Scavenger Life Episode 447: 2 Month Free Shipping Experiment

[Ryanne]

 Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week Jan 19-25, 2019 Total Items in Store: 8384 Items Sold: 26 Gross Sales: $1,055.12 Cost of I
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 447: 2 Month Free Shipping Experiment]

[The_SEAM_Store]

The 2019 Paypal 1099Ks have started to roll out for those of us who meet the minimum threshold. Here is some info I have gathered from ebay and paypal reps concerning the 1099k and internet sale tax.

Problem. The 1099K gross total does indeed include the sales tax that ebay has been processing through Paypal for the past 2-3 months since they changed their collection method. However, the sales tax amount is not clearly broken out on the 1099K, and you will need to do it yourselves. Since eBay changed their sales tax collection method near the end of the year, running a ebay sales report will not give you an accurate total for the sales tax that was processed through paypal. Additionally the ebay report only goes back 90 days, so it will not be that useful in the future, unless you run the report at less than 90 day intervals.

Solution. You can download a CSV format report on your paypal activity page for the entire 2019 year. It may take a couple hours for the report to generate. Once it becomes available, open the CSV file in Excel/Numbers. You will see a Sales Tax column which will show you the sales tax collected by ebay though paypal payments (mainly only in November and December). *Note, depending on the specific report criteria you selected to download, you may see duplicate sales tax values for each transaction. If so, you will need to filter the “type” column to include only “Tax Collected by Partner”. This will eliminate all the duplicates. Next you can (SUM) the sales tax column to get your sales tax total which should be deducted on your 2019 taxes, since it is not income.

When the managed payments changeover happens at some point this year, this will all change. So it may be a good idea to set up automatic downloads of the monthly ebay sales reports, if you aren’t already using them, using ebay’s file exchange. Once your payments are being processed though ebay that may be the only way to reconcile for 2020.

Hope that helps.

[Doublythumbs]

Thanks, for the easy solution to the tax issue, SEAM! I’m downloading my report now.

[Mark S]

1/19/20 – 1/25/20

Total Items In Store: 3340
Items Sold: 24
Cost of Items Sold: $ 70
Total Sales: $ 736.03
Highest Price Sold: $ 65 (boots)
Average Price Sold: $ 30.67
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 67.33
Number of items listed: 16

Gut Sales Report for the week: Good sales. Felt a lot slower than last week, but still a good week. I finally got around to listing the clocks I picked up a while ago. They are starting to sell well.

Challenge of the week: List more.

Scavenge of the week: Picked up a new pair of Riedell ice skates for $5 at the thrift store. I bought 35,000 of the same item. They all easily fit in a small grocery bag. Can you guess what it was? It was 7 boxes of vintage swingline staples – 5000 per box.

Mark S

[Doublythumbs]

Jan 19 – 25
Total Items in Store: 3078
Items Sold: 32
Total Sales : $1,341
* ABOVE yearly average of $885
Highest Price: $120 (KOWA KT-91 9 Transistor Pocket Radio)
Average Price: $42
Returns: 1
Cost of Goods Sold: $138
Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
Number of New Items Listed this Week: 95

Great podcast this week! Thank you for letting us know about your free shipping experiment. I tried it once for about a month and found that I had the same experience. I know you’re supposed to raise your prices to reflect the cost of shipping to the zone that’s furthest away from you, but it doesn’t seem fair to those who live close. I’ve always liked calculated shipping for the reasons you do. It’s less worry and hassle, and if someone on the west coast wants something bad enough to pay $20+ for shipping, they’re going to do it regardless. And actually, I just looked and California is my #1 ranked buyer by state.

I had a fantastic week of sales! On Monday, I recalled that I could send offers to watchers (which I’ve been neglecting to do this whole time) and sent out about 75 offers or so. I made eight sales nearly right away! I feel like that may have stirred the pot so to speak because my phone’s been cha-chinging way more than usual for the rest of the week.

No scavenging again this week. I was going to attend an auction but caught a bug instead. Thankfully just a quick 48 hr cold but nevertheless I felt it was a good idea to stay home and list instead.

[WabashValleyRelics]

Total Items In Store: 13,931
Total # of Orders – 109
Total items sold – 159
Gross Sales $2,814.01
Highest Price Sold: $150 (antique yearbook)
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 0
Number of items listed: 294
Cost of Goods Sold – ~$28

Another week of mostly magazine sales. The yearbook that sold was my highest cost of goods, costing me $10 about 2 years ago at an auction. The 2nd highest single item that sold was an action figure for $120. I paid $8 for that item last summer. The rest were paper items, records, and smalls, all which I pay well under a dollar a piece for.

11 of my orders last week were combined orders. You’re correct, it can be a hassle sometimes to combine orders on Ebay, they need to streamline it more. What I generally do if a customer messages about ordering several items is I ask them to send me a list of the items they want to buy. Then I just end all but 1 of the listings. The last listing I just edit and change the title to something like “Private Listing Lot of 8 Magazines for “xxx”

Sometimes I’ll add the other items photos to the combined listing, but sometimes when they order 10+ items at a time, I’ll skip adding photos and in the product description will have a list of items included in sale; then just update price/weight. Customers seem to enjoy buying in the simplest manner possible, so I usually do what I can to help make it easier. That’s personally helped me gain some repeat customers, especially GSP customers who want to combine orders.

Speaking of return customers, I agree 100%. I have no idea how such a basic feature hasn’t been added to Ebay yet. You can use paypal reports to give you a list of your top and/or repeat customers of 2019, but I don’t believe it’s complete data. It doesn’t account for customers who don’t purchase via paypal.

Hope everyone had a great week.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 1565
Items Sold 35
Total Sales $1,188.00
COGS $78.00
Total Profit $1,110.00
Average profit $31.71
Average sales price $33.94
New Listings 72

I just compared my January year over year numbers. I have 50% more active listings and my average sales (after adjusting for an anomaly $2k sale last year) have doubled. My average items sold in a week went from 25 to 42.
Boy I sure hope this trend continues!
I see no end in sight to my escalated listing pace. My only issue is getting new listings into my inventory system. I wish it was warmer with more sunlight so I could spend more time in my storage shed. I’ve never ran power to the shed so when I go out there in the dark I use the flashlight on my phone and I freeze my butt off if the temps are in the 30’s.

Not much time left – March (and more daylight) is just around the corner. I have big plans for the spring!

[totommyto]

Hello all, a most enjoyable podcast. Great to finish out the last 40 minutes at work listening and enjoying great fresh company the entire ride home!
I turned my entire Etsy store over to Free Shipping after the gentle muscle job we Etsy sellers received some time back. It has simplified multiple purchases and has eliminated all the pesky shipping questions. Big and bulky have not been an issue. It may have hurt some potential sales, yet it may have helped some things to sell as well I suppose, so perhaps no difference there.
For eBay, when I list new now it is with free shipping. Also, when I get the ‘Item hasn’t sold in 16 months’ message, and I get around to selling similar, I’ll add free shipping. Eventually, I’ll be all free shipping. For the big and bulky, like the vacuum cleaner I just sold Saturday, it is a bit of an equation at listing time, yet it seems to work out. International sales are the best, because the full list price is paid with no shipping deduction on my price received. I wonder about a sale to Alaska with a heavy large item with free shipping? I suppose I’ll deal with that eventually.

1/19 – 01/25/20 (no cross listing is done between platforms)

eBay store: totommyto

Total store items: 828
Number of items sold: 12
Total eBay sales (not counting s/h): $507
Cost of items sold: $44.50
Highest price sold: $250 – Electrolux Automatic G Vacuum from the 1960’s, paid $20. (Added $80 to the price to allow for shipping, and shipping was only $30. Just worked out that way)
Average price sold: $42.25
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 9
Sell through rate for the week: 1.4
Number International sales: 0

Etsy store oldfleatoymarket

Total store items: 630
Number of items sold: 9
Total Etsy sales (not counting s/h): $186
Cost of items sold: $8
Highest price sold: $31 – old wooden Osborne shop brush, paid $2
Average price sold: $20.70
Returns: 0
Money spent on new inventory: 0
Number of new items listed this week: 6
Sell through rate for the week: 1.4
Number International sales: 0

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Right there with you TTT. When we did the Free shipping change over on Etsy we just went ahead and did some custom work in SixBit and then did some sorting and filtering and added the cost to zone 6 for all weights to zone six.

Doing some more changes today to all items but in a couple of days everything will be free shipping. Even over size DIM weight items. We built a Flipper tool like calculator into our SixBit program and any time an item is over 1,728 cubic inches the Flipper Tools DIMension weight calculator shows us what level of weight the surcharge is and we use that weight cost to build in. Again all to a Zone 6 away from us. If an Hawaii or Alaska pops up will just eat that difference as a cost of doing business. Only had a couple of those since 2002 anyway.

mike at MDC Galleries

[totommyto]

Hi MDC Mike,
Encouraging to hear only a couple of HI & AK sales for all those years! I believe I am set up very similar to you in respect to free shipping calculations, only my getting there (and still getting there) involves much less tech, tools and savvy, yet involves much more time.
Make a great pot of soup like a school trained French Chef with a fancy recipe and the latest soup pan or make a great pot of soup like an old Italian Grandma with an old pot and a pinch of this and a pinch of that.
Grandma can spend all day in the kitchen, true, just like I have the luxury of spending all day at work behind a computer with LOADS of down time. Your time as a pure entrepreneur (I’m guessing) is more valuable than mine.
It may have been hidden in my post above, that I basically made an extra $50 by over estimating free shipping cost into the sale of a vacuum cleaner last week. This seems to be happening more times than not. I don’t necessarily like the idea of this ‘free shipping’, yet I’m beginning to feel like I cannot fight city hall so I’m learning how to play at it successfully and cautiously.

[Timo]

MDC Mike:
I have SixBit and understand what you mean about sorting and filtering etc.

Dimensional shipping is not a puzzle either.

But give me more info on how to add a calculator tool in SixBit program?

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hey Timo: That is just what we call it. But we have created several custom fields into our generic, one of kind hard goods template. The ones that pertain to shipping are item weight:, box size cubic inches, empty box weight, Free shipping add in, DIM Weight over 1,728 cu.” along with 3 others we use for other purposes.

We enter the item weight as we create the listing in that field, then we manually estimate the box size we will use for that item and manually multiply the 3 dim. and enter the cubic inches there, the in the Empty box weight we have a drop down menu I created that has the box weights of every box we use including the dunnage stuffing paper and bubble wrap and we then select the box weight by the cubic inches. [There is a whole other story on how to create the spread sheet we created to calculate the weight per cubic inch.] I explained that a few years back somewhere here in SL.

Now we come to the Free ship Add in., based on the combined item weight total off the scale in our assistants work station with the drop down list we created that gives us the final, packed cubic inch weight we then know what a packed final box is going to weight for that item without ever actually having to pack it up. We have never been off by more than a few ounces in years and 99.9% of the time we fall about 3 to 6 ounces above what it comes out to when we do have to go and pack it. But years of tweaking that chart have aided in it being more accurate than years ago.

So we click the drop down list of the free ship that we also created a while back. The drop down list has the USPS and FedEx shipping rates on it. All we do is click on the wieght we came up with between the item weight and the box-packing-dunnage weight and click on that wieght. The cost for that weight package to Zone 6 fills in.That number in that field will stay with this listing forever. That dollar amount straight from the USPS and FedEx prices we pre-loaded [typed into the drop down] when we created that custom field is what we add onto the item price and it is that combined dollar amount we use as our price.

For items that are over the 1,728 cubic inch mark we use the “DIM weight field. When the Box size cubic inch filed’s manually calculated size shows the dimensions in cubic inches, we have another drop down list we created during initial set-up and customization of SB. That list will contain [this field is still under construction currently] the surcharge tier levels for packages to Zone 6 for the incrental tiers of cubic inches and corresponding weights. That will then tell us we need to change the Free Ship Add In amount from the drop down list in that field. all of this data by the way was derived by working through all scenarios using one of our SL members web site tools called “FlipperTools.com”. Think his name is Josh. Jay may remember because Jay interviewed him years ago as he was building that site.

Also e have the drop down set up to also show us when to jump from USPS Priority to FedEx. Our break is at 5 lbs. Anything lower goes USPS then at 5.00 lbs. we jump to FedEx.

I know this hard to follow and it still involves some manual calculations, the creation of several drop down list that contain current shipping rates [yes the drop downs need to be updated whenever rates change] and the use of the FlipperTools DIMensional Weight calculator but everything does the trick and in only a few seconds as we travel along the SB listing flow path.

Sorry if this all sounds like goobly gook but it is hard to explain in words.

mike at mdcgfa

[Timo]

MDC Mike:
Ok. Thanks. I can kinda visualize that.

[simplicio]

Interesting to hear about your free shipping experiment!
I had a really good week on ebay.

Sales c/w shipping: CAD$3,808, 17 sales, COGS: $1,229, Fees: ~$522, Postage: $389 –> Gross profit: $1,669
Expenditures: $721 –> Cashflow: $2,565
Hours: 11
Listed: $1,510, 13 listings
Sales: ECG simulator $500 (paid $120 on eBay), door strikes $980 (paid $780 on eBay, still plenty more to sell).

One suggestion this week would be: try out Terapeak. I have started using it and it’s actually much better than I thought it’d be.

One great thing about it is it shows you total dollars sold under your search term in the last year, so you can judge not just price but popularity. That’s a feature watchcount does not have.

[Jay]

When you are buying these industrial and electronic items on eBay to resell, have you had any issues with not being able to test the items?

[simplicio]

I much prefer to get them new (e.g., those door strikes). Some, I can test. Otherwise, I am relying on the other seller to state their item condition correctly… which definitely has its risks.

[Jay]

Agree. I would just be worried buying industrial electronics. I would just assume if someone is selling them so cheap that they’re broken. Someone bought at an auction and had no way to test them.

But you seem to do well on these items!

[simplicio]

A variable DC power supply and a multimeter can do a lot vis-a-vis testing. It may not allow you to confirm full functionality but at least you can check it powers on without having to buy the OEM adapter, and you can see whether there is some kind of an output too.

[Jay]

Have you ever purchased lots on eBay and had to send back because they weren’t working properly?

[simplicio]

Yep, a couple times, although typically the seller just refunds.

[jadowa]

Week of January 18 to January 24

Total Items In Store: 5376
Items Sold: 210
Total Sales (w/o Shipping): $2400.94
Cost of Items Sold: $449.68
Total Gross Profit: $1951.26
Highest Price Sold: $49.99 (Brother Disney Embroidery Card)
Average Price Sold: $11.43
Money Spent on New Inventory: $823.52
Number of items listed: 275

My death pile is starting to get out of control… And, I spent over $800 in inventory this week… I’m going to have to stop the buying and get to listing!!!

I hate taxes… enough said!

[Retro Treasures WV]

My death pile is starting to get out of control… And, I spent over $800 in inventory this week… I’m going to have to stop the buying and get to listing!!!

Easier said than done…

Having said that, you listed 275 items this week? Wow!

[Jay]

Seriously. 275 listed in a week is incredible. Do you have helpers?

[TreasureFinder]

I am also having Go Daddy issues. Starting in October 2019, the Pirate Ship costs are no longer auto categorizing into Shipping Costs like they used to, they are just showing up as Paypal Fees, so I have to go in one by one and pick out the shipping charges and categorize them one by one. I can’t click the little box to Categorize All Paypal charges to shipping either because that is going to mess up things that aren’t shipping. I’m about to cancel Go Daddy I think. I also can’t find the summary of the Sales Tax on their so I had to add it up manually as well.

[Jay]

Yeah, GoDaddy seems to be slipping. Does anyone here use Quickbooks for their eBay business? Curious if Quickbooks would do a better job importing and syncing accounts.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

We have hit on this topic in the past. The same confusion seems to still exist between and Bookkeeping system like Go Daddy and QUICKEN vs. QuickBOOKS!!!
Hope some of the more astute accounting members will jump in and do a good explanation between the two and also give some advice on why and when one would be preferred over the other. Mark Tews and Julie B or Sharyn [I believe] maybe could help clarify.

QuickBooks is a double entry bookkeeping system that uses a General Ledger and Journal entries to support the GL. It allows the user to create invoices for customers, receive partial payments against those invoices, submit monthly statements showing amounts paid and remaining balances. This is what is called an “accrual” system of bookkeeping and is very, very robust, has tons of things to set up and will run about $350 or more per year depending on the version you get.

Quicken on the other hand is a CASH based system, very similar to Go Daddy but more robust than Go Daddy. It was bought from Intuit who invented it and had it for years but was abandoning it for it’s mother and much more profitable system QuickBooks.

Quicken has a business version which we switched to after we decided to no longer persue the printing, construction-remodeling and spray foam businesses and only start doing reselling online.

QuickBooks is overkill for the smaller business that does not invoice clients, create and issue statements and those that don’t want to carry a large inventory system within the structure of their bookkeeping system.

Quicken serves the smaller business with a CASH bases structure, stands on the journal entry system but does not include the General Ledger portion of accounting, which most accountants will tell the nocie to stay out of and let only your CPA make Gen. Ledger adjustments.

Quicken does interface with most banks [unsure about very small banks] but you can call and find out] and also downloads from PayPal.

Just like Go Daddy one has to set up the categories that you want things to be associated with, but that is a one time up front task except when you want to add new categories of expenses or income.

We run all of our online businesses with Quicken for Business as well as several contract jobs. We also can and do use the basic invoice system, but don’t carry outstanding balances over year to year. That is more for the “accrual system”.

As always, we always say check with your accountant or CPA but make sure to address the way of doing business based on Accrual vs. Cash basis.

BTW Quicken is only $69 per year, will reconcile all accounts, it also downloads all credit card accounts, has many reports, a balance sheet, and a profit & loss statement that can be viewed.

So hopefully, this will share some light on the subject.

mike at mdc galleries

[Jay]

Thanks Mike.
–I read that Quicken is getting less useful because it doenst have as much support these days. True?

–I think I understand what Quickbooks does. Since we have other businesses, we were thinking of using it for all our money in/out. With our video business, we do send invoices. So if we wanted to use it for eBay, we couldnt just sync eBay and paypal to record our sales and expenses?

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hey..

#1. Really can’t address that because we have had so few problems with Quicken. The few times we called, they were very knowledgeable and one time even did a remote in to correct something that I messed up.

#2. I think you are right about QuickBooks now that you guys are branching out so much. We used QB for years for several businesses all lumped under one accounting program. Just name your business and create a database for each. Then when you log into the app, you will see a list of your business by name, like JandR Real Estate, JandR Interior Design & Consulting, JandR Air BnB, JandR Main Street Store, etc. Then you click on that business name and QB will open up a full accounting set of books for you. Sort of like having 6 Go Daddy’s all rolled into one app.
From there you can do everything you do in GoDaddy just that you will be dealing only with that database for that one company only and it does not intefere with any of the other businesses books.
You will have separate checking accounts and credit cards, report generation, P&L sheets, expenses, payable and recievables just for that one open business.
Then if you want to go and work on records and booking functions for your next business, you close the current business you were working in and then click to open the next business.

Things may have changed somewhat. It was many years ago that I had our several business in QuickBooks.

With you having projects that may span over one calendar year through and into the the Accural system will probably be best for you anyway. That way any WIP [Work In Progress] both paybales, recievables, building materials not yet consumed on your work or job site can be carried over. As QB will doa good job of handling larger equipment purchases and depriciation of those and all of these things keep in your General Ledger.

And of a note, most Accountants-CPA’s do not have the Quicken software but with QuickBooks you can prepare everything within your accounting system [QB] then just use the send to your accountant function and he gets everything he needs for taxes for year end and quarterly from QB. Also most CPA’s do a QB upgrade annually and have the latest tax laws built in. They also can remote into your rig and handle things or make adjustments in your General Ledgers.
As a second choice you can also dump everything onto a thumb drive and just hand it to him when you do your sitdown and discuss ear end meeting. I did that for years.

Hope this helps a little, but I think QB would be the better choice for all your enterprises. But and a noteworthy BUT, you or Ryanne will have to learn or already know something about accounting-bookkeeping. things in QB are set up to coinside with the American Standards and Principles of Accounting, actually.. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP or U.S. GAAP). Either you or Ryanne will have to be the bookkeeper or hire a partime once a week person to do it for you.

mike at mdc concepts, inc.

[Julie B]

Believe it or not I still use….wait for it….Excel spreadsheets to track all of my accounting. But, my sales are much smaller compared to many of you and I only sell on one platform. I don’t have employees and because I have outside W-2 work, I don’t need to pay myself a salary thru ebay sales which simplifies things immensely. This year I will actually use an accountant to file my taxes because things are getting too complicated tax-wise. I do have a new business start up that has not yet gone live but once it does I plan to use QuickBooks only because the CPA firm I’ll be using offers a free class on it along with free support and I can upload my QB data directly to them.

Also, truth be told – those GoDaddy commercials from back in the day always rubbed me the wrong way so I’ve avoided their product entirely for that reason.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by Julie B.

[Steven S]

These are just some thoughts, not meant to disparage anyone, please consider my tone as purely conversational.
After last weeks and this latest podcast, the comments about Facebook mystify me a little.
Why would you discount the fact that FB users are older people now, seemingly not as relevant to our business’s?
After all, I think the one common denominator we all have in selling is to target the people with money to buy things. Kids generally don’t have money to throw around or have access to Paypal accounts and if they do it’s someone older who’s going to be supervising any on line purchases. Are younger people usually buying vintage items? I would think they want what’s new and cool which is great if that’s what your selling. Clothing may be an exception.

For me the best thing about FB is the groups, there is a group for practically anything. Using those groups hive mind has helped my research exponentially, and I’ve literally taught myself a couple of new skill sets via those groups. I used to join online forums but FB groups is so much easier.
FB Marketplace is starting to become more common way of selling stuff and with the addition of shipping I think it will expand.
Right now I find the FB marketplace to be like eBay in 1999, you can find stuff cheap from people who don’t research what they have, that’s why they’re selling on FB, eBay is not their thing.

On another topic, are there still collectors out there?
For me here in South Dakota, I see people who are in my age range (61) that look to me like they are still from the 30’s and 40’ era. They’re mostly rural folks I see at auctions and they are buying up the glass butter churns and old washer plungers etc. for big money. That kind of stuff doesn’t interest me but the antique dealers want them so they must have customers who collect them.
I think there will always be collectors of rare vintage, unique items, peoples interests change with age, I know when I was in my 30’s & 40’s I wasn’t into antiques so much but my eyes have opened to the interesting world of things from a different era.

[Jay]

You make very good points. I’m curious if the next generation will migrate to eBay…or are we just expecting eBay to fade away as Baby Boomers fade away.

Same way for Facebook. It’s a great platform now, but I see fewer younger people on Facebook (they dont want to be where their parents are).

You’re absolutely correct that eBay and Facebook are powerhouses right now. Wonder if that will be true in 10 years. Ultimately we have no power one way or another. Just a philosophical conversation.

[Steven S]

As the old saying goes, nothing stays the same.
If we make it to a future with matter ‘Replicators’ the monetary system will be obsolete.

[Lukastreasure]

@Steven S – I agree about Facebook and the groups. I’ve found many to be helpful for researching and identifying items, and there really does seem to be a group for just about anything. The one caveat with the groups is that some of them are a bit sensitive to resellers utilizing the hive mind. There are so many lazy sellers that simply post “What’s this?”. I use the hive sparingly for questions but they also have their files sections that often have some great written resources.

[almasty]

I’ve finally shut down my international sales on Ebay after the latest shipping increase this past weekend. It cost $26 for me to ship a book to Japan, and I had only charged $22 for it. Yikes. Postcards will now cost $16.50 to ship. It was bad enough when postcards cost $13.50 to ship internationally, but I’m done now with this increase. People from the UK have been especially upset over the $13.50 shipping charge over the past year – can’t you just ship it at letter rate for $4?! Yeah, we don’t have that here in America, sorry! I will also not risk shipping a postcard without cardboard or protection so it will potentially get damaged in shipment – you know customers will become upset if you ship it their way without protection and they receive it damaged!

I started allowing for GSP sales over the past few weeks, and did have a GSP order a few weeks ago. I’ve expanded it so all of my listings are now available for GSP. I currently still have Canada and Mexico available as shipping options for the time being, but I might eventually change it to everywhere. I still have international shipping available on Amazon and other sites I sell on.

I haven’t had a chance to listen to the full podcast yet, but I can say that free shipping works well with books, clothes, ephemera, smaller 1st class items in general. With larger shipping, I can see it working well if you ship using Fedex Ground or UPS, but not when USPS is offered.

This has been an unusual January for buying – normally there isn’t too much out there, but it feels like the summer out there with collections. I have one collection coming in this week and then I’m mainly done buying until the spring. Just time to list, my backlog areas are full.

Almost feels like we’re coming onto the next recession? The winter is an unusual time of the year for people to be selling this many collections – spring & summer are usually the best times of the year for buying. I guess I’m also feeling anxious because of the coronavirus, which I haven’t heard any resellers talking about for some reason? It might cause the Chinese economy to contract and push us into a worldwide recession. Yay 2020.

[Timo]

@almasty:
I guess all rates just went up. But check out PirateShip for the international shipping.

There was an post a couple of months back on SL from user Ricker that you should re-read.

Re-Read this thread; Post #68450

[almasty]

Yeah, I’ve seen people talking about PirateShip for a long time now, but I can’t be bothered to use it. I already use Endicia for the majority of my shipping for Amazon/Ebay/Etsy/other venues. Sometimes FedEx shipping through Ebay for my “general” store (not international), sometimes Etsy’s shipping for international or expensive items. To me, that just seems like too many different shipping places to use to add even one more into the mix.

I have kept international shipping on all of my other venues outside of Ebay. The main reason I did this is because I do not experience the problems I do on Ebay when it comes to it. People on other venues will just pay the shipping price with no problem.
Sometimes international buyers will buy an item and then complain the listing said free shipping – yes, if you indicate you’re in the US it will show free shipping. If you’re outside of the US, it will list a shipping rate. When I don’t back down and provide free shipping to these international buyers, they ask me to cancel. I do.

For the ones that do want to buy something internationally, they will sometimes email beforehand and complain about the price. I tell them it is the true cost of shipping an item from the US. They continue to complain, but some will buy. Others will say, “if in the future you can ship this for a lower rate, please let me know.”

I also feel like items shipped internationally go missing more frequently than other venues. Yes, of course some items do go missing, get stuck in customs for an exceptionally long time, or get set back because the customer didn’t want to pay the additional taxes for their country. That still costs me every time it happens, and it happens way more frequently for me on Ebay than Amazon.

So, I’m done. If people internationally want to buy, they can pay more through GSP for it. I am relieved to just ship it to a place within the US with tracking and/or insurance and that’s that. If Amazon had a similar set-up, I would 100% ship that way through them as well. What I do see on Amazon are people using forwarding services; they will use a forwarding service mainly through NYC, New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Florida to get their items shipped to them internationally. If people on Ebay want to do that, they can feel free.

Speaking of, I haven’t had a sale through Shop Airlines America in a really long time. Do they even still exist?

[Timo]

almasty:
I understand you wanting to keep shipping simplified. My volume is way less and my offerings are eBay and US only. So long as they have a zip code: territories, APO, FPO are Ok by me. I tried GSP and did not get any sales. So that is in the past for me. Besides GSP may be gone soon?

Seems like quite a few of my sales are thru forwarding services. I just mailed a small package to a Miami forwarder today.

To answer your question about Shop Airlines America: On 1/17/2020, I had a sale to “ShopAirlines Inc” that shipped first class to Redondo Beach, CA. Someone posted a positive feedback for the transaction a few days later. Odds are that item went across the Pacific.

[Nancy]

Almasty I just did a search of the forums for ‘virus’ because I was wondering if there was any discussion of the coronavirus. Yours was the only post I saw.

I’m disturbed seeing face masks being sold on ebay at greatly inflated prices.

[almasty]

I was actually just about to post an interesting article I read about shipping to & from China being impacted by the coronavirus.

Interesting how no resellers anywhere are talking about it, huh?

[Jay]

Are products from China being delayed?

[Simon]

Thanks for the show Ryanne & Jay.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3508
Items Sold: 37
Total Sales: $1159.49
Cost of Items Sold: $151
Average Price Sold: $31.34
Average Cost of Item: $4.11
Highest Price Item Sold: $240 Vintage 1970s Fox Yoko Motorcross Pants
Number of items listed this week: 53 worth approx. $1392
YTD Sales: $3752
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +15%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 451
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 221
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 113.5
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.05%
Hats sold this week: 25 (67% of sales) worth $461.99 (39% of sales $)

I had a very good week for this time of year. My highest priced sale came from clothes again (that I rarely sell due to lack of interest on my part). I probably only paid a few dollars for them. (I bought a pile of stuff cheaply at a warehouse/estate sale). I also sold several football souvenirs from past Superbowls that I picked up from an online auction. I got got them just in time to cash in on the current interest in the Superbowl.

Regarding your free-shipping experiment…. Unfortunately we, as smaller sellers, have no way to run those experiments scientifically (eg: a true A/B test) so we have no way to know what the impact was. If you hadn’t offered free-shipping, maybe your sales would have been 20% lower. Maybe they would have been the same. We can never really know for sure.

Thumbs-up to Ryanne’s suggestion for a search function in purchase history. I had the same frustration the other day doing the exact same thing.

Thanks for highlighting the Sales Tax issue. I imagine that huge numbers of people (non S.L listeners) will accidentally end up paying income tax on their sales tax revenue because they dont hear about this.

Hope everyone has a great week!

[Jay]

Regarding your free-shipping experiment…. Unfortunately we, as smaller sellers, have no way to run those experiments scientifically (eg: a true A/B test) so we have no way to know what the impact was. If you hadn’t offered free-shipping, maybe your sales would have been 20% lower. Maybe they would have been the same. We can never really know for sure.

Absolutely true, but its the only test we can do 🙂 If we trust out gut, Free Shipping didnt feel like it moved the needle at all….and was actually painful to eat the shipping cost.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

But did you think about this. Maybe your sales were down, maybe even a lot, say several hundreds of dollars per week, but because of free shipping your sales didn’t drop. So maybe you did have more sales from free shipping that “offset” your loss of regular calculated sales.

Just a thought and as stated above, really no way to know or be able to test that out.

A hypothetical question: What if, now that you have gone back to calculated shipping, your sales drop a lot per week, would that make you think differently about free shipping? Just wondering.

Now besides that, what about all the people that use the “Show me only Free Shipping sellers”. There is no way to gage who may have come to your web site but didn’t because of that filter. As I have mentioned before, my “mini” local polls at every chance I get socially, I ask about the Free shipping and everybody except for one or too all say they only buy from vendors who offer free shipping. All my in-laws, their older kids, my neighbors, many older antique booth friends we still associate with, our banker and his assistant, people at church, that I have asked about buying on Ebay, most have and almost all say free shipping is the attraction and they especially like it when they filter for free shipping and then see a sale going on.

So, thinking about customer service and providing a “buyer friendly” shopping environment, can only happen if you have a free shipping program in place.

I have also explained in detail our Ebay pricing strategy and how free shipping is added in, even shown some on paper and pen, and they don’t care. They want the hassle free, one price fits all buying environment, even if they end up paying more.

As far as charging more for closer buyers, who cares, it’s usually only a few dollars more and think of this. We buy something for a dollar or less, maybe even $.25 and price it at $49.99. Talk about a huge mark-up. Are we not then getting way too greedy, just because we can research comps. Heck no. Buy for a dollar and sell for ten or more if the market will bear it. That is the American way, that Capitalism at work, so why worry about a percentage of your buyers closer by paying a little more.

If a seller is concerned about a closer buyer paying a few dollars more, then knock off a few percentage points of the sellers 2,000% mark-up and lower the price of the item by $4 and leave the shipping cost built in.

There are two ends to a candle. So, either raise the bridge or lower the water. A $50 item that was gotten in a box lot for $.25 that has a $10 shipping cost built in along with enough mark-up to satisfy you if you sell it with a 20% Sale Discount going on and you took an offer of another 10% off is now different than has plenty of room for you to discount that shipping to a nearby buyer or to anybody.

Your profit is all in your buying costs and your target listing cost. We include a certain amount in our mark-ups for dunnage paper, so many running linear inches of tape, bubble wrap both large and small, a percentage for office supplies, subscriptions, internet, procurement costs, cleaning supplies, part of our mortgage, utility costs, carpet cleaning, generic boxes. Our accounting software shows use all our 50 plus expense categories by Percentages. Those percentages must be built into our prices, regardless of what comps say. If the market doesn’t support that final listing price, then we made a bad buying decision and paid too much.

The reason many buyers complain about shipping costs because that is the one and only thing, they can get a finger hold on that they think they know something about and can leverage it to try to get a discount. Also, could lead to negative feedback. So just take that one thing a buyer thinks he knows about “away from him”. He has no idea about what we paid for something, usually doesn’t know comps or even if he does, if we are truly buying one of a kind items and a buyer can only see 90 days on Ebay or immediate competition, he is in the dark. And we do just as JandR have said, just sit tight and sooner or later you will be the only one listed or through promoted listings we will be seen, and others not seen.

So, if you state as a seller you may lose money, then how dog gone tight are your margins. We build in for Zone 6, if it goes to zone 8 and costs us $4 dollars more, we usually have hundreds of percentages of mark-up in our items so $4 doesn’t matter. Things sell when we don’t have a sale running, we smile all the way to the bank. If we have a 20% off sale, then we still have room. If we run a 30% off Sale and take an offer that’s 20% lower [50% Off the listing price], then that too is built in.

Many comps by the way on Ebay that have Sold are from a lot of sellers who don’t know how to price correctly [Sharyn, notice I didn’t say Clueless] 🙂 and price low. The interesting thing about cross posting is when we price high, and we always do, is when an item sells on one platform at the full listing price, but yet on the other platform it is on a 30% Off Sale and we will take an offer.

So why not use every tool, persuasion tactic, promoted listings, sales event that Ebay has to offer and cover your expenses.

But just a Monday afternoon, wordy, wall of text opinion on free shipping and that as always, combined with $1.50 will get you a partial cup of coffee. 🙂

mike at mdc galleries

[sonia]

Sharyn, notice I didn’t say Clueless

LOL, Mike. i think you meant me, not Sharyn. I was the one playing “niceness police” last week or whenever that was…

[Simon]

Absolutely true, but its the only test we can do 🙂 If we trust out gut, Free Shipping didnt feel like it moved the needle at all….and was actually painful to eat the shipping cost.

Agreed. I definitely think people should be experimenting. I just find it frustrating to figure out what kind of difference these kinds of changes make to my sales. Retail sales are far more volatile that I ever would have expected before I started on eBay. I would definitely find it painful to do free shipping on large items. That’s not an experiment I want to try myself.

[Kentucky Picker]

1/19/20 – 1/25/20
Total items in store: 376
Items sold: 13
COGS: $15
Total sales: $1,585
Highest Price Sold: $1,075 (oil painting)
Average price sold: $122
Money spend on new inventory: $103
Number of items listed: 41

Gut Sales Report for the Week: By far my highest sales week in 2 1/2 years of eBaying. My star of the week was an oil painting I sold for a friend. We will split what’s left after shipping and fees. The painting was 4 x 3 feet. In tech speak, ginormous. I didn’t really think about shipping when we listed it but you grizzled veterans know that’s size is going to be a PITA to pack and ship. I can now confirm that it is indeed a PITA. Long story short, I found a box for a 50″ TV that worked perfect. Shipping cost was $200. It’s on its way to Arizona, so still crossing fingers. I had my wife inspect my packing job, and she gave it her approval so I have that going for me.

Gut Sales Report for January: Amazing. January turned into a huge month for me. $4K is within sight, which would be almost double my best month. Started with a bang with a sale of $450 for a high-end baby stroller system. I had bought several expensive items in the $300-400 range at good prices in the late summer. And they sat and they sat through Q4. Now they’re selling. My only worry is that my source for these (auction place that buys Amazon/Target/Lowes truckloads of returns, has dried up. I mean they’re not offering the nice stuff like Jura espresso machines any more. So, following Jay and Ryanne’s advice, I’ve become an auction junkie. Going for box lots that no one wants and gleaning a few gems. That’s cool, but most of the stuff is $30-40 on eBay. Not complaining, just wish I could find higher ticket stuff.

Scavenge of the week: Traveled to the sticks a week ago in nasty cold rainy weather for an auction of a construction business. Definitely outside my comfort zone. I know nothing about heavy equipment and don’t even have a truck to haul big items. I was mainly interested in boxes of service manuals for Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers etc. Thought I might scoop them up. Wrong. Some guy was buying them for $700 a box! But I did get two partial pallets for $100 total of oil and air filters, all new, all in original packaging. Took me most of the week to clean the packages and list, but my total listing value is around $2,200, so I was very happy with my decision to attend. Lesson learned, don’t be afraid to venture out of your comfort zone.

Greg (aka Kentucky Picker)

[DantheDiner]

I just wanted to say that what the teacher caller said really resonated with me. There is strong potential for value-consumerism right now. eBay could really improve its branding with Millennial-age people by focusing marketing on that, which its enormous secondhand market truly stands out for. Instead, their clothing marketing focuses on high-volume sellers of popular brands, something they have no substantive competitive advantage in, and something for which they face too much competition for to really stand out.

[Jay]

Agreed. Most of the eBay messages we get is to source brand new cheap junk to resell. eBay could really stand out from Amazon by promoting the scone hand market…even if we’re just a small part of overall sales on eBay.

[MyCottage]

Dan the Diner,

Yes, eBay should OWN the used/reconditioned/vintage market….and instead, they’ve been letting it die of neglect, while competitors chip away at it. I think when it comes to new stuff, ebay still sells a lot, but unless they are prepared to invest a ton of money, they are just going to keep losing market share to Amazon, WalMart, etc. For new stuff, it’s no longer just about selection and price, it’s about fast and free shipping, it’s about generous return policies, it’s about all the stuff that ebay doesn’t have to offer: a real product catalog, warehouses, shipping infrastructure, etc. ebay fumbled around for too many years just trying to build its product catalog, and in the end, they aren’t much better off than when they started.

But they still have a lot of used stuff, and if they’d focus on that they might be able to save themselves from the Internet Graveyard. But they would need to make some dramatic changes, and I’m not sure they are capable of doing that. I sure hope so.

[ChristineR]

Article

This is an article about secondhand retail being a high growth area. Ebay really needs to pay up for good tech people, simplify their app, and start marketing as discussed above. Arguably, they have more trustworthiness and selection being the long standing business, so they could capitalize on that.

[MyCottage]

ChristineR,

One thing I do wonder about….ebay had a lousy Q4 and a lousy 2019….and ebay is forecasting a pretty much flat trajectory for 2020. I’d love to know how sales break out between new and old stuff? I suspect those of us selling old stuff actually are better positioned to survive on eBay than sellers selling new stuff….what are your thoughts on that?

[ChristineR]

@My Cottage not sure that I’m qualified to opine on that. I know that Ebay is supposed to be 80% new offered for sale, but I don’t think I’ve seen stats on solds. I’m also not sure about how Google is treating Ebay these days – could be an issue for new item sellers in particular.

The article is interesting because perhaps the rise of Poshmark, etc. is not at Ebay’s expense so much so far, but more at the expense of the mall stores. However, since it is a big growth area and younger buyers are really embracing secondhand shopping, I would think Ebay would want to get on that – looks like they are missing that boat so far with the puny growth. Personally, I’d be a lot more comfortable buying more expensive used items on Ebay than on a smaller platform.

I’d love to see Ebay embrace and advertise what’s really great about Ebay – that you can find things here that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s not too late for Ebay to dominate the used market but I agree that they are slow to pivot and confused about the message. Also just techwise, they need to get their s*it together.

[MyCottage]

ChristineR, And that 80% is part of the problem for ebay….with so much of their revenue coming from new, they can’t easily abandon it. At the same time, if they would focus on improving the marketing and the buyer-seller experience for used/vintage, they might just find they could goose sales enough to do them some good. I think the combination of Posh, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram…..ARE taking market share from eBay , especially for used/vintage, and at a time when ebay should be trying to establish themselves as THE primary site for such stuff……instead, this stuff is becoming less and less centralized, which can make it harder and more time consuming for sellers to read a broadbased market.

I like your term…they need to pivot, and in my view, the window of opportunity to successfully pivot is closing quickly.

I’ll just keep listing and plugging away, but I sure wish they’d get their act together.

[ChristineR]

I can envision a campaign where Ebay would successfully emphasize that they have it all, including cool unique items not available anywhere else. Alas, I read they actually dialed back their advertising. Hopefully they are in the process of pivoting and not just profit taking.

[Sharyn]

Last week, I listened in on an eBay “workshop” through Facebook. This was from a lady that spoke at the eBay UpFront in November. I didn’t mention it on the forum because I didn’t know what her schtick was, i.e., what she was trying to sell. I found out on Sunday that she has a paid subscription Facebook page where she has “exclusive” content for $43/month or $430/year. Surprise, surprise, I didn’t bite.

I did find her videos to be pretty interesting. Most of the stuff I know from being active on here. I would say that the most useful information was on social media and how it could help a seller increase volume. She says that she is removing all her videos from the page on Thursday around 5PM. If someone has interest, they can go to the link below and ask to be added. Then watch either the three workshop videos (Day 1, 3, and 5) or just the Wednesday video about social media (Day 3).
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2622007851224633/

If the link doesn’t work, search within Facebook for “Skyrocket Your eBay Sales In 2020”.

Week of Jan 19 – 25
* Total Items in Store: 1482 eBay, 34 Etsy
* Items Sold: 24 eBay
* Cost of Items Sold: $19.75 + $56ish Commission
* Total Sales: $415.11 eBay
* Highest Price Sold: $36.72 for 2 sets of 10 USAir teaspoons
* Average Price Sold: $17.30
* Returns: 0
* Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
* Number of items listed this week: 0

I had a decent week. I’m not selling higher value items, just lots of lower to medium value ones.

[Castle Rock Emporium]

I haven’t explored it fully and but Wave Bookkeeping does General Journal entries, inventory, syncs and is cloud based. And it’s free.

[sonia]

Good to know. Thanks for the pointer, Castle Rock.

[chaoticgood]

Weekly report: Another SLOW week. I dropped a lot of prices on Poshmark and got 3 small sales out of that. I met my listing goal again, although it’s been focused on Poshmark. Once I get caught up, I’ll crosspost over to Ebay.

Items sold – 5
Gross sales – $84 (about 1/4 going to shipping and fees)
COG sold – est $5. Almost everything else was my kids old toys and clothes ($20 eight years ago).
Active listings – 186
Items listed – 21

The two biggest items were a Calico Critters set for $28 on Mercari that I had a lot of fun photographing. And then I sold a hunting tree mounting part for $25 on ebay. This part was a piece from a really random lot that I get from one of my local sources. It cost me $6 and quite a bit of research. But I’ve sold $100 from it, with a couple more items left. Quite a bit when to the trash or thrift store, too.

I’ve been starting to get interested in perfume as a category – it’s pretty standardized and the product is small, which is a big plus as space is my biggest constraint. Tonight I was in a bidding war for an online auction of old perfume from an estate auction. It appeared that there might be $400 worth of perfume in a grungy tote. I was hoping to get it for $50. I went as high as $85, and the lot went for $110. Too high for me to make the gamble. It also saves me an hour of driving and lets me spend that hour on new listings. I should be glad I didn’t go higher, but I hate to lose a bidding war.

[WBird]

Ryanne, you probably know this already, but just in case you don’t, you can Exclude Shipping Locations on your listings. I exclude HI and AK from some of my Free Shipping listings, although this may not be for everyone.

[gargolfer]

On the issue of figuring out sales tax collected by Ebay, I was able to find mine by downloading the monthly PayPal PDF statement under Reports/Statements/Monthly. There is a line for ‘Tax Collected by Partner’ for the sales tax that was collected for the month. I only had taxes listed for the months of November and December, but some of you may have had some collected in October. I’m not sure how this will change when I am forced to go to managed payments, as I am still using PayPal.

[The_SEAM_Store]

OMG guys! I have a friend coming by to check into helping me out part time. He’ll be here any minute for “disorientation”. Hope my crazy doesn’t scare him off. I’m super excited!

[Lukastreasure]

Great topic with the free shipping experiment. I’ve noticed that Terapeak even shows how much shipping was for each item what percentage of items like yours sold with free shipping, which makes it more valuable for research. It did move me to offer free shipping for some of my more commodity type items.

Here are my numbers for the week. Sales still a bit slower here, but getting back into the swing of posting this week, so looking forward to moving up again.

Week Ending 01/25/2020
Total Items in Store: 1141
Items Sold: 19
Gross Sales: $671.20
Gross wo Shipping $520.30
Cost of Items Sold: $46.42
Highest Price Sold: $75.00 (Tibetan Silver Snuff Bottle)
Average Price Sold: $27.38
Returns: 1 (Tibetan silver snuff bottle – ouch!)
Money Spent on New Inventory: 0
Sold via promoted listings: 7
Promoted Percentage: 36.84%
Average Days Listed: 265.79
Longest Listed: 990
New items listed: 21

Sucks that my highest sale of the week was also my one return. Returned for a defect that was clearly noted in the description. At least he’s paying shipping.

[MoCoyotes]

1/19-1/25 2020

Total Items in Store: 3100
Items Sold: 33
Cost of Items Sold: $42
Total Sales: $1222
Highest Price Sold: $122 (WWII Pants)
Average Price Sold: $37
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $62
Number of items listed this week: 66

I was waiting for this episode, since I noticed the free shipping test awhile back! 😂

We had been ahead of last year until after this week. Now behind because last year on this week we had double the sale numbers. Really feels slowish but it’s ok. I’m getting back to listing more, as I should. Gotta feed the beast.

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Customer messaging directly for returns

Friends,

My case this extra communication (please remember I have a 1000 item store only) has given me positive results.
First my statistics does not get negative points for customer asking for returns (for me small numbers weighs a lot). Second, the only case recently when the person formally asked for return I had a lot of problem.
All cases when customer contacted me (even a case in Mexico where I sold a heavy car radio) we were able to come to terms and minimize the impact. Last week even a positive feedback I had for that.

Again, this is my experience for a small store

Paulo H

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Generation driven collections

A good percentage of my inventory is composed with Boomers collectibles. So much so that I stopped buying those, only when I come up with something that is a clear shot.
I had a huge lucky a couple of years back when I purchased a whole collection of Lenox Garden Birds collection, it was a small pallet worth.

From an online auction, considering how much I paid plus shipping (shipping doubled me the cost), the average cost per item was between $6 and $7. An absurd since all of those were retired. I still have inventory and they sell at least one per month, normal sale price is about $80 plus shipping, there are some for $35 in the lower end.

My wife almost killed me when the pallet was delivered by UPS hehehe

On the other hand (I remember Jay and Sue rooted for me on this one), related to my OCD and hoarding, eBay was a major treatment. Recently I put most of my toys and action figure collections. They’ve been selling pretty well.

Paulo H

[Paulo H Leocadio]

Returning customers

As I mentioned on the other post, I am listing most of my toys and action figures. Since there are duplicated ones for one or other reason, I do not put all dupes at the same time for sale.

This has been working. There is a set of 1 inch action figures that I had possibly ten of those. ANd they have been selling immediately as soon as I list.

For the action figures, I found out that a guy from TX has been making one purchase per month of my action figures. If I had received any alert on time most certainly I would have sent him freebies with one of his purchase. Since I would’ve know what he likes, I could make a great advertisement if eBay had this feature.

Paulo H

[DantheDiner]

1/19/20 – 1/25/20

Total Items In Store: 7,364
Items Sold: 90
Total Sales: $ 1,754
Highest Price Sold: $ 250 (Grateful Dead gold record)
Average Price Sold: $ 19.49

First strong week in something like 6 months. Followed by two sub-$100 days in a row. There is no predictability anymore.

[BrianB]

Ebay International Standard Delivery:

I received the following message from Ebay today. I wasn’t aware that I was part of a pilot for Ebay Send, but the program is being renamed now:

Thank you for your partnership and participation in the eBay Send International Standard (eBay Send) pilot. Your contributions and feedback played a pivotal role in shaping this new international shipping service.

As we roll out the new offer to all sellers in the coming weeks, we’d like to tell you about a couple of changes.
•
The name of the service is changing from eBay Send to eBay international standard delivery. Going forward, you will now see eBay international standard delivery as an option in eBay Labels.
•
We have updated the rate card for the service based on 2020 adjustments and the table below shows you updated pricing effective immediately. eBay international standard delivery is still the lowest cost international shipping option available on eBay.
•
All other terms & conditions remain the same.

Click here to see the updated eBay international standard delivery rates
http://image.seller.ebay.com/lib/fe98127477650d7d74/m/3/3381e5ce-c0be-4a0e-bf2e-3da5a1222df7.jpg

As you continue to use eBay international standard delivery, we hope you also continue to share feedback. Recognizing the impact that the rising cost of shipping has on your business, our team is excited to offer a low cost option with better tracking visibility, little change in your operations, and protections.

Thanks, and happy selling!
The eBay Shipping Team

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by BrianB.

[Jay]

Have you used the program to send items overseas? Curious what the experience is like.

[BrianB]

I have not used Ebay Send. Maybe they will have more info on EISD.

[T-Satt]

Week of 1/19-1/25
Total Items in Store: 3,262 (Up 35% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 70
Number of Items Sold: 56 (Down 26% YOY)
Weekly STR: 7% (Down 6% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,035 (Down 3% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Down $550
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $494
Cost of Items Sold: $549.10

[Kentucky Picker]

January Numbers

Total Items In Store: 367
Items Sold: 57 eBay, 2 FB
Total Gross Sales: $4,137 ($4,047 eBay, $90 FB)
COGS: $330
Highest Price Solds:
$1,075 oil painting (sold for a friend)
$420 Maxi Cosi Adorra Travel System
$320 Fabtech FTS22159 Uniball Upper control Arm Kit
$200 Bosch VDN-5085-V321S FLEXIDOME Dome Camera
Average Price Sold: $70.11

January was my best month in 2 1/2 years of eBaying. First time breaking $4K in sales in a month, first time surpassing 50 items sold in a month. I netted $270 from helping a friend sell a painting. Other big ticket items have been sitting for four months. Big challenge is to find more items I can sell for over $100. Attended a 5-ring auction in Indianapolis on Wednesday and was able to get several things that should sell for over $100.

[Author]

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