Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us

Your soap Shtick is hilarious! If I ever rent an Airbnb from you, you’d better believe that I’m hoarding all of your soap! 😀

My Store Week October 27-Nov 2, 2019

Total Items in Store: 630
Items Sold: 25
Gross Sales: $2199.60
Cost of Items Sold: $194.14
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $200.00 (Brook Brothers by Alden USA Shell Cordovan Penny Loafers)
Average Price Sold: $87.98
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $215.00
Number of items listed this week: 29

Thanks for the heads up! 😀

Hey this is Anna, the girl that called a few weeks ago that is a new seller of Beauty Products.

I wanted to share my view about relisting every 30 days.

There are no solid rules about what everyone should be doing. Ebay is of course not hiding anyone’s listings, it really just comes down to your rank in search.

Ebay does bump up new listings in search, which is why some people do notice some increase in sales by relisting older items. However if there is not a demand for your item or you are priced too high this won’t help you.

In a store like Jay and Ryanne’s where they have unique items search rank may not be very important. If there are less than 20 of a certain item available than most likely the buyers will see them all, and rank will not matter.

If they had a pair of jeans that isn’t any different than hundreds of other pairs they may briefly benefit from relisting. But as was very well said in the podcast, is that chore going to take away from their enjoyment in the store?

I do think there are some sellers who enjoy ending their items and relisting because like Jay had said in the past it gives them a sense of control of what is happening.

I did an experiment where I relisted about 30 one-off items that have sat for a few months and one of them sold from doing that. With Bulk edit it only took me a few minutes to do.

I find that if I go through my store and lower the price on a ton of items by $1 it has a similar (if not greater) affect and I see an enormous boost of sales for a few days. Then it goes back to normal.

Anyway I don’t think we should be so polarized for or against the method of relisting. It is all about what you sell and what relisting will do for your quality of life. And know that by relisting you aren’t saving them from being invisible, you are just briefly bumping them up in search.

Thanks for another great podcast today.

Here are my recent numbers. I am growing fast and I wouldn’t be here without this podcast.

http://imgur.com/a/szWwBQp

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by SomethingFantastic.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by SomethingFantastic.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by SomethingFantastic.

If you are having trouble using the bulk editor to modify these new required fields, I suggest you try the “File Exchange” method to update your listings. Basically you use a .csv formated spreadsheet where you download a file of your items then modify the fields using excel or similar program and upload the modified file. I’ve been using that to list and have found it is easy to list a lot of similar items. In this case I think it would help you. Just be careful because with great power comes great responsibility. Learn more here: http://bulksell.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FileExchangeCenter

2019-10-27 – 2019-11-02

Total Items In Store: 3304
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $ 60
Total Sales: $ 585.33
Highest Price Sold: $ 125 (CD Player)
Average Price Sold: $ 36.58
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 18
Number of items listed: 31

Gut Sales Report for the week: Slow week. We are nearly half way thru the 4th quarter and sales have not picked up much. I am afraid that if things don’t pick up this next week, the 4th quarter may be a bust because at that point we are about halfway thru it.

Challenge of the week: I still have a lot of items I need to process and list.

Scavenge of the week: I found about 90 new baseball hats that I got for $36. My total of my selling price for these is about $1300. Long tail I know, but that is a good income stream to start.

Mark S

As for clothing sizes, I sometimes put it as “vintage tag size” in the title and then I’ll show the actual measurements in the description.

I vote for the “list it and forget it” method. Many of my items are vintage and may be hard to fine so when that one special buyer is looking for that one special doo-dad, I want it available in my store. If it only takes a few days to sell great! – if it takes 5 years that is also great! I just ignore the “This listing hasn’t had any sales in at least 16 months. Please consider updating it” eBay notes under my older listings.

My Numbers for Oct. 2019

Total Listings: 1079
Had 45 Sales for a total of $835.60
Highest Price Sold: $90 – 1949 Watercolor by Stan Cohen (cost $4)
Average Price Sold: $18.57 – Average Cost: $2.40
Cost of Items sold: $108.18
Spent on new inventory: $8.21
Number of items listed: 52
Issues: 1 return ($8 Pepsi patch)

My numbers for the past three months have been very similar and flat, but November is looking much better as November 1st was almost a $300 day.

Oct. 27 – Nov. 2
Total Items in Store: 2613
Items Sold: 23
Total Sales : $1114
* ABOVE yearly average of $950
Highest Price: $150 (Cardboard Electric Light Up Christmas Fireplace)
Average Price: $48
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $46
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 26

Wow. I really kicked butt with sales this week. It’s been a mix of a few higher priced items and a bunch of mid-ranged ones. Hopefully this means that 4th quarter is starting to kick off finally. I didn’t get a lot of listing done but for good reason. I spent a couple of days stocking up on shipping supplies. There was a moving company auction on Tuesday which advertised a brief description of stuff including boxes. I figured I’d check it out to see if I could score some cheap supplies. I sort of went overboard… I only spent $130, but I got so much packing paper and boxes that I had to make three trips in the van to haul it all back. I spent several hours the following day just getting it all from my garage to my basement. I think we now have enough newsprint sheets to last us 10 years or more. I was pretty ecstatic to say the least.

I have a feeling I won’t get much done this week either. Steph and I both caught a nasty bug. Just a cold virus, but colds seem to really hit me harder the older I get. I’ll see what I’m able to do. I’m just thankful that I can take a few days off without the repercussions I would have otherwise faced if I were still working a normal day job.

When i list any clothing i always put the tag size first right after the brand in the title and then the last thing in the title i put the measured size. Like “old navy mens size 40 jeans bootcut 41×32”

Then i put the measurements in the description and include a piture of the size tag.

For shirts that are vintage i always say in the description the shirt is clearly not a modern size x it measured as a modern mens size x.

Granted it takes more time but worth it.

Never had an issue

Totals for the MONTH of October 2019. I am mainly a mens clothes seller, free shipping, free returns, 1% promoted listings, no best offer, good till cancelled.

Listings/items at end of month = 4291 / 4815 Total listed value $105,738
Items sold = 355 Down 20% YOY
$ sold = $9686 Down 20% YOY
ASP = $27.28 Flat YOY
Monthly sell through rate 8.3%

Expenses
Postage = $2015 (20.8% of gross)
Ebay fees = $1132 (11.7% of gross) (includes Promoted listing fees of 83 sales totaling $2286 ($22.86-8.33 credit = $14.53) 23.4% of items sold/ 23.6% of $ sold) and return labels
COGS = $910 (9.4% of gross)
Returns = $230 (2.4% of gross)
PP Fees = $397 (4.1% of gross)

Total operating expenses = $4684 (48.4% of gross)
Total operating profit (my name for it – does not include expenses such as mileage, shipping supplies, depreciation, etc …) $5002

Notable sales:
Mitchell & Ness Throwback Varsity Jacket New Orleans Saints Wool Sz 64 (5XL?) FS (buy price $12.99, sold for $175.00)
Vtg 1973 US Army Mens Field Jacket Medium Regular Alpha Industries M-65 w/ Liner (buy Price $6.99, sold 3 sets for $129.99)
Holland & Holland Mens Jacket Coat Diamond Quilted Large Made in France Shooting (buy price $6.99, Sold for $149.99)
Alden Mens Shoes Dark Brown Leather Cap Toe Oxfords Foot Balance System 6.5 EE (buy price $4.99, sold $89.99)

YTD Items Sold = 2878 (+10% YOY)
YTD Gross = $74,269 (+14% YOY)
YTD Net = $37,636

To a certain extent I agree with “list it and forget it”. However, I do suspect that too high a price discourages some buyers and it’d be nice to automatically reduce the price by say 10% every 6 months down to some floor price of my choice. I dislike sales because you are selectively selling the fraction of inventory “close” to the market price, but the stuff that is way overpriced stays overpriced and, when the sale is over, reverts to the original price.

I had a good week! Went all in ($4000) on an out of town auction, a bankruptcy of a pretty big drilling operation. Mostly paid for some inverter drives, but I also bought several “grab bag” lots. As usual, upon getting it home, I find the stuff I paid up for slightly disappointing (not bad but not amazing), while the lots I paid pennies for yield up amazing treasures. I am only about 1/3 of the way through everything. It’s great fun.

Sales c/w shipping: CAD$2531, 13 sales, COGS: $22 Shipping: $287 Fees: ~$353 –> Gross profit: $2156
Expenditures: $4490 –> Cashflow: -$2312
Listed: $640, 12 items
Hours: 15
Notable sales: laptop port replicators $500… lots of ~$100 sales.

Total Items in Store: 482 (most ever listed)
Items Sold: 2
Total Sales : $50
Highest Price: $33 NWT Chicos shirt
Average Price: $25
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $3
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $10
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 15
Items on Posh: 17
Items sold on Posh 1 $15 for a plaid Ralph Lauren shirt

2nd week in a row in which I have sold only ONE clothing item. So I went to the dark side and started working on Posh. And Bingo an offer, counter, and sale. Conflicted at this point. Posh with my minuscule 17 item closet? Or Ebay? I’m getting so close to my goal of $500. At this time of year though, I should be hearing ca-ching several times a day. Three weeks ago I was. $600+ in clothing in a week. Then came the bright bulb of messing with sizes.

Haven’t listened yet. I’m a list it and leave it for a while. A couple of months ago I started looking at my listings, starting with the oldest. Finding some that needed cleaning up. The ones that are an ugly thing that no one has shown interest in for 4 years are taken down and put on auction. These are my mistakes and if I only get $8 or less, oh well. Before the Fall adjustment I was clearing out some of these. This seemed to stop 2-3 weeks ago too. Not sure why.

My observation of the eBay world is:

Demand is inelastic: people came to eBay to buy a specialty item. They either buy or they don’t. They’re not price matching a vintage embroidered shawl to amazons options for example.

Price is inelastic: people don’t care if the shawl is $10 or $15 they came looking for this specific shawl.

Sellers have a large market share: There might be one other shawl max 5 that are comparable such that each seller commands a 20-50% market share.

Sellers are price makers

From the get-go you should be pricing your items competitively (with our margins that’s the whole point we can undercut), and if you’re closer to the top of the spectrum expect to wait longer for a sale and vice versa. I suppose what people are trying to do is work their way down to the equilibrium point from the top–which is fine if that’s your style (why does this even make sense with best offer? *scratches head*). That’s pretty involved though if you’re trying to recalculate every idk week or “x” amount of days. Not to mention the market is changing as well, with 8K items not realistic.

You’re bound to have LOSERS however if there is demand for your item then eventually it will sell as the market reaches equilibrium. If you’re having to readjust every week you might be leaving money on the table or you might have just picked a bad item to sell. I think it’s easier to say “eBay is throttling me!” “This is a LOSER” etc than to say “I picked a bad item” “I’m pricing it too high”.

For those who do lower the price after a week or two. You’re not even using the correct metric to in my opinion. If I’m seeing idk 200 views on an item and I do a search for similar solds and the market hasn’t shifted drastically then I think you could say it’s price too high. Time is irrelevant if there’s no carrying costs. This is all IMO.

My model is list it and forget it undercutting competitors from the get-go OR pricing high with best offer. With a smaller store I definitely could be more involved but, I’m not in a hurry for sales I’m just moseying along.

Week Oct 27 – Nov 02, 2019

Items in store: 4574 Listings for 7294 Items
Items Sold: 103 transactions for 109 Items
Gross Sales: $7123.78
Highest Price Sold: $375 Tanuki Fur Coat, Unpaid, $320 LVC Sheepskin Jacket
Lowest Price Sold: $2.75….Shoelaces
Average Sale Price: $65.36
Cost of Goods Sold $445, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1130
Number of new items listed this week: 134
$$ spent on new inventory this week $0
International Sales, 33%
Returning Customers 9

Hit my $30K goal for October on the last day! Woohoo! last October was the first time I hit $20K. So I’m liking the progress.

Thanks again to @StainedGlassKarin for the tip on the Pirate Ship international simple export rate, I’ve already saved $46 on my international first class shipments, since Wednesday. Minimizing daily expenses to grow the bottom line is my favorite.

Week of 10/27-11/02
Total Items in Store: 3,271 (Up 17% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 67
Number of Items Sold: 82 (Down 4% YOY)
(Includes 4 Etsy, 9 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 11% (Down 2% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,406 (Down 7% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Down $91
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Down $86
Cost of Items Sold: $522
Cost of Labor: $0
Highest Item Sold: $75 – Hugo Boss Suit
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 25-20.

Been a crazy few weeks, with the contract gig going full time, and spending the weekends out of town to go hunting with my youngest son (may be the last time for a few years as he goes to Dallas for Medical School next year).

Sales slowed the last couple of weeks. I have a feeling that the issue with the Item Specifics not being backfilled when they made the change is part of it. I think we will have to start going through our items and bringing them up to date…

As for measurements…always list the item as it is measured. I state that if the tag says 34, but it measures as a 32, I stated that: “Tag Size 34 – Measures as 32”, and all titles and item specifics are as a 32.

Great discussions on the Podcast this week. I more or less list and forget, yet I am starting to edit older listings a little at a time and also adding free shipping. All of my Etsy listings are free shipping now, basically forced to go that route and it actually seems better, at least over there.
As for clothing sizes, I take way to long in listing clothing making sure the buyer has all they need and I’m blameless on my end. Sort of like what Tony2Times does yet I sell so little clothing it is not really relevant for me to be too opinionated.
Etsy outperformed eBay this week so it gets to be first to report.

10/27 – 11/02/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 662
Number of items sold: 5
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $315
Cost of items sold: $28
Highest price sold: $222 – pair of beat up old boat oars – paid $20
Average price sold: $63
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $9
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 0.8
Number International sales: 1

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 881
Number of items sold: 9
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $209
Cost of items sold: $10
Highest price sold: $40 – Magic Lantern Malaysia slide, shipped to France, paid $1
Average price sold: $23.22
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $9
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 1.0
Number International sales: 1

Ok, down the wormhole that is US Vanity Sizing. Somewhere along the line in past decades the US began making sizing changes, especially in the casual/mall brand clothing sector, while higher end designers still adhere to traditional sizing methods. This is what is causing a lot of the confusion for buyers.

For sizing, basically it depends on the item.

Example 1: A typical pair of jeans made for the US market is 3-4″ larger than the tagged size, when the size was initially the respective measurement in inches. I will list jeans with the tagged waist size and measured inseam in the title, and with full measurements in the description.

Example 2: A pair of tailored dress pants/suit pants will typically be tagged in size which is the same as the actual measurement. You will see inexperienced menswear buyers return dress pants because they are “way too small” not realizing they have become a victim of vanity sizing. Additionally tailored pants can also be altered in the waist and length. I list the measured waist/inseam as the size, with complete measurements in the description. If there is a discrepancy in the tagged size and the measured size, I highlight that info in red, and add it to the condition details “Tagged XX, but measures ZZ, see full description for detailed measurements”. Or “Tagged XX, altered to YY, see full description for detailed measurements”

Example 3: Belts are typically sized in actual inches from the buckle to first or center hole. You may see higher returns on belts, due to the fact that someone may place their order based on the size of their favorite Levis, and then discover the belt is several inches too small.
I list at the tagged sized, with detailed measurements in the description.

Returns still happen, returns will always happen.

If you want an eye opener, go measure your favorite pair of jeans. I learned my lesson in 2012, when I ordered a pair of size 38 linen dress pants for an outdoor wedding. When they arrived, I couldn’t button them, so I measured them and they were indeed 38″. When I measured my size 38 jeans, I discovered that my waist was actually 42″!! That’s when I started slimming down.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.

Items in Store 1310
Items Sold 17
Total Sales $536.50
COGS $56.50
Total Profit $480.00
Average profit $28.24
Average sales price $31.56
New Listings 66

This week I worked hard at listing coats and jackets. I want to get ALL of my coats and jackets listed. They can’t sell if they aren’t listed!
I had another crappy weekend of sales. It is such a bummer to have crickets in sales while listing like a madman.

I decided to compare the last 5 weeks of sales to the same period last year to see if things are really off, or if I’m just doing the business I normally do at this time of year.

Last year: 89 sales for $2607 on an average inventory of 1087 items
This year: 93 sales for $3009.50 on an average inventory of 1254 items

So things aren’t really as bad as they seem. I would hope I’d have more growth than that based on the increase in available inventory, but it is what it is. ebay really seems to be a diminishing returns game. I really need commit to figuring out a cross posting strategy to gain more eyeballs on my products.

I hope that my increased listing activity starts to pay off this week. Have a great week everyone!

Total Items In Store: 257 Ebay, 40 Mercari
Items Sold: 6 Ebay, 2 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $39 + $3 free shipping + some items ours
Total Sales: $157 Ebay + $25 Mercari
Highest Price Sold: $54 New platter (paid $25 clearance)
Average Price Sold: $26 Ebay, $18 Mercari
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed: 1 – sad face
Buyer issue: Pressure from a Mercari shopper to split a lot and then switch to free shipping on an $11 item “because other sellers will do it” (so to give her the item for free.) No thanks – silent treatment!

Speaking of silence, it was cricketsville so almost all of these sales came from make an offer / promotion or a 10% sale on Ebay that I ran midweek. Definitely helps to stir the pot. I believe making offers to watchers is a very powerful tool. I’m so glad Ebay finally caught up on that. ASP down, but I need to move some stuff. Also I noticed this week on the Ebay app that it suggested three items to reduce price – it gives you a button to reduce by a certain amount. I tried clicking those. Got an offer right after on one of those, a tiki mug. I figure they must suggest high view items that are likely to convert.

Regarding the list and forget discussion, I don’t have time to relaunch stale listings but if I did I would. I do think Ebay generates results that are not necessarily totally logical and individual seller-friendly and I do believe that certain actions affect your listings’ treatment under Cassini. It would make sense that new listings are treated differently than stale listings. They pretty much tell you in the fine print they don’t show all of the listings all of the time. I don’t think anyone can say for sure whether or not it works for others. As discussed, it might depend on the types of items in your store and the pricing level vs. comps. Best for anyone interested to try it out, and for those who have tried it to share results. That’s what I love about this Forum. If you try it, be sure to watch your multi-quantity numbers resetting.

Question: will ebay override your charging sales tax for your own state or is it safe and necessary to take that off? I don’t believe that is clear. Also, for tax Paypal purposes, it seems like they should not have it create revenue for you.

Have a great week!

Jay – My mom has totally collected hotel soaps over the years. I once bought her a package of hotel soap, like what you once found at a thrift store, as a funny gift. My family and I, though, don’t travel enough to not have to buy soap. However, my husband works for a cosmetic company, and they have a few soaps we get for free from his company store (along with hair & skin products).

Anyway:

Week of Oct 27 – Nov 2
* Total Items in Store: 1542 eBay, 37 Etsy
* Items Sold: 20
* Cost of Items Sold: $24.75 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $384.72
* Highest Price Sold: $40 Vintage Springbank Scotch Whiskey pitcher
* Average Price Sold: $19.23
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 52

Decent enough week, but today I received notice of two returns worth about $62. Bummer.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Sharyn.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Sharyn.

Tip for sending the wrong shoes: I store my items in labeled bins. Bins are numbered and recorded in listing SKU. A lot of people do this. But for quickly finding the correct item – every time. My listing number is tagged on each item. So if you have 2 pair of shoes that are nearly identical – you verify the listing number before packing the item.

I sell industrial switches. They all look alike but the rating for each may be different. Listing number on each item has worked well – now that “Good Till Canceled” keeps the listing number the same forever.

For those tech savvy people with a label printer, the QR Code containing the URL with the listing number (http://www.ebay.com/itm/nnnnnnnnn) can be read and decoded in the ebay app like any barcode.

Another great week for sales… I was out of town for a few days so I have fallen behind on new listings. I met with a tax professional last week… she made me feel pretty confident in things that i’m tracking and COGS at yard sales etc. She also said I can use cash based accounting for taxes which should make things simpler.

Items in Store 662
Items sold 30
Gross Sales 900
COGS 122
Highest Price Sold 180
Average Price Sold 30.6
New Inventory Costs 74

Another great podcast, Jay and Ryanne. I almost called in with the same comment about Poshmark sellers. They can be really “extra.” For my Poshmark sales, all I can muster is some tissue paper, and a little note on cute paper (leftover scrapbooking paper). But I’ve received packages tied up with ribbons and beauty samples and hair ties. Sort of silly, but also sort of nice.

Here’s my week: Oct. 28-Nov.2
Items Sold: 10 on Ebay, Poshmark and Mercari
Items in stores: 150 Ebay, 190 Poshmark (one more than last week)
Total Sales: $ 104.xx before fees and some free shipping
COG: Minimal… $3?
Items listed: 8
Highest priced item: $20 for a set of egg coddlers

I’m running a 3/$15 “sale” on Poshmark on some stale inventory. It’s not yielded any results yet, but I’m going to let it run through the weekend.
I’ve also started my Etsy store this week. My goal is to list 10 items a week until I get to 100 and then decide how big to get. I’m attracted by the lower fees, now that I have a better handle on shipping.

Thanks for the podcast R&J

Total Items in Store: 3334
Items Sold: 34
Total Sales: $953.57
Cost of Items Sold: $148
Average Price Sold: $28.05
Average Cost of Item: $4.36
Highest Price Item Sold: $107.95 KLM BOLS BLUE DELFT miniature HOUSE SET of 8
Number of items listed this week: 63 worth $1473
YTD Sales: $42494
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +7%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 426
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 304
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 110
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.02%
Hats sold this week: 22 (64% of sales) worth $362.17 (37% of sales $)

Thanks for clarifying your “list and forget” strategy R&J. Though you don’t actually forget about your listings because you run sales, relist old items, send offers to watchers etc. Completely forgetting about old listings would be a mistake for most sellers I think.

I was interested to hear about the results of your price-reduction experiment. Too bad it didn’t work out. For obscure items, there isn’t always someone looking for them so reducing the price for a week or two wont necessarily get a sale if nobody is looking for your item during that period of course.

I dont use the list-really-high-but-add-best-offer approach because unless items are truly unique (ie: no other sellers) price is important. Best-offer is good for sophisticated buyers but plenty of people wont use it. I generally just price based on similar sales. I think it’s unusual for me to have something I think is truly unique.

Hey ya’ll, I’m tired. Q4 is exhausting, but I’m grateful! I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but I hope to soon.

Just got my 60th sale ever on Etsy! Even though an entire nearly year’s worth of sales doesn’t match what I make on Ebay in a week, I find it fun and a good back-up. It’s also a good place for interesting duds that can sell for higher than Ebay or Amazon. I’m currently hovering around 120 active listings on that venue.

I went out and bought more stock this weekend, so now I’m behind on my current listing goals. I’ve created a new temporary storage area in an inconvenient spot in order to make myself focus on just listing that specific pile of new stock first. I got halfway through the pile from the week before, so it’s fine. I have other good Q4 stock I would like to get back to working on by the middle of November. After that, back to listing other recent stock and back to the backlog. I think my favorite estate sale company is shutting down soon (ahhh nooo), and I hate sourcing in the winter, so I should be able to get a ton of work done over the next few months with little new stock coming in to interfere with working through the backlog.

How many members here at SL still list on Bonanza and trueGether?

Just doing a little quick poll-survey.

mike at MDCGFA

I am still on Truegether and Bonanza. I don’t sell a lot there but it is easy for me to list there. Between the two of them I’ve sold a little of $2,000 this year so far. So, no complaints from me.

The content from Mr. Auction Professor is the reason why we are moving to diversify to other platforms and cross listing as quickly as we can and also re-set up our Shopify store.

The base premise is only his “opinion” based on Ebay’s 3rd quarter numbers and his own thoughts, he parallels my thinking fairly closely. I had already arrived at about his same point and with a 3rd party app like SixBit and a little manipulation of embedding a platform code into our SKU numbering system, we can maybe list on 5 or 6 platforms and still track it fairly easy and handle it.

This link goes to a recent YouTube he made and is only about a 13 to 14 minute listen.

Now staying focused just on the online reselling unique, one of a king items online, process, are any other SL members diversifying, within the e-commerce reselling platforms and if so what and how.

I don’t mean taking profits from selling online and then going and buying real estate, store fronts, Pizza franchises 🙂 LOL or the such. I mean what are you doing within the stay online and market items in online stores or your own domain to continue to be able to claim a full time income from online selling. Do know of and use SEO a lot, ads, have multiple cross listed platforms, know lot about tags and key words.

What is your plan to grow your online business, scale it up? Directly to Jay… if you and Ryanne did not know anything about video conferencing and did not do that at all for extra income and had never invested in your airBandB business model and you only had your 9,000 item inventory and your Ebay store, what would your game plan be to handle and over come the scenario
of only being on Ebay as your only income stream.

Is your inventory producing the same income given than small as it may be, the consumer price index and cost of goods we all live on still go up a few percentage points each year, Ebay and PayPal are taking more. Would you just sit back and still feed the 9,000 item beast with new purchases, list them, sell what you can just from Ebay, ship them and then as you say “rinse and repeat”?

I am not bashing Ebay, but after listening the Professor Auction, and several others on the same topic, my confidence in Ebay to be my only main income source is waining. It still is #2 right behind Amazon, but shouldn’t sellers move into a more and newer world to expand and branch out into the more diverse and younger e-commerce world. In other words are we just “marking time and aging in place” when it comes to selling online?

I am 71 years old. Have thousands of items in inventory. In 15 years from now at 86 years old, am I going to be found dead one day, laying in the garage, on the floor with a “numbered Bin” and a “pile of broken Limoge dinner plates” on top of me because I had to climb a ladder to pull some old used ceramic plates off the top shelf?? 🙂 LMAO Or will I have built up a substantial online e-commerce business, have a few helpers and sell on 5 or 6 platforms and have a buzzing business which I can over see and direct.

So where do we all go next to expand and move forward.. maybe into “The twilight Zone”.

Boy that was a rabbit hole, but may be a few hidden topics for an up coming podcast hidden in there. 🙂

Mike at MDC Galleries

Jay, same here, I can deal with one or two platforms but that’s it. After that it starts to be like a JOB hahaha.
I am of the mindset that you HAVE to diversify, not just selling on different platforms but investing in different things, because all businesses go through cycles and when you are all in on one thing and at the bottom of the cycle things can seem bleak.
I recently put my house on the market here, (have not posted on here in awhile, busy with house prettying up projects) markets hot so it’s the time to take advantage of that for me. When that sells we have our 5 year plan laid out which will include about 4 different activities that will all produce passive income on top of selling online. I’d rather create a few income streams than have a few jobs…
Happy hunting all!

Mike, Jay, etc,

At present, we are ebay only, although I sometimes will put something on Facebook. I do not disagree with the idea of diversifying, (whether via diverse streams, as Jay suggests, or diverse platforms, as Mike suggests, or both). Right now, we have enough to do just trying to get caught up on ebay for Q4…sometimes life intervenes , and our best laid plans go off course.

I don’t feel a pressing need to diversify….this quarter…but ebay IS making me nervous. They spent much of Wenig’s tenure—literally, several YEARS… promising big improvements once they got “product pages” taken care of, and they are now basically back to Square One with that, and …as the latest Item Specific mess demonstrates…they STILL don’t have a real handle on it. The new guy…well, the guy who has returned to ebay, Jordan Sweetnam or whatever his name is…does seem to be stressing—FINALLY—the importance of eBay’s huge variety of merchandise, including the collectible stuff, the used stuff, etc. BUT: They just aren’t growing, they are spinning their wheels while their competitors grow around them.

All of that wouldn’t bother me TOO much, because I’ve gotten used to it, but the Elliot Management situation is the Wild Card. I think we have to recognize the very real possibility that if ebay doesn’t DRAMATICALLY turn things around, ebay will be sold off and perhaps dismantled. A sale to the right buyer could actually be the best thing for us as sellers…or the worst. There’s just no way to know, and I think every day that goes by without signs of REAL growth—-GMV growth—is another nail in ebay’s coffin. Yes, they can goose revenue with Promoted Listing revenue and eventually Managed Payments revenue, but they can’t continue to lose market share. At some point, investors are going to insist on evidence of a real turn around. Frankly, the Board gave Wenig more time than I expected they would….maybe because he kept telling them the turn around was getting closer, just be patient….but I think they are running out of patience. I’m guessing ebay has maybe another year, at best, to show it can turn things around. A strong Q4 would help, but I wouldn’t bet on it happening….especially with the IS mess right now.

Ultimately, I think they need to make some pretty drastic changes, or sink.

Jay, we plan on settling in and renting for 2 years outside of the city center where we currently live. Downtown redone homes are mostly being sold to foreigners and big money folks from mexico city who almost all purchase them to air bnb them out. Once you get out of the center of the city rents are much lower.
If I put 20% of the sales price in to municipal bonds that would pay our rent every month for a nice house out of the city center. BTW, muni bonds pay 8% after tax here.

Jay often talks about his vision of their reselling business being a “machine” that takes on a life of its own as long as he keeps it fed and maintained. it reminds me of the “flywheel effect” Jim Collins wrote of in his book, good to great. Many of you may be familiar with it and it may bring back haunted memories of your previous corporate life as it does me. sorry about that. hope its not redundant…Here’s an abbreviated excerpt.
“Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. Three turns … four … five … six …
Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn … whoosh! … its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort…
The huge heavy disk flies forward, now with almost unstoppable momentum”