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Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week October Nov 3-9, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8487 Items Sold: 25 Gross Sales: $894.98 Cost
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 436: Ebay Expectations]0 -
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Nope, not just eBay. Etsy is down 30% yoy for me. I bit the bullet and started eBay a couple of months ago. I do believe it’s gonna be a cross listing, multi platform, social media kinda situation. Takes two platforms to make the money I made last year. All I can say is hopefully not three to make that money next year. At some point it gets discombobulating.
There are a bunch of reasons. There are a lot more sellers, you can tell that just by going to the thrift stores with their phone out and the thrifts are getting smarter and doing it themselves. Also, I think people just don’t want so much crap around the house. They are getting intentional and minimalistic. So what does that mean for us? Sell stuff people need, not want.
That’s hard for us vintage sellers.diversification in real estate was pretty smart on you’re part. You got in at the right time.
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It’ll be interesting to see if this is a long term trend.
Ive always felt that many people who buys are weird vintage items are older people with money and desire to collect. Could that population of older collectors be literally dying out? I feel younger people are not collecting the same way.
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2019-11-03 – 2019-11-09
Total Items In Store: 3343
Items Sold: 20 (19 ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $ 60
Total Sales: $ 722.02
Highest Price Sold: $ 70 (Fireplace Set)
Average Price Sold: $ 36.10
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 48
Number of items listed: 59Gut Sales Report for the week: Started out a very Slow week and could have ended poorly. I knew the only way I could turn it around was to start listing a lot. So, I listed a lot and sales picked up and ended somewhat normal. We are now half way thru the 4th quarter and sales have not picked up much. Needless to say, as Steve mentioned above, it is a disappointing 4th quarter so far.
Challenge of the week: I still have a lot of items I need to process and list, but I am making progress.
Scavenge of the week: Bought 139 more new baseball hats that I got for $43.50. I am really getting into these hats.
New ebay Shipping products:
I am going to try out these two new products with the next coupon (if they still have these new products)
1. NEW PRODUCT eBay-Branded Boxes With Black Color Logo 12.5″x12.5″ Flat Adjustable
2. NEW PRODUCT eBay-Branded Boxes With Black Color Logo 4″x4″x4″ Flat Folding
My ebay Christmas wish: What I really wish ebay would do for the quarterly coupon is let us buy $50 or $150 worth of shipping supplies with free shipping from uline. Then we could get exactly what we need.
Mark S
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Etsy would have outperformed eBay again this week if not for a high price sold on an antique Magic Lantern glass slide. eBay gets the better items and more inventory yet Etsy is right up on eBay’s tail lately. Who knows? It’s not easy to scientifically compare the two platforms, yet why not sneak in my own little kick while eBay is being bum rushed for its seasonal naughtiness. Hopefully this week will be full of healthy sales for all across all selling platforms. Bring on the cheer this week!
11/03 – 11/09/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 882
Number of items sold: 14
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $587
Cost of items sold: $29
Highest price sold: $254 – Magic Lantern glass slide of Batak people in N. Sumatra, shipped to a return Australian buyer. Paid under $1.
Average price sold: $42
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 14
Sell through rate for the week: 1.6
Number International sales: 1Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 652
Number of items sold: 15
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $363
Cost of items sold: $21.50
Highest price sold: $76 – old brass sailboat two blade prop, paid $5
Average price sold: $24
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: $5
Number of new items listed this week: 6
Sell through rate for the week: 2.7
Number International sales: 30 -
@Jay: Maybe you remember I owned a spray foam business called SprayFoam & More for a number of years.
Couple of inches of “closed cell” foam does wonders under the floor when the house is on a crawl space. Now research this, but if you have an attic, when you get the cash, have the attic sprayed with “Open Cell Foam”. The softer foam. It expands to 5″ in about 2-3 seconds. 75% of your heat is lost up and out of your attic as compared to only about 17% lost through walls and windows and even less from the floor.
You will save a whole lot more over just having the floor done. My former Supervisor has taken over my old business. Bet I could maybe I could sell him on the idea of coming up with the truck-rig-trailer with a few sets [drums] of open cell and spray your attic in return for maybe a stay in one of your BandB houses. Him and his family might like touring the caverns and the Shennendoah Valley and maybe going into Washington DC. You guys bartering out [swap] the BandB time in return for a sprayed attic or maybe even some areas in your new storage building. Closed cell works great on metal walls or roofs.
Just a thought.
PM me if you are interested and would like for me to feel George out about his interest.
mike at MDC Galleries
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I’m sure spray foam would be better, but our attic has good thick blown-in fiberglass insulation.
There was no one in our area doing sprayfoam until a couple years ago.
If you really think your buddy would trade a week of a vacation house for spray foaming a property, I’d be all over that. The Spring time would be perfect for his visit.
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@ Jay: The best and thickest blown in or batt fiberglass insulation is only 34% “Efficient”. It is very porus [try blowing baby powder through it with a hair dryer. Spray Foam is 92% “efficient”. 300% more efficient than any blown wool or fiberglass product.
Duct tape a 12′ x 12″ x 12″ cube out of fiberglass, pour in a cup of baby powder, reach in with your hand and a hair drywer, turn it on high and blow inside for a few minutes and watch the powder come billowing out. There is a ton of porosity to the blown and batts.
Now take any styro-foam cooler you can buy at any beer, convienance store or walmart. [non-pastic coated of coarse], and do the same test. Viola’… Nothing comes out through the sides, because it is mostly non-porous.. Thus 34% at holding heat in, vs. 92% ability at holding heat in.
Foam will keep your attic within 10-12 degrees of the temperature of your house. With wood, if you load the furnance up at night, you may not even need to burn any more wood until the next day late or maybe even for a 24 hour period.
Easy math…3 times more effective at holding heat inside. I had my house so warm at nights at times, I had to open the windows and let some of the captured heat out.
I will run the thought of bartering out some BandB time for him and his family in the Spring and see what his reaction is. Makes the price, extremely budget friendly for both of you guys. I will PM ou guys after I talk with him and let you know what he thinks.
mike at MDCGFA
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Hi all! Enjoying an early winter now – we got a foot or two of snow and the kids and I have been tobogganing today. Also a time for catching up on homeschool curriculum. My wife is working this weekend while I’m home with the little ones.
J&R, I’m sorry to hear your sales suck. I wonder if you really want to hear ANOTHER person put in his two cents, but… I don’t think it’s complicated. You guys haven’t been scavenging. Almost every week you guys say “we didn’t do much scavenging this week”. The fuel rods are spent. Time to mine some new ore. 🙂
I know you guys are a long-tail store, but even in that kind of store, newly listed items always pull more than their fair share of the weight.
I had a good week.
Sales c/w shipping: CAD$2425, 12 sales, COGS: $629, Fees: ~$329, Shipping: $173 –> Gross profit: $1468
Expenditures: $676 –> Cashflow: $1420
Listed: $2520, 48 items
Hours: 9
Notable sales: toners $300, engine cylinder boring tool (I’ve got to freight ship this one) $300.
Scavenging: still going through my giant auction haul from a week ago.Another thing happening is, my wife and I have been discussing how we need a deep freeze for frozen food to be more frugal with food. Trouble is, there is no space for it except downstairs, in my dank ebay domain. Which is also floor space (I am told) that could be used for a desperately needed pantry. If I moved all my storage out of the house, I’d have to rent another storage unit at $200/mo or so (making 3 for a total of $600 or so). At that point, owning my own warehouse starts to seem much more attractive. So, I think I’m going to have to start stalking local real estate again. A small piece of land with a large quonset shop would do me for a long time.
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J&R, I’m sorry to hear your sales suck. I wonder if you really want to hear ANOTHER person put in his two cents, but… I don’t think it’s complicated. You guys haven’t been scavenging. Almost every week you guys say “we didn’t do much scavenging this week”. The fuel rods are spent. Time to mine some new ore. 🙂
I agree. Ive mentioned in the last couple months that our store has been on autopilot. Ryanne will disagree because we still do list items, but they are not really home runs IMHO. When we’re actively scavenging, there’s always about 15% of items that sell immediately. I hope teh slowness is just our lack of work. I dont want it to be true that eBay itself is having an issue.
You continue to do well with the industrial items. Any big returns since I know many items cant be tested? Or is everything going to happy customers?
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I don’t think my returns are too bad. From what you guys discuss each week with clothing returns, it sounds like a MUCH lower rate than on clothes – maybe 1 in 20 or 30 items.
I don’t worry so much how big the return is, I worry how much I spent on it and how much shipping I have to refund. It’s all risk vs return. I think it’s a good tradeoff in general. A lot of the stuff I sell is new/NOB so there’s almost no risk there.
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I have held the opinion for years that eBay pushes more sales to sellers who are actively listing. I’m not talking about the initial sales boost of items just listed, I see old items selling better when I am actively listing. I don’t have records to prove this, but it has happened to me so many times that I have come to believe it. I don’t understand or have a theory for why this would be the case, other than I have seen it too many times to believe it is coincidental.
Ok, you can stop rolling your eyes and looking at me funny now. List more, sell more.
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This is one black magic conspiracy theory I can get behind. List often and get more sales.
Even if eBay isnt actually boosting your sales, that myth motivated you to list more. More listing means more things to sell.
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Jay, I believe it is a black magic theory that is both wrong and right. I think it is wrong in that I don’t believe ebay actually weighs seller activity in the Best Match algorithm. It is right in that listing more generates more views, and some of those viewers will look not just at the newly listed item, but other items you have listed too. So, listing activity generates sales, but I don’t think it has anything to do with ebay bumping up the active seller.
But it is the one thing we can do that will almost always get positive results. So, yes, list, list, list! The advice is good whether you believe ebay is doing anything behind the scenes or not.
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we have 8500 items for sale in our store, i feel that a store this large should be able to go on auto pilot a little bit during the year and still do ok. if not, what is the point? (i’m asking myself this too here)
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Yep, your store definitely has more momentum than mine (I just hit 900 listings). To a point.
The problem is, your store has taken years to reach 8500 listings, so a big fraction of the 8500 listings are hardcore survivor items. These are items which have been able to avoid purchase for several years. They are not at all like a random sample of new items you just found in a thrift store — they are grizzled veterans of ebay, skilled in the art of avoiding buyers. All their young inexperienced comrades have already been bought, they’re what’s left over, the battling bastards of the ‘bay.
Now I think ebay fees are such that you might as well keep them listed, because they justify the listing fees and you are not really limited by storage at present. But those 8500 are not equivalent to 8500 newly listed items. Newly listed stuff is the reactor grade fuel that will really power your store, I suspect. (Hope you don’t mind switching metaphors a lot.)
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I understand your point. I have 9000 items listed across 3 stores. There is that precentage of sales I think you lose when your not actively posting new items. When I can’t list for a while (a vacation for some other project has my attention) I do get a drop in sales. The longtail stuff will sell slow and steady and become even slower the longer it sits in inventory. A large inventory is great, especially for people like Jay and yourself who are involved in other things, but I do experience that drop in sales when I am not actively listing new stuff.
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Shitty week..the prior week after fixing all of my listings was stellar, and then the momentum dissipated..every long term seller that I know is down dramatically for this time of year…I am confident that this is due to visibility glitches on eBay’s end..all that I can do is to continue sourcing, listing, and hoping that things get better..
My Store Week Nov 3-9, 2019
Total Items in Store: 653
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: $1158.50
Cost of Items Sold: $201.80
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $175 (Ralph Lauren leather jacket)
Average Price Sold: $82.75
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $99.00
Number of items listed this week: 370 -
One worry I’ve had at the back of my mind for years now: ebay got its start with mostly scavenger type merchandise, but that wasn’t a corporate decision. It was by default. Folks like us were willing to risk selling online, which, back when I started, was considered crazy by many. Real businesses with real money invested in new products weren’t willing to take those risks. (Which is one reason companies like WalMart and Target are playing catch up with Amazon…they waited too long to jump in. But I digress)
Back in the early days, when a few ebay sellers started selling “new” stuff, the conventional take on it was: People come online to buy stuff they can’t get at the mall. No one is going to buy stuff they can get at the mall…” Back then, I argued the conventional wisdom was wrong. People will buy new stuff online, including boring stuff like toothpaste, because it is just like buying from a catalog. Sears originally built an empire on catalog sales. What I argued is: Increasingly, the new stuff will gravitate to the online world. (and of course, now the many B&M stores closing is proof of that) On the other hand, retail will come full circle, so to speak. Basic retail shopping is fairly boring and time consuming and most of it can now be done online. So stores are closing. But, around here anyway, I’m seeing more and more antique/craft/vintage “marketplaces, pop-ups, and so forth. And of course, places like Goodwill are booming like never before. Why? Because people like the thrill of the hunt. They like being able to handle vintage merchandise. And now, with smart phones, even those with little knowledge about the stuff can learn as they go….People are buying for themselves, and buying for resale, but I think a lot of them are doing their buying by bypassing the ‘online middleman” (us)…
And, online, I think a lot of sales are migrating to places like Facebook and Instagram, in part because they “feel” more like the B&M experience.
I really think ebay is going to have to drastically re-think their business. Too late for Q4, but if they expect to stay viable, they need to take a really fresh look at their business model.
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Week Nov 03 – Nov 09, 2019
Items in store: 4530 Listings for 7229 Items
Items Sold: 108 transactions for 124 Items
Gross Sales: $7937.40
Highest Price Sold: $190 Vintage Mid Western Sports Togs leather jacket.
Lowest Price Sold: $4.99….Shoelaces
Average Sale Price: $64.01
Cost of Goods Sold $502, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1130
Number of new items listed this week: 62
$$ spent on new inventory this week $0
International Sales, 36%
Returning Customers 13Some less than careful furniture moving put my arthritic spine into full hum this week….and the colder weather didn’t help. So I didn’t get as much listed as I would have liked. I did take this weekend off (besides shipping, there always seems to be shipping) so I’m feeling much better and hopefully will be back in full swing this week. Only 3 weeks until cyber week so it’s gotta be all in from here on out.
Meeting with the accountant this week. Hope he’s ok with the $18K I spent on inventory the other week. I really didn’t have much choice, my supplier would likely have sold the lot to someone else, and then I would probably have competition to deal with.
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Week of 11/03-11/09
Total Items in Store: 3,275 (Up 19% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 79
Number of Items Sold: 88 (Up 5% YOY)
(Includes 4 Etsy, 12 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Down 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,812 (Up 8% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $125
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $73
Cost of Items Sold: $498
Cost of Labor: $147
Highest Item Sold: $124 – Set of 5 A Christmas Story Glasses
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 26-20.Wow, lots of good topics. Diversification on platforms? I think so, just to stay relevant. All platforms? No, but the right ones yes. For us it is Poshmark for the clothes and Etsy for the hard goods. I did some Mercari in the past but it never really caught traction. I might try again some other time.
As for slowness, I think there are a lot of factors. More competition (more sellers on eBay), more sites that people are shopping on (Poshmark, Etsy, Mercari, etc.), more shoppers that like to shop on Amazon and buy new, changing tastes of consumers (more want new and cheap vs vintage and quality)…
I think there is truth in all of these factors. This is why I love your diversification of income (ebay, rental income, your video jobs). The slowness and since we also like the diversification is why I took a part time gig that became full time for now. Make money when the sun shines, and at this job I make really good money. If I can use this to help us get the rental income started in 2020, we can ride out ebbs and flows in other areas.
Things change, and we always need to change with it.
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PS – Back on the Inventory system topic. There are many who say to put different things in each bin vs putting like items in the same area. This weekend is why I say to put like items in the same area…
We couldn’t find a pair of jeans. Been years since that happened. But the good news is that we only had to look at the areas where we store pants, not EVERY area something could be stored. Found them fairly quickly (was put in P11 not J11). So while we looked at all jeans locations and didn’t find it, the only other place that made sense was the Pants locations and I went to P11 and it was right there.
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There are a few points I’d like to make in reference to the disccussions on the podcast. Yes I’ve noticed sales have been down. As of last week, my sales are up from last year, but for several months this has not been the case (8 days vacation in September did contribute to this).
I think there are several reasons for this:
One, that I haven’t heard mentioned by anyone is shipping costs. Every year shipping costs increase faster than the rate of inflation. Could it be that shipping costs have gone up so much that people may be buying looking other places to buy their items (local market places??? FB Market Place, Criaglist, Offer Up, etc.)
Two, Jay has mentioned the change in what people are looking for, for example Jay and Ryanne’s cleintel for what they sell may be dying off.
Three, there is a lot more competition online these days. Poshmark is grabbing up the clothing market and now dabbling into other catagories, Etsy has been a factor for a while, all the online local market places are becoming more and more active.
Four, the glitches. The glitches just keep coming and in 4th quarter!?!?!? Just as I was listening to your podcast last night packing orders, I was contacted by a customer from Italy who just bought something and was unable to pay. On my end it’s awaiting payment; on his end it’s showing the item ending and can’t find it to pay. Coincidentally one of your calls had this same issue. (and I do have managed payments on that store). I’m sure all of us can make a list of all the glitches they have been dealing with.
I myself have 3 ebay stores and dabble in 7 other online platforms. I plan on putting more attention on these other platforms and looking for others and maybe a Shopify store by using some type of cross posting software because of these other sites and because I no longer trust ebay to protect my data. I need to have some type of back up. Last year they lost photos, this your item specifics. I have 9000 listings on Ebay and can longer rely on them to protect this data.
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Items in Store 1287
Items Sold 30
Total Sales $935.00
COGS $80.00
Total Profit $855.00
Average profit $28.50
Average sales price $31.17
New Listings 7Well here’s some sunshine for this dreary scavenger life day. My store is FINALLY performing the way it should be this week. I was right on target for my predicted weekly sales.
Ebay is such a mess right now. I created listings for 40 pair of shoes this weekend. When researching, the search engine only worked on maybe half of them. Item specifics are still cuhrazeee… I think we can safely say that with no more updates on the item specific front that ebay is technically incapable of fixing things and that they have permanently destroyed their search engine and item specifics. And no, I’m not kidding. I don’t expect it to ever be fixed.
I’m thinking this morning that with the uncertainty of the market right now and the reduced sales I should consider shutting scavenging down for the rest of 4Q. I hate doing that as I will miss out on some home runs, but I have plenty of unlisted homeruns sitting not getting listed right now.
It will do me good to build up my cash reserves anyways.
Here’s to hoping my store continues to rebound this week, as well as everyone else’s.
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Retro,
“I should consider shutting scavenging down for the rest of 4Q”
That was also what I was thinking. However, I will still buy some here and there, but not nearly as much as normal. Like you, I have a ton of items that I can list and are great items. Better to get the cash reserve now as you say.
Mark
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Spent 14 weeks in our crawlspace with my father-in-law when we first bought our house. What an experience. Never again.
Made the same observation this week about the internet sales tax and the paypal fee associated with it. I figure the small amount of money that it will cost me in a year is worth not having to collect and remit taxes for hundreds of different tax rates across the US.
Example, for $100K sales a year, at say 8% average sales tax. The extra paypal fee on the tax would only be about $235. $20 a month for someone else to handle the taxes? Yes please! I can’t even begin to imagine how much time that is saving.Yes, found you on my Spotify dash this morning.
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Madcap Toys discussed this with an eBay rep and I did what he suggested. End all (in bulk) and SELL SIMILAR. Your info and photos are saved. My sales have been great ever since.
I think it’s as simple as eBay messed up their search and if you relist by selling similar, your items will be shown again.
I ended / sold similar all items older than 60 days. Yes, it cost me some listing fees. But I more than made up for it in sales. What do you have to lose by trying it?
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@dianneo: For us, we use the SixBit feature to end the listings and then relist as new.
After items are ended, we can see the items that have inventory but are not listed. We work on them (item specifics especially now, but also any pricing or other tweaks we see needed), then resend the item as new.
The painful part for us is that since we are so heavy on clothes, the ebay glitch on the size killed us. We still see that we have listings were the Size item specific is blank. This prevents the buyer from finding our items if they use Size on the left search bar.
Painful, but just part of the process I guess…
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I agree with the Sell Similar concept. Unless this has changed from last time I looked, end and relist carries over the impression and click history, which is likely to be poor, where end and Sell Similar is actually a brand new listing.
One big gotcha with this method, if you initially had multiple quantities on a listing and sold some, the new Sell Similar listing will revert to the initial quantity.
My dilemma is taking time to do this instead of listing new items.
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@T-Satt when you relist do you get a new ebay listing number? When I relist, it gives me the same number. When you sell similar you get a new ebay listing number, which gets it back into search. That’s why I said sell similar, NOT just relist.
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@dianneo: Yes, when you relist through SixBit and check the Box to “Send as New”, you get a new number. Ebay sees this as a fresh new listing (like Sell Similar does on eBay).
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I think I’m very good at buying at good value. I don’t think I’m as good as picking out really desirable merchandise. That is one of the reasons I feel my sales are low in comparison to other sellers. On the other hand, I see how Jay & Ryanne are doing with 8500 items compared to my 1500 items, and my store seems to track. So, my slow sales are a combination of me needing to be a better buyer along with all the possible explanations discussed in this week’s podcast.
BTW, I’ve been listening to / watching all of the Shampoo & Booze podcasts & videos. I don’t have any rentals, but it should be something I think about for a future business. I hope that Ryanne & her sister are getting some customers for their services.
Week of Nov 3 – 9
* Total Items in Store: 1525 eBay, 37 Etsy
* Items Sold: 19
* Cost of Items Sold: $31.92 + $24.28 Commission
* Total Sales: $307.45
* Highest Price Sold: $33 tie: Rob Zombie signed CD booklet; 2 Vtg Turquoise Pyrex casseroles no lids
* Average Price Sold: $16.18
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 2I think that my highest sold tie is a pretty funny combo. Shows how strangely diverse my store can be.
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Sales are good right now. 50 packages went to the PO on Saturday, and I have 60 packages all ready to go out tomorrow. Another 3 have come in that will have to wait until Wednesday to go out (2 day handling time set-up on Amazon & Ebay).
Ebay sales were slow at the beginning of the week. I ran a small sale to get some action in my store, since I don’t end/relist my listings. That seemed to work. I am also sending offers throughout the day. I’m going to hold off on anymore sales until Black Friday/Cyber Monday. I think a lot of people are saving up right now for Black Friday sales. I’ve also been seeing a lot more Thanksgiving/Black Friday spam than usual since October 31st, so people might be buying “Black Friday Month” offers right now instead of waiting until actual Black Friday. Who knows?
Thrift stores are insane where I live right now. One thrift that used to price books 5 for $.50 (which is an anomaly, especially in my area) now individually prices most books. I had to pay $8 for a $55 textbook, which is fine, but it’s not how it used to be. Most books are priced $5-10 and worth $4 online. A $25 atlas was priced at….$20. Yeah, no. I used to get 25-50 books at a time from this place, now I just get maybe 3 or 4 and pay more than I used to for just that small amount. I don’t actually mind paying higher prices, but there’s no turnover anymore. If the books are priced that high, yes, everything else is also crazy high. Clothes are usually $5-100 per piece. Shirts are usually $7-20, dresses are $20-50, coats are $50-100. It’s not even worth buying anything for yourself anymore, let alone to resell.
The local Goodwill has been a huge miss for the past 6 months. I’ve seriously walked out empty-handed every single time I’ve gone. There was never that much to find, but I’ve never seen it this bad before. Actual junk is priced extremely high, and people are just flinging it in their carts. I don’t know if they’re resellers or just people shopping for themselves. I’m assuming most of them are resellers, but I’m not sure how they make any money? I see the items in their carts and it doesn’t look like they got all the amazing stuff because they got there before I did. It’s the same junk as on the shelves. It’s odd how a store can be so full of items, yet so empty of anything interesting at the same time. The Goodwill in my area has several online stores (Ebay, Amazon, ShopGoodwill, I think they sell on OfferUp now), but still, good stuff has always fallen through the cracks. Not anymore.
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@Almasty, we had a great manager at my very busy Goodwill who shipped out a lot of the good stuff to be sold online. They have trouble keeping staff. The new guy seems to be very enthusiastic about moving things out – they are remodeling soon – so I’ve been finding sets of items with one low price on the outer item. We also had a local chain that learned their lesson and had to reduce pricing and pay to advertise that after they got all backed up. So, hopefully things will turn around where you are shopping.
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Hello everyone,
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3403
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $671.83
Cost of Items Sold: $81
Average Price Sold: $22.39
Average Cost of Item: $2.73
Highest Price Item Sold: $75 Lot of 3 Knoxville Sprint Car Nationals belt buckles
Number of items listed this week: 99
YTD Sales: $43166
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +7%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 433
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 296
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 177
Sell-through rate (for the week): 0.88%
Hats sold this week: 24 (80% of sales) worth $402.08 (59% of sales $)It was a pretty quiet week but I notice that this week last year was one of the slowest for the whole year. Maybe this is the calm before the holiday storm.
Paypal fees on tax is annoying but since PayPal’s job is to process payments it’s not surprising that their fee applies to the tax and the purchase. They don’t care why the money is being collected and they don’t care where it is going. They just want their fee for completing the transaction.
Hope everyone has a better week this week!
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Total Items in Store: 257 eBay, 35 Mercari
Items Sold: 8 Ebay, 4 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $75 + some items ours + free shipping $7
Total Sales: $299 Ebay, $39 Mercari
Highest Price Sold: $45 Midcentury Franciscan Platter Paid $2 at rummage sale last week
Average Price Sold: $30 Ebay, $10 Mercari
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $20
Number of items listed this week: 0Thank you to all of the trash elf veterans today. I’m off with my campfire candle burning and ready to list after this while my daughter is out of school.
I’m bummed to hear about the slow sales for our members. It could be any number of things really affecting sales – steady shipping increases, competition, Ebay tech issues, behind the scenes Cassini tweak, etc…
After taking my summer hiatus, I have to say that many of my recent sales are from me making an offer to watchers or getting offers on best offer. Unlike earlier, I’m willing to take lower margins and price better with 365 day Terapeak info. I figure if something similar hasn’t sold in a year on Ebay I shouldn’t be going way out there pricing-wise. I need to move stuff out.
I think that while I’ve been learning to take less profit to get more volume, maybe internet shoppers have been learning to pay less and wait for an offer to be floated to them using their phones. I also note that my millennial coworkers appreciate vintage decor but are careful with their money and are quite concerned about money. So I think great items at great prices will overcome other obstacles and I’m making it my new reselling motto.
Last week I mentioned that I tried the newer area of the Ebay app “may not sell – revise it” with the reduction suggestion button. A small sample but I did sell 3/4 of those items last week. Also news that old Mercari stuff is getting a look and moving. $10 bucks seems to be what those buyers like but most of it is stuff from our house that I would have donated.
I also think staleness is a considerable factor but I just don’t have time to devote to babysitting old items. Running sales is how I plan to address that issue.
Hoping for an uptick in sales for one and all trash elves.
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I’ve been using that “Send offers to watchers” feature on a weekly basis for a few weeks now and it’s been doing very well for me. I usually end up with about 80 listings that are eligible each week and I in generally seem to get about 10% success rate with those. I send offers on Thursday mornings which aligns well with when many people get paid (thursday or friday).
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@Simon I seem to get the same items again and again on Ebay. I wish they would offer more options. Maybe doing it once a week as you are doing would be better. I like Sunday mornings figuring more people are online.
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@Simon re sales tax discussion from last week: Cleaning out my email and got a notice from the CDTFA:
“I sell tangible merchandise exclusively online through a marketplace facilitator who is registered with the CDTFA and will be collecting and paying the tax on my facilitated sales beginning October 1, 2019. Can I close my account with the CDTFA?
Yes, beginning October 1, 2019, you are not required to be registered as a retailer with the CDTFA if all of your sales of tangible merchandise are facilitated by marketplace facilitators who are the retailers for purposes of those sales. However, if you make any sales other than those facilitated by a marketplace facilitator, for example, through your own website, you may be required to be registered (see General Registration Requirements heading).”
Here’s the link with the rest of the FAQs and info
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Thanks for the link @ChristineR. I currently submit my sales tax receipts annually at the end of June so I guess I wont change anything till then. (I’ll be submitting sales tax for July-Sept of this year.) I still want to keep my reseller id for purchases so I’m not entirely sure what happens if I close my CDTFA account. It says you can still buy stuff for resale but if I don’t have a CDTFA account I would have thought it would be hard to prove my reseller id is legit.
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Nov. 03 – 09
Total Items in Store: 2653
Items Sold: 24
Total Sales : $674
* Below yearly average of $942
Highest Price: $65 (Set of 12 Japanese Watercolor Painting Panels)
Average Price: $28
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $79
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 63Well I survived the week of being sick. And I got a lot more done than I expected, pumping out over 60 new items to my store. Not bad, though I wish my sales were a little better.
Regarding the general climate of eBay discussed in this week’s podcast, I felt like my sales have been on par with how much I’ve made last year, but they don’t reflect all of the extra hard work I’ve been putting toward the business this year. Since going full-time, I’ve been regularly listing 40-50 items a week and my store is growing quite nicely. So then why aren’t I seeing more of an increase in sales every week? I know it’s been discussed here about the plateau effect in this business, but I don’t believe I should have reached it by now at 2600 items. My conclusion is similar to yours, that this has just been a soft year for all kinds of reasons. One reason that wasn’t mentioned on the podcast is the nation’s political climate. I think the general uncertainty in our nation’s government is causing people to not want to shop or spend money no matter what side they’re on.
This week I’ll be getting back into the swing of it. Good thing I’ve got a room full of inventory just waiting to be listed and waiting to find a new home soon.
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This is my thought also (sales are good but not good enough relative to the increased work the past few months). I am trying to write up a longer piece about this and will post elsewhere if possible.
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mickdog:
Why the slowdown in sales? A data-mining story by mickdog
Warning, looooong number crunching post ahead.
The last podcast where Jay and Ryanne wonder what is going on with sales but have no answers got me thinking to look at my numbers for the past two years and do some calculations.
So I went over and spent some time looking at the traffic and impression stats under the Performance tab in the Seller Hub. I won’t go into specifics as to how I calculated all this data (but will if someone wants me to) but I think for my store it is as accurate as possible.
First I looked at impressions. When someone searches eBay with keywords and your item comes up on that page. Then I looked at average impressions per listing per month for the last 8 quarters. here is the data:
q1_18 564
q2_18 425
q3_18 420
q4_18 420
q1_19 471
q2_19 374
q3_19 364
q4_19 292 (so far)
This means in q1_18 there were an average of 564 impressions on each item in my store per month. These are averages per listing because I can’t use raw data as I’ve more than doubled my store in this time from 400 to 880 listings.
Things to note: 1) Q1 is when people search for things like mine the most, even more than Q4.
2) The average number impressions is dropping. Q3_19 is only 65% of the impressions than q1_18. This can mean a few things but basically people are searching less for my kind of items (similar vintage stuff, sprinkled with some new ones like Jay and Ryanne’s larger store).
Then I looked at average click through numbers per item per month.
q1_18 9.1
q2_18 8.4
q3_18 7.1
q4_18 6.9
q1_19 7.9
q2_19 5.8
q3_19 6.1
q4_19 5.1 (so far)
This means that in q1_18 9.1 people clicked through into each item on average per month. Q1 again has 2 of my top 3 quarters but bad news is there has been a steady decline. q3_19 is again only 67% of q1_18. Now these two pieces of data above could be because my items once seen aren’t as desirable to look at, but then I looked at the click through rate and the sale conversion rate.
click through % sales conversion rate %
q1_18 1.6 1.1
q2_18 1.9 1
q3_18 1.6 1.3
q4_18 1.6 1.2
q1_19 1.6 0.9
q2_19 1.5 0.8
q3_19 1.6 1.1
q4_19 1.6 1.3 so far
This data shows me that for every 100 people that see my listing, they click on it at a very consistent rate, 1.5-1.6% (one quarter has a larger uptick, probably due to a few very desirable items listed at that time). The sales conversion rate is more all over but hovers between .08-1.1 in January-June and 1.1-1.3 from July to December which makes sense with back to school and holiday upticks.
These data make me think that I’m doing a pretty consistent job with drawing people in with keywords, photos, etc. and they are buying at a normal rate that really hasn’t changed in the two full years I’ve been running my store.
So this leaves me with the questions Jay had? Why the slowdown? Some possibilities:
1) I have a lot of old undesirable items now. This would be my fault, obv. I looked and currently have about 145 items out of 880 (16.4% that are over 2 years). So that might be a minor issue however this past summer I increased my store by over 200 items my listing a great deal, so this should offset this and I should have better data of late.
2) eBay glitches have reduced searches and sales. Possibly, but the big glitch is the new item specifics for clothes and I only have about 6% of my listing in clothes. Maybe 10% if we add belts, shoes and purses/bags. So that probably has affected me less than others but maybe a little
3) Other online retailers are taking eyes away from eBay. Probably to some extent. In 2012 eBay had 12% market share, in 2017 8%, 2018 around 6.6%, and projected for this year 6.1% a(various online sources, google them and you’ll find them). So from 2017 to 2019 the market share shrunk about 25%. However, I’m seeing 35% drops, which brings me to my last point.
4) The economy is slowing. If you look at the data some would argue that that isn’t true, but I wonder if fun vintage purchases aren’t the first to go when your wages aren’t keeping pace and people are tightening belts. I think this combined with #3 above is the true answer.
Solutions? Some of these Jay mentioned, these are the ones that might work for me: A) diversify to other platforms. I don’t want to but I might start listing bigger items on Facebook marketplace exclusively. That could help. B) List more. This will probably increase sales based on my click through rates and sales conversions. I’m going to try to bump my store up to 1000 listings ASAP, I have a backlog right now. C) Consider more low offers, especially on long tail items. If it is over a year old and someone offers me 40-50% just take it don’t counter. 6 months old? seriously consider….
Anyone else take a deep look at their numbers of late? Are you seeing similar things? Do you have other solutions?
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I agree that a lot of new people start selling in the last 3-4 years. But more importantly, many of these sellers have actually created pipelines to amass large online inventory. Instead of people selling just 10-50 items, its becoming normal for stores to have 1000 items.
No different than what you say on Amazon. Go big or get out.
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My numbers for the week of 11/3/19:
Total Items in Store: 268
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: $50
Total Sales: $494 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $79 Roseville Pottery Vase
Average Price Sold: $24.70
Returns: 1 – Damaged in transit USPS ClaimIt has been a really long time since I posted anything but I have been faithfully listening to the podcast every Monday morning. Sad to say I am experiencing my first ever “lower than previous year” sales on eBay as well (been selling for almost 10 years). I have more listings than I ever did, am putting more work in, my limited storage space is pretty close to full…and I’m 20% down from the previous year. Disappointing.
I think there quite a few “reasons why”. Biggest ones in my mind: Promoted Listings push inflated priced items to the top of search results. Sales tax has almost overnight added 7-10% to the purchase price for buyers in many states. Shipping price increases on DIM weight have made many larger items I used to sell no longer viable, and have increased quickly even for smaller items (and we all only have 3 options here: calculated or flat and let the buyer pay the increase, free shipping and bump up your price so buyer still pays, or free and seller takes the cut to their profit, or some combination of these. Add in the messed up item specifics and it leads to a really crappy experience for a buyer. So here is my experience as a buyer this past week. Was helping my daughter browse eBay for crew neck sweatshirts. The item specifics debacle is in no way fixed…once we chose her size and a few specifications she was looking for we went from thousands of results to 44. 44! So she browsed the thousands…many which weren’t crew necks but hoodies (which is what she specifically did not want). Many from Hong Kong even though we chose US Only. My daughter had cash in hand to spend. And it ended with “this is hard” and no purchase. Frankly the eBay shopping experience is becoming nothing more than a hassle. So we went to the Brick and Mortar Stores this weekend. And they were PACKED. I’m talking driving around the mall parking lot trying to find a spot packed. I have not seen a mall this crowded around here in years. Shopping centers were the same.
Other reasons “why”: The ‘styles’ that were once hard to find in retail stores are readily available now…and while a percentage of the population want the real thing, many are happy with the close enough. Example: Walmart has Mr Christmas ceramic lighted christmas trees on the shelves this year for $25. Of course they aren’t near as pretty as the old ones, but for enough of the population it’s good enough. I could hardly even ship it and pay for fees from OH to CA for $25.
I know you guys don’t think price matters that much, but I’m really feeling the effects in the type of things I sell. This weekend I just sold a pair of Merrell hiking boots for $45. A year ago I was getting $65 easy for a like pair of Merrells. When you look at the invoice, my customer is paying about the same as my customer would have last year. Except more is going to eBay, USPS, and the state for sales tax and less is trickling down to me. I’m feeling the squeeze.1+ -
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BethGreen,
Just wanted to add, about in store B&M: I think a lot of under performing B&M stores are gone, which probably helps the survivors. Also, even in my very small local WalMart, I see people using the Pick Up kiosk. I think stores like WalMart and Target are actually doing a pretty good job—finally—at fighting the Amazon juggernaut. My local WalMart has a limited selection, but when you add in all the stuff I can order online and have sent directly to the store….it’s a huge selection. And I agree, the double whammy of sales tax and shipping increases is hurting us all. At some point, ebay is going to have to come up with some new approaches. There have been some hints that the new guy, Sweetnam, recognizes how important our kind of stuff is to eBay’s ability to differentiate itself, and I just hope it’s not too little too late.
Doublythumbs, I agree…the glitchiness, especially within search, is hurting us. The bare minimum ebay needs to do for Q4 is fix the site, and I’m not at all confident that they can do it….I have tons of winter clothing I’d like to put up, but I’m holding off and trying to mostly list non-clothing because of the IS mess. Fortunately, I have enough other stuff that I’m in no danger of running out of non-clothing….And add in the impact of sites like Poshmark….ebay screws up clothing, one of its major categories, for Q4 just as smaller sites like Posh are really getting traction….it’s a perfect storm of problems for ebay…
I’m still hoping we end up with a good Q4, but ebay is doing nothing to make me feel very confident about it…
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When I posted my numbers I meant to ask @ryanne to explain why she thinks that cropping photos is a bad idea? I’ve never heard this before and I don’t understand the downside. Showing details clearly is very important and a cropped photo does that better than a photo with lots of white space. eBay already prevents us from providing photos that are smaller than their minimum dimensions.
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i noticed that the ebay mobile app allows you to crop photos pretty small. and my helper has been cropping on all sides. it’s sometimes ok to crop down the top and bottom, but not the width. ebay hates that, it cuts down on their size requirements and ability to do the zoom on the desktop. so from now on, no more cropping.
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Its more a matter of educating our helper. She doesnt know that cropping a photo means the photo will not meet eBay’s minimum requirement. Or she crops it so much that eBay will no longer allow zoom.
We need to teach our helper to just take close ups in camera instead of cropping.
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We just had our best week on eBay since we started selling in February of 2018.
Total Items in Store: 1,751 (with many multi-variation listings)
Items Sold: 59 – WOW!
Gross Sales: $2,036
Cost of Items Sold: $279
Cost of helpers: $0
Highest Price Sold: $415 (Charles Fizzino mixed-media art)
Average Price Sold: $32
Returns: 1 for $25
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $750 – We bought a full garage of new scrapbooking supplies!
Number of items listed this week: Hard to say, most were multi-variation listings, so while not a large number of new individual listings, I did do a lot of listings with a significant number of items in each listing.I’m super excited about all the new scrapbooking supplies. It will take me months to get it all listed and a lot of the sales will be small, but it’s easy to store, easy to ship, not likely to get returned and will be a gift that should keep on giving for years.
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Total Items in Store: 1509
Items Sold: 32
Gross Sales: $858.85
Net selling costs:214.76
Cost of Items Sold: <$20
Cost of Helpers: My wife is my helper, so the cost is some alone time without kids! Win-win
Net Profit: $624
Average Price Sold: $32
Avg profit/item: $19.50
Highest Price Sold: $91.53(Case of plaster casts-I bought 24 cases for $80)
Returns: 3 initiated.
#1-Confusing model# on a monitor. Customer agreed not to return, but cut my actual profit on a
computer monitor to $10. Better than losing $40 in shipping. He sent me a nice message and knew it
was not my fault and left glowing feedback after refund.
#2 telecommunication tool-customer wasn’t aware of the capabilities before purchase and submitted a
wrong item. If he ever ships it back, I will not refund the shipping.
#3 Fall protection lanyard–I messed up and send the belt instead of lanyard. Customer initiated a
return, but I sent the proper item and he will keep both. Don’t want to eat return shipping on an
item I haven’t been able to sell in years.Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $100
Items Listed: 120Clothing sales have been extremely slow. I’ve been getting a steady stream of “missing required details” because of size or color and am confident this is impacting sales. Eventually I will have them all edited and be back to full strength on clothing, so I am not stressing it at all. The details are in the title, so they only take a couple minutes per day to fix.
Local auction was an absolute bust Sunday, but I found one that looks promising for Friday and the kids happen to have no school! The older ones can watch the baby while my wife and I shop til we drop. We have enough inventory to get out 100 minimum listings this week, but we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel to hit the goal. Auctions have been great and double as our “date night” so even the bust didn’t feel like wasted time.
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Well, no numbers to report for this week as far as sales. Just put up my first listings today! It took me quite a while but I expect to get faster with time. I did go to some sales this week (yep, I’m a hoarder) and approached some ladies who were running their grandma’s estate sale that was chock full of fabric. I asked if they would consider selling what was left at the end to me for a discount, which they did! Bins, rolls and bolts of fabric for $200. I’m excited to get working on that. Hope you all have a great and profitable week!! 🙂
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Great Podcast as always.
Wow.. Toyota is paying for a new frame for your 10+ year old truck. That’s HUGE. Just the labor cost on that is probably close to the value of the truck. Toyota is a company that really stands behind their product and reputation.
Insulating the house is almost always a homerun. When the former owners of my house, had it built, they used 2X6 studs (instead of 2X4) and really paid attention to the insulation.
I am reaping the rewards of their design. Last summer, July and August were 100 degrees almost every day and I never used the air conditioner. I do use a swamp cooler and the hottest it got inside my house was 80 degrees. In fact, unless it gets past 92 or so, I don’t even use the swamp cooler.
What’s the future of Ebay.. who knows, but it’s smart to keep all options open. Ever since I moved, my account has been very passive. Geographic arbitration was the best move I’ve ever made.
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The guy who’s going to replace teh frame says it cost between $10-$15k to replace the frame. My truck might be worth $7k. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
These rusting frames have been an issue for Toyota for years. I asked why they dont just fix the problem. I guess they bought the supplier who was making the frames so hopefully it’ll stop the pain.
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Toyota use to make a 3.0 V6 engine from like 1989 to 1994. There was a recall on the head gaskets and they were replacing them for years. Some of the forums (for motorhomes) say there are dealers still replacing the head gaskets even now on some of them under recall.
That is just one of the reasons Toyota sells to so many repeat customers.
Getting to cruise around in a new loaner truck for w while… Cool.
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Regarding your truck, you shouldn’t have to pay a cent. I used to have a 2008 Tacoma, and the frame was replaced totally free of charge back in 2014. If you could call it a drawback, it took 4 months for the repair, apparently the pickup was literally shipped back to Japan. No big deal though, I had a loaner on Toyota’s dime to rack up some winter miles on!
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Yep, they reiterated that its no cost to me when I dropped it off yesterday. They told me nightmare stories of replacement back when you got yours done. But they had the frame in house. Supposed to be done by end of week.
In the meantime, Im driving a new truck. Cant lie. Its nice!
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Well, it’s confirmed; I just lost a sale because of the glitch one of your calls spoke about international customers not being able to pay. The guy was very patient and we both called ebay and spoke to two different reps each giving us different instructions to follow. I even explained to the rep about this issue other sellers were having and I was blown off. Frustrating!
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I had a buyer in France who could not buy an item from me last week. I tried numerous things to help him – I even removed GSP, set up a custom shipping option for him, and cleared my exclusion list. Didn’t matter.
I did have other GSP sales last week though, so who knows what happened there.
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@RTWV: Could it possibly be the Item.
I had Ebay pull a 1950’s boxed set of steak knives and turns out knives of any sort were not allowed into that country. Maybe it was the item not the listing.
We laughed at what to call steak knives. Meat cutting utensils, food slicing manual cutters, etc., etc.
mike at MDCGFA
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I have very good and bad news to report. So so week last week. But somebody threw the switch on my store. Hoping it was me. But I’ll be happy if Ebay just fixed the glitches. However, they still appear to be there
I’m assuming that Ebay glitches messed up everything listed before October. Slowly I’ve been crashing down the old listings. Checking Everything! Tweaking and relisting. Lots of errors. Then selling similar Newly listed items with no previous interest get 10 views in an hour or two.
All the old items were lacking global shipping. And there are plenty of unhelpful fill-ins. Slowly relisting. Reducing the prices on many, but not too much. 70% of my sales are from offers in which I offer 10 or 15% off. So I may only have half of the 4th quarter but at least I’m getting that.0 -
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Last week was pretty bad. Two $20-something sales on eBay and one on Poshmark.
I did okay with listings, I’m at least making ground.
I did some sourcing this weekend, which at least was fun. I found a $70 iphone sleeve for 25 cents, some old art calendars that I’m going to see if I can sell, and a NFL pullover for 75 cents.This week is off to a decent start: Four sales (one of which was a return from last week) so far.
I think I’m finally going to sign up for the starter store. But I am also feeling the need to clear out some items from inventory that I don’t have faith in. (Yep, I’m identifying some “losers.”) With only so much space, and rock bottom COG, it doesn’t seem to make sense to hold on to them.
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We have a 1998 Tacoma that the frame rusted out and hubby welded it. I wish we had known up this way back when. The apparently Toyota buying the trucks back in the 90s for 1 and 1/2 of the blue book value, but we heard nothing about it.
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Been selling since 1999 and this year is terrible.
I’m a small seller making $250-$500 per month profit, until this year.
It got very slow, so I donated ALL my inventory and started over with just 12 items listed that are not selling either. Using sales, promos, etc – I’m selling one thing a month and after expenses last month was the 1st time since 1999 I showed a loss.
I notice in my area, lots of junk at garage sales and we cannot even get in the door at estate sales anymore. The ones we do go to are priced above ebay retail worth – and people buy stuff.
Also the supply of cool stuff in my area has dried up. We had an air force base and 4-5 General Electric Plants many years ago here and I was able to find very cool old electrical/electronic stuff – all that stuff is gone now! I took about 30 items of clothing removed them from eBay and put them on Poshmark and are selling very slowly. Rock bottom profit.
All anyone talks about in my area is Facebook Marketplace.
Been driving Uber while going to sales to try to make a few bucks, but 1% of riders tip, so the profit after gas, etc – is around $9 an hour in my area. If anyone wants to talk Uber – let me know and we will move it to the Random Thoughts. I will make a post there.
As far as eBay goes .. WTF .. I really thought my account was broken, so I renamed my store, deleted everything and started over, I even deleted all policies and restarted everything. Lets hope 2020 picks up.0 -
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Jay, people were doing the same thing with VW diesels a few years back after VW got in to a bit of trouble over their emissions cheating. They were buying any of the qualifying year cars in any condition and reselling them back to VW for a nice sum. Some guys were doing like 20 cars a month while it lasted…
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