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We all know there is a lot that goes on in a businesses like ours over the course of a week. The only real time and schedule constraint is post-sale when items need to be retrieved, packed, and shipped pronto. The rest; sourcing, cleaning, fixing, measuring, researching, photographing, describing, listing, and storing takes far more time in total but can be done when we choose.
This begs the question, how much time does it take, on average, to do these steps, for instance, on a group of say 25 items? If you ran a test to go find 25 more items to sell, list them, sell them, and ship them … how long would that take on average per item? If you ran that test on 100 items, would it vary that much? Likely not. A ballpark figure might be 1 hour average per unique item.
This time factor per item is a key constraint and is generally pretty firm. With experience, you might skim a few minutes off of certain steps, but likely not a whole lot in total.
If our time value is 1 hour per item, and we devote 40 hours per week to thrifting, the income we’d expect would be 40 times the average net profit per sale. Without adding hours, the only direct way to increase thrifting income is to increase average net profit per sale. This suggests buying more valuable stuff over time and passing up the cheaper stuff (not very easy to do!)
End of Random Thought. Thank you.
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Yep, the two ways to increase your income is to:
1) list more
2) sell items that bring a larger profitI think online selling can be seen through two lenses. First you can see it as a spreadsheet game where you purely are breaking it down into predictable numbers. Amazon is like this. If I invest $10k in this stuff from china, I can make $3 per item, my costs are x, etc.
The second is to see it more as an creative art form. Scavenging and selling weird, vintage, one-of-a-kind items is not an easy system to predict on a spreadsheet. The power of nostalgia and design is very strong in many buyers and can bring exponential profit if you research and list in the proper context.
And as other sellers have said, selling on eBay is all about freedom of time. Money is nice, but we like the fact that we control our time. That’s something that can’t be calculated on a spreadsheet. If we work 15 more hours a week to make $1k more a month doesn’t interest us one bit. The ability to decide on a random Tuesday that we’re going to go see a movie and take a walk in the park makes us feel like billionaires.
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Jay, I agree in spirit with all that you say, especially on the last paragraph. But there are ways to get to an answer that PickingPair is looking for. And the answer is…it depends… 🙂
I can speak to our business, as that is what I know. Others will have to track and speak to their business, as that is what they know, and that is what is real in their business.
The best predictor of your future success…is your past success. I come from a manufacturing and cost accounting world. We measured everything, found metrics that we wanted to manage and improve, and used that data to predict and forecast the future.
Before my wife and I started this business full-time, my wife was doing this as a hobby. She will admit that she had no inventory control, no accounting and idea of profitability, no idea on what her time was worth, her profit per hour, etc. Or at best, she had a guess on where she was. When I came in to track and provide that data and some management tools, our world moved from hobby to business. It had to, as this is now how we pay the mortgage and feed the kids!
To that point, I track my time spent on each task. I have a spreadsheet where I track the time to perform a task and the number of items I worked on in that time frame. I work in men’s clothes, so that is where I come from. Here are my numbers per item:
Shopping (includes all drive time): 5 min
Prep: 2.4 min
Photo (includes creating draft listing): 11.25 min
Photo Edit: 3.75
Listing (adding photos, research, quality check): 2 min
Shipping: 3 minThe best thing that I can tell you is to track your numbers on each task, keep them on a spreadsheet, and you will start to get an idea of what you numbers are like. Everyone will be different, based on what they source, where they source, quality of photos and listing, etc. But by tracking your process, you can see where you can improve. I tweaked my process a week ago, and shaved about 8 minutes off of my total listing time (photo, photo edit, listing).
And always look to improve! Google, YouTube, forums, etc., will always have new ideas. Some may work, some won’t, but always learn new tricks.
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Rule #1 to optimizing a process is…you have to have a defined process.
Creating metrics and improving listing times is great, but a lot of sellers don’t even know where to start and just start making random changes all over the place. My advice to anyone who wants to improve their time investment per listed item is to first get their process down on paper from start to finish.
I would also recommend differentiating between batch (like items) process times and one of a kind process times. They really aren’t apples to apples.I have become a shoes specialist. I can tell you for a fact that I can shop for, clean, photograph, list, and ship shoes faster than any other type of item I sell. I have a bona-fide true process for shoes, down to the exact poses I put my shoes in during photographing.
So if I wanted to optimize my shoe process, how would I go about that? Well you have to have a good process for improving a process of course!
Read this brief introduction to six sigma:
https://goleansixsigma.com/lean-six-sigma-step-by-step/While I have my own issues with six sigma in professional practice (hint, it is usually ineffectively applied and more problems are created) it would actually work great for helping an ebay seller clearly mapping and optimizing his/her work processes since you have direct control over every aspect of the process.
So now that I’ve covered how to define and improve your process, keep this last tidbit in mind:
Listing needs to be fun and engaging. If you aren’t enjoying what you are doing then odds are your time per item will suffer. While you may find a solution that improves your cycle times, if it makes the task unappealing then it will not be a sustainable solution. -
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It is interesting the variability in processes people develop to accomplish the same thing. Some people work on one item at a time, beginning to end, while others do a group of items for each step. I tend to work on 10 items at a time.
1. Fetch, clean. measure, and make notes on 10 items
2. Photograph the 10
3. Upload photos from the camera to the PC for all 10
4. Research and fully list one at a time for each item in the 10
5. Review all 10 ads and fix errors.
6. Place items in inventoryRinse and repeat.
When it comes to shipping, I do 2 at a time, beginning-to-end, mainly so I don’t screw-up putting the wrong label on things.
If a couple is dividing up tasks, it can be even more interesting. People tend to gravitate to what they do best, what they like doing, and are what they are most efficient at. I wonder if J & R have ever switched roles for a week just for fun. There can be some great value in doing that, in case one or the other is incapacitated or wants to go away for a few days.
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Picking Pair: You are right, many ways to get things done, so what is the right way for you?
If you want to see how your process looks, just start jotting down the start and stop times on each of your tasks, and the number of items you work on in that timeframe. Track that for a few weeks, and you will get an average time you spend on those tasks. Then, you can see if you want to improve it, implement the change, and then track again. And see how you liked the change.
I started setting up Draft listings instead of using listing sheets. Works great! While I was here at my contract job today, I was able to list 24 items in just under an hour. So even when we get employees, we could use this (or a similar) process, as well as seeing that it can work while we are on the road.
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