ebay | The Discountess of Washington

This week, I made my very first eBay sale (of course, I have bought plenty before, but that’s another matter). I realize that I’m about a century late to this party, but I’ve just never done it. I consign my clothes at a local store, I sell on Craigslist, but I have never have managed to sell anything on eBay…until now.

Last week, I decided to part with my most recent bridesmaid dress acquisition. I had a great time in it, but I knew I was never going to wear it again. Thankfully, the bride chose a J. Crew dress for the wedding. If you have ever been in a wedding before, you’ve probably worn something from the J. Crew wedding collection. In fact, my dress is on the homepage right now! Anyway, I assumed there was a good chance that someone else would need it, and I was right.

No sooner than I posted it, some lucky lady in Illinois snatched it up! Easy as pie. I had already had it dry cleaned, so I easily sent it off in the 2-day window that eBay requested. Badda bing, badda boom–she got a great dress, and I have $100 burning a hole in my pocket.

This is dangerous new territory for me. I am currently considering selling anything in my apartment that isn’t nailed down. If you want to join my ranks as a late-blooming eBay sales goddess, I recommend checking out their suggested tips for selling listed on the site. I just winged it, but I could have probably made more money if I had used some of these. Ah well, live and learn.

What about you? What has been your best eBay score or sale? I have a friend who has used it to buy furniture before. Who knew?!

Since January is no credit card month, it pretty much means that online shopping is out for me. According to the authorities, online shopping should only be done with credit cards. Debit cards, while they function like regular credit cards, aren’t as well protected. Frankly, I don’t need some crazy hacker finding me online and draining my (already pitiful) bank account. At least with a credit card, the banks will refund your money, and your rating is not damaged if you are hacked.

Anyway, I’m starting to consider what being credit card free for a month actually means. As the Discountess, I’m not supposed to be doing a ton of online shopping anyway. However, there are certain things that I order online because their cheaper. Best example is my favorite, drugstore.com, who offers all of my products at a fraction of the cost in CVS.

I certainly can’t give that up for an entire month!! So I decided to research which online retail outlets offer payment through PayPal. I assume most of you know what PayPal is, but in case you’ve been living abroad (or under a rock) for the past few years, I will explain. PayPal is an online payment service that allows you to securely transfer money from a checking account to pay for goods online. You can also use it to send or receive payments from people.

Thankfully, PayPal payment is an option at drugstore.com. Here are some other retailers that offer PayPal as a payment option. This is where I’ll be shopping for the next month.

(this one is new – THANK GOD!)