The Numbers: December 12-18, 2021

This topic has 30 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 4 weeks ago by Joe.

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- 12/19/2021 at 2:28 pm #94316
  Jay
  Keymaster
  Location: Virginia
  @jay
  Solid week of sales. Candlesticks seemed strangely popular. We love helping home designers make their places cool 🙂 Check out our coffee! ► broadporc
  [See the full post at: The Numbers: December 12-18, 2021]
- 12/19/2021 at 7:13 pm #94318
  old_man_marty
  Participant
  Location: California
  @martyholthaus
  Hello, everyone. Sold 3 items this week after several weeks of nothing. One of them was the set of Italian silk pendant lights I mentioned on a podcast about 8 months ago. I was hoping for closer to $1,500 sales before fees for that one but only got $1,000.
  
  Total On eBay: 85
  
  Items Listed: 0
  
  Items Sold: 3
  
  Total Profit: $892.44
  
  Average Profit Per Item: $297.48
  
  Highest Profit: $863.15 (Italian Silk Pendant Lights)
  - 12/19/2021 at 7:18 pm #94319
    Jay
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @jay
    Nice sale. Remind me, is that a light you found?
    - 12/19/2021 at 7:37 pm #94323
      old_man_marty
      Participant
      
      Location: California
      @martyholthaus
      
      Hello, Jay. These lights were purchased by my mother-in-law and never used. They are made by a company called Fortuny. I had hoped for more but found some fading and a flaw with a threaded metal piece that made it feel easier to take $1,000. Item #294245271705 (I can’t seem to upload this reply with the link tool on your WordPress site.
- 12/19/2021 at 10:07 pm #94324
  BrianB
  Participant
  Location:
  @brianb
  Jay, Ryanne: I’m just curious as to whether you’ve heard of this coffee company that claims to have figured out how to grow coffee in the contiguous U.S.
  
  Home
  - 12/20/2021 at 8:37 am #94326
    Ryanne
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @ryanne
    yes we’ve heard of them. 5oz of coffee (two pots of drip coffee) for $80. amazing.
    - 12/20/2021 at 11:18 am #94331
      Antique Frog
      Participant
      
      Location: Leicester
      @antique-frog
      
      You can get 5 coffees (or smoothies or other drinks) a day every day for a subscription of £20 (26 dollars) a month from Pret a Manger in the UK.
      
      slurp…
- 12/20/2021 at 8:35 am #94325
  Retro Treasures WV
  Participant
  Location:
  @retro-treasures-wv
  Items in Store 1512
  Items Sold 22
  Total Sales $969.00
  COGS $88.00
  Total Profit $881.00
  Average profit $40.05
  Average sales price $44.05
  New Listings 4
  Items scavenged 4
  
  Looks like the “too late to buy anything online” Christmas slowdown struck this weekend. After a very steady week, Saturday and Sunday took a nosedive.
  
  Picked up a few video games at Walmart Clearance and listed them while in store. The profit margin is not great – just 2x money – but they are just so easy to list and ship. It’s basically free money.
  
  Have a Merry Christmas everyone!
- 12/20/2021 at 9:06 am #94327
  NC
  Participant
  Location: Georgia
  @millionairedojo
  Weekly sales 12/12 – 12/18
  Random Item Store
  Total items 1527
  Items sold 31
  New items listed 70
  Gross sales $595.46
  Net sales $374.91
  New buyers 31
  Repeat buyers 0
  
  Patch Store
  Total items 4494
  Items sold 87
  New items listed 140
  Gross sales $646.89
  Net sales $500.25
  New buyers 76
  Repeat buyers 1
  
  Etsy
  Orders 27
  Gross sales $320.00
  Net sales $272.00
  
  Gross sales total $1,562.35
  Net sales total $1,147.16
  
  A decent week thanks again to patch sales. I’ve got 39 patch orders to ship out this morning that sold over the weekend (worth $368). It will probably take me about an hour to pull the patches, print the labels, and throw them in an envelope. My random item store is in a weird funk lately. Some days I sell 10 things and then the next day, nothing sells. I’m glad to see my daily average sales go up with patches since I’ve been listing 20 a day for months now. I’d like to get to where I sell like 50 a day and list 50 a day. I think I could get all my work done in about 5 hours a day at that point if I wasn’t doing random items anymore.
- 12/20/2021 at 10:46 am #94328
  Mark S
  Participant
  Location:
  @mark-s
  12/12/21 – 12/18/21
  
  Total Items In Store: 4270 (was 4252 previously listed)
  Items Sold: 20
  Total Sales: $ 777.83
  Highest Price Sold: $ 115 (Vintage GI Joe Accessory)
  Average Price Sold: $ 38.89
  Money Spent on New Inventory: $ about $180
  Number of items listed: 38
  
  Gut Sales Report for the week: I’m with Retro – “Looks like the “too late to buy anything online” Christmas slowdown struck” but for me sales started getting rocky on Wed. 15th and stayed that way for the rest of the week.
  
  Focus for the week : Just trying to keep up with listing and shipping.
  
  Scavenge of the week: Picked up another nice pair of Allen Edmonds for cheap.
  
  Thoughts for the week: Still working on getting my Youtube channel going. I have a good handle on my content for the first episode. I did a trial run thru it.
  
  Mark S
- 12/20/2021 at 10:54 am #94329
  mscellaneous
  Participant
  Location: VA
  @mscellaneous
  12-12-21 to 12-18-21
  Total Items in Store: 1892
  Items Sold: 9
  Gross Sales:$ 269.30
  Net Sales:$ 167.81
  Cost of Items Sold: $ 3.00
  Highest Price Sold: $ 60.00 American Eagle Silver Dollar
  Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 1.00
  Number of items listed this week: 80
  
  Lots of listing this week. Finished posting all the single items that came out of my lot listings. And sold 1 of them. That always helps the motivation.
  
  Did a nearly complete inventory check and updated the location information in Ebay for stuff that had wound up in a new spot. Got rid of some bulky items and reorganized some items so they will be easier to find. Also found 5 cancelled items that had not been relisted. So I relisted them. There is 1 more item that was cancelled but I don’t remember if it sold in the mean time. Have to hunt for it. If I find it, I will relist.
  
  Taking off the end of this week, leaving sales on just not shipping until next week. I’d rather do some fun holiday stuff and take a break from shipping, posting, etc.
  
  Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.
- 12/20/2021 at 12:27 pm #94337
  Lukastreasuretrove
  Participant
  Location: Chevy Chase, MD
  @lukastreasuretrove
  Sales Report for: 12/18/21
  Total Items in Store: 1157
  Items Sold: 25
  Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $697.04
  Net Sales (After fees): $560.20
  Cost of Items Sold: $94.29
  COGS Percent 16.83%
  Net Profit Margin: 66.84%
  Highest Price Sold: $65.00 Stuffed Bear with Santa
  Average Price Sold: $27.88
  Returns: 0
  Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
  Sold via promoted listings: 15
  Promoted Percentage: 60.00%
  Average Days Listed: 446
  Longest Listed: 1852
  New items listed: 0
  
  Another below average week of sales, dollar wise. Number sold was above average, but the price per sale was way below what I usually get. As with others, the week started off strong, but died by week’s end. Big sale of the week occurred on Friday with a sale of a large stuffed Santa riding a bear for $65. Most interesting sale was a set of Audubon microphonograph bird cards. Each card has a small record that can be played in a handheld microphonograph. I acquired them with the player, but the player was no longer working. Paid $5 for the player and cards and sold just the cards for $29.95.
  
  Spent most of my time this week working on learning how to cross-post items to Etsy using SixBit. For me it isn’t a very straightforward process and I had to go back and forth with support a few times before I got it right, but I finally have a few items listed. Now that I have it figured out it should go faster.
  
  The biggest pain, once the proper configuration items were figured out, is editing the description for each item. When Sixbit imports the eBay listings, it copies the description with hypertext mark-up, which doesn’t work with Etsy, so each description has to be copied and cleaned up. It will be less hassle when creating a completely new listing for both simultaneously.
  
  Some of my confusion with the initial set up is likely due to my not being familiar with Etsy. For instance, I didn’t have shipping preferences set up in Etsy, so no shipping preferences were available in Sixbit. I’m sure I’ll keep uncovering other gotchas as I sell a few items. If I can find the time, I may write up a “lessons learned” that I can share in case anyone else is interested.
  
  Merry Christmas one and all!
  
  Mike
  - 12/20/2021 at 12:36 pm #94338
    Jay
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @jay
    I know fast crossposting is the holy grail of reselling. Since Etsy requires different info from eBay (and square photos?), how does Sixbit make the process faster? Can you give an example of the time spent?
    - 12/21/2021 at 9:10 am #94348
      Lukastreasuretrove
      Participant
      
      Location: Chevy Chase, MD
      @lukastreasuretrove
      
      @Jay – Once you understand the process, it only takes a few more minutes to create the Etsy listing. My pictures are mostly square in eBay, so I won’t have much problem there. The main time effort is description clean-up. See the attached screen shots. First is how the eBay imported information looks. Second is what the etsy section looks like after listing is populated from eBay (very little information is transferred, just quantity and price). Thirds shows the essential fields which must be completed for Etsy that are different from Ebay.
      
      Ebay Vs. Etsy with Sixbit
      - 12/21/2021 at 10:06 am #94349
        
        Jay
        Keymaster
        
        Location: Virginia
        @jay
        
        Cool. I’ll be interested to see your progress and results. We’ve seen people jump over to Etsy and do the same amount of business as eBay because they liked the Etsy community better.
        
        Not sure if we’ve seen anyone duplicate all their eBay listings to Etsy and increase/double sales. It’d be awesome if Sixbit makes that possible. You have the inventory that Etsy likes.
- 12/20/2021 at 2:18 pm #94340
  Sharyn
  Participant
  Location: Central NJ
  @sharyn
  Week of Dec 12 – 18
  Total Items in Store: 1387 eBay, 31 Etsy
  Items Sold: 17 eBay, 2 Etsy
  Cost of Items Sold: $19.25 + $49 Commission
  Total Sales: $250.63 eBay, $40 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
  Highest Price Sold: $29 for Vtg Glenfiddich Whiskey Pitcher
  Average price: $15.30
  Returns: 0
  Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
  Number of items listed this week: 7
  
  Just selling small value items, but higher quantity. Still getting more Etsy sales than any of the past years. Maybe because I now have more feedback, but most likely because of their off-site advertising.
  
  I’m going crazy at the moment because I cannot find an item that sold over the weekend. I’m going to have to notify the buyer, but I’m pretty bummed about it. Been looking over an hour now; got to just let it go.
- 12/20/2021 at 3:08 pm #94342
  ChristineR
  Participant
  Location: Southern California
  @christiner
  Items in Store 280
  Items Sold 6
  Total Sales $192.53
  COGS $38
  Total Profit $112.85
  Average sales price $21
  New Listings 0
  Items scavenged 0
  
  Happy to have any sales at this rate. I’m shutting my store off for a few days due to a health issue. Happy that I didn’t stockpile a bunch of xmas since I haven’t been listing. Thinking about whether to keep selling on Mercari in 2021. It’s our stuff that I sell over there (mostly clothing) for about 2-4x yard sale prices. Hope all who celebrate have a very happy Christmas.
- 12/20/2021 at 5:59 pm #94344
  workhorse
  Participant
  Location: California
  @workhorse
  I’m glad some people have had some sales. Mine have been in the toilet. I sold about 50 dollars of small stuff the last week. My sales are down 50% compared to 2020. I have 2500 items.
  - 12/20/2021 at 6:42 pm #94345
    Retro Treasures WV
    Participant
    
    Location:
    @retro-treasures-wv
    This baffles me. Do you mind sharing your store?
    It makes no sense how you could barely be selling anything with that many listings.
  - 12/21/2021 at 3:35 pm #94357
    NC
    Participant
    
    Location: Georgia
    @millionairedojo
    How often do you list new items? That seems to have a huge impact in my opinion. Next thing I’d look at is price. Next, what is the typical sell through of the items you’re selling? If you search an item you have for sell and there are 10,000 other listings of the same item and only 10 have sold in the past 90 days, it’s going to take forever to move that item. Are you offering any kind of coupon? Do you do promoted listings? I do 1% promoted and it helps me sell more stuff for sure so it’s worth it to me. I think we are going to have to start using the tools eBay gives us more and more in the future to keep our sales going up. Things get harder over time, not easier.
    - 12/21/2021 at 7:07 pm #94360
      workhorse
      Participant
      
      Location: California
      @workhorse
      
      I haven’t been posting stuff as often because things don’t seem to be moving that much. I put about 10-15 new things up a week. It is confusing to me too. I do some promoted listings but not too many. I don’t do coupons but send offers almost daily. I have been selling things, but the volume is way down the past 2 weeks, and the past year as i said is down 50 percent almost. It could be that the pandemic cleared me out of a lot of stuff or something. I sell “old weird stuff”, not commodities. Maybe I will try promoting.
      - 12/22/2021 at 7:30 am #94365
        
        NC
        Participant
        
        Location: Georgia
        @millionairedojo
        
        Yeah, my random item store hasn’t been doing good for the past month or so but it’s still bringing in a few hundred a week. I list the same amount of items 7 days a week. on days that I create new listings, I create enough to spread across the days that I don’t create new ones and save them as drafts to list on those days. Having the constant activity seems to help. I just checked and promoted listings make up 25% of my sales so I’m glad to pay 1% for an extra 25% increase. I just promote everything at 1%.
- 12/20/2021 at 8:33 pm #94346
  DarlinDils
  Participant
  Location: Reno
  @cdils
  Total Items in Store: 155
  
  Items Listed: 3
  
  Items Sold: 4
  
  Total Sales: $62.50
  
  Highest Price Sold: $25 Kitchen Craft 11.5″ electric skillet
  
  I echo the deader than a doornail sentiments last week. No sales all week, finally got a few offers accepted over the weekend or it would have been my first week with no sales in the two years I have been doing this regularly. I am a bit surprised the flow of activity ended so early, I’d have expected it to slow this week instead of last.
  
  Life has changed for me, I picked up a short term work contract starting next week. I just couldn’t let my licensing and certifications expire for my ‘real job’ and they require work hours to renew. Since the worksite is a few hours away, I will be staying out there during the work week and wont be able to ship in a timely manner. I am looking into how to change my shipping preference to 5 days if possible, then I could at least continue selling, even if my listing numbers would go down. Timeframe for the work is 2-6 months, depending on their needs. Hopeful I can find some good stuff to resell in my free time, it is always fun to hunt through a new territory!
- 12/21/2021 at 3:25 pm #94356
  NC
  Participant
  Location: Georgia
  @millionairedojo
  My two cents on crossposting: It ain’t worth it. Every other selling platform other than Amazon has half the traffic or less than eBay. If there’s a buyer for our used items, they’re likely searching eBay. You also have to think about all the mental space it takes up as well as extra time to manage a whole other selling platform. Not to mention the amount of times you’re going to forget to pull something that has sold on one platform from the other and that’s going to lead to unhappy buyers and defects on your account. We’re likely all better off just listing a couple more items than we usually do instead of trying to crosspost.
  - 12/22/2021 at 2:00 am #94363
    Joe
    Participant
    
    Location:
    @joe
    I wouldn’t want to derail the thread but I do disagree on the crossposting. I currently have around 5500 items on eBay and have been crosslisting to Mercari for about a year now and have about 1500 items there. Sales on Mercari are getting very close to those of eBay which is impressive because I don’t even have even a third than what I do on Ebay. From what I have seen, should I have the same number of listings on both platforms, I would definitely sell more on Mercari than what I do on eBay. Now, this is the only platform I crosslist to and do not have experience with other platforms as far as cross posting. As far as removing from one platform and vice versa when an item sells, I have gotten already used to always remove the items as soon as it sells through mobile device. It’s not that bad. It has been months since I had an item double selling and even then it wasn’t happening that often either. I’m top rated plus on eBay.
    - 12/22/2021 at 7:25 am #94364
      NC
      Participant
      
      Location: Georgia
      @millionairedojo
      
      Hey, that’s great that it’s working out well for you and I’m surprised Mercari is doing that great vs eBay. Sounds like you’ve got a good system down which is key. I said I was giving my two cents and that may have been all it was worth lol
    - 12/22/2021 at 8:25 am #94366
      Jay
      Keymaster
      
      Location: Virginia
      @jay
      
      Are you mainly selling clothes on Mercari? If Mercari is doing better than eBay, why not just go all in on that platform?
      - 12/22/2021 at 1:40 pm #94370
        
        ChristineR
        Participant
        
        Location: Southern California
        @christiner
        
        Curious to hear this too. I think there are younger buyers on Mercari, who EBay has struggled to attract. However, I find people are cheap on Mercari unless it’s a very hot brand, like Patagonia. Buying-wise, I really struggle on Mercari with sellers just not measuring and weighing the item and my strict post office just sends it right back.
      - 12/22/2021 at 4:17 pm #94372
        
        Joe
        Participant
        
        Location:
        @joe
        
        No, I do sell some clothing but I’m mostly a hard goods, “everything” store. Mostly sell vintage items, media (records, CDs, video games), toys, electronics, and everything in between. I’ve thought about going all in on just one platform but my original thought was to diversify and not have everything in one basket. Essentially, my original thinking was to have a backup to eBay in case it went belly up on us, for whatever the reason.
- 12/21/2021 at 3:50 pm #94358
  BethGreen
  Participant
  Location: Ohio
  @bethgreen
  Store Week December 12-18, 2021
  
  Total Items in Store: 398
  Items Sold: 41
  Gross Sales: $2277 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
  Net Sales: $1574 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
  Cost of Items Sold: Roughly 10% (a bit behind on my bookkeeping but this is my steady average)
  
  I haven’t posted in a long time. But this is the highest sales I’ve ever had in one week and I’m feeling pretty proud. I miss the sound of your voices Jay and Ryanne. I hope you have a Merry Christmas!
  - 12/22/2021 at 8:26 am #94367
    Jay
    Keymaster
    
    Location: Virginia
    @jay
    Glad you stopped in. That’s crazy the amount you sold in one week!
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