eBay the Right Way

eBay Seller Chat with Paula in Texas: Day Job as Marketing Consultant Using AI, Applies Process to Reselling 🧑🏻‍💻

• Suzanne A. Wells • Episode 244

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Suzanne Wells:

Hello, resellers. Welcome to episode number 244, of eBay the right way. Today's date is November, 19. 2025 my guest is Paula in Texas. No announcements this week, so we will get started right away. You okay, listeners, we have a special guest with us today who is going to fill us in on chat, GPT and AI and all the things that we want to learn. So how are you doing this morning?

Unknown:

Paula Suzanne, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh, my pleasure. I was thrilled when you reached out. I was like, yes, yes. When can we do this? So can you give us a little bit of background about how you came to eBay and what your your full time job is, and how all this works together? Yeah, I'd love to.

Unknown:

I my current eBay account. I started in 2016 and I don't know if that was my first eBay account, I think it was my second, but I got into it way back then because I found I loved crafting, and in particular beading, and I had this fantasy that I was going to make beautiful things out of beads, sell them on eBay, be able to quit my soul sucking job as a marketing research

Suzanne Wells:

that's not a fantasy. That's an inspired idea. Well, it hasn't happened yet. Doesn't mean it

Unknown:

won't Well, in my case, it turns out the only thing I was really good at was buying beads. Zero artistic talent, but I loved buying beads, and I learned a little bit about eBay and but and over the years, I would post something every now and then. And frankly, Suzanne, it was a miracle that I sold anything. I'm not a natural photographer. Back then, I didn't know anything about titles or descriptions or, you know, or pricing or research, I knew nothing. So it's really amazing. I think I had 65 sales between 2016 and 2020 you know, I mean, I bought more stuff than I sold on eBay.

Suzanne Wells:

Well, that's a common situation, because the treasure hunting and the buying is that dopamine hit. It's, you know, listing. Well, in your case, you had to make stuff to sell, so kind of a longer process.

Unknown:

Well, and then covid hit. And I was at home with my husband, and I looked at him, I realized, I, you know, I'm in this 25 year marriage. In the first 10 years were great, and then something went south, and I I just knew, I said, I have to get divorced. And and it scared me, and I knew how it was going to go down. I knew that he would stay in the house. He would keep the house, and I would, I would get a cash out from him and and I was even further scared, because when my girlfriend said to me, Hey sis, let me tell you about dating in your 60s, she said, the odds are good, but the goods are odd, so just be careful. So I was like, oh my god, let's Okay.

Suzanne Wells:

Wait, let's, let's put some perspective. What year were you born? 65 oh, okay, so you just, you're you just turned 60 this year?

Unknown:

Yes, I just turned 60 this year. Okay, because you Sure. But I, I thought that was very funny and and I decided at that point I need to downsize. I need to start getting rid of stuff, because I knew divorce was inevitable, so I upped my eBay game. And again, it was a miracle I sold anything, because again, I hadn't bothered to teach myself anything, because I didn't know about you at that time, and I'm just slapping stuff up. I made some sales. Probably made sold a dozen things, and then I ended up giving the the all the stuff that didn't sell. Immediately, I gave to my best friend who is in the estate sale business, and so I've known her. I met her in 2008 when I left the corporate world and started my own business as a marketing consultant. She was at that time, teaching a class here in Fort Worth called How to start a business. So we became instant best friends, and I watched her evolve, and she went into the estate sale business right before covid, but kept busy at it and went. And I, when I left my husband, I moved in with Tony. I rent her old mother in law suite. It's two private bedrooms with a private bathroom, perfect. So, oh, I know it's just, it's a great deal. She, bless her heart, she only charges me $500 a month. So one room is my office and one room is my my bedroom, and then I have the bathroom. So I started hanging around with her as she's going to these estate sales that she's producing right eating these people that are full time resellers, they're pickers and resellers. And I met a guy who does nothing but what does he do stamps. I met a guy that does nothing but rocks. I met a guy that does nothing but Star Wars and Star Trek stuff. So my mind really opened up to how these people are having fun in this industry and doing things they love. So, but I still wasn't ready to dive back into eBay, mainly because I love my day job. I have great clients. I'm very happy with my job, but I I'm always on the lookout, because my three largest clients are well past retirement age, so once they go, that's 80% of my income, uh huh. And I'm going to have to do something else, whether it's get out there and start networking and get your clients, or maybe become a reseller myself. So all this is moving around, and then you I fast forward to 2003 and as the odds would have it, I met a guy, and he was a

Suzanne Wells:

widower. Wait, do you mean 2023 I'm sorry, 2023 Okay, good. Because I was like, that was way before your divorce. Before your divorce. What's got you?

Unknown:

And he was a recent widower. He'd only been widowed about 10 months, and but we're texting. We're talking on the phone. We go out on a couple of dinner dates. We're really liking each other, we're having a good time and and I'm ready to take things to the next level. I'm ready to do the hokey pokey, if you know what I mean, right? And he says to me, okay, Paula, I'm going to show you my house now. I said, Okay, great. I know,

Suzanne Wells:

right. I'm making a hoarder situation. I Well,

Unknown:

my my girlfriend who told me, let me tell you about dating in the 60s. The odds are good, but the goods are odd. And so this is screaming in my head, and I'm thinking, Okay, let's see. And I go over there, and I was flabbergasted. Yes, it was a hoarder house. There were pathways you could barely squeeze through. He had not touched anything since his wife passed 10 months previously. He just was stuck. He couldn't he didn't know how. Couldn't do anything and what had happened in the few years preceding her passing. She she showed horses. So she'd had a she had a heart attack and passed unexpectedly, but she had in her household a whole lifetime of stuff. She loved to go antiquing with her mom, but her mom had passed. So she inherited everything in her mother's large house. Her her father passed. They inherited everything in their father's large house. And then Mike's parents also passed. So in his house was a lifetime of stuff. I remember in one of your introductory videos in your premium library, you say, everybody's got 7000 things they can put on eBay right now. Okay? He had that by four. And he just, he did not know what to do with any of it. And I basically, I looked around the house and I said, you know you're cute and all, but I gotta go.

Suzanne Wells:

You just felt heavy like I gotta get out of here. This is crushing me, right? I

Unknown:

couldn't, I couldn't. So that seemed to be a big motivation for him. He started cleaning his house at the time. It was a little painful, because he would just load up truckloads and take them to Goodwill and and I would say to him things like, you know, my friend Tony's in the estate sale business, you could just give this to her, and she would sell it and give you cash. She said, Nope, I just got to get it out of here. Got to get it out. And so I saw 1000s and 1000s of dollars go OUT out the door, but things like she his wife, had 80 pairs of jeans, and they are all brand new.

Suzanne Wells:

Wait, I forgot to ask you where you're located. I'm in Fort Worth Texas. Okay, so that is, that's like a thrifting Mecca. And I, I'm just imagining the listeners, the pickers, just salivating, like, where's this guy's house? And can I go and all the stuff that's in there?

Unknown:

Yeah, I know. And she had really good taste. Said, just multiple pairs of cowboy boots and a lot of James Avery jewelry and just all kinds of stuff. And a lot of people had already gone through the daughters came in. They took what they wanted, but you know, like most children, they don't want all their fathers and grandparents knickknacks. So fast forward to this year I I married Mike. Okay, you did get married. I did get married. I got congratulations.

Suzanne Wells:

Thank you. Hey,

Unknown:

he got his house clean. Everything turned out okay, but there's still just a ton of stuff. I can't give up my apartment here in Fort Worth, because there's literally no closet space. You know, it's still full of everybody's stuff. He got it. He got rid of a lot. You can walk around. You can see the walls now. And I so I thought, You know what? Maybe, maybe I ought to look at eBay again. You need a

Suzanne Wells:

sanctuary when you're dealing with a situation like that with someone who has lived in the house a really long time and they have a lot of stuff, you need to be able to leave and go and breathe and have your space and not because clutter is very emotional. It's It's like your soul feels heavy when you're around a lot of clutter. And I'm completely on board with that decision. I support you in that 100% to have your little sanctuary where you can just go and and be around your own stuff and just take a breather. Because I've you're maybe you're like me, that when you're in that situation, you're at his house, it's you're constantly wanting to work on everything and clean this out, and let's get rid of this today. And it doesn't go away because it's in front of you all the time.

Unknown:

It's so true, and he needed time. I mean, he'd only been she, she just passed away 10 months before I met him, so he's had to have time to let go of things in stages and really evaluate if he's ready to let it go, if he wants to keep it. But one day, I looked up on a shelf. It way up higher on this shelf, there was this, I don't even know, a porcelain piece. It was like flowers. And I took a picture of it, and I Google searched it. It's this Italian thing that sold for $300 at auction. Yeah, I know what

Suzanne Wells:

you're talking about. I had an aunt married to my dad's brother, who was in the Air Force, and they lived in Italy for a while when we were little kids, and they brought my mom back some of that stuff. I can't remember the brand names of it, but it's beautiful. It's like porcelain, and it's flowers, and the petals are very intricate and beautiful and delicate. Those are valuable. They're a little tricky to ship. You gotta be careful. But yeah, talking about,

Unknown:

well, when I pointed that out to him, I think that was a real eye opener for him. So then he was like, all on board. He would bring me things. How much do they kind of get from this? He used to be a merchant marine and work on ships, so he's got a lot of antique stuff. Oh, fascinating. So he's getting all excited and and so I this was, this was just last month, okay, and I had zero cells for many, many, many months, and I started looking around on the internet to get some education. Finally, and Suzanne, I I picked you out of all the other podcasts out there, primarily because your last name was wells, and the guy, his last name is Mike, wells, I said, Oh, that's my gal, right

Suzanne Wells:

there. Okay, well, that is my married name when I got married in 88 and my maiden name, no one can ever spell it right, so I just kept that and for my kids sake, like, Oh yeah, well, then our last names would be the same and all that. Okay, yeah, so that that worked in my favor, great. And it did. It did. And I

Unknown:

started listening to your podcast and watching your premium content library, and in learning these so I've, I've made a lot of changes to how I do things, and I started, I'll tell you, last month, I sold seven things and made $430 just by implementing what I've learned. Excellent. Thank you. I really, you know, in but I started using AI in my day job. I'm a freelance marketing consultant. So for clients, I build them websites, and I write a lot of blogs, a lot of E News, a lot of social media, and they're all trying to outrank their competitors. So I've learned that words matter and how you name photographs matter, yes, so I've started, so I started incorporating all that knowledge into how I posted things on eBay. And I also, oh, here's a good bit of advice that you, you gave at one point was. Be careful about designer items on eBay, because people will get your item, wear it to their class reunion, and then return it within your 30 day return window. Also that you can get your your personal eBay site banned if that Coach bag you're selling isn't really coach. But the other day, I came home and Mike goes, you know, Paula, I have all of my childhood GI Joe doll. Oh yeah. And my little ears perked up. I'm, like, really dear. Like, how many dudes? What do you mean by all of them? Could you to be more specific. Oh, my God. He goes, now a few boxes. Do you want me to get them out of storage? I said, why?

Suzanne Wells:

Yes, yes, I did. Let me help you. Let's go right now.

Unknown:

So he brings in these four shipping container sized, I mean, they're, they're, they're five feet wide and a few feet tall, and he stacks them up, and they're taller than me, and I'm five six. I mean, this is how many GI Joe dolls he has. So, so I said, You know what, Honey, we're going to Europe. I said, I'm going to everything I sell on eBay in Poshmark. I'm going to put it in savings account, and I'm going into the eBay business. So that's so that's how I got started. I have a gold I learned this from one of your podcast interviewees. I'm trying to post something every day for the rest of the year, so I yeah, I set up a process. I take photographs in the in the morning, and I've developed a process with AI, which I want to talk to you about more, because, you know, there's pros and cons to AI. It's it's

Suzanne Wells:

not there are, and it's such a buzzword right now, you have to be careful what you do and where the AI is pulling the information from to make sure that you're not violating any copyright laws, especially with photos.

Unknown:

Oh my gosh, yes, so many things. And you know, not everything on the internet is accurate.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, that's that was very true. When I started all this eBay mentoring stuff. It was like so much of it about eBay was wrong. There's no internet police. There's no governing body that checks and make sure what you're saying is accurate,

Unknown:

right? And sometimes

Suzanne Wells:

people just don't know and they just guess. But sometimes they look it up and they get wrong information.

Unknown:

And a let's face it, AI is helpful. It is as it is. It can also be a little creepy, especially when it comes to images. I'm not a huge fan of the image generator, because sometimes I've tried to do them for my work, and I'll get somebody's hand and I'll have like, seven fingers, you know, it just does weird, creepy things.

Suzanne Wells:

Yes, I saw something the other day, and it said, you can tell if something's AI look at the people's hands, because either, like, the wrong age hand, or it'll be missing fingers, or something will be not, not human about it.

Unknown:

Yeah, a friend of mine tried to create a coloring book using AI. And she was a, she's a marriage counselor, client of mine, too, and she was describing these things. It was generating cartoon images that would be great for coloring book, but the couple, they'd be have their arms around each other, but then there'd be, like, this fifth arm that would come out of nowhere, and none of it was usable. And at the end of the day, none of it was usable. So, but I have found it, you know, for me, I I'm so new in my eBay journey, I I know less than nothing, so I'm finding it very helpful for just what is this item. This is great thing looking at, and you know, what's the price range on it? So I developed a process. I use, um, Google, Gemini. Okay, a lot of people ask me, oh, is chat to be better? They're all fine, but, and I don't find much difference between those two, but I the reason I use Gemini is I started a separate account just for my eBay business. And I do this with all my clients, also because my my client base is diversified. So when I'm working, I have a client that's an animal rescue,

Suzanne Wells:

because it learns you, doesn't it. It's intuitive, like Apple products, it learns what your next step is going to be,

Unknown:

yes, and I was using my general account for this eBay stuff, and it would finish doing the research and say, Would you like me to make a posting to put this on the Brit website? And I'm like, no. So I started a separate. A Google account, and I go to Gemini via Google, and I gave it, I started the conversation. I started a conversation with him and with Gemini, I said, I'm an eBay reseller. And I told Gemini I was an experienced one, because I didn't want Gemini to teach me how to, you know, start a listing on Ebay. I already know how to

Suzanne Wells:

fly, yeah, like Be sure to fill in the item specifics and all the stuff you already know, right?

Unknown:

But, but what I what I do is I'll take photographs and I'll upload it to my prompt, and I have this general prompt that says, What is this? Please conduct. And I know what it is. It's a Seattle Seahawks ball cap, but, but I still, I say, what is this? Please conduct pricing research and write an SEO optimized title. And I've already told Gemini, I want the SEO title. I want the first three words to be the most important. Again, that's something I learned from when somebody you

Suzanne Wells:

interviewed, that was Holly. I believe Holly that sells the VCRs. She was talking about that the first three words she heard that, and that's really difficult.

Unknown:

It is, you know, you come close three or four words. But I took her, so I told Jim, and i Hey, I want you to do this on all of them going forward, and now it knows to do that for me. And then I said, and write me a succinct description, because you know how overly florid some of these descriptions are, and it just they make your eyes roll. Nobody wants to read all that, right? So

Suzanne Wells:

nobody wants to know that your neighbors will be stunned at this beautiful sunflower painting in the dining room like nobody. That's just a waste of words.

Unknown:

So but by telling that Gemini account, I want succinct descriptions, I don't get all that marketing BS. Now sometimes I want some of it, and I might, I might go back and say, Can you add a little marketing flair to this description if I feel like it needs it so it can adapt, it can change. And so far, I'm having good luck. But the pricing, you know, I don't know. I mean, it's, I feel like I'm pricing things a bit on the high side, you know, like you said, you can always go in and lower the price later. Right now, my main goal is to learn as much as I can and get one item posted every day through the end of the year and survive the holidays. You know, I want to do have a holiday here or there, so, right?

Suzanne Wells:

Well, in the pricing that will come with time, because it all depends on the seller's strategy, you know, what's their business model? You can look up items, and you will see prices all over the place. And I say that all the time, yeah, prices were all over the place on this What am What am I happy with? Or go with, go with the highest one. Have best offer, and see what you get. And then you can say, okay, wells, looks like the market is only going to demand this price is if you get five offers on it within the same price range, that's telling you something. And you don't know. Sometimes I learned this selling on Amazon. Sometimes sellers will find the same thing over and over again, so they will leave a listing open, and they will just price it insanely high, like nobody would ever buy it. But when they find it again, they just do a quantity of one, you know, and re relaunch it. So you have to factor all that in when you're looking at pricing,

Unknown:

interesting. Well, there's a lot to learn in this business, and it's so much fun. And I find it so much more fun now than did before, because now I I've had the experience of watching Tony run her estate sale business. Oh, and honey, if you can get a girlfriend in the estate sale business, do it, take them out to lunch, because she lets me come and do a pre sale at all of her sales, so I get to go in and pick before everybody else. Oh, okay, and I had another girlfriend. She she decided to do her own. Her mother had just passed, and her mother was a lover of purses, and had just hundreds of purses. And so my friend, bless her heart, she just, she had an estate sale, and said every purse is $3 well, I dug through there, and I found some coach purses that had never been used I and I wore one of them for a long time. You know, it's just those estate sales, if you can get in early, they're great.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh, yeah, yeah, there's some treasures for sure. And you know, the objective is to get the stuff sold. Yeah, because the owner or the estate sale company, like, they don't want to pack all this stuff up and have to do something with it. No, that's why. Like sometimes on the last day, it's fill a bag for $10 or they just want to get it out of there. And even they're finding that fine line between making as much money for the client as they can and having as few leftovers as they can.

Unknown:

So it's been quite a journey, but I feel like now I'm getting the the education that I had missed and all the years before when I tried to do this sort of thing. So I'm having a lot more fun this time around. Yeah, the timing is having a good phone, yeah. And I

Suzanne Wells:

can see how it would be more fun when you have 8000 tubs of vintage GI Joes. That's going to make it more

Unknown:

fun. Well, and I have an offer in front of me. I have Tony has a friend who is a GI Joe collector, and he is itching to come out, and he might just buy the whole lot off me. So, oh yeah, perfect, yeah, yeah, you know, because there's no shortage of things in myself, right, you know, and even my own stuff, and my own addiction to

Suzanne Wells:

going to estate sales. And the situation with Mike's house is kind of like the estate sale. You want to re home as much as you can and make a decent amount of money without giving things away. But sometimes you you know you might have that buyer in hand, that GI Joe guy. And if he's there and he offers you X $1,000 for these things, let him take them, and if he wants to resell them, sometimes you just have to do that. I sold something the other day. It was a vintage Zodiac needlepoint. It was like a wheel with all the signs on it. And it could be a wall hanging, it could be a pillow cover. It was like, 12 by 12. It was pretty big. And I got it in a state sale for like, $10 and I'd had it up there for six months or so, $100 somebody offered me 70 fives. I'm like, Okay, I took it and it went to a vintage store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, because I was like, where's this going? What are you going to do with it? And I put that on the the money making Mondays, and somebody's like, Oh, they're probably going to resell it for three or 400 and I'm like, okay, good for them. I can't control that. I've had it. It was a good flip. Okay, you know, that's fine if they want to hang it in their store for three years. It's a beautiful piece of work to look at. So okay, but you kind of have to find that balance between rehoming all the stuff and making money and feeling okay about it, yeah.

Unknown:

Well, it's interesting. When you think about the life cycle of some products, you know, what? What they go through, they it's like they have their own lives. You know, someone probably handmade that piece that you're talking about. Oh, yeah, it was

Suzanne Wells:

definitely handmade. It was in a it was on an online auction, and it was just this heap of all this needlework, oh, and, like, they didn't even take pictures of each individual thing. Oh, wow. So I just zoomed in on the pictures, and this was on the very bottom, and all I saw was, like, two or three of the zodiac signs. And I'm like, that stuff is hot. People love that, especially if it's vintage. So I paid $10 for all of it, and fantastic. And it turned out well, sometimes it doesn't turn out well, stuff is stained you can't see, you know, it's a gamble when you can't examine it in person. And a lot of these estate sale companies that that do these online sales like they don't have time to go back and take more pictures for you. Sometimes they will. But, you know, they're dealing with 1000s of items.

Unknown:

They don't have time, right? Yeah, yeah, they got to move it. Yeah, no, I Yeah. I never regret resellers. In fact, we've Tony has made so many friends with resellers. It's kind of what she's known for. So when she gets in albums, you know, she's got somebody she can call, it'll come get albums. You know, she's not. She's a very social person, and doesn't want to sit down in front of a computer to do eBay. Right for her, it's all about wheeling and dealing on the phone and

Suzanne Wells:

the hands on with the items. Like I get that part. That's why we love treasure hunting. Is you're, you're there, up close and personal, seeing all these things. And that is a big part of the business, is the hands on part. And it's, oh, it's so much fun. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown:

Well, I'm hoping to be better at it than beating I hope I'm not just good at buying things.

Suzanne Wells:

Like, if you did$400 in a month, yeah, pretty new to it. That's, that's excellent.

Unknown:

Yeah, I'd like to show you my AI process and and how I use discernment, okay? Because, you know, we said. Add not everything out there is accurate, but Right, sure. Well, first thing I want to show you is Google, Gemini, my very first prompt when I when I decided to use this account just for selling, is, I told it I have many items in my home to sell on eBay. I've been an eBay reseller for many years, and would like your assistance with product and pricing research, as well as writing SEO titles and product descriptions. I was told by an eBay coach that the first three words of a product title are the most significant. So here I'm giving I'm giving Gemini specific instructions. In my next chat, I will upload photos of an item for you to research. But first, I have a couple of questions. So my first question was, will you retain this information for future chats? And number two, is there a limit on the number of photos I can share with you on my current plan, which in this version, I just have the free plan. I'm using the free Gemini. And so here's its answer. It's so kind. I just know that Gemini is a librarian. Gemini is that friendly librarian that helps you with your homework. Anyway. It says I'd be happy to assist you with your eBay reselling your experience and knowledge is great. Blah, blah, blah. Question number one, will you retain this information for future chats? Yes, I've stored the key details about your request. And then it goes on to tell me, you can always ask me to forget things or manage what I've saved for you at this link, which is nice, because what if we go to the next eBay conference and they say, No, no, it's the first five words of the most important, right? Two words, you know, I can go in and I can change that. You can guarantee that with

Suzanne Wells:

reselling things, yep. And

Unknown:

then the second question I was asking, how many images can I upload for Gemini to figure out the item, what the audio I'm trying to sell is? And basically it said, you know, 10 images or less, you're going to be fine, as long as they're not, you know, overly gigantic. So let's see here. So the first thing I did was, I'd like to sell this item on eBay. Please tell me what it is, conduct pricing research and write an SEO optimized title for eBay and a succinct description, because I wanted a description that wasn't overly floored with too much marketing. It's simply a Seattle Seahawks Santa hat. So it wasn't that big of a deal. But I made a mistake on this prompt. I accidentally turned on this thing called deep research, so it and I'm wondering, why is this taking so long, you know? And it turned out it did all this research. It's like a college textbook here with all this good degree. And it's just a hat. It's a city hat. So I closed that out and and I went back, and I said, Please give me a suggested by it now, price and SEO of do I style and a succinct eBay description? So honestly, I didn't even read all that deep research.

Suzanne Wells:

Did you put in eBay description with 50 words or less and that way would be shorter?

Unknown:

Yeah, you could do that absolutely. So it gave me a buy it now, price of 2799 I think I think I ended up posting it for 25 or 24 that's fair. That sounds right, yeah. But I like this title. It was a little bit too long for eBay. So once I figure out how many characters can be in that title, I think I'll go back to Gemini and say, Please keep the titles at you know, 65 characters less, or whatever it turns out to be. I don't know what that

Suzanne Wells:

is. It's it on eBay. It's 80 characters. 80 characters.

Unknown:

I'm going to write that down. Thank you. And then for my description, you have to read because, if you'll notice, this first paragraph is not part of the description. It's Gemini telling me what it's done. Okay, so the description really started right here and goes all the way down to here. And I, I do read through these. Sometimes I might take out a description or something if I, if I don't feel like it's just right, you do need to read them. But all of this looked pretty good to me. And so I, I went over, copied and pasted all this, uploaded my images. I did regain the hat, something like NFL sales, Seahawks, Santa hat,

Suzanne Wells:

so you can save these results on on your Gemini account.

Unknown:

Yes, you can go back to this conversation, and it does way more analysis than that. I need truth be told. I don't always read every single word of this analysis, you know, look at the prices and pick one and go with it, but I do rename the titles over here so I know where I've listed it. And then. And this one, I just asked a question, because I found this Seahawks ball cap and the Seahawks Santa hat at a garage sale last weekend for $1 a piece. And I would my question was, should I sell these separately or as a set? Because, you know, we're coming up on the holiday season. And so I asked eBay or Gemini this question, and it gave me some good, good logic, and it's ultimate recommendation was to sell them separately, but it gave me some pros and cons. But it's just nice to have be able to ask this in and look at its reasoning.

Suzanne Wells:

Okay, now, so you said you just have the free account,

Unknown:

free Gemini account. Yeah, I have a pro account on another, another Gmail address, and I can't tell the difference. I really cannot tell what I'm getting. And I've never there may be a limit on how many questions you can ask. I know there is with chat GBT, but I haven't run into in fact, let's just ask. Let's see. I'm going to come over here to new chat. Is there a limit on the number of chats I can have with you today?

Suzanne Wells:

Is that what we want to ask? Or with the subscription I have, or whatever they call

Unknown:

it, with my current plan, perfect. You know, I know there is a limit with chat GBT,

Suzanne Wells:

I'll research that and put it in later. That's fine.

Unknown:

Well, I have an item for us to test, great and Suzanne, I picked this item just for you, because I know you have experience selling Disney collectibles, or, as I learned from you, Disney Anna

Suzanne Wells:

Oh from the premium library, those six lessons about different Disney things. The item we are researching is a ceramic figurine of Lucifer, the cat from the Cinderella story. It has the box and the certificate of authenticity. I'll do my quick and dirty research here, and I start on eBay, just to see if there's anything. And it's ceramic, and I go back a year on my first search, just, just to give, well, this is probably something there's not going to be a whole lot of. It's not like iPhone cases, where there's going to be 1000s, okay? And I always sort by price, and then you always want to look at how many are active, because the market might be flooded. So 67 active listings. That's kind of a lot, yeah, or something so specific, but you never know. You might have the paperwork might do it

Unknown:

so. And then the next thing is this. Let's go to, I just took a screenshot of the cat face on from the movie that I took. Uh huh. So if you want, we can, we can try this again. I'm just going to use the one photo. I was going to

Suzanne Wells:

just drop it into Google Images and see,

Unknown:

oh yeah, that's the same one. That's the same one that was pulling up. I took a movie of it. You know, on it I have this little rotating thing that rotates items. Oh, cool. So I just took a screenshot of that. So let's, let's give this a whirl again. So this Disney figurine, let's see what it does with it. And just, just using one photo, I'll go back in and tell it that I have certificate of authentication.

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, just put CoA. Yeah, that's the reseller lingo. CoA, certificate of authenticity, way shorter to say and type,

Unknown:

okay, so I'm gonna say yes, do the research plan. I also have the COA. And the original box gives me an item ID, original box, Minton box, like noon. That's true.

Suzanne Wells:

Oh my, yeah, we did see one that was 125 all depends on how many are for sale at the same time. And have they done the research? Have they done it correctly? Are they, you know, a long tail item seller where they're okay to wait? Yes, some people aren't. You know, that's why I don't sell stuff for other people, is because they are in so much of a home. They want the money tomorrow, and it may not sell for a year or two. You got to be

Unknown:

patient with this and and they want it right now. They do, and they want top dollar. Or

Suzanne Wells:

they maybe they have something ability to have. To pay. Or some like they need money for there's a reason they're in a hurry.

Unknown:

Oh, yeah, so that's a heart, that's that's what

Suzanne Wells:

we compete against every day. Is okay? I gotta wait for all these to sell out, and then mine might be the only one left, or me and the other higher price people might be the only ones left, because these others are willing to take so much less well. I

Unknown:

think what I'm going to do on this one is I'm going to put a Buy It Now price at 174 and I'll take offers at 150 because, again, I have zero money into this. You know, it's just been on a shelf. The box is a tiny bit worn, but, and I will just keep working with Gemini to make sure that my description describes the box and, and this is fine. This isn't too long,

Suzanne Wells:

no. And that Disney stuff is serious business. Oh, wow, these people? Well, my mom lived near Orlando for a while before she passed, and I'd go down there and go to the thrift stores, and there's all the Disney stuff. And, you know, they talked about friends that, oh, their whole house is Disney. Or at Christmas, they have three Disney Christmas rooms, and they want all the every single Christopher radco Christmas, Disney thing that was ever made. And you know, they're serious about their collection, like the Barbie people. You know they're serious about it. So do your research. Be confident in your research, and especially if it's older, you know, it's only going to get more valuable because there's fewer of them. That's true, very true. So you may want to revisit every six months and see where your pricing is falling. But trust me, when adult children inherit their parents Disney collection of stuff, you know, they may want to just get rid of it as fast as they can. Maybe they hate it, maybe they never wanted it in the first place, and they just want to re home it and get something. And so you just never know what your competitors are charging until you look at the active listings.

Unknown:

Well, you know, and so I heard someone say the other day, they don't like going to the thrift stores because they I think it's already all been picked over and overpriced. But you know, if you hit it on the day that someone shows up with their a carload of this stuff, you know, there's still deals to be found.

Suzanne Wells:

Yes, just have to believe and it will come to you. But I've had that happen. We're like, I see him coming out of the back, rolling that card out, and all this stuff, you know, like, Wait, somebody must have just dropped that off.

Unknown:

Yeah, I really admire these pickers that have a strategy. And they go, you know, they've done it so long, they just go into a store, and the wife will take one side of the store, and the husband will take the other, and they have their niches. And, you know, it's just, it's fascinating all people do, and there's enough room in this industry for everybody to have their own niche, their own way to do things. There are people that are just going to hate AI. They've been doing this long enough they don't need it. But some of them are like me, I need all the help I can get. I'm just starting out, I have zero experience. I don't know what half the stuff is, so I for me, it's been very helpful. Well,

Suzanne Wells:

what is your take on AI photos, not just the background change, but the actual photo of the item. Because this kind of straddles some eBay rules,

Unknown:

use a tool called Canva for creating graphics for social media that's for my clients, and they have a an AI generative tool within Canva that allows you to create a design and presuppose it upon a coffee mug or a model, if it's a t shirt design. So you can do a lot of these things. I don't want to get item not as described, because tools like chat GBT, they can pull images from everywhere. They can pull a brand new image from Land's End of this item. And yet, maybe the image I'm selling has a little, you know, faded, or a little scratch here or there, you know, it's not brand new. I don't want to have to deal with the return. So there's so many things that can go wrong. And remember earlier I said, use discernment and everything with AI that's way too much discernment for me, for me, because I don't, I just want to get stuff listed. My goal is to list a thing every day, so anything that might possibly get me in trouble or slow me down, I'm just not going to do it. I mean, I the pictures I take with my iPhone are good enough, right? Lighting is good if it's not wrinkled. And I lay it out, I. Um, if I take more care than I did on the Disney cat, I have pretty good luck just with my iPhone that, you know, I'm going to always have an iPhone, no matter what, or Android. You know, they all have great cameras in them these days. So no, I'm not, I'm not for that. It's, it's also, it's sneaky. You know, when I used to teach classes on marketing, and I would tell my students, people know when you're trying to BS them, they can smell they can sense it when you're being sneaky or deceptive, so just don't do it. Be authentic if you're selling yourself and your personal services. Just if you don't know how to do something, don't. Don't pretend like you do. You're going to get found out. And that's the same thing with using false images in advertising. In fact, I think there's laws against it.

Suzanne Wells:

Well, the actual eBay rule, yeah, the eBay rule for the listeners, in case you don't know, is you must take your own photos unless you have permission from the owner of the photo, or the photo is in the eBay stock catalog, which that's more for, like products new in the box. So this is rampant on eBay. People break this rule all the time, and they just go to the like you said, LL Bean website, and oh, here's the code I'm selling. I'm just going to grab this picture because it's better than mine. But that is outright theft. That is a violation of copyright, because those companies have paid a photographer, they have paid models, they have paid website designers, they paid to have that photo made. It belongs to them. Oh, wow, you're not going to get permission from LL Bean to ever use that also, this is very dangerous with new items, because they're new in the stock photos, and if you're selling use clothing, use anything, it's not going to be perfect, like the brand new photo. It it may have faded. It may have some small blemish. It may be missing a button, it may have a chip or a crack, whatever. And that is where you're going to get an inad. And you get too many of them, then you get in trouble, just for the sellers out there. AI in photos, you want to use that carefully. Yes, the background tool eBay has that where you can fool around with your background and make it cute and fun, but you are not allowed to just go and take photos off the internet that's not in the public domain, that that's not you know, if you're using an AI tool to create a photo. The AI tool could be pulling those photos from these sites where they're copyrighted, or, you know, another reselling site, like you said, you do things the laziest way. This is not, you know, and some people say, Oh, I have a stock photo because I want to show how it looks on a model and all that. No, you can't do that. Great. Get, get your neighbor to come over and model it and take a picture of that, or get a mannequin. You got to be real careful, because, also, sellers use that stock photo that they're not supposed to. Or this AI image as their gallery photo, and a lot of buyers don't look past that gallery photo. Oh, this is a beautiful coat, you know, I'm going to buy it, and they don't look at all the other pictures. So it is deceptive, and you do have to be careful, or you're not going to be on eBay much longer, especially with used clothing, take your own photos that is in the eBay handbook, or whatever you call it. You know that is a policy you cannot use stock photos without permission from the owner, or unless it's in the eBay catalog. That's the end of my rant. With

Unknown:

technology being the way it is, I'm sure it's just a short amount of time before EAS or eBay's technology will be able to detect

Suzanne Wells:

these. Oh, right. And, you know, I'm waiting for when eBay is searchable by image, just like Google lens. You know, how, how great would that be to drop it into the eBay research tool and have it find it based on image?

Unknown:

Yeah, it

Suzanne Wells:

took us a long time to get here, to get research on the app and to, you know, get the AI tools in the background. Removal Tool on eBay. It's not perfect. Sometimes it takes out too much. Sometimes it doesn't take out enough. And there's no like, eraser or put back tool to make it, to fix it, you have to go to Canva, or I think photo room is one. I use PicMonkey for all my other stuff too. But, you know, it's an evolution. These things will get better over time, but you just have to be

Unknown:

careful. And I'm very grateful that eBay. Is attempting to keep up with the times and to give us tools as sellers. And like I said, it may not be all perfect. It's all an evolution, but I think that it's a platform that's going to be there for us future. I don't see eBay going away anytime soon, least I hope not, because I'm having the time of my life on it right now?

Suzanne Wells:

Well, then you weren't around on eBay back in the day. But, like, we didn't even have internet on our phones. I would go to thrift stores and and write things down a little notebook, and then go to the nearest library and use their computer to look it up. Oh my god, we didn't all have, you know, internet in our pocket. And then that, and then that, graduated to having a laptop that I could just go somewhere that had internet and it, you know, I would go and look up these things because I was poor, I didn't have a lot of money to waste. And then I'd figure it out, and then I'd go back to the store and buy the ones that were wins and like, the fact that you can just look at your phone and figure it all out, right? There is, is still amazing to me.

Unknown:

Well, I want to come visit you and go shopping with you. Sometime. I'd love to see

Suzanne Wells:

No, I want to come go shopping with you. Oh, I do

Unknown:

have some great stores. We've got here in Fort Worth?

Suzanne Wells:

Yeah, we've had several guests from the Dallas Fort Worth area, and it's just, I hear everything's great, thrift stores, the state sales or garage sales, it's you're in a great location to launch into this once you are forced to

Unknown:

have a side hustle, girl's got to keep her options open, right?

Suzanne Wells:

That's right. Okay. Well, we've been going for quite a while here, and I think you've given us some great information. Thank you. One again, in a few months, maybe. Let's give it six months maybe, and you can catch us up on what you've

Unknown:

learned. I'd love to. I had so much fun talking with you today. Thanks a lot. Well,

Suzanne Wells:

I appreciate it, because I've been dying to learn about this. So you really helped me too. So, oh, good, good. So what are you up to this afternoon? Your regular

Unknown:

job, quiet meetings. Yes, I've got some self care to take of just it's a hodgepodge when you work for yourself.

Suzanne Wells:

So well, it's Tuesday, which means it's senior day. Means I'm going to some of the good wills around me in my new location. Oh, so I can do the little recon on senior day. Like, is is this like? No way I'm not doing that again, too many people. Or is it like, wells? So I like to wait until early afternoon, because seems like the scene, the die hards, you know, the ones that buy all the glass and stuff, they like to be there when the

Unknown:

store open, they open. I have, I have a goodwill probably a mile from my house. And every Tuesday morning I see them out there, and I'm like, Oh, get it. I have some girlfriends that go on Tuesdays, but I like that stretch. I might just pause. It's like a

Suzanne Wells:

social event. So I'm okay with that, but I feel like in my experience of going on senior day, even when I wasn't a senior, I was like, oh, Tuesday, I better not go. But you know, they're all in there, congregated and chatting and like, then they all go out to lunch afterwards, and it's, it's like a whole social event. So I kind of wait for them to clear out because, because, you know what, they're not looking for, what I'm looking for, yeah, the all the little tchotchkes and hodgepodge things that that their kids are like, Why did you buy this anyway? Well, I will let you go and get on with your day, and thanks again for all that valuable information. Well, thank you. I'll talk to you later. Suzanne, good luck with the GI Joes. Okay, thanks. I'm gonna need it. Bye. Bye. Okay. I said I would address a few issues here at the end. First of all, Gemini subscription levels. And Paula said that she uses the free one. So the levels are based on what the tool does, not necessarily how many questions you put into it. So the standard Gemini is free, and then the next level up is Gemini advanced for 1999 a month. So I'm going to refer you to the pricing schedule. Just Google Gemini pricing plans, and you can see the different levels and what they do. Paula said that she really doesn't need any more than what the free version does, so hopefully you won't either. Now, there was more to this conversation, but since a podcast is not. Visual I will add that to the premium library as a lesson about using Gemini and AI for eBay, and Paula has given me permission to use our zoom screen sharing to help others learn. I am still in the process of creating that lesson, and I will let you know when that information has been added. So if you are not a member of my online school, the premium library, you can join for a month if you want to access and download the lesson for future use. So I will announce when the AI lesson has been uploaded, so you have the full month to access it. And who knows, you may see all the other information in the premium library and decide to stay longer next week. My guest is Linda, who is a newer seller, but has achieved remarkable success. Thank you for tuning in this week and every week, and I hope you have a profitable and productive week on eBay. Talk to you next time. Bye, everybody you you.