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Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week October Dec 1-7, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8439 Items Sold: 39 Gross Sales: $1,728.79 Cos
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 440: Online Scavenging] -
2019-12-01 – 2019-12-07
Total Items In Store: 3391
Items Sold: 24
Cost of Items Sold: $ 80
Total Sales: $ 797.82
Highest Price Sold: $ 50 (Chess Set)
Average Price Sold: $ 33.24
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 33.35
Number of items listed: 27Gut Sales Report for the week: Strange selling pattern. Sold 14 items Sunday and Monday and then only 10 for the rest of the week.
Challenge of the week: I still have a lot of items I need to process and list.
Scavenge of the week: Nothing much.
Mark S
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@Jay @Ryanne Awe, you guys are so kind, thanks! I wouldn’t call myself “hardcore” per se, I just try to keep my head down and work hard. I can always seem to find ways to improve.
Week Dec 1 – Dec 7, 2019
Items in store: 4597 Listings for 7551 Items
Items Sold: 91 transactions for 114 Items
Gross Sales: $7098.40
Highest Price Sold: $240 Carmina Antelope Boots
Lowest Price Sold: $10….Necktie
Average Sale Price: $62.27
Cost of Goods Sold $558, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1200
Number of new items listed this week: 164 listings for 305 items
$$ spent on new inventory this week $948
International Sales, 39%Oh eBay, you hurt my feelings this week with that promotions glitch. Was really hoping to have my first $10K week. Oh well, maybe next year.
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Items in Store 1330
Items Sold 40
Total Sales $1,244.00
COGS $108.00
Total Profit $1,136.00
Average profit $28.40
Average sales price $31.10
New Listings 22It’s beginning to look alot like… December sales!
J&R, don’t knock those $30 sales – they add up quick!
Yesterday I changed my handling times to 1 business day until the USPS Christmas cutoff date. We’ll see if that has any effect on my sales. I’m hoping I can keep up as our schedule is packed to the gills this month.This week I have a contractor coming to install a standard entry door in my garage. For years I’ve been having to open the main garage door to go in and out of my ebay space. The kids also use the main garage door when taking their dogs out. Needless to say, when it is really cold (or really hot), opening that 18′ garage door sucks. Now I’ll have a 36″ door that will open out right near the entrance of my inventory storage shed. It’ll also have a doggie door so the dogs can come and go as they please. Money well spent…and tax deductible since it is an improvement to my ebay space!
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J&R, don’t knock those $30 sales – they add up quick!
+1
Out of 114 items sold this week, 61 of them were under $35.
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30 out of 40 were $30 or less for me. My numbers would be a far different story if it weren’t for those low dollar sales.
It’s like I said when I first started scavenging:
Everyone else sees junk and trash. Me? I see $20 bills laying all over the place just waiting for me to pick them up. -
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Total Items In Store: 265 Ebay, 45 Mercari
Items Sold: 14 Ebay, 7 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $208 + some items ours
Total Sales: $615 Ebay, $126 Mercari 🙂
Highest Price Sold: $129 (Used Pottery Barn Duvet and Shams, paid $35 at indy thrift Christmas boutique 2 weeks ago)
Average Price Sold: $43 Ebay, $18 Mercari
Money Spent on New Inventory: $6
Number of items listed: 1 🙁A great selling week on Ebay for me until the weekend was dead. Unfortunately didn’t manage to get much listed this week and I found another half bin of Christmas. I might try to pop some of that on Mercari quickly this week, though I will need to be aware of the shipping deadlines next week. Mercari doesn’t do a great job of letting the buyer know when to expect delivery before purchasing – there is no handling time.
I made another post about shutting my Ebay store off the week before Christmas. I was burned one year when Ebay let me sell something with Fed Ex shipping before Christmas and then wouldn’t let me print the label. At the counter it was $185 for two day. I think I will do the priority deadline of 12/21 but the Fed Ex deadline is 12/16 for home, which seems really early. Then I turn it on 12/24.
Have a great week.
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Week 12/1-12/7
Sales: $2,375
Items sold: 12
COGs: 75 cents
Consignment payout: $1100I sold a sailboat for $2200. I bought, and am renovating the hurricane-damaged home of my former 90 year old neighbor Frank. Frank also owned a storage unit with a 1974 Eastward Ho sailboat he started building in 1974! Frank moved to MD in Sept and asked me to sell the storage unit items; I get 50%. Storage unit lease ends Dec 31, so I was glad to sell it. It’s local pickup. I sold the boat on ebay and received a $500 deposit on purchase. I tried selling local but no bites after 4 months. No registration was ever done on boat or trailer so I created a bill of sale. Not hard to do. I could see myself doing this for friends for cars and boat, etc. if needed.
Other interesting sales was a $65 antique French copper pot “dhillerin”. I call it a “Frank find” since it was under the crawl space when I dragged everything out. Other Frank find sales was an ashtray from a local NC oil company for $12. His wife had a collection of 30+ so I have been selling them off; sold 9 so far. He left me a lot of stuff in the house that I have been selling.
The seller for the boat is a bit odd, but sailors often are. He has sent me 8 messages since the sale of very loquacious and nautical language about the boat and his happiness for it. Will likely be a character I’m sure.
On another side, I took a “contract job” of my former profession of being a military attorney. I am helping an enlisted Marine write an appeal for a performance evaluation that affected his promotion. Should take about 3-4 hours. I never want to be full-time again since I like being at home with my 5 year old, and renovating the house…but I feel okay doing a small job for someone that needs (and deserves) it. Yes, I am being paid, but charging a low attorney fee. Getting my feet back in the water.
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Hello all, been traveling, zero attention paid to my little eBay and Etsy stores, nice to have some sales that translated into good meals on the road and at airports.
12/01 – 12/07/19 (no cross listing is done between platforms)
eBay store: totommyto
Total store items: 858
Number of items sold: 6
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $174
Cost of items sold: $15
Highest price sold: $42.50 – vintage Girl Scouts pocket knife, paid $5.
Average price sold: $29
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 0.7
Number International sales: 0Etsy store oldfleatoymarket
Total store items: 649
Number of items sold: 6
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $124.80
Cost of items sold: $6
Highest price sold: $30 Tasmanian Devil Looney tunes gift wrap, paid $1
Average price sold: $20.80
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 0
Sell through rate for the week: 0.9
Number International sales: 0 -
I wish I could change my unparseable screen name but I can’t remember my blogger login anymore. Simplicio (sim-pliss-ee-oh or sim-pleech-ee-oh) was a handle I started using in uni because I liked the character in Galileo’s “Two World Systems”. He is the one that Galileo makes into the foil who is asking all the dumb questions, which was my avocation in uni physics & engineering classes.
I had a really good week on ebay again. However, I can’t find new inventory to save my life – mostly because I haven’t had the time.
Sales c/w shipping income: CAD$3791, 12 sales. COGS: $431, Fees: ~$520, Shipping: $278 –> Gross profit: $2840
Expenditures: $178 –> Cashflow: $3093
Hours: 7
Listed: $0 (ouch!)
Notable sales: kicking off the Christmas buying season with the perfect gift for dad, a $1200 boat grappling hook. I bought this for $200 on a hunch… basically because it looked expensive. Glad to see the gamble paid off.-
Try Asking Ryanne if she will change your “showing Name” if you really want too.
3 or 4 years ago, maybe more, when I first signed up on SL I used an old handle name “HUNCRELAN”. Ryanne made fun of me by trying to pronounce it. It was Hun-cree-lan. She asked where it came from and I replied it was the first 3 letters of a street we used to live on. Hunter Creek Lane.
So I asked and somehow she changed it for me to our business name, MDC Galleries. I think she said that the original name had to stick on my account profile but she could changed what was showing to whatever I want.
If you will look all the way down at the bottom of SL to the members signed it, it always shows Huncrelan but under my Logo Icon, she got it to show our business name and as you know I also always sign my posts with my first name and our business name.
Maybe Ryanne can do it for you if she isn’t too busy with her Shampoo and Booze podcast work.
Mike [Huncrelan-LOL :-)] at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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You’ve really been on a roll with your industrial items. Am I wrong to think this? Why do you think that is? Are you listing a different quality of item?
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Dec 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 2705
Items Sold: 49
Total Sales : $1958
* WAY ABOVE yearly average of $920
Highest Price: $280 (Michael Frances Higgins Studio Art Glass Wall Plaque)
Average Price: $40
Returns: 0
Cost of Goods Sold: $42
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $83
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 57Wow, I had a fantastic week of sales! Lots of good stuff sold and my phone just kept cha-chinging all week. I’m sure my postal carrier hates us by now but that’s okay. I’ve been listing those vintage racing slides and have been making about $30 each on average. 24 have sold so far for a total of $758. I also sold another piece of MCM furniture for $250 and the piece of art I mentioned above for $280. All that combined with a slew of misc odds and ends led me to make almost 2K in a week. I wish every week was this crazy.
Thanks for answering my question on the show. I tried doing some searches on eBay for stuff that was hastily listed by sellers who might not have the knowledge or time to care about getting top dollar. I used the keyword “lot” and came up with some interesting results. Restricting my search to 15 miles from my location was even more interesting. I’ll have to play around when I have more time and see if I can snag some inventory for cheap.
Steph and I did some interesting scavenging last week. We have a pair of friends who needed to take a room and a garage full of stuff to Goodwill but didn’t really have the time or vehicle to do it. When they found out that we sold on eBay, they offered to give it all to us as long as we took everything. It was a good opportunity even though we had no idea what we’d find. Two van loads and two days of work later, we came out with a ton of sellable inventory. No treasure, but definitely over 100 items that will fetch us $10-40 each.
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Your experience with your friends giving you all that stuff reminded me that as a result of the TCJA giving some things but taking other things away, charitable donations at the level most people give are no longer deductible on their income taxes. So will more stuff end up on the curb, at yard sales and on Craigslist/Facebook etc., or given away to scavengers like us? Other than some initial complaints about it from charities that their donations would dry up due to the law change, I’ve not heard since then that there has actually been any reduction. Charitable giving is probably not primarily driven by the ability to deduct it.
I think many people don’t know that the law has been changed. The large consignment of military challenge coins I recently acquired from a friend was on its way to Goodwill until I told him about it.
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I just heard a story about challenge coins:
Now I know to look out for them.Do they sell well? Or is the tradition that someone has to give it to you?
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I was just looking at sold Challenge Coins on Ebay a few days ago! My husband bought some during a stop over at Wake Island last week. It’s an island of 94 people and a US Air Force Runway between Hawaii and Guam. Needless to say, not many people would have challenge coins from there. As he was telling me about it I realized that I have been given a number of these from federal law enforcement agencies back when I used to be a speaker at various government conferences years ago. I’m pretty sure I donated all of them to Goodwill as I had no idea at the time what use they could possible have.
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In 1980 when I got my first one, you did not give them to people. You were entitled to have and use your unit coin by being a member of the unit. And in the US I had never heard of them outside of Army Special Forces, either. But since then all the services (especially the Navy) have adopted them whole hog, and government civilians as well. Not only are they are now frequently given as unofficial awards and mementos and traded among military, police, fire, and government personnel, people do buy and collect them. It’s preferable to be given one but there are currently about 78,000 eBay listings in the Challenge Coins subcategory with a bit less than 50% sell through so it’s now a very active collecting field. But there are fakes, forgeries, and cheap China copies so you have to be careful buying them online.
That’s a great story you linked! It talks about the coin check:
“Not all of the branches of the military are into the drinking game, but those who play are in it to win it. Some have their coin on them at all times, even when they’re sleeping, running, or showering. You just never know when you could get checked.”
A friend of mine was one of those guys – you were never safe in a latrine shower or anywhere from a coin check from him. He got me once on a scuba dive – came up and tapped it on my mask.
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Great week volume-wise…35 items sold is a new high for me. Zebra thermal printer was a great investment… has saved time/ headaches already.
Does anyone have tips for getting permanent marker off of the bottom of shoes? I have a nice pair of cap toes that i need to get sharpie off of the leather sole. I’ve tried several different concoctions with not much luck.
Dec-1-7
Items in Store 735
Items sold 35
Gross Sales $883
COGS $196
Highest Price Sold $100
Average Price Sold $25.23
New Inventory Costs $185-
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Yes magic erasers, but wet the sponge-eraser with a little bit of Fantastic or water. It releases the dry bleach built into the sponge.
Also you can try Lighter Fluid [but this works better on non-porus surfaces] but still helps some and lastly if the shoes have roughed up bottoms-soles, then sand paper works great.
Also while you are out, get yourself some “Shoe Black” sole-edge dressing [this is not black liquid shoe polish]. This is very opaque and professional shoe repairmen use it to finish off the sole edges. The highly opaque nature it will cover almost anything on the bottom.
Run it around the edge of the sole and it puts a brand new like appearance to the sole edge. Almost like the armour all liquid that is put on your tires at the car wash. And lastly, we have actually covered [painted], the bottom sole completely black before. It hides any markings and gives the shoe bottom a whole new look.
mike at MDC Galleries
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@simplicio thanks for the tip! I’ll pick some up today.
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Hey everyone! Haven’t posted in I don’t know how long, so have some extra numbers below – month of Oct, month of Nov, and then this past first week of Dec. Work, travel, holidays, etc got in the way from posting, but I have been listening & following along the whole time!
Oct Sales: 55 items, $2,587 gross, $47.04 avg, 28% COGS
Nov Sales: 68 items, $2,863 gross, $42.11 avg, 33% GOGS
Dec 1-7: 53 items, $1,729 gross, $32.63 avg, 30% COGSSales have really picked up second half of November and this first week of December. I think people realized that Thanksgiving was late this year and the buying season is severely condensed. I’ve also been aggressively selling in FB groups as a test, and 23 of my 53 sales this week were via FB (30 items via eBay are awesome on their own).
Key, high dollar, or interesting sales:
1997 Radiohead Ok Computer
1996 2Pac Me Against the World
1957 Miles Davis Round About Midnight
1994 Jeff Buckley Grace
1989 De La Soul 3 Feet High & Rising
1991 Van Halen For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge
1959 Thelonious Monk Alone in San Francisco
1969 David Bowie Man of Words, Man of Music
1991 Mother Love Bone Shine
1980 Papa Smurf Animation Cel
12 Vintage Fountain Pens
WWI Era Army Captain Photo-
Welcome back. Glad things are still selling well.
When you sell on FB groups, are you having people come to your home to purchase?
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Rarely. 99.9% of my stuff can be shipped, so I still usually do that. Although I am open to meeting locally, much like CL.
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We were just talking about Facebook Marketplace and shipping. How do you negotiate shipping and payment on Facebook? Is it all just trust?
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I always push for Paypal Goods & Services as payment so both parties are protected. I’ll add “shipping is $x or cash on pickup”. So far, no issues. Much like CL, FB is about flipping things quickly as opposed to for top dollar. Tend to put lower prices on older stock I’m trying to clear out – you know, the “losers” LOL
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I just put that in the listing and then either send them a Paypal invoice or tell them my Paypal email address. You’re right, there’s no real shipping option in the FB Marketplace listings. I sell in private groups, local groups, and general marketplace. However, you can connect your Paypal to FB payments and send invoices through FB Messenger if you feel weird about giving out your email.
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There’s definitely an element of trust, just like anything we do… but that Paypal G&S provides the same/similar protections as eBay or any other platform. Now, if you use Paypal Friends & Family to avoid the 3% fee, then you relinquish those protections and I reco against that.
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Yeah, there are plenty of those low-ballers, especially in “yard sale” type groups. But for every 10 low balls, there will be that 1 person that gives you a reasonable offer. And, if you have something collectible, it’s easy to find closed groups that focus on an area and you’ll get much better prices but obviously lower scale/volume.
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Yes, definitely the holiday season:
Week of Dec 1 – 7
* Total Items in Store: 1535 eBay, 35 Etsy
* Items Sold: 29 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $36.65 + $62.33 Commission
* Total Sales: $728.36 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $200 for Nonworking 1930s Freed-Eisemann WOR AM Tube Radio Wood Case
* Average Price Sold: $25.12
* Returns: 1 cancel (my mistake) + 1 denied at GSP for custom regulations
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 29I sold a 1950s Crosley Clock AM tube radio to someone in Canada, and it didn’t make it through the GSP. The tubes have hazardous material in them, and they can’t be shipped to Canada. I’ve already sold one to England. I’m not sure whether it squeaked through or if their import rules are different.
In any case, I changed all my tube radios to domestic only, and eBay let me keep my sale and the customer was refunded. All is good. Now I’m watching 8ten1944 to see if he/she lists it. I’m wondering if they will use my photos or not.
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Sharyn: Off Topic but your link and source for both the thin and large bubble wrap is great. Got a sample roll of the thin today and it is soft, non-static prone and tears off perfectly.
4 large rolls to come in a few days.
Thanks very much.
Mike at MDCGFA -
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Another good week here. I’m really amazed how much is flying out the door. On track to do about 1/3 of the income for the year just during November and December.
Total Items in Store: 1231
Items Sold: 43
Gross Sales: $2071.71
Cost of Items Sold: $42
Highest Price Sold: $120 (Civil War Fractional Currency)
Average Price Sold: $35.50
Returns:
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 32
Number of items sold via promoted listings: 23 (53%)It’s nice to see that the year’s work in scavenging and listing is paying off. Interesting to note that 53% of our sales were via promoted listings and I’m averaging around 5% for the promoted fee. I added a line above for me to track this metric as well. I only started promoted items a few months ago and it really seems to be making a difference. One thing I don’t like about the promoted listings is that you can’t see whether an offer is coming in from a promoted listing. Now I’m second guessing my reduction as I can’t tell until after the sale whether I’m getting hit for the additional fee. Significant as we tend to sell about half our items for best offer.
Lukas Treasure Trove
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One other metric I’ve recently started tracking that I forgot to add into this weeks numbers. Average number of days an item was listed: 231 days.
Longest tail: 793 days for an NPR Christmas ornament. -
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The first rule of online scavenging is not to talk about online scavenging! Just kidding. I’m so into online scavenging that I’m currently working my way through a 3 week free trial of Eflip. It’s not exactly for me, but I get how it can be utilized to make good buying decisions. I’ve also purchased a few good items that I’m glad I had the subscription to find. I don’t know if I’ll keep it beyond the trial period, but it has been fun.
We had 25 packages go out Saturday, over 50 go out today, another 25 going out tomorrow that have been labeled. Since printing slips for the shipment going out tomorrow at 8 this morning, I’ve had another 16 items sell on Ebay that will be shipped out in 7 packages, as well as 8 new Amazon orders come in. Going from 1 ship out to the next. I also had time to sneak into a convenience store to get snacks after bringing the mail in and managed to do some RA lol. Yay Q4
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Thanks for the podcast
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3457
Items Sold: 49
Total Sales: $1202.06
Cost of Items Sold: $147
Average Price Sold: $24.53
Average Cost of Item: $3.01
Highest Price Item Sold: $200 Sony Cybershot RX100 V 20.1MP Digital Camera (for Parts)
Number of items listed this week: 36 worth approx. $708
YTD Sales: $47111
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +6%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 430
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 232
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 127
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.42%
Hats sold this week: 33 (67% of sales) worth $587.71 (48% of sales $)My highest-priced sale this week was for a camera I got for free at a garage sale because the person running the sale told me it was broken. That’s some easy money.
In my post last week, I forgot to mention my most interesting sale. I picked up a book called the Art and Science of Embalming at an estate sale for $2 which sold for over $50 to a funeral home. It creeped out my wife. Not surprisingly.
Good sales this week. I’d guess we just have one more week of good sales before we’ll hit the xmas slow down as the mailing deadline gets close.
I hope everyone has a profitable week.
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The big Meh continues for me:
12/1/19 – 12/7/19
Total Items In Store: 832
Items Sold: 16
Net Sales (Total Sales – Selling Costs): $380.20
Highest Sold Price: $60 BO on a pair of vintage plaid bedskirts – still haven’t paid; will open a case tomorrow (their revised date of payment)
Average Sold Price: $23.76
Cost of Items Sold: $33.44
Returns/Refunds: $0
Money Spent on New Inventory Last Week: $0
Number of Items listed last week: 15ish -
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My numbers for November:
Items in store: 522
Items sold: 57
Gross sales: $1,232.52
COGS: $142.16
Net profit: $894.62If you’d like to see the items I sold and a more detailed break down of the month, you can checkout my blog post here:
https://millionairedojo.com/what-sells-on-ebay-november-2019/
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@millionairedojo I see that you are selling patches with free shipping and just using a stamp. I have quite a few patches that I am thinking of switching to Free Shipping (First Class Postage Stamp). Have you had much issue with it not being tracked and/or people claiming not to receive their items? I’d like to keep my patches affordable, especially since I’m dealing in multiples.
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Hey Jay, Ryanne: Gildaddy is back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-xWAeYX1Q
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Thanks everyone for sharing. I enjoy the podcast and comments every week.
Brian’s Treasures… your sales always make me laugh. My ex husband and I were total music fanatics and audiophiles. We spent our weekends scouring east village record shops for rare and collectable alternative, industrial, alt-country, punk etc. artists. When we got divorced in 2001 we sold our 3,000+ collection of vinyl for 50 CENTS a record to a dealer. When I see your sold prices I realize if I had held onto to em…. prob. would have been at least 50k today… more even! LOL
Oh well… such is life. Happy Holidays everyone! CAT MOM (Liz) =^..^=
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@chaoticgood – I also sell (stickers, not patches) using stamps, and have only had one hiccup where a Buyer noted an item hadn’t arrived. I asked that he give it more time, and it showed up. Never had a complaint, or an item actually not arrive. If an item did go missing, the $ amount invested wouldn’t bother me, so I guess if you have valuable patches, you could consider shipping differently, but stamps work great for any low dollar item that fits in a regular envelope!
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Yep agree but there is a regulation that you need to pay attention to.
As long as the envelope does not protrude more than 1/4″ thick. It has to be able to slide through a feeler gauge they use to kick out envelope that are too thick AND the internal item has to be flexible enough to allow the envelope to bend as it goes through the high speed sorters. The sorters will take the envelope around several roller like pins and they bend / flex around those rollers at high speeds as the zip code readers scan them and then send them down the correct shute.
Watch this video of actual USPS machines and employees operating the machines and at work. Amazing that we don’t pay a whole lot more for what all goes into delivering our “stuff”.
Watch this YouTube video of a Pitney and Bowes high speed sorter for like kind mailing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbYypf0gPkEVery fascinating. and the flexibility that is needed is toward the end when they run a sorter with it open and you can see inside. This picture is worth a thousand words on how a “Flat envelope” needs to be in order to be handled. If not it gets kicked out [not shown in this video] but then goes to hand sorting, which slows down the process or gets returned to the sender because if over 1/4″ thick it should have been shipped and paid as a First Class Package.
These videos are amazing and shows what, in my opinion, is a great job the USPS does in handling all of our stuff at what I think is a very good price. Kudos to them.
But unfortunately all of our customers are not aware or don’t understand Logistics and what is involved and what goes into getting their purchases to them. $12.00 to ship a 2 to 3 lb. package 3,000 miles in 2 days and going door to door from Atlanta to Los Angeles.
Just my opinion.
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment Parts -
With this discussion of shipping stickers, patches, and similar small items, I was thinking about a post over a year ago, maybe two. I’m thinking it might have been around the time that the guy from Popeye’s Postcards was interviewed, but I might be incorrect. Either he or someone else mentioned a type of tracking for letter sized envelopes with a regular stamp. I think that the service was extra – not through the post office – but through some website where you could pay by the item or have some type of subscription.
It wasn’t the full tracking that one would get with a label, but it did provide something.
Anyway, I could possibly find it through the forum search function, but maybe someone knows what I’m talking about?
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It’s called Letter Track Pro:
https://www.letter-track.com/We talked about it here. Ive never used it.
LetterTrack Pro adds an Intelligent Mail Barcode (also known as USPS Informed Visibility® Mail Tracking) above the address block which provides you with the ability to track your mail as it is being sent through the postal system. When a mailpiece reaches the destination post office to be placed on a USPS postal truck for delivery, the mailpiece is marked as Out for Delivery.
Large companies have been able to take advantage of First Class intelligent mail barcode tracking for years due to the volume of mail they send which enables them to receive bulk tracking data from the USPS. Now, this capability is available for small to mid-sized companies sending mass letter mailings and online sellers shipping items in letters, flats, and bubble mailers. Due to the volume of mail that is sent through LetterTrack, each LetterTrack Pro customer is able to obtain tracking information for their First Class mailpieces. The decoding of the USPS intelligent mail barcode tracking data and real-time email tracking that LetterTrack Pro provides is the intrinsic value of LetterTrack.
I dont think any of really understand how it works. To me, it sounds like they’re somehow hacking the USPS system. I’m also not sure if eBay would accept this number or not.
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BINGO, Jay! I was being lazy and didn’t feel like doing the search. My excuse is that I’m a bit under the weather.
Perhaps this will help those interested in selling lots of small items and/or ephemera. I’m thinking about selling my stamp collection next year, some piece by piece and some in sets. I think as long as I’m selling in large enough quantities or if I have some valuable stamps, I’d probably not use this service. But, I could set up a second store and use this service to have some kind of backup.
Something to think about for those interested.
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I’ve been using Letter Track Pro and Popeye’s Postcards’ (John Miller) shipping methods for postcards, stickers, and patches for about a year now in my budget store. I use a cheap 4.5” x 6.5” cardboard envelope that’s stiff but not too stiff (see Mike’s post above), a thin plastic bag-weight postcard sleeve (or a small ziplock like a 3”x3”), and a first class stamp. Miller only uses Letter Track Pro for more expensive cards because there are a couple of extra steps involved but I’m low volume so I always use it.
The tracking is not so much a hack as it is sort of like how eBay passes on commercial USPS rates to us no matter how few packages we actually ship, with USPS’ blessing. Letter Track is passing the ability for anyone to add the address barcode that is in common use by bulk mailers and I’m sure it’s also fine with USPS.
How it works is that you have to go into Letter Track Pro, manually enter the address and purchase a barcode, which includes a tracking number. Pricing varies. It is pay as you go, starting at $0.01 per address and up, depending on your volume. No subscription but it’s like Shipsaver where you preload money for your transactions. Then you have to manually print out the address (that includes the barcode) from the Letter Track Pro website and manually copy and paste the tracking number into eBay. It does not work for non-machinable letters (too stiff or more than ¼” thickness).
The benefits are limited. Ebay does accept and recognize the tracking number, but it does not automatically upload status updates. If you click on the tracking number in the orders list during shipment, it will always show nothing more than “tracking has been uploaded”. Not even “accepted”. You can go on the Letter Track Pro website and see the additional usual updates but it always ends at “out for delivery”. There is never a “delivered” scan.
You can also receive email updates of the status changes if you wish, but I have turned those off. I don’t think eBay will accept this tracking as proof of shipment or delivery as it does with regular tracking. Also, it does not work for foreign addresses.
All in all it’s not worth much more than a selling point in my listings and peace of mind for me if a buyer ever wants to know where their item is.
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The benefits are limited. Ebay does accept and recognize the tracking number, but it does not automatically upload status updates. If you click on the tracking number in the orders list during shipment, it will always show nothing more than “tracking has been uploaded”. Not even “accepted”. You can go on the Letter Track Pro website and see the additional usual updates but it always ends at “out for delivery”. There is never a “delivered” scan.
–If eBay wont use this scan to determine if a package is officially delivered, how does it help if there’s a shipping dispute?
–Does USPS acknowledge this scan as an official tracking number if an item is lost?I’m confused how this helps when there’s an issue.
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@SilverFoxFinds and @MDCGalleries Thank you for the tips and experience. I’ll switch these few items over. I was aware of the 1/4 rule, but it’s a good reminder!
And I loved the video. As much as I complain about the cost of shipping, it is pretty amazing to be able to send something across the country in an efficient timely manner.
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To the guy who wants to do 100 items a day, you should watch empty hanger on YouTube. She has a video of her process. She gets everything out of the bags, hangs them immediately on a rack. Does her measurements while they are hung and photos on hanger. Then she bags them with a number sticker. It’s very fast, especially if you do sell similar, use the scheduled thing and go back in a change sizes from your note pad
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Can someone remind me what the efficient way is to calculate sales volume for the week? The stupid shipping-inclusive sales numbers always fool me into feeling more successful than I am.
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Do you mean how we post numbers each week?
–go to the Seller Hub
–Click “Orders”
–Choose range of “This week”
–Up top, it’ll say something like “Results: 1-26 of 26 ( $1,129.14 )”
–Click on the “i”
–Actual sales numbers without shipping income is the “item total” (not “grand total”)
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