From Black Friday to Cyber Monday

This will be a short post about from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. I had always heard of people purchasing items on Black Friday and placing the items up on Cyber Monday which is the following Monday after Black Friday. The venue is eBay where you can find just about anything you can possibly think of... well sort of. Mostly electronic stuff, clothing, kid stuff, CDs/DVDs and parts to fix just about anything that needs to be fixed.

I ended up purchasing a $198 laptop just to try and sell it on eBay on Cyber Monday. Needless to say the whole process was kinda exciting, as I never did anything like that before. I mean I sold small stuff on eBay but nothing really that valuable and expensive. As a pointer if you are planning to do this it’s important to really understand the shipping cost and also the eBay and PayPal fees involved. Most people usually miss estimate on the shipping cost (as I did) it only needs to happen once. Best thing to do is place the item(s) in the box you are planning to ship it in pack it like you are going to ship it. Then take it down to the Post Office and say, “What would the shipping be for all the 50 States?” This way it really gives you an idea of what to expect. When you do up an eBay page it gives you the cost of that page upon completion so you know what the cost is. But PayPal fees are a little more confusing (sort of) I find by using the eBay support chat works well in figuring out what PayPal fee are going to be.

Oh if your wondering... I still made out on the sale. But the most important thing is I had fun doing it!

Black Friday 2009

It seems every year last minute we would decide if we are going to attend the coveted Black Friday event at a our local Walmart. This year my brother in law’s laptop was giving some problems, being that it was 3 years old, he decided he want a new laptop. I told him about Wally Mart’s laptop deal made by eMachines for $198! So we decide let’s go and get this laptop so I asked “What time do you want to leave (as he was driving)?” He said “4 am…” He then called me back 15 minutes later and said “Better make that 3:30 am…” Another 15-20 minutes later… “Better make that midnight… we’re leaving at midnight…” I said “Midnight…!?! (Pause) OK, I’m game…” See I’ve been to couple of the Black Friday Wally Mart sales what I remembered was just waiting in a long line in the dark and it was cold… and did I say that the line was really long? Most times by the time you get into the store the item you waited for or wanted was sold out as Walmart just brings in a limited amount of the sale items.

This year was the first year I went 5 hours before the sale started and to my surprise Walmart was open when we got there. Apparently they were open 24 hours that day and had the entire sale items wrapped up in cardboard with signs on them saying “(Item Name) for 5 am Sale” and you could not purchase the item until 5 am. How they handle the big-ticket items like laptops, flat screen TVs, game units, etc. they gave you a ticket number where each ticket corresponds to one item. In the $198 sale model laptop there were only 30 available! And my brother in law got the last one!

Walmart had aisles roped off (in some case they had more than one item per line) for each of the big-ticket items when you got a ticket you had to wait in a line and could take 15 minutes bathroom breaks, but you had to turn in your ticket if you don’t return in 15 minutes your ticket will be given to someone else.

I have to confess something I got caught up in the moment and bought one these $198 laptop. I always heard about people buying stuff on Black Friday and Ebaying it on Cyber Monday. So I gave it a shot with this laptop (but that’s another story).

I set up the eMachines laptop for my brother in law that we got from Walmart and I was really impressed with that model especially for that price tag. It was a very capable performer it did everything my brother in law needed it to do (and more!). I ended up taking some video with my Nikon L5 digital camera of the set up I was planning on using it for my eBay page you can see the video below...

My New Year’s Resolution for 2010

My New Year’s resolution for 2010 is to start using this blog I created as sort of a repository of all things that I find net worthy, interesting, and helpful to me a sort of online notebook not so much a journal, but a place for my thoughts and ramblings. There a lot times when I would get these ideas and think “Wouldn’t it be great to just jot these thoughts down somewhere…?” Much Kudos to Google, YouTube, and PhotoBucket for making this a reality for lots people. The ability to convey an idea or thought or simple praise or a place to rant about something it’s a great stress relief. I’m really not sure how often I will post but I am going to try hard to be diligent at this New Year’s resolution.