Scavenger Life Episode 418: Brick & Mortar Store Is Not For Us

I am one of those people who likely won’t post in a fully public forum. Why don’t you just make the sub-reddit private? You would have to approve members just like you do now, but it is much simpler to do. You would still have all the benefits of the reddit sub (minus the user gen content directing back to this domaain)

Here’s my latest what sells on eBay report. June was a good month for my little store.

I would not watch you if you go to reddit. I think most people will feel like me. Just my statement is all.

I would watch facebook before reddit any day though.

Jay,
Why won’t you address using a private sub-reddit.

June 30 – July 6
Total Items in Store: 2400
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales : $1044
* Above yearly average of $950
Highest Price: $130 (Keystone Stereoscope Cards)
Average Price: $34
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $58
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $2
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 55

Last week’s sales were kinda weird. The beginning of the week was filled with sales all the way through Wednesday. Then it just died. I made a couple on Independence Day and didn’t have a single sale on Friday or Saturday. But I still managed to sell over $1K which was unexpected.

There hasn’t been much excitement happening our way. Just trying to stay cool in this hot, muggy Ohio Valley weather. I am rocking it on my listings lately though. I may not hit 3000 listings by the new year, but at this rate it’ll be close.

Thanks for the podcast this week!

I rarely look at Reddit – maybe moving the forums there would convince me to participate, who knows? Honestly, this forum has a high barrier for participating, and the upside is that all of us who run the gauntlet to get in are very motivated to be here. So the conversations are constructive and professional, which is what I’m here for. With a low-barrier, public forum I’d expect a lot more negativity and one-shot “How much is this worth kthxbye” posts. But I’d still give it a shot. I imagine that running the forum takes away time from more profitable endeavors, so I respect whatever decision you need to make.

Did I understand you rightly regarding your new building, that you are taking on commercial tenants but not running a new front-facing business yourselves?

I had a really good week on eBay, I seem to be on a streak lately.

Sales: CAD$2225, 11 items, COGS: $193 –> Item profit: $1698
Expenditures: $536 –> Cashflow: $1335
Hours: 7, $191/hr
Notable sales: 14 voip adapters $510 paid $70, shower head $360 paid $60.
Not much scavenging as I was out of town Wednesday & Thursday. Of course, while I was away we had to have our basement drain back up, which meant my ebay lair’s carpet got soaked. Now that I’ve got the clog cleared, drying it all out. Doesn’t help that storage is a mess as I’ve been delayed in acquiring the new storage unit.

“Honestly, this forum has a high barrier for participating, and the upside is that all of us who run the gauntlet to get in are very motivated to be here. So the conversations are constructive and professional”

Yes!

People are seldom more innocently employed than when they are honestly making money.

Samuel Johnson (amended)

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but I would like to add my 2 cents about the forum:

-I suspect that 50-75% of the normal posters on here would be gone if this forum moved to Reddit, myself included.
-If a move to Reddit is necessary, a private reddit as suggested might work? A lot of us would probably still not bother to create another account in a new place, just because.
-There would most likely be a net gain of active forum posters on Reddit, but that would probably consist of people from flipping (it’s up to 134k subscribers now, which is terrifying). Ugh, flipping.
-I believe a lot of people like posting on this forum because it feels “private,” even though it’s not. Exposing insight on what you sell is one thing when a place feels private, but when you’re just out in the open with any would be “flipper” lurker hanging onto your every word, a lot less can be said.
-Maybe keep the forum here, but require an annual maintenance fee for the continuation of the forum and make the forums completely private unless the fee is paid?
-Add mods here?

Reddit would never be as organized. I have a forum on netfronts server. Costs me about 150 a year. I use phpforum, sets up in minutes. Can be organized like this one. Netfronts is super helpful if an issue and correct things quickly. In 15 years I’ve had maybe 4 down times longer than one hour.

Also check out Tapatalk, I use them as a mobile portal but they have desktop forums that integrate as well, Tapatalk can generate ad revenue (I don’t use)

Week June 30 – July 6, 2019

Items in store: 4092 Listings for 6104 Items
Items Sold: 62 Items
Gross Sales: $3653.08
Highest Price Sold: $250… Edward Green Shoes
Lowest Price Sold: $2.75… Shoe Laces
Average Price Sold: $58.92
Cost of Goods Sold $193, Plus consignment
Number of new items listed this week: 70 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $75
Repeat Customers: 6

Pretty slow this week, but could be worse for a summer holiday.

I decided to buy another camera this week. My main camera has over 200,000 clicks and has just started getting a little quirky. It straightened up with a little cleaning, but it’s only a matter of time at this point. I have a backup that can fill-in in a pinch, but it’s missing a couple of my favorite features for tethered shooting, and I often need to use two cameras at the same time. Ideally, I would have 3 cameras, one on vertical, one overhead, and one free-hand.

Since it was time to buy, I decided to upgrade to a full frame camera. Full Frame cameras can be ultra pricey, so I picked up one up secondhand on ebay, hopefully it will workout until I can manage to thrift one. The idea is that, when used overhead in my customised photo booth, the full frame camera can be mounted at a lower height than the cropped DSLR, making it easier for the user to reach without over-stetching/straining/twisting their back. It the moment, I have to really stretch to reach it at some settings, and my wife has to get on a step stool and reach. Neither of which is ideal. Can’t wait to see if this improves things. I will likely have to do more cropping during post editing, but I suppose a little added crop time is a good trade off for less back pain.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.

Items in Store 1218
Items Sold 21
Total Sales $719.50
COGS $60.00
Total Profit $659.50
Average profit $31.40
Average sales price $34.26
New Listings 0

I had a $200 sale right before midnight last night to save my week. Score! It was the Seiko watch I picked up at a yard sale a couple weeks ago for $20.

It was a short week, so no listing. Went out of town for the holiday weekend. I did a bunch of organizing and rearranging of my ebay spaces. I have a pressing need to get my workspace fixed up nicely because my 12yo daughter has proven she is very capable at being my helper. This week will also likely be light on listing as I work to have a more functional “two person” space.

Summer Goal: Under weekly sales goal by $155.50. Running total is under pace by $565.
Eh, it could be alot worse. Once I’m up and running as a 2 person operation this month I hope to gain some ground on my sales goal.

Hello, and thank you again for the podcast. Although I’m sure there will be advantages to moving, there will be adjustments as well. Certainly I’d give it a go. What’s best for J&R is paramount. Personally, I prefer things just as they are with the forum. Better is the enemy of good, but sometimes good is good enough.

6/30– 7/06/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 701
Number of items sold: 10
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $478.50
Cost of items sold: $66
Highest price sold: $175 – antique 2 button (MOP) light switch plates lot – paid about $20
Average price sold: $47.85
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $1.00 (terrible scavenging trip! Found one patch!)
Number of new items listed this week: 26
Sell through rate for the week: 1.5
Number International sales: 0

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 663
Number of items sold: 6
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $112
Cost of items sold: $7
Highest price sold: $22.50 – small beat vintage wood cutting board – paid $1.00
Average price sold: $18.70
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 16
Sell through rate for the week: 1.0
Number International sales: 0

Great podcast once again! In May I noticed the shipping options situation you mentioned this week on the podcast and I posted it on the forum here: https://www.scavengerlife.com/forums/topic/shipping-options-hidden-on-some-items-i-asked-ebay-and-they-said/

Here is a piece of that thread. I wrote to Ebay and they said:

Me: I noticed that even when I put shipping options sometimes only the lowest priced option is made available. This is new… is that intentional?

Ebay: Great observation! This is new and it is intentional. Right now we’re just testing it out on the site. Essentially, we’ll only hide shipping services that are more expensive and offer the same estimated delivery date as a service of lesser cost. So if a more expensive item has a better delivery date, it will still show for your customers.

Another great show. I’m sure whatever place you end up will be just fine once we all get used to it… just like here it took a bit of time for people to adapt, but it happened and the community is larger than ever. There are several people above (and likely callers/emails next week) saying no way they’ll move to Reddit without any explanation/validation – why/why not? I personally don’t go on Reddit much currently, but it’s more because of the trolls & disorganization – but when you weed out those things, Reddit can actually be a useful source of information & community.

Weeks June 23-July 6, 2019 (2 weeks)

Total Items in Store: 1023
Items Sold: 31
Cost of Items Sold: $537 (31% of sales)
Total Sales: $1,730.38
Highest Price Sold: $180 (4) (Alice in Chains – Jar of Flies, Jimi Hendrix – Are Your Experienced, Beatles – Sgt Pepper MFSL, Bush – Sixteen Stone)
Average Price Sold: $55.82
Returns: 0 (1 NPB though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $800
Number of items listed this week: 24
Promoted listings test: 17 sales, $987.94 (57.1% of total sales), $48.62 fees (4.9% of sales)

Really good last week of June, so so start to July. July 3-5 had no sales, and things started to pick up again Saturday. COGS are way higher than I like, however that comes with the territory of going after higher dollar items for sale – 5 sales of $130+. Outside of the high dollar records sold, also had some neat finds that sold including this Certificate of Citizenship folio, a neat beam compass I was able to tie back to a German engineer, and a quick reminder to everyone that the fall/winter holidays will be here sooner than we think after I sold a Halloween blow mold.

Another topic that just started affecting me and might affect some of you out there – the new extra fees that come if you have “excessive” INADs. I never thought I hit that mark since I always look at Seller Level/Performance and I’m Top Rated, overall return rate is 1.88%. However, there’s a new section called Service Metrics that shows your returns by category as compared to everyone else in that category. After 3 returns in May, my Music Category return rate is 2.28% (13 of 571 sales) as compared to the average 0.59% return rate in the category. I now get charged an EXTRA 5% on any sales within the music category, which recently has been the majority of my sales.

Working to resolve this and calling eBay to see if some can be excluded, like when a buyer opens a case but never returns the item… while I never had to refund or provide a label, it’s still counted against me.

Thanks for the podcast! After a long weekend, it was good to have your podcast to listen to on the way to work this morning.

Here are my numbers for this week:

Total Items in Store: 3159
Items Sold: 43
Total Sales: $1476
Cost of Items Sold: $223
Average Price Sold: $34.32
Average Cost of Item: $5.19
Highest Price Item Sold: $229.95 Scotty Cameron Studio Style Newport 1.5 Putter (paid $30)
Number of items listed this week: 66
YTD Sales: $26337
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +14%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 378
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 193
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 42
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.36%
Hats sold this week: 26 (60% of sales) worth $459.99 (31% of sales $)

The end of the week (Sunday for me) was very strong which pushed my numbers above this week last year. I sold a couple of high value golf clubs which boosted my numbers so I’m happy wiht how the week turned out.

On the subject of Reddit, I’ve been active on that site for years (since Digg collapsed). I like using it and I’d join a SL subreddit though I think you’d find the amount of time necessary to moderate it would probably be greater than what you do now if it was public. Maybe it’s worth setting a subreaddit up and see what happens. If it’s successful, shut down this forum, otherwise shut down the subreddit. You’ll have twice the moderation duties for a while.

Different topic: I’ve recently crossed the 1-year-from-retirement countdown mark. I set myself a goal 2 years ago to retire from my day job next June. I’m on track to do that. I plan to sell part time on eBay and do lots of traveling and probably volunteer work. Lots to look forward to.

Hope everyone has a great week!

June Monthly numbers:

Items sold : 36 (below average)

Amt sold : $1072 (also down a bit)

Avg price sold $29.78 (that is up a few dollars due to a couple big sales.)

Customer issues: none so far on the 36 sales above, but I did have the person try to scam me by returning a different broken item (detailed in another thread). That case was closed but only after I gave a partial refund and eBay did not send me a credit as promised. Fortunately when I started free returns I added a .50 per item surcharge which is now my self-insurance. So far in the year I’ve done this I’ve not paid out much less than I’ve taken in which is good.

Big sale was a working Atari 800XL Computer that I got at an auction. Paid up for it at $34 but I knew even if it didn’t work I could part it out for $70-80. It worked nicely and sold it for $150.

Other big sale was from someone accepting an offer I sent. It was a case of 24 sealed Avatar (anime, not movie) trading cards. I had them up for a $100 for a while and sent an offer of $89 out that was accepted. Found these for $3.99 at a Goodwill, so that was a sweet sale.

I’m going to keep better track of how many offers I send and get accepted. I’m entering them into a spreadsheet each day. For example, so far in July I’ve sent 27 offers and got one taker (only a $12 sale on a poster that was up for $15).

I’m also listing like mad now that my time is more free in the summer (I’m a full time college instructor). My goal is 30 listings over what ever I buy. Meaning if I buy 10 new things in a week, I have to list 40 that week! It is helping me cut down my death pile and curbing purchases, unless they are very nice items. So far since 6/17 I’ve listed 136 items bring my store up to 765 listings. I hope to get close to the 900-1000 range by the end of the summer!

I did source from some garage sales, the aforementioned auction, and a couple thrift stores. I’m heading to Seattle for a quick trip to see friends this week and I may stop at multiple thrift stores on the drive and back. I love sourcing in new territory!

To Reddit or Not to Reddit, that is the Question?

Yes, even if you can make the Reddit private, in my opinion, there will be a lot more outsiders or newer incomers than before. Not a bad thing but what is your ultimate goal? Grow the forum, monetize the forum, have it on robotic auto pilot and not have to monitor it, stop it or abandon it. What are your goals.

Well take the following from a good place, the heart and in stride as just a personal opinion and maybe from a little different perspective than just the navigation and organizational of reddit point of view.

I have participated here on SL through the years and provided and shared a lot of information that I have acquired through 6 years in art school, teaching a few years on the collegiate level and 32 years in the printing and publishing areas.

I don’t mind dispensing this harder to come by information which cost me lots of sweat and money, but only to those I feel have contributed to my well being and success also. Here on this forum, with the current group of approx. 5,000, I feel Jay and Ryanne as well as many of those who have been around a while have helped Susan and I tremendously. And still to this day, while we have gotten down the basics, we are always learning from others who keep digging into the why things happen and how to avoid issues going forward, especially after Ebay does major updates.
I also feel that I owe something to J&R especially for creating and building this community into what it is today and instead of large cash donations to J&R, I dispense my “walls of Text” [detailed replies in other words], to those newer members here to help them succeed because that is my way of paying it forward for J&R and in turn in hopes that these newer members will “indulge” into the world of providing detailed replies to other newer members.

BUT to jump formats and your own homestead place to a location with hundreds of thousands of subscribers having access to information that I post as a courtesy, I would just stop doing that because I have no idea how my information will be used and I surely know I will get no royalties on it.

About the only way I would post on a place with that much exposure, trolls and potential for argumentative, negative rebuttals would be to sell my information or market a book I would write about my experience with art, prints, fakes, forgeries, tips and techniques and only market to sell my information there. No way am I going to just throw all that hard-earned information out to hundreds of thousands of total strangers. Many of whom, would probably use it in their own efforts, via plagiarize and cut and paste techniques to make money for themselves.

I know people here on SL, so much so, we communicate directly even off the SL forum. We call or text each other at times. We have shared spread sheets with each other, tips and techniques because I feel there is a true and appreciative nature in the people I communicate here, and that number is a smaller, interactive group. Not that wouldn’t be the case on Reddit, but as many have already expressed, they may cut bait and not be there anymore. That would leave us with our private communications and no more “posting” live any longer. In today’s world it is hard to trust anybody or anyplace other than a place you feel secure and at home with. I feel that here at SL, not Reddit.

To also put the value of participating on SL into a mini time study format there is a “cost” associated with being an active participating SL member.

Participating on SL costs a poster time which we all know is money. My SL profile metrics say I have created 34 topics, not too many but replied 1,396 times, and those who know me, understand many of my replies are longer and detailed which Jay calls “walls of text”, as such is this one. But I can say, that some members have thanked me for the details in many of my replies. But my main point is in creating 1,396 replies comes at a cost which I am willing to donate as a “pay back”.

If my 1,396 replies have averaged 500 words per reply, or 698,000 words, at an avg. of 8 to 10 characters per word = 5,584,000 charters. That’s almost 6 million characters. I type slow and with 3 fingers, so let’s say 10 to 12 words per minute that’s about 58,166 minutes or 969 hours and at 40 hours per week that is approx. 24 weeks or 6 months’ worth of time just typing on SL nonstop.

Now think about the time to read thousands and thousands of other people’s replies. Hard to multitask when reading.

Now to the cost of participating. At the 969 hours of replying and at a random choice of $20 an hour fee for posted information [if anyone is really interested in it] the information, comes to approx. $19,380 worth of time spent just in the replying on SL to try to help anyone that is asking for help or trying to shed more light on a topic, all the while not trying to be critical of any other member, nasty of hateful like some of the “Anonymous” members used to get before Ryanne started screening more carefully and eliminated the anonymous sign ins.

In my opinion I just am not going to be willing spend that amount of valuable time to just throw my knowledge out into a more public domain and the online “junk-o-sphere” , than it already is. My knowledge and information, even though it may not be very good, or such “secret” information, out in that “junkosphere” I have even less control on how it will be used and it will be for anyone to grab, cut and paste, and maybe used for too many other purposes other than helpful information for my fellow SL comrades. Then add to that, to possibly read a bunch of arguments from people who don’t appreciate the comments and understand the place in the heart they come from.

Jay and Ryanne, I understand if you two are getting over whelmed with your other diverse work, don’t have the time for this more warm, cushy, cuddly “private place” you have created for those of us, who truly care for each other and wanting to help each other out, then I would rather see you abandon it all together and wish us all a good and safe journey for the rest of our lives rather than put the content and community into the hands of a quarter of a million of other people who I don’t know from Adam. Personally I am not going to spend the time to get to know all those newer members the way I have the current SL members and even more time due to the influx of many more members with questions and arguments and spend time reading all of those. The SL Fire Hose serves me well enough daily. My time and knowledge to another batch of newcomers is not something I would look forward to.

And if so, then color me “outta’ here”.

My time now is even more valuable because Susan pathology report came back and the hysterectomy did not get all the cancer and it has moved downward and is now classified as Stage III-B and she will have to do chemo and radiation treatments now for approx. 20 weeks.

So, between our Etsy and Ebay stores, building a few new homes to sell, our basement rental, some art creation and selling and then all of Susan’s medical trips, I personally just will cut bait as well on going over to Reddit and doing that whole gig.

That is just my humble opinion coming from A southern guy which that and $.75 will get you a third of a cup of coffee. 
Did this come out as a “new rant”???? LOL 
Ta Ta for Now!

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta

WHy not just put a Facebook group together. You can make it private to members and no maintenance on your part.

If you’re thinking of getting moderators on Reddit, wouldn’t it work to just put moderators here? Same diffs, better outcome? You have moderator options in this forum. A Mod would take a lot of the grunt work off your hands.

I vote Mike be a Mod! 😀 😀 😀 😀

I don’t think moving to reddit would be the right move. From my experience with it, you wouldn’t be able to keep the static structure of this forum where there are different categories that you can post to. Everything would have to be put on one page and each new topic would push down previous conversations, resulting in the same questions being brought up constantly.

I personally don’t think this forum is all that clunky. If you need to hire someone to moderate SL, you could probably cover the costs of that by joining a premium advertising company instead of using google adsense. Adsense pays ways less money than the premium ad networks and I just joined one called Monumetric that pays me around $15 per 1,000 pageviews. I’d be doing good to make 10 cents with adsense for every 1,000 pageviews.

I’m sure whatever you decide to go with will have some success, but I don’t see enough benefits to moving the forum as there will be cons with any option and I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish with the move. I appreciate the community you’ve built here and I think with some additional monetization of the site, you could easily hire someone to take care of all the grunt work!

@MDC That’s the beauty of some of these ad networks – you get paid just for someone being on the website without even clicking. You get more money if people actually click on the ad, but even if they don’t, you still make money. It’s basically the same model as renting out a billboard but for the internet. And a lot of ad networks pay good money to display ads on your website (just not Google adsense). I have no idea what kind of traffic SL gets, but if it’s 10s of thousands each month then you should be able to make several hundred each month

Average Summer Sales Slowly crawling towards my goal of 500. At that point I’m not trying to get a whole lot bigger. With 500 listings I know I’ll have a steady albeit small supply of sales. After 500 I want to work harder on organization of listings, diminishing death piles, and just reclaiming the home from the Ebay invasion. Perhaps I’ll list a lot more for 4th quarter. Perhaps I’ll get pickier and list not just the $100+ that everyone wants, but more $45, $50, $60 items.
Total Items in Store: 491
Items Sold: 6
Total Sales : $139
Highest Price: $35 Eileen Fisher Top
Lowest Price: $15 Izod Shorts
Average Price: $23
Returns: 1 still in process They have until tomorrow.
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0 Death piles still loom

Mike I’m so sorry to hear about your wife’s cancer. My thoughts and prayers are with both of you!

I echo the sentiment of many on here with the fear that moving to reddit may bring a barrage of newbies who would ruin the supportive community we have here. I like Erol’s suggestion of a private closed FB group. Just curious, why is FB a hard no for you?

Regarding eBay hiding more expensive services, I did learn that it will always keep (and show on the listing) your first shipping option. I was excited when I read the concept, as we’re selling magazine lots, which are not allowed to ship via Media Mail. With Priority, flat rate medium is cheaper going from AZ to NY, but regular priority is cheaper going to CA. I was hoping it would select and only show the cheapest option for each buyer. It does not. Now if they could get that to work, that would be amazing.

I certainly will post no matter what the venue, but I would probably curtail any personal/specific information on a more public forum. I have never posted regularly anywhere else, and I did take some time to feel comfortable posting my numbers and links to my store. If the forum can stay private, I’d continue to post that information if I was assured of a closed group similar to this site.

Week of Jun 30 – July 6
* Total Items in Store: 1347, eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 9
* Cost of Items Sold: about $20
* Total Sales: $305.65
* Highest Price Sold: $125 Vintage 1950s Rheem HVAC tool box
* Average Price Sold: $33.96
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 0

My numbers weren’t all that bad considering that I am on vacation with an extended handling time. I had a few high value sales that helped.

Regarding the fee for scheduled listings, I still see the 10c fee mentioned on the eBay site:
https://pages.ebay.com/turbo_lister/schedulingfaq.html#7

When I attempt a scheduled listing, the fee still appears.

Sales this week were only a tiny bit higher in number than last week, but the sales, when compared to last week, were less. I am grateful for the sales I did get, and I will keep on listing to get my store numbers up and try not to buy new inventory for at least one week. I said that last week, but that didn’t quite work out.

I am still utilizing promoted listings at 2% and for the Fourth, I did a storewide 15% sale. The sale accounted for about half of the sales, and before I started the sale, there were a couple of best offers I accepted from customers.

Total Items in Store: 565
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $237.12

Highest Price Sold: $70.00 Vintage Wall Tapestry of Last Supper
Average Price Sold: 24.00

Returns: Had a return request on an item shipped via Global Shipping. It arrived damaged to the buyer, called eBay and closed the case and reimbursed the buyer. I love Global Shipping!

Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $36
Number of items listed this week: 35

This week the goal is to list, list, list. I am working hard to reach a mini goal of 600 with a back to school goal of 700 items listed.

I calculated a set of 6 month goals with regards to gross income from eBay. The last six months of this year (2019) I am working towards earning a minimum of $300 a week gross sales, $1300 a month in gross sales. By the end of the year, that will be an end goal of $7800 gross sales. Of course, more is better!

When we go on Christmas break at work ( I work at an elementary school) I will have time to revisit these goals with the intent of revising them to reach a higher weekly income.

Thanks again for the podcast! It is the voice of reason in the eBay selling world.

~Lisa

I don’t mean to pile on, but I think @almasty summed it up best:

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but I would like to add my 2 cents about the forum:

-I suspect that 50-75% of the normal posters on here would be gone if this forum moved to Reddit, myself included.
-If a move to Reddit is necessary, a private reddit as suggested might work? A lot of us would probably still not bother to create another account in a new place, just because.
-There would most likely be a net gain of active forum posters on Reddit, but that would probably consist of people from flipping (it’s up to 134k subscribers now, which is terrifying). Ugh, flipping.
-I believe a lot of people like posting on this forum because it feels “private,” even though it’s not. Exposing insight on what you sell is one thing when a place feels private, but when you’re just out in the open with any would be “flipper” lurker hanging onto your every word, a lot less can be said.
-Maybe keep the forum here, but require an annual maintenance fee for the continuation of the forum and make the forums completely private unless the fee is paid?
-Add mods here?

June 30 – July 6
Total Items in Store: 1413
Items Sold: 10
Total Sales : $550
Highest Price: $170 (U.S. Military ART II Green Heavy Sniper Scope Case)
Average Price: $42 (not including the scope case)
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $17
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $30
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 35

Hello all,

A better week for me. The military sniper scope case was an interesting find at an estate sale. We thought it was an art case of some type when I found it since it said ART on it, lol. But I threw it on auction and away it went. So that helped my funds, especially with our Seattle trip coming up.

I went to a couple yard sales with my mom on Friday. Nothing crazy but we got to spend some time together which was nice. Then I got to meet up with my best friend that moved to Georgia who was visiting family on the weekend, also a good time!

Other than that like Doubly said, trying to stay cool in this gross Ohio Valley humid weather.
I had two unfortunate things happen. I had read last week that Kirkman ended the Walking Dead comic series. I did not think I should go and stock-hold the last issue but I should have. People went bananas over it. And apparently it sold out. But I cant imagine that comic stores wont restock soon… so it’s just strange to me. And sadly one of my favorite stores closed and I didn’t know about it, ThinkGeek 🙁 Bummer!

Also, I dig Reddit! Deleted Facebook couple years ago thanks to drama and wasting too much time on it. I support the move to Reddit if YOU two decide to do it and will follow. All good here 🙂

Have a good week all!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by xxThinkLinkxx.

Just got my bay box shipment and noticed a sticker on the box that mentioned “Sales Tax”. In my post over in the shipping forum on my post about having a slim selection of supplies to choose from, I also mentioned a few things I personally thought Ebay could consider to help Sellers out a little bit more.

One of those suggestions was to allow those of us who have a formal business structure to provide our Federal ID number and State Tax Resellers ID number so that we do not have to pay all of the various states Sales taxes that are now being imposed in 26 states I think.

Well the decal said to go to the following link: ebay.com/salestax and register your Tax Exempt Dept. of Revenue Resale number. Well that is good to know. By doing so, anything that you buy that is part of your business or inventory that we source off of Ebay, anything for your business that is to be resold, we won’t be taxed on it because it is all for resale and will be taxed to the buyer at their end when they purchase from you.

How far that can be stretched, because some things while not for actual resale are used in the process of making an object saleable, but that is a fine line for your CPA.

But thought I would share in case you have a Dept. of Revenue resale number or business license in your state.

I haven’t jumped over there yet but will do so shortly and see if there are any snags.

mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art

URGENT eBay tech issue…Heads up:

Just bought 5 shipping labels totalling $63.56. When the paypal receipt came through I saw I was charged $127.12, exactly double for 5 labels. Reported the bug, awaiting an answer and a refund.

Everyone keep an eye out to make sure you are being charged correctly.

Hi Ryanne and Jay, I was reluctant to post here for the first time (for some reason my “introduce yourself” post never published) but I wanted to comment on moving the forum. Yes, this format is clunky and, in my opinion, laborious to actually participate. I do have a Reddit account but I rarely go there.

I want to encourage you to re-consider Facebook. I heard on the podcast that you are against FB but you didn’t really give a reason. I personally am not into FB and spend zero time perusing the social aspects but I do find the group format beneficial.

You could create an email and set up a profile for your cat and then create a private group for Scavenger Life. There would be no need to post any personal information on FB and you could have qualifying questions for members to join the group. No spammers.

It’s super easy for both the admin and the members. My guess is that anyone participating on this forum is also versed in using FB.

I appreciate all you two do in putting content out for your community!

Tracy

So glad I deleted my facebook account after 11 days in 2006.

Scheduled listings are NOT free, everyone! eBay has multiple web pages showing the listing fees. They give contradictory information. I saw the wrong info and asked if anyone could confirm because I didn’t know what to think.

When I asked a question on the forum, I was looking at the eBay page showing listing fees for a seller with no store. On that page, next to “scheduled,” it said “free.” But IF YOU HAVE A STORE, IT IS NOT FREE.

I tested it out to make sure. If you have an eBay store, scheduling a listing STILL COSTS 10 CENTS.

I’m so sorry for the misunderstanding. I was just hoping someone with more experience would answer my question – I was asking because I didn’t know how to interpret the info on eBay’s web pages. If anyone heard about this on the podcast and scheduled their listings, thinking they would be free, I am SO SORRY.

– Paula

Week of 06/30-07/06
Total Items in Store: 3,225 (Up 34% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 90
Number of Items Sold: 58 (Down 28% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 5 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 8% (Down 7% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $1,729 (Down 13% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Down $545
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $292
Cost of Items Sold: $281
Cost of Labor: $0
Highest Item Sold: $260 – Hugo Boss Suit
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 15-13.

Clothing
# Listed: 1,874
# Sold: 33
STR: 8%
ASP: $29.32

Shoes
# Listed: 741
# Sold: 19
STR: 11%
ASP: $29.55

Hard Goods
# Listed: 610
# Sold: 6
STR: 4%
ASP: $33.28

EBay
# Listed: 3,225
# Sold: 53
STR: 7%
ASP: $28.56

Etsy
# Listed: 226
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0

Poshmark
# Listed: 750
# Sold: 5
STR: 3%
ASP: $43.00

Had a bit of a comeback, but with the July 4 holiday, slow sales.