Scavenger Life Episode 329: 200+ Ebay Sales To Pack. We’re Not Complaining.

[Ryanne]

We just landed after an entire month of traveling and working in Scandinavia and Europe. We topped it off by being a couple of scavenger executives an
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 329: 200+ Ebay Sales To Pack. We’re Not Complaining.]

[Brian Treasures from Grandmas]

O, upgrading… isn’t it the BEST?!?!?! I’ve gotten the chance to a couple times for work and it’s glorious.

Are you going to have a “packing 200 sales” video? Would be incredible to see your process in 10x speed and then the stack waiting for your USPS carrier!

Week September 24-30, 2017

Total Items in Store: 942
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: $86 (10.6% of sales)
Total Sales: $808.77
Highest Price Sold: $89.99 (1969-1970 Ford Mustang Shelby Cobra GT Center Wheel Cap)
Average Price Sold: $35.16
Returns: 0 (1 purchase cancellation though)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $225
Number of items listed this week: 20
Promoted listings test: 8 sales, $276.49 (34.2% of total sales), $15.12 fees (5.5% of sales)

Solid week of sales including that cool Mustang Wheel Cap (paid $2), $120 worth of records headed to one guy, cleared out a few super old things (the 2nd & 3rd longest things in my store according to my records).

Got to go out and pick at a few estate sales for the first time in a good two months. It felt great to get out on a beautiful Saturday morning, crisp fall air, hot coffee, standing in line for a pretty epic 70s-80s video game sale. They had original Colecovision, NES 001, Super Nintendo, and Nintendo 64 in box with literally every accessory. I was 4th in line and had every opportunity to buy the systems, but they wanted like $500/each for the systems and I just couldn’t go that high. They’d probably each sell in the range of $600-$700 and there just wasn’t enough meat on the bone to make it worthwhile. I didn’t get a chance to call today and find out if they sold for their price, but I’m sure someone paid at least $400/each for them.

While everyone was drooling over that stuff and I had already realized it wasn’t going to happen, I did find some cool stuff elsewhere in the house – box of pre-WWII drafting pencils, handful of all wood Fisher Price Little People, an antique wooden & brass bellows, a 1940s Gillette travel razor with wrapped blade, vintage padlocks, Zippos, early 1900s drafting kit, and more bread & butter. Ended up spending $225, but my profits will far exceed the guys that got the video game systems.

[Doublythumbs]

I had a similar experience with an estate sale, but with photography equipment. It was advertised as being a crazy sale with tons of cameras and lenses and stuff from a professional photographer that could be worth lots of cash. But they knew it and priced accordingly. Still though, I found plenty of non-photo stuff to make it worthwhile.

[Mark S]

Doublythumbs,

I have a similar experience when I go to the garage sale of this baseball card dealer. “Don’t buy baseball cards from a baseball card dealer” I tell myself because you can never win at that game.

So, I always look for things he doesn’t know much about and always get something good.

Mark

[Rydell Relics]

RR Store Week Sept 24-30, 2017

Total Items in Store: 1348
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: $35.54
Total Sales: $496.22
Highest Price Sold: $68 (vintage 70s Playboy disco shirt)
Average Price Sold: $21.57
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 29

Well that week pretty much sucked. I know I didn’t list much the week before, but damn…that was a rough one. I heard chatter about the glitch in Promoted Listings, and that they might be negatively affecting sales. But I don’t listen to rumors, only facts. And the facts are that I need to list more stuff, period. But sourcing has been tough lately.

The past two weeks, there were no estate sales in my area. Weird, because there’s always at least one. But not lately. Because of the dearth of sales, I decided to hit the thrifts. In one part of town, there’s three all on the same street. The first two were awful; the pricers knew their stuff and priced accordingly. I was hoping something would slip through the cracks, but they were on it. Ah well, on to the third. I was almost ready to give up after coming up empty handed, but then I found an incredible vintage bowling shirt. Then a second. Then a couple more vintage shirts. And all priced at $2 bucks or less! I just hope they sell soon. Clearly I can use the sales.

*Paul*

[Brian Treasures from Grandmas]

re: Promoted Listings glitch

From what I’ve seen/heard, the glitch is only with reporting and not actually with listings showing up in search results, etc. Checking my numbers, I’ve had a relatively consistent 30%-35% of my sales coming through Promoted Listings each week in September. That’s just my perspective.

[T-Satt]

We haven’t seen any issues with Promoted Listings either. We have sold 60 items in the past 31 days through Promoted Listings.

[dearmila]

Sept 24 – Sept 30, 2017
Total Items in Store: 363
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $17
Total Sales: $228.89 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $ 30.00 (VTG jewel encrusted & beaded sweater w/ one jewel missing)
Average Price Sold: $13.46
Returns: 0
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $27.23
Number of items listed this week: 24

A low but steady week, I chalk it up to not listing much the week before as well as this week. Interesting sale was the jewel encrusted vtg sweater, it went to a fashion biz person in NY. Every once in awhile I get overwhelmed with “stuff” here, and have the urge to purge inventory & skip my once a week sourcing opportunity to stay home and clean up/catch up more – it’s been feeling that way lately. But I just made it a rule awhile back that I need to use my one free kid-less day to source, otherwise, I regret it because I don’t have enough to work with later and get even more behind. Personal thrift score was a big bundle of nice quality yarn for my daughter who is a finger knitting fiend right now and also found a bunch of handwritten letters from the 50’s that I will try to sell. Trying to kick a cold, get things together w/ homeschool schedule, home mess and listing more!

[T-Satt]

Week of 9/24-9/30
Total Items in Store: 1,806
Number of Items Listed: 104
Number of Items Sold: 77
Weekly STR: 18%
Total Product Sales: $2,007.52
Cost of Items Sold: $450.99
Gross Profit for Week: $1,323.85
Highest Item Sold: $155 – New UGG Emilie Black Leather Shearling Wedge Heel Boots
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 23-15.

September 2017
Number of Items Listed: 373 (Forecast: 400)
Number of Items Sold: 302 (Forecast: 349)
Monthly STR: 18% (Forecast: 20%)
Total Product Sales: $7,684 (Forecast: $7,590) – Increase of 43% YOY
Cost of Items Sold: $1,642 (Forecast: $1,897)
Gross Profit $5,072 (Forecast: $4,263)

As an accountant, I have done forecasts for 20+ years. Love it when you miss forecast on a lot of your metrics, but the most important ones are up! We had a much better Average Selling Price and much better ROI than forecast, so I’ll take it! Also, at $9,607 Total Revenue, that is our best month ever. Solid going into Q4.

We opted into eBay Guaranteed Delivery (EGD) while we were at eBay Open, and it went live this week. Unfortunately, our items are not showing under the program. We called Concierge on Friday, and they initially said it was because we were using Best Offer. After I explained that you CAN have Best Offer and still be part of EGD, the rep said she had to do some more research and call me back. She called later and said that I was right, and that was not the issue. She then said that the rollout had been pushed back, and that was why are items were not showing.

Later in the day on Friday, there was a webinar on EGD that I sat in on that was the same basic info I had heard before, but they had a chat session. I asked why our items were not showing, and gave them my user ID. They sent me a link that I can use that will have the Buyer View of EGD (it has the toggle on the screen to filter on items that just offer EGD). I used that and sure enough, our items were not showing as offering Guaranteed Delivery. They had a technical team look at it, and they were not sure why they were not showing. They are supposed to call me on Monday and let me know the progress. Overall, I’m not worried, as I know that they will get the bugs worked out. I have done too many software implementations to get too worried. I just find the bugs, report on them and work on short term solutions while they get them fixed.

[Steven S]

I don’t blame you for being homesick, traveling is fun but you’ve built a great home life as well.
Lots of high priced items sold this week.
The Magnavox was cross posted on eBay and CL, the buyer messaged me his ph# through eBay and emailed me through CL, I got the stern letter from eBay about selling off site but no action was taken.

Sept 24-30 2017

• Total Items in Store: 850
• Items Sold: 20 Total (18 eBay / 1 Truegether / 1 CL)
• International 1 Priority International Sweden
• Total Sales $2533 ($1748 eBay / $85 Truegether / $700 CL)
• Highest Price $700 Magnavox console $400 Pair of lamps
• Average Price Sold: $127
• Returns: 1 Coleman lantern, they couldn’t figure out how to use it.
• Cost of Items Sold: $440
• Cost of items purchased this week $110

[BethGreen]

My numbers for the week of 9/24/17:
Total Items in Store: 80
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $26
Total Sales: $396 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $98 – Dansko Clogs
Average Price Sold: $44
Returns: 0

Welcome home Jay & Ryanne!
I really like the “seasons” of eBay. Just finished up what I consider the buying season. The garage sale list is getting shorter every week here in Ohio. The mornings are colder and darker. Time to hunker down for selling season!
There was a glitch around Labor Day to be aware of. Several of my items that shipped out on that Tuesday (9/5) were showing on my Dashboard as “Uploaded on time but no carrier scan”…but they DID have a carrier scan along with full tracking via USPS. I called and they said it was a known glitch and they would manually correct my metrics. They did correct all but one that I just contacted eBay For Business on…I miss my 100%. It’s a good idea to check out your Dashboard to see if you were affected.
Off to tackle my busy Monday!

[Mark S]

Beth,

I’m in Michigan, so the same here – garage sales are dying out and should mostly be gone by mid October. However, Rummage sale season is now upon me. Isn’t this Rummage sale season in Ohio? Sometimes you have to dig to find them, but the rummage sales are usually out there. I always find great stuff for super cheap at the Rummage sales.

Mark

[BethGreen]

Mark, Rummage Sales seem to be interchangeable with Garage Sales around here…they happen mostly in the Summer. That said, I have never looked too hard to scope them out. By this time of year I generally have about enough purchased to last me through the winter. I am part time so I don’t want the pile to get bigger than what I can list by about March.
What area of Michigan are you in? I love Ludington!

[Mark S]

Beth,

I am in the Ann Arbor area of Michigan – GO BLUE!

There are two distinct times for Rummage Sales here: April and October. There are obviously others but this is when the majority of them take place. I am part time also, but I like to have a good inventory of items to list so that I can scale up easily when I want to. The Rummage sales are my favorite sales, I get things for like $.46 and then sell them for sometimes as much as a $100. You get crazy deals on items that people think are junk, but they are really cool vintage items. Sometimes I think I could source all my items from just rummage sales, but estate sales have great items too, you just have to pay up more for them.

Mark

[So Cal Joe]

I had the same situation with one shipment. When I called Ebay, they said I had to speak to a certain department and the hold time was pretty long. I said “never mind.” and hung up. A few days later it was mysteriously fixed…

[ChristineR]

Thanks Beth for mentioning this no scan issue. I had it too and needed to call. A buyer just asked me to wait to ship something, and combined it would knock me out of TRS. Update: just checked and it’s no longer there. 🙂

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items Sold:18
Cost of Items Sold: $46
Total Sales: $450
Profit: $404
Highest Price Sold: $75 Vintage Hot Wheels Nascar youth jacket
Average Price Sold: $25
Average Profit: $22.44

My sales come in stops and starts. I’ll go days without sales and then get 4 offers on totally random items within minutes. I did no listing this week. Fall baseball/softball lasts till mid-October and after that I’ll get back in the groove of things.

[Doublythumbs]

Sept. 24-30
Total Items in Store: 705
Items Sold: 16
Total Sales (Gross Profit): $617
Highest Price: $120 (Ullman Mfg. Co. 1900 Santa Claus Print in Frame)
Average Price: $39
Returns: 1
Cost of Items Sold: $53
Costs of Items Purchased this Week: $23

Aww, Oktoberfest! It’s been one of my goals to go to Germany during the festivals and experience all of that. And I can’t even fathom what it’ll be like having over 200 items to pack when you get home! Yikes!

Okay, I can finally breathe again. My sales were in the gutter for the past three weeks, but this week was fantastic! I made a couple pretty decent sales, but I think this week’s round of slide auctions really saved me. I’ve been listing a set of around 15 slides for auction once a week for the past few months. It’s mostly been one person buying them for the starting bid price, but this week there were a couple new contenders which caused some bidding wars. I was quite pleased.

We had our semi-annual garage sale on Saturday. Basically, we fill our garage with stuff from box lots that aren’t really worth our time to list on ebay. Then, twice a year, we put out some tables, dump everything onto the tables, and charge people .25 cents an item. It’s crazy! People have said that ours have been the best garage sales that they’ve ever been to. Admittedly, we could be making more if we charged more, but that’s not really the goal in my mind. I just want a clean garage, and if I can do that without just throwing everything away and even making 60 or 70 bucks while doing it, then I’m satisfied. And everything that doesn’t sell gets donated to St. Vincent’s so we really do have a clean slate to start on the next sale.

I had a return this week that just really got me steamed. It wasn’t so much the return itself (although I feel like I clearly stated and photographed the damage on the item, but whatever). But rather, I had issues with eBay. For whatever reason, I couldn’t purchase a return shipping label through eBay. It would only let me upload a picture of a shipping label that I would have had to purchase from USPS independently. I gave them a call and after some runaround, the rep told me that there was nothing I could do, that I either had to do it the hard way or just PayPal the customer the price of shipping. The problem was, I didn’t know what that price would have been exactly. It was just frustrating to have a representative of ebay not be able to explain why I couldn’t purchase a shipping label when I’ve done it several times before. I ended up just refunding the buyer in full because it was a low value item and wasn’t worth my time.

[Amatino]

T-Satt, please would you post how you calculate your STR? According to Suzanne A Wells, it is number of items sold divided by number of items listed, x 100 to get a percentage.

So, for example:
# items listed 420
# items sold 17
STR = 4%

Have I got that wrong?

[T-Satt]

Ahh…fun with numbers!

You are correct in the basic math. STR is the number of items sold divided by the number of items in inventory.

The only tricky part is over what time period? If you watch Rockstar Flipper or 10k on the Bay on YouTube, you hear them talk about striving for a 1% STR. That is per day.

I like to keep things in a monthly STR rate. So when I look at my monthly sales numbers, I divide them by the beginning inventory for the month. To be 100% accurate, you would divide your sales for the month by the average inventory level for the month (but this is why I’m not a 100% accountant…it isn’t worth my time to get that accurate at this point.)

Because I like to keep things on a monthly STR rate, when I look at my weekly sales numbers, I divide them by 7 and then multiply them by 30, THEN I divide that number by the inventory. What I’m doing is taking my weekly sales, dividing by 7 to get a sales rate by day, then multiplying by 30 to get a monthly sales total at that weeks sales rate.

By doing this, I’m always dealing with an STR that has some relevance, regardless of the timeframe.

You can see why I was an accountant in my former life…because I’m still one now!

[ChristineR]

Total Items in Store: 372
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $128 (new RA and used) + $42 free shipping
Total Sales: $648
Highest Price Sold: $199 Koi art plates
Average Price Sold: $38
Returns: 1 tiny Wonder Woman costume from the college end of year rummage sale with tags cut out – didn’t fit. Free shipping (ouch) but basically got it for free.
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 0

A good sales week for me. The higher priced sale was a woman whose moving company broke one of hers so she’s ok paying up since they will reimburse her. A lot of low profit sales in there too – auction to get $ back on slightly damaged collectable ornaments. Unfortunately realized I had created some new listings and inadvertently left the free shipping box populated. I know I didn’t check it. So, lesson learned and just searched and double checked my actives this morning. I do think using free shipping has probably helped my sales, but is skewing my average price lower.

Last week my regular job picked up and we had some extra school events going on, so sad to not list. Hope to get back my Christmas stockpile soon and get back over 400 listings. There is great quantity of piles left in my garage and guest room closet, but I’m starting to feel a bit of breathing room and I don’t really feel the urge to shop much. I know there will always be plenty of stuff out there and I’d like to get inventory under control. At my rate, it will be a long haul.

[Steve List]

Numbers for month of September

Total Listings: 859
Sold 47 Items for $1072
Cost of Items Sold: $93
Highest Price Sold: $85 – Italian Mosaic Hammer / $80 lot of 1930s Magazines
Average Price Sold: $22.80
Spent on new inventory: $141
Number of items listed: 59

The Mosaic Hammer was a nice sale. It took me over an hour of research to discover that it was made for cutting mosaic tiles. I’ll post an image of it on Wednesday on the what sold forum.

[Linda Shields]

Oh, I so want to go back to Germany again. The Rhine wine is insanely wonderful. Speaking of missing your cats, we have one of those indoor cameras that came with our home security system. I miss the cats so much when we are out of town that I have a hard time leaving them, so now we point the camera at their food dishes so we can watch little recorded video clips of them eating while we are gone. What a couple of chow hounds!

It was a decent but not wonderful week for me on ebay. I got 58 items listed last week thanks to having my helper take photos for four hours. Can’t wait until she can work more hours. 😊

[Sharyn]

Week of Sept 24 – 30
* Total Items in Store: 1086
* Items Sold: 16
* Cost of Items Sold: $21.65 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $325.20
* Highest Price Sold: $57 Vintage 11 Sealed Omega Zip disks + 2 untested zip drives
* Average Price Sold: $20.33
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $14.50
* Number of items listed this week: 43

Week started out really, really slow, but got back to normal mid-week. I feel like maybe the slow down was due to the mistake I made in shipping out several items two days late. I have no proof of this, but I’m allowed a conspiracy theory every once in a while, right?

My parents are going to be visiting this weekend, and they are bringing me another car load! I still haven’t caught up with my backlog (or death piles), so I won’t be doing much sourcing for the next few weeks. I have an auction on Oct 12 that I want to go to. I’ll just have to be careful with what I buy.

I was looking through the estate sales for this weekend (but didn’t go to any). I noticed the title of one that was pretty funny. For those who like the movie The Princess Bride, you might find this amusing:

My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Found My Estate Sale, Prepare To Buy!

[T-Satt]

I LOVE “The Princess Bride”, and still one of the most quoted movies in my repertoire. My wife likes it but not as much.

But when I told her about “My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Found My Estate Sale, Prepare To Buy”, she LOVED that!

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”

[Mark S]

Sharyn,

“My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Found My Estate Sale, Prepare To Buy!” What a great play on those famous words. I saw this movie at the theater in 1987 when it came out. It has been a favorite movie of my wife and I for some time. We always quote this movie, so that was particularly funny – had to tell my wife.

Mark

[Sharyn]

My husband is the one who is a big fan of that movie and often quotes from it. He got a kick from the title as well!

For those that don’t know the movie, the actual quote is:
My Name Is Inigo Montoya, You Killed my Father, Prepare To Die

[Retro Treasures WV]

I’ve tried explaining to my wife why many men love a movie called “The Princess Bride”, even had her watch it. She just doesn’t get it.

Love the movie. The book is awesome as well. I was totally “worked” by the book. If you’ve read it then you know what I mean. If you haven’t read it and you love the movie, go read the book!

[Linda Shields]

I totally don’t get the humor in Princess Bride, or Monty Pyton type movies either! I can be in a roomful of people watching them and while they are laughing their heads off I’m wondering what was so funny about that? I keep waiting for the funny part and it never arrives. They just seem inanely dumb. I would think I had no sense of humor, but other movies, and certain British TV series, make me laugh til I cry. I’m actually a pretty funny person myself. Just that genre seems so stupid to me. Go figure. Diffrent strokes…

Have you ever seen the old TV series, “Keeping Up Appearances”? Omigosh—SO hilarious!

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Linda Shields.

[Amatino]

Ahhh… She didn’t mention anything about the timeline. Thanks, T-Satt

[T-Satt]

No problem, and completely understandable.

Any time you are looking at a calculation of velocity, or rate in this case, you have to define over what time period the rate is used. I could say that my STR is .6% for the day, or 5% for a week, or 20% for a month. All are correct, but doing comparisons gets tougher. Most businesses will look at Inventory Turnover (a similar calculation) over a month, quarter, and year. The ones that I worked for always used these metrics based on a yearly rate (so a 4.0 Annual Turnover Rate was our target, regardless of if the period mentioned was over a month, quarter, or year).

So bringing that thought process to this business, I used STR instead of Inventory Turnover since STR is used more in the reselling community. Wanting to look at the rate weekly, but compare to what my monthly goals are, I convert the weekly rate into a monthly rate, so I’m always dealing with a similar number. That way, if my goal is a 20% STR, and the weekly rate converts to a 19% Monthly STR, I know that I was lower than expected that week. It would be harder to relate if my weekly rates were 4%, 5%, 4%, etc, to see how they roll up for the month.

[mickdog]

Since I have a small part-time business, I’ve just posting numbers once a quarter. So here is Q3 (July-Sept)!

# of items sold each month: 30, 44, 39

July was the low point, but August rebounded nicely!

Monthly sales $: $682.24, $1,076.75, $1,158.45

In August I found six new in box SAS shoes that I bought for $3 each at a garage sale. Ended up that one wasn’t new and one was new but in the wrong box but I still sold 5 of them in Aug and September for about $470 total. Went to a few auctions and at one I bought a lot of vintage electronic items, locks, knives and some wallets. Sold two of them to pay for the lot and sold another 4 items so far with a number of auctions still listed. Probably will 8x my money on this lot.

Average sale price $: $22.74, $24.47, $29.70

Trying to be over $25.00 but that slow July also was me selling more lower priced items. The shoes in August and September brought that up. I need to find more of those items!

Had one return of some Pyrex lids that were the wrong size. Customer paid for restocking and I got them back, no problem.

Was on vacation for 3 days and did Jay and Ryanne’s handling time change and I sold 6 items which I all shipped back on the following Monday. No problems.

Overall a good quarter for a part-time gig. I got up over 320 listings, but have backed off listing these past few weeks. Have a backlog I hope to get to in the next week and get those listings up before the holidays come around.

[Steven S]

Pretty good numbers for a part time store.
Think about how it would be full time.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Steven S.

[skydog]

Hey guys, been lurking around the forum for a few years, but have only posted a couple of times. Thought I would finally join in on the “what sold this week” forum. I am semi-retired and ebay is my “hobby” job.

Week of September 24-30, 2017
Total Items in Store: 502
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $43
Total Sales: $339
Highest Price Sold: $45 (two of those)
Average Price Sold: $24.21
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $56
Number of items listed this week: 24

My September was very, very slow. I was expecting over 100 sales and missed that by about 30. Anyone else feel it was a slow month? October is off to a much better start.

[skydog]

Hey Steve, love your what sold videos-keep up the good work. And really enjoy the dogs at the end. And I NEVER watch dog/cat video on youtube! But I enjoy watching the interplay between your dogs (we only have one). I cracked up when the Collies were chasing each other around the garage, and the older one (bigger one) decided to just run on one side from front to back to cut off the younger dog who was circling the garage. Too funny.

[Steven S]

Thanks, they do that all the time.
The bigger rough collie Norman is 3 and Bleu the smooth is 6.

[Inglewood]

@skydog – I found September to be pretty good – August and late July were really slow for me. September my sales were about 50% above average (I average about $2000 a month, September was just under $3000 for me).

Just over 14 years (I’m counting down…sadly) and I’ll be “semi-retired” and plan on doing this as a larger hobby. Very difficult some weeks when I work overtime to source and list items and looking forward to having the free time when retired to scavenge more often.

[BethGreen]

An interesting read about eBay’s version of the “Buy Box”:
https://medium.com/@foursixcommerce/introducing-the-ebay-buy-box-b0994ecc609d

[MyCottage]

I’m a little surprised that he seems to be saying ebay has been pretty quiet about this. That’s just nonsense. eBay has been talking up Product Identifiers, their Catalog, and Product pages for several years now. And as Wenig has said, it’s something they should have done YEARS ago…if they had, they might be Number One today, instead of Amazon (or at least a lot closer to Amazon).

I do not share his pessimistic forecast about small sellers and the product pages. BUT I do think small sellers need to be realistic about ebay’s priorities. For more than a decade people have been saying ebay wants to get rid of the small sellers. I don’t think so. For the simple reason that we provide some of the most interesting inventory, the stuff that helps to differentiate ebay from other mainstream sites and helps to give ebay its truly vast selection. And also because quite a few “large” sellers on ebay started small….we’re the farm team for the pros, so to speak. And of course, many of us buy on the site because we spend so much time there.

So, as a group, we are very important to ebay, even if, as a group, we contribute a relatively small percentage of ebay’s GMV. But as individuals, we are expendable. I find it best to recognize my place in the ebay ecosystem (my place is pretty far down the food chain).

[Manateejaq]

Packing 200 orders – to me this would be so daunting. Overwhelming!

September 24th – Sep 30th 2017
Total items in store: Etsy 447 // Ebay 516 (Items not crossposted I list different types of things on Etsy and Ebay)
Items Sold: Etsy 25 // Ebay 18
Cost of items Sold: Etsy $76.41 // Ebay $52.57
Total Sales: Etsy $436.10 // Ebay $315.82
Highest Price Sold: (5 way tie) $35 Dimensions Christmas stocking kit, Popple plush, Masters of the Universe action figure Mosquitor, Bunny Hop My Little Pony, and Eileen Fisher dress
Average Price Sold: $17.49
Returns: 1
Number of items listed this week: 36 (listed at $593)

Had my first return customer on eBay – bought one item a couple weeks and came back after receiving the first item to buy three more things! 😀 I have had lots of return customers on Etsy, but never eBay before.

Overall September was a great month for me. My best month this year and I was on vacation with my store closed for over a week!

Sharyn: That Estate Sale title with the Princess Bride reference – thanks for sharing! Made me smile. 🙂

[Idahoarder]

Store Week 9/24/17 – 9/30/17

Total items in store: 1536
Items sold: 17
Cost of items sold: $18.06
Total sales: $436.91
Highest price sold: $59.99 (Easy Spirit shoes)
Average price sold: $25.70
International Sales: 2
Returns: 0 (But 3 unpaid items. Ouch!)
Money spent on new inventory this week: $35.00

I sold an item last week to someone local, and they wanted to pick it up, which was no problem for me. I’ve been adding local pickup to all my new listings lately, and after he requested it, I decided to go ahead and add it to all of my listings. I went to the bulk editor and selected the first page of 200 items. Under shipping options, I selected the option to add a shipping method and checked local pickup. Once I saved it, I checked a listing to make sure it was showing. It did show up, but my other shipping methods didn’t. It had REPLACED the shipping methods on all 200 listings. Ugh. I called eBay to see where I went wrong and they said I had done it right and it must be a glitch so they reported it and I had to redo the shipping on those items. I just thought I’d bring it up so nobody else has the same problem. And I’ve learned my lesson. Next time I’ll try 2 or 3 listings first!

[simplicio]

Last week I didn’t put much into eBay and didn’t get much out.

Sales: CAD$236, 4 items
COGS: $65
Gross Profit: $118
Expenses: $0
Net profit: $118

Sales were all bulky old junk, which is OK. Get it outta my house!

[Author]

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