Scavenger Life Episode 412: Positive Ebay Changes

[Ryanne]

 Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week May 19-25, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8432 Items Sold: 73 Gross Sales: $2,245.99 Cost of I
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 412: Positive Ebay Changes]

[totommyto]

So, so, so cool to be enjoying the podcast now! Thank you Jay & Ryanne! Listening now at my very quiet workplace while posting.
I keep plugging away at Etsy, more than willing to front load this platform, yet my focus has always been eBay.

5/19– 5/25/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 645
Number of items sold: 9
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $303
Cost of items sold: $42
Consignment payouts $5
Highest price sold: $85 – vintage Harpoon replica, paid $20, sold one before
Average price sold: $33.70
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $25
Number of new items listed this week: 16
Sell through rate for the week: 1.4
Number International sales: 1

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 642
Number of items sold: 4
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $115
Cost of items sold: $17
Consignment payouts: 0
Highest price sold: $35 – Rare type of small pull hook
Average price sold: $29
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $15
Number of new items listed this week: 15
Sell through rate for the week: 0.6
# International sales: 0

[jmiller358@yahoo.com]

I’ve been a little out of sorts as my mom died in April and I am executrix. Since I am licensed ebay trading assistant and deal with estates all the time, I thought what the heck, I should sell some of her stuff as well. Probably the most expensive thing in the whole house was a Charles Revson Love Bracelet (gold plated copy of the Cartier Original) that my mom bought for $4 in 1970. I have one as well as we bought them together, but she kept the box and paperwork and I tossed mine. Hers sold for $489.99. And her stupid Revlon Nail Whitening Pencils sold for $19.99 each! God Bless you mom! RIP!

[The Thrift Raider]

Sorry about your loss, jmiller358. It’s hard to lose a mom.

[Jay]

I think its great you can take the time to sell your mom’s belongings. I bet she’d want you to make the most of it.

[simplicio]

I wish buyers who want right of first refusal but aren’t seriously entering into a contract would not buy or accept offers, but rather make offers in messages. If you want to make a non-binding deal, the functionality is right there.

What a week! Crazy sales, crazy spending – broke even.

Sales: CAD$1966, 15 items, COGS: $310 –> Item profit: $1337
Expenditures: $1655 –> Cashflow: -$8
Hours: 10
Notable sales: Headlight bulbs $130, projector $400 (paid $150 I think), 32 new remotes for satellite dishes $490, Yamaha tone generator $220.
Scavenging: I went a little crazy this week. The tone generator mentioned above – I have 18 more of them, bought for $20 each. Hopefully there is a decent market for them but the first sale within 5 minutes of listing seems to bode well. I also bought 12 mounts to place computers on walls (mainly for hospital application) at $30 each. These have a few solds in the $600 range. I also bought an addressing printer (not yet picked up) for $600, this has one sold for $3600.

[Jay]

You have consistently been buying these weird industrial parts for a while now.
Overall, does everything eventually sell? Or are you creating a stockpile of items that doesn’t sell?

From what you’ve shared, the returns on items that do sell look amazing.

[simplicio]

Hey Jay, the stuff may be industrial, but still the reason I get it cheap is a lot of it’s long-tail, not super popular, specialty stuff. So yeah, it piles up in inventory like any other long tail thing. I make enough on these items for it to be well worth it though.

[Jay]

Yeah, buy for $30 and sell for $600 is my kind of scavenging. And we know all about long tail. We’ve been okay with steady inventory growth, knowing it’s all just deferred income.

Are you still kay with storage or will you have to get more at some point?

[simplicio]

Well, the fat lady hasn’t sung on that $30 item yet, but I think it’s a good buy. They’re huge though! Those boxes are 50lbs, 37x22x11″. That’s big for me, but even so my typical item is large. A lot of stuff in the 20lbs range with at least one dimension bigger than 12″.

Yes, storage is becoming a bottleneck. I have one 10×30′ unit I pay $200/mo for and after last week it is now, officially, full. So I’m getting a 10×20′ shortly, which will run me another $175/mo.

[Jay]

Stay strong! As long as items are consistently selling each week, storage space is cheap.

[AJ]

Hi Jay and Ryanne:

I think you were referring to me when you mentioned that guy that bought the artwork.
Here is the breakdown:

Purchased for $6500 (after fees it came to $7000).
Spent $100 to have it professionally photographed.
Listed for $16,999.99.
Sold after one day for $15,000.

Buyer was an art collector/dealer from Columbus, Ohio. He paid by check, so I saved about $500 on PayPal fees.

[Jay]

Wow, and you forgot to tell us you sold it so quick! Huge congrats.
Looks like you made over $7k when all fees are paid.

So what did you learn from that experience?
Was that a unicorn experience, or do you think you can do that more often?

[AJ]

Jay –

I don’t know if it was a unicorn necessarily, though I am also not sure how quick I would want to do it again. The gut instinct is to repeat the process, but ultimately I could be putting a lot of money out and sitting on the art for some time. Maybe I got lucky selling so quickly this time?

I DO think having the professional photos done was a big plus and I would definitely do so again for a fine art piece. The photographer I used would come down on price if I bring him more items at one time, so that is worth considering too.

Also, wanted to note my eBay fees were only $250, which was awesome. I may also consider having a business policy where buyers must pay by cashier’s check for purchases over $5k…as that would save a bunch on PayPal fees.

[Jay]

Spending $100 on photographs to sell for $15k is well worth the expense. Paypal fees would have only been $350, right? Not that big a hit depending on if you want the money fast or not.

–Did this buyer want to see the item in person before buying?
–Did he/she have many questions on its authenticity and provenance?
–Other than all your research, what was the difference in the actual sale between this art and a $30 shirt?
–Are you now just going back to scavenging and selling $30-$100 items?

[Ryanne]

would love to know how you shipped/insured it as well.

[AJ]

The buyer did not want to see the item in person first, but he said he was going to have the authenticity verified by an Edouard Cortes expert. That is no major concern to me because of my extensive research, and also Rehs Gallery in NYC told me it was an original (I sent it to the gallery first because they showed some interested in buying).

As far as a difference between selling the piece and any other item on eBay, there was none. Having the professional pictures made everything super easy. Also, I did a brief write up about the condition and provenance. The only downside was waiting on the check, and subsequently waiting on the check to clear.

No, I am not back to scavenging lower dollar items…I am just being super selective about what I buy. I purchased some rare Chagall lithographs recently, and once I get the one back from being professionally framed I will list those as well.

Ryanne –
FedEx has deluxe art shipping boxes. The broad sides of the box has a thin puncture-proof plastic lining. The box comes with three layers of foam. The outer two layers are egg carton foam, and the inner layer is 2 inch think foam. You cut this layer to make a snug frame around the artwork. This type of box was actually recommended to me by the gallery in NYC. Uline sells these types of boxes. As you can see they are kind of costly. https://www.uline.com/BL_2356/Deluxe-Artwork-Shippers
My business insurance had me covered in case something would have happened during shipment.

[Jay]

Cool. Look forward to hearing more if you’re willing to share.

Professional framing isnt cheap, but worth the cost if your profit is $1000+.

[The_SEAM_Store]

Offers to buyers:

Some items with watchers may not be eligible for sending offers because the buyers have to be opted in to receiving offers from sellers. So if you have 10 watchers, you may only be able to send an offer to 2 or 3 people or even 0.

[Jay]

Huh, I’m an eBay buyer and watch items. Where do I have the choice to receive offers or not? I’ve never received communication if I want to accept offers or not.

[twizzle]

Hi, Jay & Ryanne. Think its under your ebay Communication Preferences. Cheers!

[Jay]

I have no idea where that would be. So do buyers have to opt-in to sellers sending offers? Or are all buyers automatically opted in…but must take action to opt-out?

[twizzle]

Or are all buyers automatically opted in…but must take action to opt-out?

Looks to me that the buyers must take take action to opt out.

[Doublythumbs]

May 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 2,248
Items Sold: 14
Total Sales : $334
* BELOW yearly average of $887
Highest Price: $90 (Sirchie Fingerprint Field Kit)
Average Price: $24
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $19
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 14

Again with the stark contrasting weeks. I went from selling over $1K worth of goods to only above $300. It’s so weird how that happens. But at least I’m above my survival numbers for the week.

We did our bi-annual yard sale over the weekend. It was somewhat underwhelming. I knew going in that it would be different since we’re in a more rural area, but I only came out with about $70 in profit. Granted, we were selling only the stuff out of box lots that weren’t worth our time to list on ebay and would have just gotten donated anyways, but it was more about the time spent on this sale that could have been better spent listing on ebay. Plus, somebody went and stole our yard sale signs, so that probably didn’t help to drive traffic.

[Jay]

We tried a yard sale once to sell our junk. We had a handful of neighbors buy some stuff out of pity. If we’re honest, we were selling stuff that was worthless, which was why we weren’t selling it on eBay.

Worthless stuff is worthless in any venue.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Avoiding yard sales is one of the reasons I started to take ebay more seriously about 6 years ago. My wife would want to do a yardsale. I wouldn’t as I would be the one out there in the heat most of the time and I’d be the one to pack it all back up. All for $80-100 in sales. NOPE!

So the last time we ever considered a yard sale I picked out a handful of items we were going to sell and listed them on ebay. If I did good I could just take the rest of the junk to goodwill and not do the yardsale. I made well over $100 on just a handful of items and off to goodwill I went!

It’s funny because shipping is the thing that kept me from doing ebay. Now I am an uber shipping nerd and it is one of my favorite aspects. Lol!

[The_SEAM_Store]

Week May 19-25, 2019

Items in store: 3835 Listings for 5884 Items
Items Sold: 61 Transactions for 64 Items
Gross Sales: $4383.37
Highest Price Sold: $295, LVC Leather Jacket
Lowest Price Sold: $15.00(necktie)
Average Price Sold: $68.48
Cost of Goods Sold $158, Plus consignment
Number of items listed this week: 120 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $185
Repeat Customers: 7

Amazon
Items Sold 0
Gross Sales $0
Cost of Good Sold $0

With the slower sales this week, I spent 3 days completely re-arranging our 1100 sq ft office space to maximize work flow and inventory space to make it ready for the growth needed to pay for my wife’s masters degree aspirations. I think it’s really going to make a noticeable improvement on efficiency.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.

[Jay]

Your COGS are always so low, but you sell items for awesome profit.
Other than consignment, where are you buying such high quality items for cheap?

[The_SEAM_Store]

A few ways
Thrift Stores mainly. Some wholesale which is a bit higher cost usually. I’ve even bought up a few death piles from sellers with space shortages or burnout, and some closet buyouts direct from the owner prior to donation.

[Jay]

Makes sense. How long do you have to scavenge at thrift stores to find the high dollar clothes? Or do you just do daily five minute runs through the suits?

[The_SEAM_Store]

I usually go out for most of the day, once a week. It’s at least an hour drive to anywhere decent, so I pick a direction and go. I’ve been known to drive 2-3 hours to the first store of the day, but in the last couple years I’ve kept it a little bit closer to home. My back just can’t handle a 16 hour day of thrifting and driving anymore. Of course I hit our little local stores weekly between errands.

I got curious on the breakdown of my store.

Thrifted or secondhand buyout – 1859 listings
Consignment – 1018 listings
New Wholesale – 958 listings representing 3001 items.

[Jay]

The fact that half your inventory are high dollar scavenged items is a credit to your skill. We’ve tried selling men’s suits, sports coats, ties without much luck. We rarely find good brands, and don’t have the skill/passion to photograph them to the standard you’ve set. At the end of the day, men’s high fashion just isn’t our world.

What percentage of your sales are scavenged vs consignment? Do your items sell quickly?

[The_SEAM_Store]

In April 37.5% of our sales, as far as sold price, were consignment items. Physically speaking, it was roughly 30% of the items sold (101 out of 332 items sold.)

Active listings by length of time listed.

456 in the last 31 days
1151 in the 1-6 month range
1389 in the last 6 month-1 year range
674 in the 1-2 year range
132 in the 2-3 year range
35 in the 3-4 year range

I sell newly listed and old inventory every week, but the largest chunk of the stuff seems to sell in the first 4-6 months. I could sell faster with lower prices probably, but I have the space…. for now.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by The_SEAM_Store.

[Jay]

I dont have our exact numbers, but they’d follow your pattern. A majority of items sell within a year…with plenty of profit to be made holding onto items that sell 1+ years.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Seam, your numbers always appear too good to be true. I’m quite envious!
I love looking through your sold listings.

Thanks for being so transparent about your processes and your willingness to answer questions.

[The_SEAM_Store]

Thank you. I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m just a guy selling someone else’s junk on ebay like everyone else, always looking for ways to grow and improve.

[jmiller358@yahoo.com]

I’ve looked all over site preferences and communication preferences under my ebay and can find NOTHING regarding receiving offers on watched items.

[Sharyn]

Week of May 19 – 25
* Total Items in Store: 1366, eBay, 3 Etsy
* Items Sold: 15 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $18.80 + $5 Commission
* Total Sales: $335.54
* Highest Price Sold: $75 Christofle silver plate oval tray
* Average Price Sold: $22.37
* Returns: 0, but had to refund $12 on set of dishes where I miscounted
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 10

Good week, but slowed down for the holiday weekend.

[almasty]

I haven’t really been focusing on Ebay that much this past month, but I’ve been having fun sending offers to people! I probably sent 200 offers on Friday evening between both of my stores, and got 15 sales late Friday night – Saturday on them! Sent a few offers off this morning that resulted in 1 sale within an hour. I think it helps that this is a weekend associated with large sales in stores/on the internet, so people were in a spendy mood if a good deal popped up.

I’ve noticed something interesting this past month while I’ve been thrifting muuuuch less than normal. Sales of brand new clothing in stores are now comparable to prices in Goodwill, if not cheaper (at least where I live). Of course not mid-range to designer brands, but where I live I can buy a brand new shirt at H&M for $4.99 or spend a minimum of I believe $6.99 at Goodwill for a used shirt. In my area, nothing is ever just $6.99. Most shirts are usually priced individually at $9.99-$30 apiece.

As a teenager, I used to go to H&M to see if I liked anything, and then go to a thrift store to buy the vintage version of it that was way cheaper. Not anymore. As a 20 yo snob that refused to shop non-vintage, I would probably be laughing at my future self now if I realized I had to buy new because it was cheaper. I have also been buying a lot of clothes off of Poshmark for myself over the past year because I still thought that clothing stores were way more expensive than used, but boy was I wrong. I guess it’s back to shopping for new clothing for me.

Oh, this past week I had my 30th Etsy sale! Yay! My store is a little over a year old now, and I sell more in a week on Ebay than I did on Etsy during that whole time frame. Still, I feel very happy and proud for the little guy. Those sales have motivated me to get more listed on there!

[Jay]

Since H&M is home to “fast fashion”, they always have closeout sales on relatively new lines they’re trying to liquidate. Ryanne bought three pairs of new jeans for $8? each. Crazy.

[Retro Treasures WV]

We got a TJ Maxx at our mall just over a year ago. They are loaded with Nike, Ralph Lauren, Guess, Lucky Brand, etc. All at a fraction of the price of other stores in the mall.

$14.99-19.99 is their sweet spot. It definitely makes me nervous as a used clothing seller. My Ralph Lauren mens shirts don’t sell at all anymore.

[Inglewood]

TJ Maxx and their other stores (Marshalls and in Canada Winners) are a great source for us. We buy brand name items in the deep clearance sections all the time (they are the items with Yellow price tags – usually 10% the original price). The best items are very large Men’s clothing and shoes – they never can sell them, there is always a few items in every store, and the guys looking for them can’t find them locally and will pay top dollar for items there unique size. Some of the “RED” price tag clearance items are good also (I bought some Calvin Klein dress pants around Easter for $8/pair and sold them quickly for $45 each for example).

So don’t look at TJ Maxx as competition – look at it as a source of clothing – NEW / NWT clothing that sells for more than used clothing.

My wife also does well on women’s accessories/bags/purses at TJ Maxx type stores.

Unlike thrift stores, half the people in there are on their phones, so it doesn’t look odd when you do price comparisons on the spot to see what your potential profit would be.

[The Thrift Raider]

I have a fun Scavenge of the Week: last Wednesday my husband and I were walking home late from karaoke in Downtown Baton Rouge. I saw a Starbucks bag just on the ground near the Capitol building and figured it was trash but I decided to find out for sure. I looked inside under the tissue paper and found a box. Wanna guess what was in it? Sure enough, a brand new Starbucks mug! A Louisiana Starbucks mug at that. Crazy huh? It’s only worth between 20-30 but it was free!

Just another note, I’ve said before that I get pretty obsessed with views and watchers. It’s easier to look at with less than 150 items though. The other day I’m glad I looked because a PSP (Playstation handheld console) was getting watchers way too fast. I thought I priced it well but with that many watchers I thought I might have underpriced it. Priced it for $10 more and it sold the next day. On the other hand I had a purse that I almost dropped the price on for $10 less because it wasn’t getting many views or watchers. Sold last night for my original asking price. It really is hard to tell sometimes.

[Jay]

How many items do you have listed? I’ve just found that after a certain size inventory, it’s not time efficient to follow watcher/view numbers.

[EliLoehrke]

Hi, I’d just like to chime in on the “FedEx Label Fees” thing. I actually noticed it before the message came. I just happened to be doing a bunch of accounting for my small business and noticed my eBay fees were less than average. I knew that my sales weren’t down so I explored it. I found that my Smartpost labels were not on the invoice. I made a note to my self “call eBay” and the next day that message came in so I didn’t call. To me, this is just one more thing that should be instant. We are in 2019 for goodness sake. Ebay final value fees… instant Labels….. instant. If you want my item…. pay right now.

[Jay]

Agreed. You’d think FedEx would work with eBay to take their fees as soon as a label is printed instead of balancing the account at the end of the month.

[Ryanne]

i quickly looked at my last few invoices and didn’t see FedEx charge me in March of Feb, so they must be catching up now. that is really annoying.

[xxThinkLinkxx]

May 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 1344
Items Sold: 15
Total Sales : $784
Highest Price: $160 (Victor Breeze Spreader Electric Fan)
Average Price: $52
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $102
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 11

Hello all!

I hope everyone is doing well. I had a much better week thankfully! Besides selling the Victor Breeze fan I sold a pickle caster for $135 through the send offer on eBay. That was a fun surprise, lol.

As Doubly mentioned we had our first garage sale at the new house. I wasn’t a happy camper about someone stealing our yard sale sign… but we had more foot traffic than I thought we would with our location. And my mom stopped by to help out and brought us food!

I will be away for the remainder of the week starting tomorrow for my convention. So my store will be on vacation mode. Hopefully still selling items!

Have a great week all and happy selling 🙂

[Retro Treasures WV]

This is fascinating data!

Doubly is WAY down this week and you are way up. Similar stores in literally the same location, but with a drastic swing in sales. Interesting.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 1121
Items Sold 16
Total Sales $429.00
COGS $50.00
Total Profit $379.00
Average profit $23.69
Average sales price $26.81
New Listings 8

Ugh, this holiday weekend sales sucked! I did a 40% off sale on all items that were older than 1.5 years. 320 items were part of the sale and I sold 1 single item. I also got multiple insultingly bad offers on sale items that I declined.
One item I had to cancel and relist to get it out of the sale because a buyer in the northwest corner of Washington was making offers – the item had free shipping. I would have lost money! Thank goodness that person was sooo cheap that they didn’t just use Buy It Now for a whopping $2 more, which would have still been less than actual shipping.

I only sold 3 items total over the holiday weekend.

Turns out this is a trend. Last year I sold 2 items over the 3 day memorial weekend. In 2017 I sold 5 items. In 2016, 4 items.

I’m pretty sure I ran a sale last year as well.

In other news, I expanded my DIY repertoire of skills by replacing my front porch steps this weekend. The stringers and step boards were rotten on one side which had become dangerous. The steps were also poorly designed – the top step was only 3″ lower than the porch. We got used to the studder step required for the top step when entering leaving.

The new steps are properly designed with even steps of the proper height/depth all the way up. The problem: We still have that muscle memory of the old steps that we have to unlearn! The first step when leaving is a doozy when my brain is still expecting only a 3″ drop.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast. I saved the show for my first commute of the week so I’m delayed in posting my numbers:

Total Items in Store: 3014
Items Sold: 52
Total Sales: $1183
Cost of Items Sold: $108
Average Price Sold: $22.74
Average Cost of Item: $2.08
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 Garmin GPS 12
Number of items listed this week: 50
YTD Sales: $19689
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +11%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 380
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 216
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 130
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.73%
Hats sold this week: 38 (73% of sales) worth $687.32 (58% of sales $)

I had a pretty busy week. I guess it’s hat season. I seemed to sell more hats this week than normal.

I saw some advertising or a promotion or something on eBay from WebInterpret last week so I signed up (free service). They localize and post your listings on a handful of overseas ebay sites in local currency. I got my first sale from that. There’s no way to know whether I would have just made that sale anyway. The weird thing about WebInterpret is that your listings get duplicated and localized so when you look at your listing (without using any filters) you can see 5x the number of listings (one for each country my items are listed).

Here’s my gripe for the week. A buyer return a remote control that they said didn’t work. They took the first-class return shipping label and stuck it on a priority mail express envelope so when it was delivered my mail carrier ask for $25 extra shipping charges. (I didn’t know what was in the envelope so I couldn’t reject it as I was also expecting to get an expensive camera returned).

Hope everyone has a good week!

[Jay]

Great sales.

One warning about Web Interpret. A large seller signed up for their service and had this problem: they duplicated all his listings in different regions without checking to see if any of his items were disallowed in those regions. For instance, in the US you can sell knives. In many countries you cant. Some animal products cant get sold in some countries. Some countries are very strict if you miscategorize an item.

He quickly got hit with multiple violations and his store was suspended.

He was pretty grumpy about it because he feels eBay should have backed him up, but be aware.

When something sells through Web Interpret:
–do you ship through GSP?
–How much money do they charge you for each sale?
–When you list new items, do those automatically go into their system?
–If you sell an item in the US, does that item automatically get taken off those other eBay sites?

[Simon]

Thanks for the heads-up Jay. I watch Terminal99 on Youtube regularly. I probably saw that video but didn’t pay much attention to it because I wasn’t using Web Interpret at that time. I can’t think of anything that I sell that should be banned overseas.

In answer to your questions:
– I’ve only sold 2 items through it so far – both hats to the UK. I was shipping direct already and the Web Interpret orders shipped direct as well so I don’t yet know what would happen if I only GSP enabled. I suspect that nothing changes with shipping methods.
– Web Interpret says there is no fee
– the exchange rate seemed pretty poor but I don’t know if that’s just PayPal being greedy.
– yes, when it sells overseas, all the other listings are ended. Same thing happens if I manually end the US listing. (I haven’t just ended a foreign listing to see what happens in that situation).

[Temudgin]

I recently received an email from eBay soliciting me to join the WebInterpret program. It stated that it is “not applicable to sellers on” the GSP (which I’m not).

I’m not planning on signing up, though. I’m going to try and post the email for those interested on a new subforum here if I can.

[Jay]

Cool. Our inventory is too varied so I’d be worried we’d be breaking some rules in other countries. We ship anywhere, but I guess people in other countries can buy any item on eBay.com, but not on eBay Spain,etc.

–When you list new items, do they automatically populate trough Web Interpret?
–How do you think Web Interpret makes money? Do you think you’re just in a trial period?

[wellspring]

In regards to buyer cancellations immediately after the sale or hours after the sale, it could be due to ebay sending “similar item” offerings to the buyer as soon as they’ve paid. If they see the same or similar item at a better price, the buyer requests to cancel. Has anyone here been offered similar items for less from other sellers right after paying? I haven’t purchased for awhile but I remember it happening to me.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by wellspring.

[Jay]

Could be. But hasn’t these “similar items” been shown to buyers fora while. Just seems non=paying buyers is happening more now than before. Could just be us these past couple weeks. We need more data points.

[pythonesk]

Amazon does that to me but never seen it on Ebay.

[wellspring]

Poshmark’s “Home Decor” category is said to prohibit glass and ceramic (although coffee mugs and such have already been listed there).

[Mark S]

2019-05-19 – 2019-05-25

Total Items In Store: 3015
Items Sold: 21 (20 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $90
Total Sales: $972.10
Highest Price Sold: $ 150 (Antique Sports Equipment)
Average Price Sold: $ 46.29
# Items Listed: 34
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 88

Gut Sales Report for the week: Sales took off while I was up North. What was nice is that a lot of higher priced items sold. This is right in line with my strategy to get higher priced items, and now they are starting to sell. It is nice to see my strategy working.

Challenge of the week: Packed and shipped for most of today. Now to get back into the swing of things now that I am back from up North.

Strategy of the week\month: I had a great time scavenging up North. Our cabin is in a small town and they have a ton of garage sales \ rummage sale during the Holiday weekend every year. I couldn’t sleep so I got out there at about 8:15AM on Friday and cleaned up on all the good items. This was my best scavenging on Memorial Day weekend up North. We go every year, but this was the best by far. I attribute it to getting out there early, especially at the church rummage sale – got a lot of great items at the rummage sale. I will get out there early next year also.

Mark S

[Rob]

Ryanne, you mentioned you ship via FexEd SmartPost sometimes. When does it make sense to use that, for larger heavier items? And do you drop off at FedEx, or USPS?

[Mark S]

Rob,

In general, smartpist is cheaper when you have smaller dimensions – usually less than 15 x 8 x 6. FedEx ground is good for large heavy packages. But you have to check for each individual package because it does vary.

I am not real happy with smartpost right now. The package has to be real small. Also, they seem to take a long time going cross country. Also, they have damaged a few items that I have sent and getting reimbursed was impossible. USPS rarely ever damages an item. So, I tend to not use smartpost now.

Mark

[Mark S]

Rob,

You can drop off Smartpost at fedex or the post office. For fedex home or FedEx ground, you have to take these to a FedEx site.

Mark

[Julie B]

Re: FedEx – if you have a Walgreens, most of them are now serving as a FedEx drop off site. They even scan the barcode and will email you the scan receipt. It’s so much more convenient for me than driving out of my way to the FedEx store. Anytime I have something going across country and it’s more than 2 lbs, smart post has often times been much cheaper than the post office. Not quite as cheap as they used to be a year or so ago but the difference is still quite noticeable. Haven’t had a damaged or lost item yet so I can’t speak to how they are with claims. Fingers crossed I don’t have to find out.

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Easier way to quick review the monthly invoice

Friends – during this week’s episode Rayanne mentions how challenging/boring it is to review the monthly invoice and she further details the reasons.

I am not sure how much relevant on average this might be, for me for example with a 1000 item store, depending on the issue (some might remember the checkbox option for higher def pictures on item listing – Gallery Plus – was made checked by default), charging extra or unexpected can be a big deal.

Anyway, if anybody wants an easier and quicker way to have a five minutes review of what might be impacting or surprising in a giving months here is how:
(1) Download the invoice in .CSV format
(2) Open on any spreadsheet
(3) Select the line with column titles in it – it is usually line 8
(4) Go to the sorting and filtering menu in your Spreadsheet of choice
(5) Click on create filter

You will see in each column title you will have a drop down box. Column “D” is named “Fee Type”

The drop down list will show all fee types eBay charges us monthly, you can select one or many.
For example, Insertion Fee, Gallery Plus fee, Promotion fee, Payment fee, Subscription, Final Value fee, Final Value on Shipping fee, among others.

This way you can quickly look on any fee by type, run your eyes on anything suspicious, among many many things in a five minute review with the other columns to support. Column “B” for example describes the fee and the item it is related to so you can select further the drop down box in that column and select one or more items you want to specifically look at.

Hope this helps

Paulo H

[T-Satt]

Regarding the Monthly Invoice, I will second what Paulo says on the CSV version.

I download the CSV version every month, then run a Pivot Table over the data on Fee Type. This quickly lets me know how much each type of charge is.

Very handy…

[T-Satt]

Week of 05/19-05/25
Total Items in Store: 3,346 (Up 55% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 119
Number of Items Sold: 96 (Up 57% YOY)
(Includes 1 Etsy, 4 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Flat YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,302 (Up 62% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $813
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $71
Cost of Items Sold: $439
Cost of Labor: $334
Highest Item Sold: $90 – Canali Suit
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 12-10.

Clothing
# Listed: 2,000
# Sold: 72
STR: 15%
ASP: $23

Shoes
# Listed: 738
# Sold: 18
STR: 10%
ASP: $28.90

Hard Goods
# Listed: 608
# Sold: 16
STR: 4%
ASP: $21.07

EBay
# Listed: 3,346
# Sold: 91
STR: 12%
ASP: $22.71

Etsy
# Listed: 225
# Sold: 1
STR: 2%
ASP: $39.90

Poshmark
# Listed: 776
# Sold: 4
STR: 2%
ASP: $49

Way late on numbers. We were in Montana visiting my parents for Memorial Day. Worked on the ranch a bunch and taking care of my Dad who is going through some tough health issues right now. Got back Wednesday night and still digging out a bit on work (the elves didn’t do our work stuff while we were gone…gotta get new elves…)

[Anonymous]

items sold: 41
sales: $1,061.63 (i don’t include shipping revenue)
average selling price: $25.87
cost of goods: $157.44
returns: 1
purchases: $186.30
store listings: 992
inventory $ risk: $3,855.36 (what i paid for all existing inventory)
listed this week: 41
ebay hours: 11
what’s on my mind: some office upgrades.

Late to the party this week. Last week was about avg, but this week will be a clunker absent a big friday-saturday. In NYC this week & finally saw the Maxfield Parrish mural at the St. Regis post-cleaning (10 years ago). Worth it, made my week.

Here is a link. Risotto was excellent.

http://www.bespokemagazineonline.com/global-murals/

[Jay]

Nice hotel bar in NYC. Little oases.

[BrianB]

Hello all: I am part of an Ebay program called “Ebay Expressions” where eBay occasionally has me fill out an online poll. Today, I responded to one of these polls where they asked me several questions concerning eBay possibly creating a service like Amazon’s FBA. Not a lot of details, but they asked me whether I’d be interested in having my inventory spread out across the U.S. for quicker delivery to buyers. It would also have eBay pulling the items from inventory and handling returns. I don’t know how serious this is and maybe they are just gathering info on how much interest there would be. If I used this service I would have to change my business model, which might be interesting. Ebay would be hitting me for more fees of course and I’d have to increase my inventory volume.

[Jay]

Did you have a sense they were interested in system like Amazon FBA where they focus on new items? Or where you could send in all the old , weird stuff like many of us have?

[BrianB]

Jay: One of the questions was something like, “Would you be more inclined to use this service for new items”. They also asked what options would make me want to use the system, like, #1: provide shorter delivery times (2-day as opposed to 3-day), #2 Ebay handled returns, #3 Ebay picking. They also asked which option would make me more inclined to use the service; pricing/fee options, $ Ebay-fulfillment > $ FBA, $ Ebay-fulfillment = $ FBA or $ Ebay-fulfillment < $ FBA. That might seem like an odd thing to ask, but sellers will compare this service (if it exists) to FBA.

[Mark S]

BrianB,

I think the issue here is going to be the same issue most had with FBA. If your items don’t sell fast, they will start charging you storage fees. The storage fees will probably go up over time and make longer tail items not doable.

I think this would work best for items that you have multiples and they sell rather quickly.

Mark

[scott2]

I had a great week down here, few sales but all high dollar stuff. Sold a Baldor electric motor, new in box with cables and schematic for $631,
https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.mx/MLM-681759867-motor-electrico-baldor-brushless-ac-servomotor-nuevo-_JM
a Dye Ironmen limited edition paintball pistol, new in box, for $947.
https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.mx/MLM-681432239-marcadora-dye-m2-ironmen-edicion-limitada-nuevo-_JM
Also sold a few collectible toys for another $200ish.
Overall killer week for me, just wish I always had such nice things to sell…

[Sharyn]

The Mercado Libre site is quite interesting. I noticed that the question & answers are shown on the page. Do you have the choice to let the Q&As be shown, or does it do that automatically? With eBay, you have a choice whether or not to show them.

You really do get some good stuff through those auctions.

[scott2]

Sharyn, yes, it is a good site. They always show the questions and answers, but i can have some things deleted, like discussing a lower price and the buyer does not go through with the purchase i can have that question and answer deleted so others don’t know that i am willing to accept a lower price…

[Author]

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