The Numbers: Week June 29 – July 6, 2024

I set up standard promoted listings each month. There’s a button for “recommended listings” that I select, and then I have to go through a few screens of all the items eBay recommends I add. It is usually about 600-700 out of my 1600-ish store, and I have no idea what they use to determine why an item is good for PL.

I used to set up a sale each month, but someone here recommended that I chose PL instead. I figure a 9% PL is less than the 15% off sale. I’m still sending out offers when available, so those are lower priced.

I had another slow week, but my numbers were helped by one $199 sale. About two years ago, we needed a repair on our furnace where they had to replace a controller, but it came with a new blower motor. They told me that the old motor still worked and asked if they should take it away. I said to leave it, but I forgot to list it until last week. I had no way to retest, so, hopefully, it works fine; otherwise, I’m screwed :).

I did list like a crazy woman, so there’s that. Sales so far this week are better.

Week of May Jun 30 – Jul 6
Total Items in Store: 1665 eBay, 33 Etsy
Items Sold: 4 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $3.55 + $0 Commission
Total Sales: $242.05 eBay
Highest Price Sold: eBay $199 for GE ECM Blower Motor Model 5SME39SL USA
Average price: $60.50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 39

Items in Store: 3039
Items Sold: 41
Total Sales: $2,258.00
COGS: $300.00
Total Profit: $1,958.00
Average profit: $47.76
Average sales price: $55.07
New Listings: 215
Items scavenged: 19
2024 weekly new listings Avg: 35
2024 avg gross weekly sales $1,410.37
2024 Avg weekly Items Sold 33
2024 ASP $43.27
2024 projected total sales $73,339.26

I was a listing MACHINE this week. My daughter did well photographing shoes – 126 pair. She calls it the “sensory deprivation chamber” due to the lights and white background. LOL! My draft bank is down to 70 items.

I’m getting back on track to building my ideal store – 45 listings a week, 45 sales a week, $45 ASP. That there is a $100k sales business that is manageable in about 15-20 hours a week. Sounds like a get rich quick scheme doesn’t it? Well it’s not ‘rich’ or ‘quick’, but it’s a pretty darned impressive single person side business.

Still no baby yet. Little fella wants to play games and keep us guessing I suppose.

My numbers are still getting dragged down by selling off old low dollar items. My low dollar sales were 11 items for $89. Ewww…. Still, that’s $89 in my pocket and an $80 profit off $9 COGS. If I filter those low dollar items out my ASP was a most excellent $72.30

A lot of these low dollar sales was from ending/sell similar of old items. I still have a lot of items that were basically dead listings because I still had 1^st class shipping on them. I adjust price, rework the title, and update the shipping on all of my old listings. This past week I did 30 old items every weekday. I do this relisting  in my down time at my day job. The perks of being an engineer – Sometimes I get to sit around and wait for someone to ask me a question if I have all my routine tasks done.  Currently my oldest listing is August 2022. This week I’ll break into 2023. My long term goal is to keep my oldest listing at 12 months. Then every month I end/sell similar the items that fall in the 13^th month. I have about 500 old listings to go in order to be caught up to the 1 year mark.

Premium Hoarder update:

Sold 12 items for $1510.

Hopefully this number stays high for a few weeks after my listing blitz. I NEED the money. I believe I have all of the newest hoarder shoes listed now. I’ll be processing through the newest clothing for a while.

Bummer today as I had a pair of NWT Prada Jeans I took a chance on with the latest batch. Even if they weren’t real, it was worth the risk to spend plenty of time studying the jeans. Alas, I settled on fake. They are old and are definitely from 2004. One tag appears legit, but there was way too much variance in different Prada fonts between the price tags, the main back tag, and the inner tags. Still, it was fun to do a deep dive studying the item and reading up on various websites on vintage Prada.

Would they still sell? Yes. Am I willing to risk it? No. I may put some photos up on Reddit just to confirm.

06/30/24 – 07/06/24

Total Items In my ebay Store: 4318

Total Items In my Etsy Store: 609

Total Items listed: 4927

ebay Items Sold: 4 items for $ 209.66 Net $ 152.86
Etsy Items Sold: 0 items for $0 Net $0

Total Gross Sales: $ 209.66
Net Sales: $ 152.86
Items Sold: 4 items
Highest Price Sold: $ 100 (Running Shoes)
Average Price Sold: $ 38.22
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 67.23

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales are lacking, even for this time of year. I have to start listing consistently.

Scavenge of the week: Picked up some great vintage electronics.

Thoughts for the week: Glad to be back on the forum and happy to announce that I have gone full-time with my business. I don’t say ebay, because I
am already on ebay and etsy. I plan to go list on the following marketplaces:  Poshmark, Mercari, Depop, and Facebook Marketplace in the not so distant future.

Now for those statistics that I said that I would post today. These statistics come from the cross listing company, Vendoo. See the information below on Vendoo.

Today, the Vendoo community has more than 40k members who have cross-listed more than 15 million items in 2022 using the platform. Our users represent small, medium, and big reselling businesses. Benefits from resellers also continued to grow with a 10% efficiency improvement in the sale process! Dec 15, 2022. Vendoo started in the Cross Listing business in 2017.

What we already knew: The more you list, the more you sell.

Now here is that same knowledge with Data Analytics behind it:

1. Users that list items at least 20 days a month have twice the sales.

What we already knew: The more marketplaces you sell on, the more you will make.

Now here is that same knowledge with Data Analytics behind it:

2. Users that list in 3 or more marketplaces have a sell-through-rate that is 180% higher.

What we already knew: The more you Delist/Relist you items, the more sales you make.

Now here is that same knowledge with Data Analytics behind it:

3. Vendoo users who regularly Delist/Relist their inventory make 33% more sales.

I hope these statistics help you. This will really help me out.

Mark

I’m locked out of the site on my desktop still.  Had sales of $600 but only a net of $300.  Not sure what is going on there.  I let my sale expire and asked went dead so I started a 20% off again today.  The 25% off was more successful.  Will be crunching listings until vacation in a week.  It’s a long vacation at 13 days but I guess I will leave sales on probably.

June 30 – July 6

Total sales from Ebay, FBM:  $338

Items sold:  8

COGs:  $0

Net profit after fees and COGs:  $314.97

Breakdowns:

Ebay Items in store:  409

Ebay Items Sold: 2

Ebay total sales:  $38

Ebay fees: $12.25

COGs: $0

Facebook Items:  120

FBM items sold: 6

FBM total sales: $300

FBM shipped orders: 2 at $75 with $10.78 fees

FBM local, no fees:  6 at $225

Last week I scavenged a patio rug, two large patio chairs, a small metal dresser, a small metal side table, a wicker curved chair, two cast iron octopi wall decor, a Little Tikes car, 2 sets of patio cushions, and three woven metal Serena and Lily folding deck chairs.

The Serena and Lily chairs sell for $498 each new, they are called “Palisades” chairs.  Mine are a smidge beat up on the edges but still so solid.  I priced them at $300 for the set.

NONE of my ebay listings are promoted.  I think I am going to be allowed soon, so we’ll see if my sales go up.  I had a 30% sales off last week but still just sold two items.  Lots of offers sent out though!

I don’t know if this will help anyone, but I like to get more analytical about my business when I start worrying about the economy, the news or the state of the world. It’s important to remember that buying things online has been around for 25+ years now and it’s not going away anytime soon. Things will sell as long as you keep listing and price them well. Nothing moving and that’s make you anxious? Change your offer settings, end and sell similar your oldest 100 listings, add promoted listings at 5% to a bunch of items. Don’t put this stuff off! Remember, the goal is to get some more things shipped out this week. Keep the faith…

Retro’s post above about 45 listings, 45 sales, $45 average sales price leading to $100K in a year is really something to think about. Every reseller starts from 0 listings, and the only way to build up your store from that point is to buy and sell and keep building those pipelines. But what good is a roomful of inventory if it’s full of things that aren’t listed or most of it isn’t selling? This is always one of the big challenges with selling online.

For the last month or so, I’ve focused on organizing my space (always my biggest battle personally) and creating strong new listings. I do the research, I price them well, I promote the listings and I accept offers. My sell-through rate for my store has been over 10% for the last three weeks. I’m very happy with that. My goal this week is to keep doing the work, to do what I can to continue this momentum, and not get too discouraged if the numbers drop slightly over the rest of July. Q4 is around the corner and I am setting myself up for success.

6/30/2024 to 7/6/2024

Items in store: 307 (up from 303 two weeks ago)

Items sold: 37 — 16 via best offer, 12 via seller initiated offer, 29 via advertising

Gross sales: $1654.79 (up 129% from one year ago)

Net sales: $1039.46 (up 170% from one year ago)

Average sales price: $44.72 (up 11% from one year ago)

I took a little vacation around this time last year, so that’s why these numbers are so high compared to one year ago.

Highest price sold (net): $235.44 — Lord Nelson battle flag relic card from 2011 Goodwin Champions

Lowest price sold (net): $11.11 — William Contreras 2021 Donruss Optic holo autograph rookie card

Ebay total items in store:  423

FBM total items:  72

Total items sold:  14

Total Gross Sales:  $992 – $38 fees = $954

COGs:  $11

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My best sale was a set of four curtains, each 16 feet tall and 8 feet wide.  I sold them locally for $480.   I had taken my daughter to a doctor’s appointment in a shopping center.   It’s a weekly appointment and I normally stop and get “good boxes” from behind the offices.  There is a big brown dumpster there.  Well, I saw a pile of fabric there.  It was tapestry thick fabric – I threw in the back of my truck and stretched them out on the lawn later in the sun.  HUGE curtains, with some picks and such, but really very clean.  They were huge.  I posted them and sold within 48 hours for $480.  A woman bought for her historic home with 14 ft windows.   I thought about posting them on ebay but there were so many imperfections, I didn’t want to deal with returns.

My ebay items sold were an antique composition doll, a 70s Chrissy doll damaged, a modern baby smocked dress, and a perfume.  COGs on those were $11.  Ebay sales had been about $126.

My FBM items sold that week were all “found” items with $0 COGs.

Antique side table with carved legs and damaged veneer top – $45 (side of road); it had been with an antique wood twin bed frame, which sold for $140.  These came from a neighborhood 70s house.

From apartment complexes, I found a 6×9 Safavieh blue rug and sold for $40, a skinny kitchen mdf cabinet for $25, a doll cast iron bench for $20,and a floating shelf for $40.

From other roadsides in neighborhoods, I sold a Little Tikes car for $20, a concrete birdbath pedestal for $40.

I spent last week in NC taking my daughter and her friend to a camp.  That little town doesn’t have the scavenging I can find in Charleston area.   However, I did get four vintage wicker chairs for $8 i Palm Beach Regency style, and two Chromecraft dining chairs for $11.  I also found two 1990s American Girl dolls for $1.50 each at a thrift  store there on 50% off day; I was first to the toys area.  Those girls are on auction now.