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Troy, aka T-Satt on the forum, reports back to us from eBay Open in Las Vegas (so we didn’t have to go!). See some more of his info on the forum. Jo
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 371: T-Satt (Troy) Reports on eBay Open] -
07/22/18 – 07/28/18
Total Items In Store: 2,427
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $ (around)
Total Sales: $ 561.66
Highest Price Sold: $ 212 (Vintage Full Length Mink Coat – yes, Mink still sells, but long tail)
Average Price Sold: $ 43.20
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 43
Number of Items listed this week: 31Sales Report for the week: Much better sales this week than last week. Great sale on the Mink Coat.
My process improvement for the week: I entered in a spreadsheet the location of each of my standard boxes. You would have thought I would already have this, but I didn’t. They are all in the same general area, but it was getting hard to tell exactly where everything was, so i entered it in a spreadsheet as it would appear as you looked at them.
To Do: Put my Pick List Script in a Task Scheduler job automatically everyday and have it go to a spreadsheet. Going to work on a flash report to give me a snapshot automatically everyday of where my business is at. Things like this weeks sales and projected sales for the week. MTD Sales $ \ # Items with YOY. Projected current month sales.
Scavenge of the week: I picked up a Vintage Bingo Game in Wood Case for $2.50. It had the metal container that you put the bingo balls in and spin it around. I have never seen one of these before. May list for about $60. I thought of J&R when I saw that. I think they would like that one.
I went to a garage sale this week and they were giving away about 1\3 of the items at the sale just to get rid of it all. I got a 21″ PC monitor that they said worked (haven’t tested it yet). I think I will keep the monitor as a backup for myself. Also, I picked up a huge box of Mint Sheet Binders for Stamps. The binders will only go for about $12 each. But if I list a quantity of 25 (just guessing the quantity, didn’t count them yet) then I have a potential profit of $300!
Challenge of the week: I am going to challenge my lister to list 1000 items by the end of the year. I will pay a $2000 bonus if they can meet the goal. It is a tier’d goal so that they will still get a bonus if they don’t list the 1000 items, but it will be much less than $2000. The amount of sales that 1000 listings would generate for the business would be well worth the $2000 bonus.
Dude\King of the week: T-Satt\Troy. He did a great job getting all of that great info for us at ebay Open 2018!
Mark
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I posted in last weeks forum about a fantastic estate sale in the Dayton, Ohio area. It’s been extended through tomorrow, 1-6 pm. See last week’s topic for my description and the link to the website and directions.
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My Store Week July 22-28, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1074
Items Sold: 13
Total Sales: $365.04
Cost of Items Sold: $21.99
Promoted Listing Sales: 4
Ad Fees for Promoted Listings: $10.13
Highest Price Sold: $89.95 (Lot of Trashies – Trash Pack Toys)
ASP: $28.08
STR: 5.2%
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $32
Number of items listed this week: 7Not a great week for listing because we have been entertaining all week. Slightly better sales than last week at least! I moved my office (upstairs) into my basement unfinished area/packing room – and have big plans to turn this into my photography studio. It has been great to locate my computer/shipping supplies into the same general area – because I pack at night when kids are sleeping and having to go up and down the stairs several times to grab boxes was a real pain. I am excited to have a more professional space, but I have A LOT of work to do and personal non-ebay death piles to deal with and organize. (Kids clothes and shoes and toys and mounds of paperwork, UGH!)
T-Satt thank you for sharing the eBay open knowledge – it is terrific.
Someone this past week also mentioned the custom SKU on mobile ap disappearing and that has been my experience too – it was there for one or two days and then it wasn’t. Too bad, I liked having that function on my phone. I hope they put it back.
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Week of July 22 – 28
* Total Items in Store: 1244
* Items Sold: 12
* Cost of Items Sold: $20.90 + $0 Commission
* Total Sales: $245.14
* Highest Price Sold: $50 Vintage Straw Fedora Hat Churchill Ltd.
* Average Price Sold: $20.42
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5
* Number of items listed this week: 45I won’t listen to the podcast until tomorrow, but I figured I get my numbers out. I really appreciated reading about T-Satt’s information on the forum.
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I just started to listen and right up front you mentioned my 3 favorite words.
“Write It Off!!” 🙂 🙂 🙂
Made my day already.. now my coffee comes next and I am a happy guy.
Mike at MDC Galleries
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Cool, look forward to hearing the podcast!
It was a decent week, but my only sales were on Monday & Tuesday so it felt super slow.
Sales: CAD$903, 2 items, COGS: $83 –> item profit: $682
Expenditures: $117 –> After-tax cashflow: $471
Notable sales: Ford diagnostic tester $83 –> $650
Listed: $1100, 4 items (total 413 items in store)
Not a lot of scavenging this week… some OK auction stuff. We’ll see if it sells. -
7/22 – 7/28/18
eBay store totommyto
Total store items: 594
Number of items sold: 8
eBay sales (not counting s/h): $264
Cost of items sold: $9.50
Consignment payouts: $6
Highest price sold: Lion King new (vintage) plush – $60
Average price sold: $33
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $45
Number of items listed this week: 0Etsy store Oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 544
Number of items sold: 12
Etsy sales ( not counting s/h): $255
Cost of items sold: $15
Consignment payouts: $14
Highest price sold: Snow White and the seven dwarfs doll set – $35
Average price sold: $21.25
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $10
Number of items listed this week: 29Something seems to be happening with my etsy store. All manner of stuff has been selling these past two weeks. Sales are about 4X better than previous 2 1/2 months, still small numbers but much better small numbers. Etsy get more of my lower end stuff, and stuff that does a bit better over there than on eBay.
Etsy will air its first ever television ads tomorrow night on NBC’s 10/9c premiere of ‘Making It’. It’s like a craft challenge show of some sort, supposed to be light hearted enough. What else could it be?! Amy Poehler is one of the two hosts so that alone should make it interesting. I’m beginning to list some of my better things on Etsy. Might as well load $torpedoes$ in high hopes this cool little platform will finally bump up something noticeable.-
totommyto: Interesting on your Etsy sales. We were up a lot as well until last week (put the store on vacation), so we are seeing better sales as well. We just heard about the ads as well.
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Yes, nice to hear your sales are up as well over there. Eager to see what’s happening. I should state that my increase comes with no sales or promos, and no significant change in what I’m listing. And only now some normally eBay bound higher priced items are going to go up on there.
Been gut listing on Etsy for sometime now, keeping the kettle warm so to speak, waiting for them to make some tea. And admittedly I do enjoy the shift in gears at Etsy regardless of the more modest profits. -
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Week July 23-29, 2018
Total Items in Store: 833
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $34
Total Sales: $649.50 (not including shipping)
Highest Price Sold: $83 Old light fixture
Average Price Sold: $40.59
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $508
Number of items listed this week: 147Looking forward to listening to the podcast today while listing since I made it to an auction Saturday and stocked up on inventory. For the last two weeks the auctions have been fairly good to me, hoping that continues for a while. I have four weeks in a row of hitting my listing and inventory goals. Makes me think I need to up the goals a bit higher so I don’t get complacent.
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Total Items In Store: 457
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $154 + $64 free shipping + some items were my kids’ ($0 COGS for $230 in sales, items sold at a loss)
Total Sales: $807
Highest Price Sold: $172 (New bedding set, paid $85 9-12 months ago)
Average Price Sold: $50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of Items listed this week: 17 plus several on Facebook
Mercari update: 0 sales still, about 26 items listed.Nice week on Ebay after turning my store’s full vacation mode off and trying to list while the free listing offer happened. Plus I also ran a 20% off sale. I had some Pyrex and Hazel Atlas stowed away in our kitchen so had to list it as we are remodeling. Some of the patterns and condition I shouldn’t have picked up for the hassle to ship, so put those on Facebook. If they don’t sell I might swing them on to Mercari. Spent some time recounting and relisting all of my multi-quantity since I had an issue with that. I have 26 items with one photo, which means I got hit by both the June and July glitches because I only had 12 in June. Still need to swing back and fix those.
I’m down to about the last 25% of my retail arbitrage items and not buying much more at all. Makes me feel a bit vulnerable, but there is some cool vintage stuff in the piles. It is also harder now to get the deals I once got at the main retailer I shopped with. Haven’t been listing on Mercari but I’d sure like to get a sale over there. I’m hoping with back to school that my daughter’s clothes sell per my experiment.
I was distracted listening to the podcast but thanks for doing it. My takeaway is that leadership is trying to do a lot at once, know they are having issues and saying the right things to reassure sellers. I suspect though that maybe the employees who they are able to get and retain are simply not up to executing it well and quickly in this old environment. Despite their issues with growth and investors I think they would be unwise to continue the path of biting off more than they can chew. Making unnecessary and incomplete changes right now like shipping labels is super lame.
As a seller, the thing I’m most concerned about though is the product pages. I don’t want it to be easier for buyers to make price comparisons and not have my listings seen. No bueno. Plus their catalog sucks even for brand new items and media. Hopefully they will back off this for used or at least vintage items and have a hybrid system. I’d also like to see Etsy advertise and pick up vintage buyers to make a greater time investment over there worthwhile. Etsy should for sure step up and try to capitalize on Ebay’s issues. Have a great week!
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Total Items in Store: 2583
Items Sold: 29
Cost of Items Sold: $25
Total Sales: $876.77
Highest Price Sold: $90.22 (Russian orthodox book)
Average Price Sold: $30.23
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $70
Number of items listed this week: 70Sales about the same, down slightly from last week. We have had a few days this month going back to July 1 of no sales, which is weird. But it’s up and down, consistent enough for summer.
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Listening to the podcast now – thanks, Troy!
A few larger dollar sales at the end of the week pushed my numbers up nicely. Still on a loose sourcing moratorium, following too many empty-handed hits of estate sales, thrift stores, etc in recent weeks, as well as my own desire to work through death piles. I really prefer clear floors and surfaces, a challenge with this work…
07/15/18 – 07/21/18
Total Items In Store: 917
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales: $1046.23
Cost of Items Sold: $38.25
Highest Price Sold: $300 – 1951 Centennial Singer Featherweight Sewing Machine
Average Price Sold: $49.82
Returns/Refunds: 1 (an international return on a backpack that I can’t easily argue; the shipping I’ll have to refund on costs more than the item itself did)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $2.00
Number of Items listed this week: ~30Also, FWIW, I had 76 listings affected by the photo glitch. I’m going to try and pull most of those items to re-photograph. Their I’m sorry offer with a 3+ day period of use was worthless to me, and a little insulting. Even a partial blanket dollar amount credit to everyone’s monthly store fee would go farther in goodwill, compensation on time spent on their error, and as Troy just noted, trust. Meh.
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Thanks for the report Troy. Maybe one year I’ll make it to Vegas if they continue to do Open.
Sales have been super slow, and the things that have been selling are low end items. Most interesting sale was a cookie cutter in the shape of a duck that I picked from the curb that looked antique for $15. Good news is that I’m up to over 140 listings. I hung around between 100-120 forever, mostly because when I would list, some would sell. But it’s been so slow I actually haven’t had that issue, lol. I do think that part of it is that I’m gearing up for Q4 by picking a lot of vintage Halloween and Christmas, especially Halloween. And while those items are getting a lot of interest, they aren’t exactly hot sellers in the summer. It’ll probably be the same for most of August.
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Week of 7/22-7/28
Total Items in Store: 2,496 (Up 69% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 0 – Ebay Open will do that!
Number of Items Sold: 69 (Up 116% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Up 3% YOY)Total Product Sales: $1,946 (Up 163% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $387
Highest Item Sold: $151 – Vintage GE Lighted Sunshine Pets Sign
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 17-13eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,610
# Sold: 44
STR: 12%
ASP: $24eBay Shoes
# Listed: 315
# Sold: 17
STR: 23%
ASP: $35.27eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 571
# Sold: 8
STR: 6%
ASP: $36.30Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 158
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0Glad to see that our sales stayed strong even with extended handling time (5 days) while gone to eBay Open.
A couple of squirrelly sales. While at the Open, we had an offer on the Sunshine Pets sign for $150, but before we could accept, the listing ended. After SixBit relisted the item, I contacted the buyer that made the offer and let them know that I will change the price on the item and they can just buy direct. So I go straight to eBay, change the price to $150. 5 minutes later, I see the sale. Then I see the total payment…$154.
Umm…this sign is 20 lbs and will be at least 36 x 24 x 16 to ship. $4 shipping?
I immediately called eBay and after having to convince them that this was obviously an error on their part that when I made the shipping change, that somehow a different Shipping Policy was put on the listing, then we got eBay to send us a $46 credit to cover the difference in shipping.
Then, after packing up 72 items this morning (in 3 hours!), I see that one of the first items we packed up has a “Suspicious Buyer” message on it. I called eBay, told them that this was packed up and ready to ship, and they said void and relist. Buyer was suspicious and had already left the site. So that was fun to find and take back off…
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Listening to the podcast and just thought about an issue with the 200 sales or $100k minimum state sales tax issue:
Are states going by venue, or combined sales on all venues? I don’t make $100k a year from any individual state, but I know there are a few states I make over 200 sales a year in individually on Amazon as an FBM. There might be 1 state I make over 200 sales a year in individually on Ebay, not sure atm. I would have to look.
There might be additional states I make over 200 sales a year in combined through Ebay and Amazon. But, would the state tax info only be sent to the states if the individual venues themselves only had 200 sales a year?
I think that the whole state sales tax mess will have to be really thought through on the state level before implementation. I don’t think they realize the actual reality of how individuals sell online.
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The $100k/200 item limit was by state.
Now, that was a limit that worked for South Dakota, but that limit shouldn’t work for California or Texas, as those states are exponentially larger than South Dakota.
For now, just keep your ears open for what states are moving to so that we stay compliant.
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I wanted to follow up on some open questions from the talk with Jay.
Bob Kupbens is the Vice President for Seller and Marketplace Operations.
Adyen is partnering with eBay to manage payments, eBay isn’t buying them. So Adyen and eBay will be two separate companies. We won’t notice that they are two companies, as Adyen is just running the backend payment side the same way that Pitney Bowes handles all of the GSP shipping for eBay.
Link to article about Apple Pay and Square Capital
Ebay to add support for Apple Pay, partners with Square Capital on seller financing
Link to article on PayPal. Yeah, they have lots of other options beyond eBay…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-paypal-hldg-results/paypal-quarterly-profit-beats-estimates-forecast-falls-short-idUSKBN1KF2XF-
Youre correct that eBay isnt buying Ayden, but they will own a piece. Up to 5%:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-adyen-ipo/ebay-could-end-up-with-5-percent-stake-in-dutch-fintech-firm-adyen-report-idUSKCN1J01FL -
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Thanks for the reports Troy, I’m going to have to listen again, so much good info.
An average week of sales:
Sold 16 items for $1125
I’ve ramped up my listing a little bit and now have 880 items in store but thousands unlisted yet, I have trouble choosing what to list at times. I tend to do the easy stuff first. -
Troy and jay , thanks so much for the interview. A couple quick numbers, not necessarily representative of ebay as a whole, but I thought pretty interesting: The average return rate for the approximately 2000 sellers at eBay Open : 1.7%, composed of .9% INAD and .8% remorse reasons.
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I’m at 3.35% for the last 12 months. That is 26 return cases on 777 sales.
Here is the breakdown:
5 returns where I missed something.
1 item damaged in shipping
2 false INADThe other 18 returns were all for fit or the buyer just not wanting the item.
So even with the false INAD’s, my INAD returns rate is .9%. When will be getting the details on the BS 4% surcharge for excess INADs?-
Does eBay breakdown the reason for return? I just see a total return rate.
Will eBay just be judging your INAD rate? Or will it include returns where the buyers just changed their minds?
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Do you see where eBay breaks down the return rate into the INAD? I assume they’ll have to.
I dont see it on this on the return page:
https://sellerstandards.ebay.com/dashboard?region=US -
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T-Satt, The workshop on returns.
Another thing , think I may have mentioned this before, but Liv from Promotions Manager team told me that they will be replacing the little used codeless coupon with a coded coupon. Hopefully in time for Q4. Also, they’ll be adding a volume discount to PM….I think this would be off less use for most of us, since I think it’s for volume sales of single items.
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Items in Store 1023
Items Sold 21
Total Sales $596.00
COGS $60.70
Total Profit $535.30
Average profit $25.49
Average sales price $28.38I had a couple dead days in the middle of the week. We didn’t list much this week because we had a lot of house work to do to prepare for a birthday party.
Yard Sale Scavenging was plentiful on Saturday. The local high school had a huge yard sale in the cafeteria to support the show choir. I’ve went to these in the past and they’ve stunk. This one though was awesome! We planned to go in the last hour because at that point everything gets cheap. Clothes were $1 per grocery bag. I got two vintage Canon AE-1 camera setups with a bunch of lenses A silk screen machine, TONS of clothes and shoes, a bunch of other random crap. I filled my minivan up completely for $100. The camera setups alone will make me $500.
Also on Saturday I happened across another copy of the board game Heroquest on facebook yardsale. This set was complete too! Yippee!
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July 22-28
Total Items in Store: 1576
Items Sold: 21
Total Sales : $728
* roughly equal yearly average of $730
* above 2017 total week sales of $636
Highest Price: $89 (Adalet Explosion Proof Industrial Light Fixture Sconce)
Average Price: $35
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $33
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 37Great interview! Thanks for sharing with us your experience at eBay Open, T-Satt! It seems like things are pretty optimistic despite the recent blunders and hiccups. I still think eBay could improve trust if there were a lot more open communication with us sellers. Why does it seem like eBay keep things hush-hush all the time?
I’m slowly getting more into listing again, even though we’ve had guests over a few times this week. I think I was just dragging my feet for no reason, but once I get started, I don’t want to quit. 37 new items listed is still pretty low for me, but I think I can whip out a lot more this week.
No scavenging this week, but I did have a scavenger experience that I thought I would share. The refrigerator that I gutted for parts to sell had been sitting in my garage for a couple weeks taking up space. I’ve been calling garbage collectors and nobody would pick it up for us. And I don’t have a truck to haul it to the landfill. Someone mentioned to leave it out on the curb for metal scrappers. I did, thinking this eyesore of a fridge would be sitting there for a week, just to be dragged back inside when it was evident that nobody wanted. Well I’ll be damned, that thing was gone in less than 6 hours! I have to wonder what kind of money they could get out of it at a scrap yard? I’m just relieved to have it out of the house!
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Troy, thanks for sharing.. Jay, thanks for having him on..
Troy, I’m confused.. why do you say the sales tax at 200 sales/100k wouldn’t work in California? They are just as greedy as every other state.. Brian-
KanineKleenup: oh I hear you that Cali may try that, but lawsuits would ensue that that is an undue burden on small sellers. I wouldn’t have issue with $100k, but 200 sales is too small. There would be a good chance WE do 200 sales to Cali.
To me, the two levels don’t equate. If $100k and 200 sales are each a level of a “big” seller, then that is an average of $500 per transaction. I would love that ASP, but since we are high $20’s…
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07/22/18 – 07/28/18
Total Items In Store: 116
Items Sold: 0
Cost of Items Sold: $ [ … ]
Total Sales: $ [ … ]
Highest Price Sold: $ [ … ] ( [ … ] )
Average Price Sold: $ [ … ]
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $18
Number of Items listed this week: [ … ]Sales Report for the week: I have not sold anything this week.
My process improvement for the week: I really like what “Mark” is doing here, so I will look more into it. I don’t know what MTD Sales mean?
Scavenge of the week: Trafaluc black jacket for $3, Zero Restriction Golf Outerwear Gore-Tex short sleeve jacket $3, Marithe Francois Girbaud denum jacket $3.
Challenge of the week: My wife and I rearranged the house so that the office is on the first floor now and we will have a better Ebay working environment now. We just have to finish it up and get the rest of the house taken care of now, while I still work full time and we have a 1 month old to take care of as well.
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Shortcut: I like what Mark did too. I may have to do that from an accountability standpoint on my other projects. Gives more flavor than just how many listed and sold.
MTD is Month To Date.
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Shortcut and Troy,
Thanks for the feedback. I thought that format looked familar.
I am trying to get things as automated and process driven as I can. I want daily, weekly, and monthly reports to be automatic and just sitting in an excel spreadsheet for me.
Right now I am working on automating the listing of items from an Excel spreadsheet using only about 5 fields and item specifics. This would be a game changer for me. I already put this basic info except item specifics in a spreadsheet for listin (title, custom label, price, condition, weight, pc location of pics). I plan to combine this to use listing templates. The goal is to have a lot of 20 or so items in a spreadshhet each specifying which template to use. Kick off a script and they all get listed! If I get a photographer, I could go at blazing speed!
Mark
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Mark: Interesting thought. For me though, I really like looking at the Item Specifics, especially the custom Item Specifics, to make sure that the proper keywords are on each listing. To that end, I use templates for every listing with Item Specifics prefilled and with commonly used options in the dropdowns provided by SixBit.
I’m going to expand this by using Custom Fields on the listings so that I can run reports faster to see just clothes/shoes/hard goods broken out.
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Total Items in Store: 1521
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $58.59
Total Sales: $252.16
Highest Price Sold: $49 (railroad ephemera)
Average Price Sold: $21.01
Returns: none
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $107
Number of items listed this week: 26Enjoyed the podcast and great reporting Troy. Pretty slow sales for me last week. I turned down a lot of low ball offers and seemed like a lot of buyers were only wanting rock bottom price, which caused me to actually remove best offer from a few items.
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Such good info in the podcast! My head is reeling a bit. May have to revisit to absorb more! Not sure what’s in the air today, but I woke up to 3 overnight sales and 3 offers! As of now (9:30 pm eastern) I have sold 8 items for more than I made in the entire last week! I ‘m hoping this is setting the tone for the week and not just a flash in the pan. It’d be nice to have a mini Christmas at the end of July! Scavenge of the week-3 vtg Stephen King Gunslinger Series books for $1 each and 2 early Michael Crichton first editions for $1. One of the first editions was from that awesome estate sale I mentioned. Didn’t buy a lot there, but I had such a great time exploring it made my week. Ebaymom, did you make it there?
Numbers for July 22-28
Total sales. $116.92
Items in store. 1,064
# sold. 14
Avg. sale. $8.35
Returns. 0
COGS. $5.83
$ spent on new. $41.81
# listed. 36
Highest sale: $28 pair of Longaberger basket stampsSold some of my older inventory on best offer. Probably took too many low offers, but it was nice to get some old stuff out the door. A friend is having a garage sale this weekend and i’m probably going to delist some older stuff under $10 and put it in her sale. Free up some space and replace those items with higher price items.
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If you ever find the Gunslinger books in hardback, snatch ‘em up-they go for hundreds of dollars. Also Sue Grafton A is for Alibi and B is for Burglar first editions are on my look out list!
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Thanks for the podcast. I really enjoyed the eBay Open insights from Tony. That was lot of good information.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 2480
Items Sold: 38
Total Sales: $877
Cost of Items Sold: $109
Average Price Sold: $23.09
Average Cost of Item: $2.88
Highest Price Item Sold: $69.95 Garmin Foretrex 201 GPS Wrist Navigator
Number of items listed this week: 59
YTD Sales: $25858
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +19%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 323
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 114
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 50
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.53%
# of Hats Sold: 25 (65% of sales)It was a pretty unremarkable week. It started off busy and ended quiet but the numbers prove that overall it was a decent week.
Regarding stale listings: Jay mentioned Griff from eBay Radio. I bet that Griff says to list as GTC because he doesn’t want to encourage people to game the system. It’s better for eBay if they can tune their search algorithm to bury poor-performing listings so Griff is going to want to discourage anything that works against their algorithm.
I hope we see some stability from eBay for a while. Innovation is important but they have experienced a lot of resentment from sellers and I hope that pushes them to invest a little more on fixing their existing infrastructure.
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Troy,
My item specifics would be specfic to the listing template. So only the item specifics of those that apply to that listing template. Doing all of one type of thing would make it much easier, such as shoes.I can do a listing manuslly in 3-5 min if I have photos and my spreadsheet of item info. It is just cut and paste from there. But I am tired after doing about 6 or more. The idea here is to save that time and getting tired. I would have to review the listing at first, but if I got this down, it could be like clock work.
Mark
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I totally agree. Speed and efficiency. This is why I stopped writing the listing sheet. I had to write the data and then later type it (or someone else would). Don’t touch it twice.
So, do you need the data in the spreadsheet? Or could you extract from WonderLister?
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Troy,
I enter the items in a spreadsheet right after I buy them. I enter them with the final title, price, and imperfections. Then later I group them into a listing lot (usually a 30 gallon container with 15-20 items or an 18 gallon container with 9-12 items) using a Listing Lot spreadsheet. I use the Listing Lot spreadsheet as a copy and paste into the ebay listing. I only enter the data once, but some copy and pasting going on.
So, what I am trying to do here is use the Listing Lot spreadsheet as the input to my program to automatically enter the listings into ebay. I may have to do some manual reviews and tweaking, but I think it will save a lot of time and get me excited to list. I have some of the program written and it is getting exciting. The photos and the item specifics will be the challenge. But for shoes, for example, I will only enter Brand, Style, Size, and Width for the item specifics – which is basically another copy and paste.
Mark
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Mark: makes sense.
So… here is what Veronica and I have done to speed up our process. We no longer put items in the spreadsheet once we bring them home. They don’t go into inventory until they’re listed.
This only becomes an issue at the end of the year, when anything unlisted has to get put in inventory for tax purposes. But it’s also good motivation to make that list as small as possible, avoiding dead piles.
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I thought that there was already a way to upload listing information from an Excel spreadsheet into eBay. I’m sorry that I can’t provide any information on it. I just read about it at one time (when I was just starting out), but I never looked into it. I think I read about it in a library book.
Sorry I can’t be of more help. Maybe if you googled it? Next time I’m in the library, I’ll see if I can find that book again.
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Troy,
I just read the “Item Specifics 101: How to customize specifics for unique items?” thread.
So, I guess another divide among the scavengers. I think I side with J & R on this one. I don’t like entering those Item Specifics and I keep it as brief as possible, usually barely more than the min of required fields.
Mark
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Yeah, that’s what this place needs. More division! 🙂
I get it, but I do like the concept that the item specifics are more keywords for items to be found in search. All of the EBay folks, as well as some other sellers that I have followed, all state to use item specifics as much as possible. Again, anything to get eyeballs on the listing for me is worth it. Little investment in time…
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Again, I agree with Troy. Remember the required fields are often also filters for search on the left side, and as product pages develop, they will be key to appearing in those pages (and elsewhere). Like I said in that thread, my sense of it is, if you were to choose between great IS and great description, eBay would recommend IS if you want to be found and you want your listings to convert. Right now, this may not be as important for our type of stuff as for new stuff, but everything is headed that way, and my recommendation is whenever practical, get ahead of the curve.
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MyCottage,
I really can’t disagree with your logic. More IS can only be better. I guess this is a case of “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”.
I list a lot of shoes. I can’t really see someone really looking for “Lace up” versus something else. I suppose someone might be looking for “velcro”, but then again I can’t mention that!
But, I will pay closer attention on those newer more commodity type items. I think those would give me the most bang for my “buck”.
I guess for some reason, I just can’t get excited over IS. Maybe all this talk will inspire me to new heights.
Mark
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T-Satt,
Thanks for sharing all of the great information! Very factual and not a lot of doom and gloom. Sounds like a really good time, maybe I have a write-off vacation next year.
Monthly Numbers
July 2018
Total Items In Store: 12,500
Items Sold: 770
Cost of Items Sold: $1285
Total Sales: $ 12,533
Highest Price Sold: $ 445 (HO Train Buildings)
Average Price Sold: $ 16.27
Returns: 14
Money Spent on New Inventory This Month: $ 2200Stopped doing weekly numbers and have been doing monthly only. Decent month but still trending down from last year same period. Purchased a large lot of train buildings from a local charity and doing well on them. Sold 10 for $445 to a customer in Chicago, each building cost $2.50. Other big sales included a Lego Space Shuttle for $150 and Les Paul Signed book for $160.
Finally got over my aversion of estate sales, 10 years of reselling and I never saw the need to go to them. I think the last estate sale I went to was about 9 years ago, it was overpriced and poorly ran. In the last week or so I have been to three very nice estate sales, and made a business contact with one of them that might lead to presale privilege or free post sale items.
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Michael d: Very solid monthly numbers, especially for summer.
12,000 items! What do you list and how do you store everything? That is a huge store!
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I’ll let Michael explain more fully, but I asked the same question when he popped up here last year. He actually lives in our region.
He is smart and made a deal with local charities to collect items for him. Truckloads full. Then he sells those items and splits the profit with the charities. He also buys in bulk from auctions and anywhere he can scavenge.
He rented a warehouse and at one time had several full time employees. I know Amazon was his main money maker, and eBay was just a place to sell left overs. I wonder if Amazon is still a safe place for people who sell used items.
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Jay outlined some of it. I have made a deal with several local charities and libraries to sell their books online and split the profits. I use some software to cross-list the media items to several venues. Out of the 12,000 ish items about half are media items that we mainly sell on Amazon. If they sell on eBay, great, that’s a little extra. Not really truckloads, maybe 20 banker boxes worth of books a week.
I do buy in bulk at auctions, storage units, store closeouts and anywhere else I can find a good deal.
Still have the warehouse, minus the part-time employees. I really do need to hire someone, my death mountains continue to grow.
Amazon still makes up about 60% of my online sales, followed by ebay, barnes and nobles, alibris and a bunch of other smaller places textbookrush ect.
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So, you are focused on books. I’m assuming that this is a pretty long tail business, correct?
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I’d like to know a little more about the train buildings as I have a number of them unlisted.
Were the buildings you sold new or unassembled?
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Thank You Troy for the eBay open report, lots of useful info.
Numbers: 07/01/2018 – 07/31/2018
Total Listings: 927
Had 33 Sales for a total of $817
Cost of Items Sold: $60
Highest Price Sold: $195.95 (1952 Maryland Shooting Match Trophy Plaque)
Average Price Sold: $24.75 – Average Cost: $1.82
Spent on new inventory: $21
Number of items listed: 36
No returns, No GSPI did a simple search on eBay for “college yearbook”. Out of the first ten listings, none have the TRS logo and only one has free shipping (6th from the top). One is sponsored (4th from the top) and Two are marked as “New Listings” (7th and 9th from the top). None have free returns and three do not even accept returns. Seven of the sellers have 100% positive feedback. This is a very small sample but it makes me wonder if I should use free returns or free shipping on my listings. I mainly sell vintage and collectibles, I did the same search for “cell phone cases” and all of the first ten had free shipping and six of them had free returns. I’m glad I sell people’s old stuff.
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When I research an item to list, I now also check mark the “free shipping” box on listings and completed solds. This tells me the if having free shipping results in more sales. If it does, I list with free shipping. If it is just a subset, I don’t.
I add free shipping to very few items.
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Steve, Another way of looking at this, for old stuff: I just did a search for “College yearbook” and got over 52,000 results. Used free ship filter, got 12, 131. Used Free return filter, got 5,372.
Assume those types of numbers would apply for a more specific search as well. What that tells me is, IF a buyer is using one of those filters, I definitely increase my chance of selling in a filtered search because there will be so much less competition.
Now, my gut tells me that those filters are more often used by buyers searching for new products, but, especially in the 4th Q, I expect a fair number of buyers looking for our type of stuff use filters…probably a minority, but could it be enough to help me make a sale? I think so.
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MyCottage: +1 and Gold Star.
This is something I have been looking at as well. What % of sellers are doing Free Shipping and Free Returns in some of my research areas? If we offer that, and a buyer uses those check boxes on the left, then I have less competition in search.
Something I’m considering to try next year. So far, Free Returns hasn’t hurt us, so offering both Free Shipping and Free Returns could be a good marketing strategy for us in some categories. Just have to test and see what works…
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Really enjoyed the podinterview – so appreciate the big picture perspective!
So helpful to hear a reminder that eBay people are listening, they will make mistakes, and will reconsider given evidence!
On the other hand – summer doldrums seem to have lifted, shipped 8 items over the weekend and 3-4 daily this week, added ~20 new CDs / DVDs , almost all moved!!!
Of course, if the bar code scanner / Prefilled items was back to normal, I could have listed at least double the amount. Efficiency comes from good systems!!!!
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Just listened to the episode – great work Troy/T-Satt for providing all the information you did! And some excellent in-depth questioning by Jay.
I think the point that eBay isn’t an evil empire sometimes needs to be taken into context when we have complaints. We all are on a triangle of dependency where as sellers we depend on eBay and buyers, and each of them depend on the other two points of the triangle. Without each other, we all wouldn’t exist in this business.
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As an update, the Keynotes and Workshops will be available to stream in about a week. Check here…
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Hey all: Just wanted to check in and say hi. I haven’t posted in a bit but I’m still listening to the podcast. I’m just having a busy summer outside of eBay and haven’t done much listing. My sales have been slower – I know, I’ll do my numbers sometime soon but I just haven’t. My kids start school in a couple weeks so I’m sure I’ll get back to my routines then. Meantime, it was fun to hear about ebay open on this podcast and on instagram. 🙂
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Hey I listen to the podcast but rarely visit your forums. I went to ebay Open last year and this year. It is a lot of fun and my mom and my sisters go. We are all small sellers but that doesn’t stop us. The price includes almost all meals and unlimited access to a variety of ebay employees. The other sellers are all very friendly although we find the ebay motors people aren’t very chatty, lol. On the follow up survey they asked about where you would like to see future events held. I think they will always hold it during this timeframe bc it’s a good build up to 4th quarter.
Also, I don’t know if Troy mentioned it but they said they are going to continue doing promotions to drive traffic. That’s a great time to use your shipping coupon and one ebay employee with a large side business said he did exactly that.
Google did a great presentation about how to get your ad placed that turned away people bc the sessions were too full. Basically, keep that first photo a white background, don’t use all caps or unnecessary punctuation and include gender, style and occasion (mother’s day, etc) in the title to get you item showing up in google shopping or ads. Some sellers say that google does a better job of picking up their items on mercari or truegether but that is likely bc those platforms pay more than ebay at that moment.
If you can get there, I don’t think you would be disappointed. I met some people last year who became great friends after they shared a hotel room last year to save money. Some of the Facebook groups help facilitate this, maybe next year some of you scavengers could do the same to cut expenses.
Cheers!
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Some questions I don’t know how to answer but seem like they could be important:
-What proportion of ebay sellers sell mostly used stuff
-What proportion of ebay’s operating costs are to do with resolving customer complaints/returns etc
-How does the return rate on used stuff compared to that on new stuff
-Rephrased: how much of a pain in the ass are we relative to the final value fees we generate?I thought I’d be able to answer the first question, but it’s harder than you think. It’s easy for ITEMS, but for sellers, harder.
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RR Store Week July 22-28, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1616
Items Sold: 32
Cost of Items Sold: $38.16
Total Sales: $700.25)
Highest Price Sold: $79.99 (Tie: new Ikea curtains/vintage dessert bowls)
Average Price Sold: $21.88
Returns: 1 1/2 (one partial refund)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 30This week, my parents left California for their new life in Arizona. I’m super bummed, but also happy for them. They worked hard for decades, and they deserve their retirement. And now that they’re gone, I can finally get back to my business.
The returns really hurt this week. One was a $95 vintage Hawaiian shirt returned for size. Such a drag during this slow summer. And the other was a partial refund on a vintage fishing reel. I sent it in working order, got it back broken. The buyer was new to eBay, and the return was a mess from the beginning. Following the CSR’s advice, I offered a partial refund, totally expecting the buyer to flip out on me. But to my surprise, he accepted! That turned a $75 refund into a $35 refund; I paid a dollar for the reel. But that shirt refund still stings.
Paul
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