I’m finally getting around to creating this post about my wife’s eBay experience this past Christmas (2008). She was able to make quite a bit of money selling multiple Wii Fits on eBay and other online sources. It was an unnerving experience for her, but she was able to make a profit and that is all that matters.

Back in August of 2008, my wife told me that Kmart had the Wii Fit on sale, but they were sold out by the time that she got there. We had planned to get a Wii Fit for the kids for Christmas – and my wife hates to buy anything unless it is on sale. I told her that we should really consider buying multiple Wii Fits the next time they go on sale and that we should then sell them on eBay.

I didn’t think much more about it until one day in late November, my wife called me on the phone, very excited. She told me that she had just left a Target where she had purchased 6 Wii Fits that were on sale (1 for the kids, and 5 to sell on eBay). She asked me if she should purchase more and I said that she should, so she purchased 5 additional Wii Fits.

My wife already had an eBay account, so she quickly placed a few of the Wii Fit’s up for auction. I told her that she should add only a few of the products in the beginning – to see what the market was like. She setup the each auction with different durations.

We noticed that people didn’t really begin to focus on an item until the time remaining for the auction was close to completion (although many had set a maximum bid price). Although there are reasons that a bidder may set their listing to display for 5, 7 or 10 days, when you are selling a Wii Fit at Christmas time, setting a auction duration at anything past 3 days is a waste of time. Most people did not begin bidding until 1 hour or so before the auction was ending (there are exceptions, of course).

One aspect of selling eBay that my wife and I did not particularly like was that most of the people selling Wii Fit at that time were offering Standard shipping for free – cuts down on profit. Because my really disliked having to pay shipping cost (which was much in most cases), she also added a few of the Wii Fit to our County’s online classifieds. I think she sold 3 of them from this source. She did not make a great profit from these sells, but, because she sold them locally, she was able to deliver the Wii Fit personally. She and the buyer always met in a public place and I went with her on a few occasions, so she was safe.

All and all, it was a good experience. Now she obviously did not make enough to quit her job, but it was a nice bit of extra change.