Scavenger Life Episode 498: eBay New Listing Experience

[Ryanne]

 Check out our coffee! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week January 17-23, 2020 Total Items in Store: 763
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 498: eBay New Listing Experience]

[Mark S]

01/17/21 – 01/23/21

Total Items In Store: 3352
Items Sold: 28
Cost of Items Sold: $ 100
Total Sales: $ 1169.53
Highest Price Sold: $ 150 (Vintage Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $ 41.77
Money Spent on New Inventory: $ 120
Number of items listed: 21

Gut Sales Report for the week: Shipping was annoying, so that means sales were good. I believe I have been averaging over $1000 per week since the first week in December.

Scavenge of the week: I bought some Police evidence tags that are metal. They look like they are from the 1940’s or 1950’s to me. I will have to do some research on them. I couldn’t find anything like them on ebay by doing a quick search.

New this week: So, I tried something new today. An estate sale was having a big vintage sale with a large percentage off for the last day today. So, I knew there were some very high dollar items there that I wanted.

So, I got there first and passed out the street numbers to everyone. I thought it was going to be boring sitting there for 2.5 hours. But, it was actually fun. I passed out about 50 numbers. I got to meet everyone coming to the sale and talk to them. Most people were a little confused about how the street numbers worked. So, I had to explain that to them. I met a trucker who asked what I was there for. I told him I sold on ebay. That started a flurry of questions, but it was good, I enjoyed it.

So, I made a few new friends and really enjoyed myself. But, then before the sale started I found out that the highest tickets items had sold yesterday. But, since I was #1 to get into the sale, I got to get what I wanted. I knew exactly what I wanted since I was at the sale the day before and wrote down everything I wanted. It seemed like the harder I looked, the more great vintage items I found. It ended up being a honey hole for me and I spent about $400.

Mark S

 

 

[MyCottage]

Thanks for the shout out. Wish I could tell you more about the “new listing experience” but it’s being rolled out gradually, and I don’t have it yet and I haven’t really heard from anyone who has it. I really really wish ebay would put out short tutorial videos when they announce stuff like this, so we know what it’s going to be like before we get it. Instead, we wait and wait and have only the vaguest idea what to expect. But come to think of it, that’s true of my life generally LOL

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store    1515

Items Sold           20

Total Sales          $855.00

COGS    $60.00

Total Profit         $795.00

Average profit   $39.75

Average sales price          $42.75

New Listings       71

Items scavenged              25

Sourcing Allotment         19

 

The goodwill nearest me has had some AMAZING vintage clothing the last 2 weeks. The manager told me that a 95 year old man died and the family brought everything to the store to donate – 5 truckloads. There were rooms full of NWT clothing. Sadly much of the NWT stuff is Kmart junk from the 90’s. The real winners are the like new 70’s stuff. Groovy womens outfits, mens suits, NWT 70’s Sears mens pants. I wish they’d let me just go through all the stuff without it being slowly filtered out onto the floor over time. Man I was soooo hoping there would be a treasure trove of vintage Jeans, but no luck.

 

Regarding facebook, I kicked it to the curb a couple months ago and my happiness level is way up. Marketplace has become a dump IMO. If I need to buy or sell something on there, I’ll just use my wife’s FB. If facebook comes up with a marketplace only app, I would do that. I don’t want any social media at all.

 

I was really hoping to do 100 listings this week, but Saturday was a wash because I slipped/fell on some ice outside. I was freaking out all day thinking I had tore something in my knee. Thankfully I’m ok other than some minor bruising. Back to full strength already. I do already have 20 listings created and waiting on photos so I have a jump on this week.

 

I hope this new listing tool lets you set default parameters when creating new listings OR doing sell similar. I created a new listing last week with local pickup only and it ruined my default settings. best offer, immediate pay, handling time, and shipping method all reset to unchecked/blank. I cannot find any way to fix it!!!! They have always just randomly changed over time.

[simplicio]

Hope all are doing well. Busy weekend! Finished up a sliding barn door to make space for our 6 month old to have his own room. It’s only temporary (eventually I’ll need to renovate a “sun room” into a bedroom), but it works pretty well. Also, had a big auction pickup, spent about 8 hours on that on Saturday. Liquidation sale for a large and impressive machine shop, now shut down as the oil industry here sputters. I took a picture of myself with a CNC lathe the size of a small house. Being small fry I mostly bought little things like chucks, but even they turned out to be larger than they seemed in the pictures, and I had to leave one behind that I simply couldn’t lift.

I also bought my old favourite kind of lot, the “shelf” lot where you get everything on the storeroom shelving unit. I paid $2500 for 4 or 5 such shelving units absolutely chock a block with parts. A lot of it is garbage or marginal but there are tons and tons of little $40-500 items in there, plus a few big ticket ones (keypads for CNC machines, a lathe ballscrew). All told I spent $6000 on this auction and wish I had had more to spend. It was a bonanza and I will be listing for a week or two from this.

Luckily ebay sales were good and at least partially funded all this. NOW I need to cool it and pay off my taxes.

Sales: CAD$3571, 17 sales, COGS: $436, Fees: ~$486, Postage: $600 –> Gross profit: $2060

Expenses: $819, New inventory: $4597 –> Cashflow: -$2931

[Jay]

I also bought my old favourite kind of lot, the “shelf” lot where you get everything on the storeroom shelving unit. I paid $2500 for 4 or 5 such shelving units absolutely chock a block with parts. A lot of it is garbage or marginal but there are tons and tons of little $40-500 items in there, plus a few big ticket ones (keypads for CNC machines, a lathe ballscrew). All told I spent $6000 on this auction and wish I had had more to spend. It was a bonanza and I will be listing for a week or two from this.

I wonder if you’re in an area with a lot of industrial auctions. Or maybe I just dont have an eye for it in my area. I usually only see house cleanouts or restaurant auctions.

Is there no competition for those industrial items in your area?

[simplicio]

Certainly my region is one that has been very busy with oilfield and other industrial activities but is now in decline. Not sure about yours but I’ve got to believe there are some such auctions. I just found them by googling I think.

Wouldn’t say there is no competition, I just try to find the lots other people don’t want. Typically, tools in good working order get bid up very high. They sell fast so resellers like them. I am getting longer-tail stuff typically, and taking on more work to sort through messy boxes and dusty greasy items that nobody bothered to catalogue by name for the auction.

The big ticket items in these auctions like the CNC lathe I mentioned above may sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think the right way to see it is I am just a bottom feeder. Or a scavenger if you like.  🙂

[Jay]

Understood. I assume you’re in Alberta? I do see farm and tool lots at auctions, but its usually home based stuff. There’s the “tool guys” who pay up for the good stuff.

I think we’re in the region where there’s old money and lots of home goods from the past couple centuries. If you want Civil War stuff, come to my area.

 

 

[Sharyn]

I noticed this message in my feedback page today “You can find the item’s listing details next to each feedback you’ve received. Details for private listings or items you purchased are hidden from visitors to your Feedback profile.”. Does this make sense? If I go to some other buyer’s feedback, I can see the feedback he left for others. I think buyers can see mine. Am I misinterpreting it incorrectly?

I used Gixen for the first time this week to make sure that I would win some matching pieces to my dish set. Not that it was going to be a popular item or that I really needed to snipe it, but I didn’t want to have to worry about timing or calling attention by putting in an earlier bid. I was just the second bidder with a bid $0.50 above the first.

Week of Jan 17 – 23
Total Items in Store: 1445 eBay, 27 Etsy
Items Sold: 27 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $23 + $94 Commission
Total Sales: $623.67 eBay
Highest Price Sold: $139 Sajen sterling frog pin (on commission)
Average price: $23.10
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 19

This was a pretty good week for me, but many of my higher sales were commissions.

[gargolfer]

1/16/21-1/22/21

Total Items In Store: 2199
Items Sold: 34
Gross Sales: $1118
Highest Price Sold: $300 (Vtg Nutone Radiant Ceiling Heater)
Average Price Sold: $32.87

Returns:  2 $31
Money Spent on New Inventory: $59
Number of items listed: 55

 

• Sales had been running pretty light all week, but I ended up getting a $300 sale first thing on Friday that jumped me up over the $1K mark.
• Great discussion on FB Marketplace. I for one love using it for quickly getting rid of larger item that I don’t want to ship.

[Lukastreasure]

Thanks for the podcast.  I’m looking forward to the rollout of the unified experience.  I have an android and my wife has an apple phone.  They are so different in appearance and functionality that sometimes it seems it is a different company.  The limited functionality of the phone experience in general has me staying away from it except to respond to offers.  Funny thing also is that currently her iphone always gets the cha-ching notification long before I do.

I love that new sales report.  Makes running the weekly numbers so much faster.  I no longer have to sort through my own spreadsheet to compile the basic numbers.  One problem with it that I have, though, is that it doesn’t always report the shipping costs I paid, so I have to recalculate the Net Sales column.  And, of course, it can’t tell you what you paid for shipping on Pirate Ship.  Also is some glitch that omits the listing title on occasion for a few listings.

Not  a bad week of sales but below average.  A lot of what sold were recent listings which lowered my average days till sale average to its lowest point I’ve seen.  We’ve been selling a lot of pottery that we purchased a few weeks ago at an estate sale.  Originally felt like we might have paid too much for the lot, but it is selling like hot cakes.

Weekly Numbers 1/23/21
Total Items in Store: 1170
Items Sold: 24
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $872.69
Net Sales (After fees): $700.35
Cost of Items Sold: $132.00
COGS Percent 18.85%
Net Profit Margin: 65.13%
Highest Price Sold: $74.95 Longaberger Pottery
Average Price Sold: $29.18
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 16
Promoted Percentage: 66.67%
Average Days Listed: 99
Longest Listed: 461
New items listed: 36

[DarlinDils]

Total Items in Store: 123

Items Sold: 8

Total Sales: 180.25

Highest Price Sold: $48.75 Breyer Chalky Paso Fino (offer accepted)

Sigh – I had a mess of a week last week. I was taking pictures for eBay on my ipad, but someone suggested using the iphone instead as the camera and in-camera adjustments were better. They may be, but it was a total pain. Evidently iphones no longer take pictures in .jpeg – they use a Super Special Fancy Format that eBay does not accept. So I spent nearly an entire day learning how to reset my phone format and change the format on my already-taken pictures. Since it was my first time with the phone, the pictures needed some editing anyway, and I am still not happy with the quality, but the format challenge put me over the edge. Hope this week is easier, photos are my achilles heel in listing.

I also have a PITA buyer that I hope doesn’t snowball out of control. New buyer, just made the account, bought something then initiated a return a few minutes later as they changed their mind. I can’t process a return on something I haven’t shipped, and none of the options looked correct, so I called eBay. The rep said to ask the buyer to call and cancel the return, then initiate a cancellation. I hold no hope this buyer will hold up their end, and all the responses in the help center that I can find aren’t helpful or offer conflicting information. Well, there is a first time for everything, so once this gets resolved I can check off another seller learning lesson.

[Retro Treasures WV]

I have been using my iphone for pictures for over 5 years without issues. Your issue is the first time I’ve heard of this for anyone ever.

I even transfer my personal photos regularly to the computer and they’re always standard jpg.

[Jay]

If you have a newer iPhone, it uses this new file format by default. I forget which version of the iPhone started it.

Good news is you can go into your settings on the phone and change the file format to what eBay likes.

[Retro Treasures WV]

I’m on an 11. Nothing has changed since I started on a 3gs.

[Jay]

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/what-is-heic-3660408/#:~:text=With%20the%20release%20of%20iOS,does%20HEIC%20have%20to%20offer%3F

Says that HEIC started with iPhone 11. It’s obviously happening with people. Our helper had this issue on her new iPhone. we just had to show her how to change the default file format.

[ChristineR]

Total Items in Store: 361
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales: $721
Cost of Items Sold: $309
Highest Price Sold: $275 (New bedding set, paid about $105 this month clearance RA)
Average Price Sold: $72
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $290 RA clearance
Number of items listed this week: 45

It was nice to list on Ebay and sales were good for new items and some vintage wall art.  My new items usually do well in January and then in quiets down in February in a regular year.

Thanks to Jay for mentioning Dr. Campbell’s Covid Youtube videos before on the podcast.  I’m concerned about the variant so I started listening again recently and oof – he predicts a possible wave of the more infectious variant(s).   Our numbers here are trending down and the governor relaxed the restrictions a bit allowing outdoor dining, hotels, and haircuts.  Might take advantage a little bit before it goes downhill again.

My dad got his first vaccine dose though the hospital, which is doing way better than the County Health’s dismal performance.  For older people, it takes longer for their bodies to learn from the vaccine but he should be able to hang out with us again here in about 3 weeks.  For my husband he is already in it 2 weeks and should be protected.

Hope to see photos of the new place soon.  Your coffee is great.  It was a pretty dull weekend and I looked forward to the podcast while I listed.

[Jay]

Yeah, it worries me to see that there are now more contagious strains hitting the US. It’s like a movie that just keeps getting worse.

In our county of 20,000 people, we had a vaccination day on Friday where they put shots in the arm of over 2000 people (over 65). 500 people were from outside the county, but I think it shows that the vaccine roll out will depend on how organized your local area is.

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

I knew my state of WV is FINALLY ranked near the top in something good. I was SHOCKED to see Virginia is #50. That is sad. What is going on there?

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/states-ranked-by-percentage-of-covid-19-vaccines-administered.html#:~:text=North%20Dakota%20has%20administered%20the,distribution%20and%20administration%20data%20tracker.

 

All of our metrics are falling a week or two after the first big batch of vaccine receivers got their second dose.

[Jay]

Yeah, like I said, the vaccine roll out is going to be county by county.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast R&J:

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4379
Items Sold: 69
Total Sales: $1451.06
Cost of Items Sold: $215
Average Price Sold: $21.03
Average Cost of Item: $3.12
Highest Price Item Sold: $112.46 1947 San Francisco 49ers v Chicago Rockets Football Program
Number of items listed this week: 59 worth approx. $1142
Hats sold this week: 49 (71% of sales) worth $814 (56% of sales $)

It was a pretty busy week.  Can’t complain at all.

The California lockdowns started being lifted today which is great.  Vaccines are being distributed to people 75+ here but it’s a competitive business to register for a vaccine. (Multi-hour waits on the phone and people sitting on their computers refreshing the page over and over trying to get a reservation).

I’ll be interested to see how the new listing flow rollout goes.  Those new feature rollouts generally don’t go very slowly.  At my old company, we talked about that kind of change as “changing the engine while the plane is in flight”.   Most tech companies have one team that works on the iphone app (or a piece of the app), another team that works on the android app (or a piece of the app) and other teams that works on pieces of website.  Jay shouldn’t expect all the pages of the website to magical get updated.  There are probably loads of pages that aren’t owned by any team and will rarely get touched.

Other comments about the show
– I’ve had the same issue that Ryanne mentioned with drafts that couldn’t be edited.  Here’s a workaround: Copy the bad draft and then edit the copy and delete the bad draft.  (The draft copy function has had sporadic problems of it’s own but that’s a different problem.)
– I’ve been using the new Sales page that Jay mentioned for a couple of months.  (https://www.ebay.com/sh/performance/sales ).  There’s a download option on that page that problems order-level info that is useful.  For data nerds there’s another useful data download here: https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin/report.  The big issue with these reports is that we’re still limited to 90 days worth of data.  It’s totally crazy that we still can’t data for a full year so that we have the info that we all need for our taxes.
– For the caller that had the big, heavy, return,  couldn’t the seller have created a FedEx account and created their own return shipping label there? He would only have been charged if the label was used.

I hope everyone has a good week!

[Jay]

I’ll be interested to see how the new listing flow rollout goes.  Those new feature rollouts generally don’t go very slowly.  At my old company, we talked about that kind of change as “changing the engine while the plane is in flight”.   Most tech companies have one team that works on the iphone app (or a piece of the app), another team that works on the android app (or a piece of the app) and other teams that works on pieces of website.  Jay shouldn’t expect all the pages of the website to magical get updated.  There are probably loads of pages that aren’t owned by any team and will rarely get touched.

I knew you would be the best person here to understand what eBay is going through. Having worked on software projects (much much smaller), I understand it’s a big task to be replacing things as people are using it. But eBay is a multi-billion dollar company, so it’s not as if the don’t have the resources to hire who they need.

[Lukastreasure]

@Simon – I got all excited when you mentioned the second report, only to find out this morning that it is only for Managed Payments users.  I’ve been in the queue for months but for some reason they haven’t moved me over.  Something else to look forward to.

Does that report provide any other useful information that the sales report doesn’t?

Thanks

[Jay]

We got our Paypal 1099 for our 2020 taxes.

Do we know if or how eBay will send a 1099 for Managed Payments? Anyone get one yet? Or can it be downloaded?

[Simon]

@Jay – For sellers under managed payments,  the 1099 will apparently be found here.  (Nothing there for me yet):  https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin/taxforms

[Jay]

Nice,thanks!

[Simon]

@lukastreasuretrove – The other report that I tried (unsuccessfully) to link to above includes additional types of transactions including shipping labels, refund etc.  It’s more detailed. For orders it also includes final value fees.  And, yes,  this is under the managed payments section of the website.  The corrected link is : https://www.ebay.com/sh/fin/report

[Jay]

As someone who helped build and maintain large websites, why do you think eBay wont let users generate reports that show numbers for a 12-month period. Can their database not handle that kind of pull?

When we sold on Amazon, it was easy to click through our sales/expenses over long periods of time.

[NC]

Numbers for the week of: 1/17/2021 -1/23/2021
Total listings: 2554
Items sold: 78
Gross sales: $769.36
Net sales: $604.47
COGS: $228.94 – not sure what my COGS for the week were so I just put in the month total.
Average price sold: $9.86

I have a low average sold price because I’m building a patch store and my average sale price is about $6. I have a store with random items that is currently at about 500 listings and I’m wanting to get that up to 1,000 listings and keep it there while I build the patch store to infinity.

I also have an antique booth that brings in about $100 a week after fees. I only take items to it every couple of weeks and it’s super easy to manage so it’s worth the extra couple thousand it brings in a year to me.

Working my way to becoming full time. I work from home in IT and just don’t like what I do. Not sure why I enjoy putting junk on the internet for people to buy but at least I’ve found a way to make money that is fun to me 🙂

I’ve thought about quitting my IT job and working with my dad a couple of days a week remodeling houses. I would at least make enough working with him to cover our mortgage and then I’d have 3-5 days a week to focus on selling.

I can’t decide if I want to take the leap or not because we want to move here in a couple of years and I’m wondering if I’ll have a hard time getting a mortgage without a W2 job? We’ve got some equity in our house so maybe I’m being overly cautious. Any of you scavengers get a mortgage with just your eBay income?

 

[Jay]

Not sure what you do in IT, but it can be good money. Instead of working for someone full-time, you cld do freelance work which can pay better (but no benefits). We keep our foot in our “career jobs” as video producers. A couple freelance jobs a year is nice money. We put a lot of time into training, so why lose out?

I can’t decide if I want to take the leap or not because we want to move here in a couple of years and I’m wondering if I’ll have a hard time getting a mortgage without a W2 job? We’ve got some equity in our house so maybe I’m being overly cautious. Any of you scavengers get a mortgage with just your eBay income?

Banks don’t like inconsistent income. Just a fact. Otherwise they want to see cash or assets. I will say that now that we have consistent eBay income for a decade, our bank sees us as a stable business.

I always recommend “getting a banker”. We live in a small town and it’s very nice having a relationship with a younger guy who works at a small bank who talks us through stuff. He also gets to know our finances so is willing to take chances on us that a big, anonymous bank wouldn’t.

[NC]

Thanks, I’ll look into getting a local banker. I actually set up the network for the antique booth I sell at so I bet there are all kinds of little jobs like that I could do using my IT experience. But now every time they have a computer issue they call me lol. I bet I will end up “the IT guy” for most people I do work for if I start freelancing.

[Jay]

Once you own 100% of your time, lots of opportunities pop up. We would have had 0% of our freelance video work if we hadnt created the flexibility to take on those jobs.

[Antique Frog]

Regarding nobody’s favourite topic- I’ve been told the British strain has been confirmed as being 30% more deadly, and more infectious. At one point this year we were running at around 1,800 deaths per day, which is about 3 or 4 times higher by population than the US rate.

[Doublythumbs]

Jan 17 – 23

• Total Items in Store: 4,093
• Items Sold: 47
• Total Sales :  $1,395
• * ABOVE yearly average of $1,070
• Highest Price:  $250 (Pair of Empty Wood Speaker Cabinets)
• Average Price:  $30
• Returns: 0
• Cost of Goods Sold:  $81
• Costs of Goods Purchased this Week:  $436
• Number of New Items Listed this Week: 19

I had a fantastic week of sales last week. Lots of bread and butter kind of stuff, but a few things sold which really boosted my numbers. Numerous trips to FedEx last week too. I sold a bunch of large items which really makes me happy, at least after they’re packed.

I sort of took time away from listing last week to focus on inventorying a huge online auction haul. This was the third auction from the church hoard near me. I went hard on some of the box lots, but I must say I didn’t get as many winners as I did the last time. The big ticket winner was a 1st edition The Queen’s Gambit book that I listed immediately. If it sells, it’ll pay for almost what I spent on everything.

The speaker cabinets were an awesome sale (other than packing them!). I bought these on an online auction for $2. There was zero description beyond “speakers” and just one lousy picture. But I could tell from the construction that the cabinets were at least high quality. Turns out that the speakers were high grade too. I sold them the week prior for the same price as the cabinets. So I made $500 on a couple dollar gamble. Not bad!

This week will be spent mostly listing soda cans. I scored three huge boxes of someone’s vintage soda can collection for $6 on an online auction. I don’t know how well they’ll do, but I’m just going to do a few dozen at a time. There’s hundreds of cans here and I don’t want to get burnt out.

[TopNotch]

Thanks for the link Simon!  I was wondering the exact same thing.  Got a couple 1099s, but waiting on eBay yet.

I am surprised you haven’t been looking at the Performance tab a lot longer!  I don’t remember when it first popped in, but I want to say that I’ve been using it since switching to managed payments in July?  I really like looking at that stuff.  It isn’t perfect, but it is a great quick tool.   Your selling costs are impressive!  Mine range from 26-40% depending on the week.  It’s so weird how eBay rolls out different things to different users all the time.  I guess Facebook is the same.  My interface looks completely different than my wifes.  I can search through my listings, which was a very much needed feature, but she cannot and is stuck searching marketplace for her listings.

We are getting ready for this weekend when we have our first open warehouse sale since Dec 10th.  It is expected to snow all weekend and I’m expecting at least 5 times more customers than last time.  I’m nervous about handling that many people and overall inventory may not be good for future reputation.  The last couple loads were heavy on grills and toilets, so the variety just isn’t there this time.  All we can do is our best and improve every single event.

[Author]

Posts