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This is my second time around as a full time eBay seller, hence the name (Tony2Times). I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say the first time wasn’t a fun experience. Someone once said “Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift.” and I believe that to be true. Having lived through it we gained so much from the experience of that initial failure that the only way we could possibly fail now is to quit.
If I could sum up the single most important factor that kept us from making it the first go round it would be knowing our numbers. I firmly believe if I had it all to do over again and oddly enough I do 🙂 I know we would could have made it if we had only known our numbers.
Nothing is going to stop me this time.
Happy 2019 Everyone !
Tony -
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Sorry for the late response, the reason we failed the first time around was pretty much like I said, we didn’t know our numbers and more importantly we didn’t even know what that meant ” knowing our numbers ” so the whole endeavor was doomed from the start.
Jay, I have heard you say know your numbers for what seems like forever but it never really sank in and I don’t know why. I heard you say that over and over but I was so caught up in learning brands and what vintage items were worth looking for and how ebay worked that I guess I just let that part go by.
We were on track to do well and if you want to know what we will be doing differently it’s really easy. The last time around we got to 1000 listings and stopped because that is how many free listings we could have at our store level. We never once thought it would take more than that to have a great business but again we didn’t know our numbers.
We didn’t know anything about our stores financial health, I mean seriously we had no idea what you were even talking about when you said know your numbers, I mean it was a great catch phrase but we didn’t know what it meant.
It wasn’t until I was watching a youtube video one day when this guy, I don’t remember who, was talking about his numbers and he went over in depth how he arrived at his numbers, that it really hit me and it was for me a AHA! moment.
I took what he was showing me and ran my old stores numbers through it and saw where we went wrong. With what we are selling, at the average price sold and our sell through rate it would have taking us 3000 listings to become viable and that is where I am headed this time around.
We don’t have to change anything except DON’T STOP LISTING. It was really as simple as that and I feel pretty stupid now looking back that I couldn’t see that then but I’m not that smart and it has taken me this long to fully understand.
Other than that, don’t buy junk, don’t buy stained or broken merchandise, keep buying cost low. Unfortunately for me I am alone on this now, my wife went back to work. It’s all on me, Challenge Accepted. I will succeed this time, it’s not even a question, I mean I know it for fact. The question is only how long will it take me alone to reach 3000 listing? 🙂
I have wanted this since I first started listening to you guys back in 2013 so I am more motivated than I have ever been to run this business like a business, no excuses, get it done. I have a work schedule now and I have a minimum amount of listings I must do each work day ( 5 days a week ) before I can call it a day.
When I reach 500 listing I will give you an update on how consistent my numbers are. Right now my average sold price is 16.00 and my sell through rate for the store per month is .09%. I look for that rate to increase slightly with the influx of new higher quality merchandise.
Well that is my story and I know it was a bit long but this has been a 5 year journey for me and now it’s time to get back to work, thanks for reading.
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Sounds like you’re going to crush it (as the kids say) this time around. Not to dampen your enthusiasm, but one note of caution: This has been discussed on these forums: Increasing listings is great, but be careful about projecting your income in a strictly linear fashion: That is, If I make x at 1000 listings, I’ll make 2x at 2000 listings. it rarely works that way. there are too many variables (ASPs, sales velocity, etc.) I think the key, and I have to get much better at this myself, is to keep tracking your numbers regularly. And don’t let the inevitable fluctuations bring you down.
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MyCottage, yes unfortunately it doesn’t work like that and no that is not how we are projecting future income, It’s a lot more complicated than that. We thought that it was when we started and that is what was so depressing. You have to know several things about your business to project your future income and I suspect you already know 🙂
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Our normal payout is $1 to $2 per item, we will go up to $4 on a few things but they have to be a high dollar item to go that high. Our method definitely would not work for everyone because some places things cost so much more. We are lucky we live somewhere where the things we sell are super cheap. It will be easy and cheap for us to reach 3000 items but for some people out there that is an unreal target.
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