy it is to get overwhelmed by things.
I feel like I don't have a proper routine yet and it gets difficult to balance work and personal life. It was especially hard when my boyfriend came back from work on monday and announced he got fired. Not the best time for this.
It wasn't his fault of course, and I supported him as soon as he told me. But at times when we're meant to buy a car and we had finally agreed on taking a dog, it definitely took us off-guard. Hopefully, things will sort themselves out and we can go back to our old quiet and happy life.


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FRANCAIS
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J'ai été une mauvaise blogueuse ces deux dernières semaines. Je me suis complètement laissée submerger par mon nouveau travail, un retour éclair en France, mes anciens colocataires qui sont venus me rendre visite en Angleterre et mon Jules qui a perdu son travail.

Jusqu'ici, mon nouveau travail se passe bien et cela a été une semaine vraiment intense pour nous. Il s'agit d'un tout nouveau café Starbucks donc on a dû travailler dur pour s'assurer que tout était prêt pour l'ouverture, sans oublier que nous devions aussi gérer toute la promotion pour attirer de nouveaux clients. Mais dans l'ensemble, c'était assez amusant et très intéressant de voir le processus derrière l'ouverture d'un café. En plus, j'adore apprendre tout sur le café et ça m'a fait réaliser qu'être barista est un art, pas seulement un job.

J'ai aussi dû ramener ma voiture en France, ce qui n'a pas été facile car j'adore ma voiture. Mais c'est une voiture française et je ne pouvais plus l'assurer en Angleterre. Tout ça est tombé un peu à la dernière minute, du coup j'ai dû prendre des jours de congé au boulot et heureusement, mon manager a accepté. L'avantage est que j'ai pu passer quelques jours avec ma mère et ma soeur, ce qui était vraiment sympa puisque je ne les vois pas souvent dans l'année. C'est incroyable comme elles me manquent. Mais au moins, je suis finalement OK avec le fait que j'ai décidé de déménager dans un autre pays et que je dois désormais y rester. Bref, j'avais donc une longue route à faire mais normalement, je n'aurais plus à la conduire avant un bout de temps.

Bref. Revenons à nos moutons.
J'ai du mal à croire que j'ai laissé passer autant de temps depuis mon dernier post. La vie devient parfois tellement mouvementée que j'en ai presque oublié à quel point il est facile de se laisser submerger par tout ça.
J'ai le sentiment de ne pas avoir de routine du tout et ça complique beaucoup les choses car je n'arrive pas à trouver un équilibre entre travail et vie personnelle. Cela n'a pas non plus arrangé les choses quand mon Jules est rentré du travail lundi dernier et m'a annoncé qu'il s'était fait virer. Pas au meilleur moment, j'ajouterai...
Ce n'était pas sa faute évidemment et je l'ai soutenu à la seconde même où il me l'a annoncé. Mais quand on sait que l'on est bientôt censé acheter une voiture et que l'on était enfin décidés à adopter un chien, tout ça nous a vraiment pris de court et va nous ralentir dans nos projets. Espérons que les choses s'arrangeront d'elles-mêmes et que l'on pourra vite retourner à notre train de vie tranquille et heureux.