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Check out our coffee! ► broadporchcoffee.com Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week May 2-8, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7559 Item
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 513: On The Thought Train with Past Jay and Future Jay] -
May 2 – 8
- Total Items in Store: 4,179
- Items Sold: 24
- Total Sales: $643
- * BELOW yearly average of $1,095
- Highest Price: $100 (Pace Two-Way CB Radio Base Station)
- Average Price: $27
- Returns: 0
- Cost of Goods Sold: $44
- Costs of Goods Purchased this Week: $0
- Number of New Items Listed this Week: 47
I had an alright week. Kinda slow in sales. I managed to get a lot listed though. With the crumby weather came an opportunity to put all my efforts into the eBay business. This week looks to be more of the same while it slowly warms up again.
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Jay, you mentioned your sales decline, and could it be because of downgrading your store? I suspect not, BUT I do wonder what impact all those free additional listings have had on the competitive climate? If a lot of sellers really maxed out on free listings, that’s not only a lot more stuff for the search engine to search for, but it’s also just a lot more stuff for buyers to buy. Another possible factor is ebay’s change to Automated Promoted Listings….again, if a lot of sellers have adopted this, it might give them an edge over those who either don’t promote or who have been promoting say with a flat 1%…..but I’m just tossing these ideas out there. Sometimes it is just the ebb and flow of retail….
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Slow. Very slow.
The better half has been doing better, but she’s slow too. We’re trying to do more “back office” stuff….better shipping area, inventory control, etc…along with trying to get more listings up. I only have about 700 listings, which I don’t think is really critical mass, and she has maybe 100 more than I do. On the plus side, we’ve been doing some sourcing (yard sales mostly) and have been picking up some decent stuff. We’ve both had the 2 vaccines, and still wear masks, but we do feel a little better about going out and sourcing. And really, that’s the main thing that gets us out of the house LOL
Since I do all the shipping and inventory work for both accounts, there are times when slow sales actually seems like a blessing….LOL
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Items in Store 1464
Items Sold 32
Total Sales $1,191.00
COGS $127.00
Total Profit $1,064.00
Average profit $33.25
Average sales price $37.22
New Listings 9
Items scavenged 32I’ve been really struggling to find time for ebay lately. I make time to ship, and we still go out and scavenge on Saturday and Sunday. That’s about it. I got a couple records photographed and listed this weekend.
Our Governor just set a date for dropping masks in our state – June 20th. Who knows how that is going to work out. Will businesses keep the requirements? Who knows!
Nothing much else to report. Ebay is kinda a backburner thing right now that I hope to kick into high gear in June.
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We’re going back to Universal Studios the last week of this month. It’s gonna be culture shock for sure. They removed temp checks and lessened social distancing to 3 feet. So basically, there is no more social distancing.
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Yeah, the Florida governor has decided to run a huge health experiment by lifting all precautions and not pushing vaccines. I guess its survival of the fittest in action.
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“… the Florida governor has decided to run a huge health experiment…”
Ever since he started incrementally lifting requirements with a series of Executive Orders starting in April, 2020, they said he was going to kill everyone in the state and that didn’t happen. Commentators like to say everyone didn’t die because the humidity compromises the COVID droplets and it has nothing to do with what he has done (well, maybe, but the humidity here today is 56% and that’s not unusual…), but for whatever reason, as a state we’ve been middle of the road or better on just about every metric.
Pretty much everything has been voluntary here since at least September (except localities could enforce 50% occupancy limit for indoor dining and amusement parks had to have protection plans) so this latest order only drops a very few remaining governmental restrictions. There is also now liability protection from COVID-related claims which changes the dynamic for businesses.
Around here some people wear masks and some don’t. Some businesses require mask for entry (but usually don’t enforce it strictly) and some don’t. My son’s school has been strict on masks but he got to go to school every day. If I walk in a store and the employees are wearing masks I’ll put one on to be polite but many people don’t. It’s been that way for a while.
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I called on a couple of friends a week back, who run an antique shop in a small town. Not having been there since September last I noticed that a lot of new investment had come in- Ye Olde English Pub is now a spirit bar, the working man’s caff is now a wine seller’s ‘bottle shop’ and there’s new houses built in local stone all over the place. There’s an atmosphere of Covid paranoia all over the place, mixed in with commercial paranoia. We visited a farmers’ market- desperate stallholders trying to sell tomatoes at a dollar each, and Scotch eggs at four dollars.
The antique shop re-opened at the end of April, and apart from an initial burst of people looking but not buying, custom is now minimal. They took 50 pence (about 75 cents) in the hour I spent with them. They’ve got permission from the landlord’s agent to sell the business- the setup is rather feudal, the shop’s in a 14th century barn back of the mansion so the landlord is actually a land lord.
It’ll be interesting to see how life is after things open back up.
Boom and bust I reckon.
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Not sure how it is across the US, but our town is experiencing a mini-boom. Housing prices are going crazy. People are building new houses regardless of the sky high construction costs. Even our downtown properties are switching hands and getting renovated after decades of stagnation.
Might be the federal money flowing into the population, which is doing exactly what its supposed to: stimulate the economy.
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Hello all. Another good week on ebay, although it “felt” slow.
Sales: CAD$3657, 16 sales, COGS: $1444, Fees: ~$475, Postage: $438 –> Gross profit: $1300
Expenses: $0, New inventory: $0 –> Cashflow: $2743
For the past few months I had been using UPS more and more as they were turning out cheaper and faster, on paper, than Canada Post, AND they picked up from my porch. I think I am done with that for good. Two packages, one worth $4000 and one worth $1500, had basically the same screwup happen starting nearly a *month* ago which UPS has failed to correct, so the funds are still in jeopardy:
- Customer owes customs
- Driver tries to deliver but for whatever reason is unable to collect customs
- Buyer pays customs online
- UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves
- I call and yell at them
- “Oh sorry, we’ll deliver again”
- UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves (x6) (no I’m not joking about the 6).
- UPS loses the package
- UPS finds the package
- UPS loses the package
- UPS tries to deliver again, demands customs, and leaves
I am really at the end of my rope with them, and their customer service is appalling. It’s near impossible to get a hold of a real person, tracking numbers just lead you to a “do everything online!” dialog. You have to “trick” the robot into connecting you with a person by mumbling inaudibly when it asks for a tracking number. I might have had better luck putting my package in a wicker basket with an address label and floating it down the river to rely on the kindness of strangers.
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That really sucks. These commercial shippers are held up as examples of the efficiency of capitalism, but these are bad stories when it goes wrong.
So the buyer is refusing to pay customs fees and accept the package? How does it work when you ship Canada Post?
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Regarding clothing measurements – I’m near Atlanta, very much a “dress-to-impress” city so good clothing is plentiful to flip and make up the majority of my store. I provide a lot of measurements but no matter where I include them in my listing, I get questions every single week asking for a measurement that is already provided in the listing. I finally switched to writing the measurements on a whiteboard, photographing it and putting it in the pictures, thinking people just weren’t reading descriptions. Wrong! People are still asking for measurements even when I’ve included a pic of that measurement and referred to the photo in the description. I even had a “Karen” scold me telling via ebay message that I won’t sell a certain vest without measurements. It felt good to message her back immediately to let her know that actually the measurements she wanted are included in the last photo, which was also clearly stated in the short description.
Another measurement rant – no matter how many measurements I include, every few weeks I get a message from someone asking for some off-the-wall additional measurement like “length between waist and armpit” or something. No other retailers who sell online provide measurements beyond chest, waist, hip, length but on ebay buyers expect 20+ different measurements. It’s ridiculous. If the item is inexpensive I won’t reply – it’s really not worth my time to dig it out of storage, unwrap it, measure it, etc. when half of the time it won’t lead to a sale anyway.
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Totally agree. We really follow the advice of another Scavenger who said he just photos the label with the measurement. Thats all any modern clothing store provides. If someone is worried about something fitting, they should buy in person.
When I buy clothes online, I know my measurements and havent had any issue. (Though I know men may have an easier time with clothing sizes?)
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The only clothes I provide very detailed measurements on is suits, as they are tailored and have seam allowances that need to be known.
Pants get rise, inseam, waist.
Shirts get chest, length
Occasionally I’ll do sleeve and shoulder measurements if it seems to be something other than standard.
Womens clothes that appear to be cut to form I will add hips and waist as needed.
I also don’t answer oddball size requests unless I’m really in the mood to go the extra mile. They generate a sale maybe 1 in 10 times. Most of the time the person doesn’t even acknowledge the extra effort.
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@ Retro Treasures WV – thank you for the mention re: suits… getting closer to listing a bunch and this was helpful. – Marty
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Marty, my best advice is to look at what other successful suit sellers do on ebay regarding photos and description.
This guy used to post here and does AMAZING numbers in men’s clothing:
https://www.ebay.com/usr/the-seam-store
Here is one of my blazer listings for example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/264399324853
I have a word template I used for various clothes that prepopulates all the measurements and details I add. I copy/paste into description and then I just add the actual measurements.
I sold all the suits I’ve listed apparently. I guess it is time to list a few more!
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Jay – Somewhat recently, you changed your weekly sales number to include shipping & fees and added net sales without shipping and fees. Before you started showing your numbers this way, didn’t you calculate your sales with the eBay fees but not the shipping? And then compared that to $1000? Now, you are listing your sales without any fees and still comparing to $1000?
If I remembered this correctly, the $850 you made this week would then be very close to the $1000 a week you want to see.
Anyway, my numbers:
Week of May 2 – 8
Total Items in Store: 1323 eBay, 44 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay
Cost of Items Sold: $8 + $60.70 Commission
Total Sales: $400.34
Highest Price Sold: Tie, $75 Signed & framed print “Cobb Island Decoys” & $75 for 3 dental implants sealed in box
Average price: $40.34
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 23While I didn’t sell many items this week, I did have a high average price. I was also more active with listing, so that did help. Three items I listed sold within 24 hours.
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You make a good point. I’ve always done a rough profit/cost estimate because eBay never made it easy getting numbers.
But Managed Payments has made it very easy which I like. I love that eBay now just pulls out all the fees/taxes/shipping before they send the profit.
I will say that we’re mainly just selling lower dollar items this month. But we have these items listed so we’ll take any sale!
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5-3-21 to 5-9-21
Total Items in Store: 1405
Items Sold: 14
Gross Sales: 1016.58
Net Sales: 884.49
Cost of Items Sold: $ 15
Highest Price Sold: $ 115.50 Lot of 2 American Eagle Dollar coins
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $4
Number of items listed this week: 25Big week because I finally listed some of the coins I have from a large collection. Have tons more to list but I will be taking my time with them.
Actually went out to the stores this weekend. It felt great to do that and be pretty secure (had both shots and 2 weeks have passed). Found a great item, an original Ghostbusters Firehouse playset in amazing condition. It was missing a few pieces but I never see actual vintage toys in good shape anymore. And it was half price ($2). Nothing like a fun find to renew the scavenging battery.
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Concerning shipping more than one box for an order, I seem to do it a little different every time but if the two boxes combined is not over 70lbs I will measure out and enter the dimensions of the largest box and combine the weight of both and it usually comes out in my favor by a couple of bucks. Of course I’m more central in the country so that may be a factor. I’ve also done the extra handling route as well, I’ll figure the rate to the furthest destination and use that has my handling fee, you can always refund the buyer of any over charge but its tougher to get them to pay more after the sale.
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Smart. Do you get a lot of buyers complain about shipping cost? Or are these buyers who know how much things cost?
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Glad to hear the coffee shop is hopping and you are open 7 days a week. Our vacation plans changed by a couple of days. We will stop by the coffee shop on morning of 6/4. I hope to meet you both! Maybe you can arrange a “Scavenger Meetup” there and others come as well.
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5/1/21 – 5/8/21
Total Active Items (2 different IDs): 338
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales: $251.46
Highest Price Sold: $108 – WWII soldier folk art painting on board, a $2 flea market find
Returns: 0
COGS: $59.83 (including commissions but not including cost of any family castoffs sold)
New Listings: 14
$ Spent on New Inventory: $0I was out of town for half the week so slow was ok. I had to laugh when I heard about the resignation of your employee as my 17 year old son did the same thing to resign this week, though we made him add a signed letter. He was in charge of the bakery several nights a week at a nearby grocery. He did it long enough to appreciate the value of the college education he’s headed off to. They did not want to see him go – “you’ll come back and work when you’re on break, right?” they said. They seem desperate for employees.
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Businesses in my area are majorly desperate for employees. Even before Covid hit, it was hard to find employees that could pass a drug test and show up for work. Now it is much worse.
Many places around here have giant signs advertising well above minimum wage starting pay AND healthy signing bonuses. Even McDonalds is offering $10+ an hour starting pay!
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They did not want to see him go – “you’ll come back and work when you’re on break, right?” they said. They seem desperate for employees.
There are probably a couple managers losing sleep at night now 😉 But congrats to your son. All those low paying jobs in my young years make me appreciate our life now.
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Total Active Items 955 (Excited to hit 1000!!!!!)
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $930.10Highest Price Sold: $110 – Gumball Machine
Returns: 2 Grrrr.
New Listings: Only 1! However my helper is back this week and already working on more! Found her on this forum (hi Paula!!) She’s great!!
$ Spent on New Inventory: $50. Maybe a flea this weekend!Net Gain: 630.99
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5/1/21-5/7/21
Total Items In Store: 2182
Items Sold: 27
Gross Sales: $583.77
Highest Price Sold: $80 (Dancing Woman Ceramic Sculpture)
Average Price Sold: $21.62Returns: 0 $0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $26
Number of items listed: 16- My sales have also dropped quite a bit recently. It’s been about ½ to ¾ of what I normally do. I’ve made no changes to my store bc the store level changes didn’t justify it. It just seems like a lot of my lower dollar items are selling lately instead of higher dollar items.
- I’ve always hated selling clothes. I try to avoid it, but sometimes the money is too good to pass up on some items, so I bite the bullet and take all the measurements. I did get lucky a few months ago when CJ Banks went out of business and got a bunch of jeans and tops for $1-$2 each. Nice thing was that I got multiples of some of the sizes so I could measure once and list several.
- I’ve been seeing a lot more auctions in my area on auctionzip lately. 2 of my favorites still have not opened up yet, though. I think one of them might be done for good.
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Thanks for the podcast. I’m happy to hear that the coffee shop is still very busy. I hope it continues that way.
My numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 4574
Items Sold: 64
Total Sales: $1226.35
Cost of Items Sold: $180
Average Price Sold: $19.16
Average Cost of Item: $2.82
Highest Price Item Sold: $54.95 Sega Dreamcast Vintage Promo t-shirt
Number of items listed this week: 101 worth approx. $2296
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +25%My sales were back down to normal levels this week. I had no high-value sales this week.
In regard to your Jay’s theory about the store downgrade being responsible for slow sales, I also downgraded from an anchor store to a premium store and didn’t see a big change in my sales. If you think about it from eBay’s perspective, they probably don’t really care what kind of store you have. They make most of their money from final value fees so their primary interest is in helping sell as much stuff as they can to collect those fees.
I hope everyone has a good week!
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I’ve never bought the throttling theory. economically, ebay’s interests are actually pretty well aligned with sellers…the more I sell, the more I make…and ebay makes. It’s the exact opposite of ebay’s “Golden Age”….in the early days, ebay made much more of its revenue from listing fees, and only a small percentage from FVFs. It was in ebay’s best interest to push more listings (and re-listings if an item didn’t sell the first time (or the 20th time) and it was also in ebay’s best interest to NOT supply sellers with basic business information (how to figure net profit, and so forth).
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Thanks for the show. Glad to hear the coffee shop is doing well.
With a third of the year behind us, I took a look at my numbers year to date and compared to last year. Net sales are down 18% for me so far. I initially thought it was due to posting less, but actually have listed about 14% more this year (322 vs. 281). My store has roughly the same number of items as a year ago and I’ve actually sold more items (343 vs. 330), so it’s my average price per sale that seems to be making the difference. I’m going to have to give that some more thought. Working harder and making less money not what I had in mind. 🙂
Sales Report for: 5/8/21
Total Items in Store: 1130
Items Sold: 17
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $554.24
Net Sales (After fees): $449.69
Cost of Items Sold: $37.44
COGS Percent 8.33%
Net Profit Margin: 74.38%
Highest Price Sold: $100.00 Star Trek Enterprise Collectible
Average Price Sold: $32.60
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 11
Promoted Percentage: 64.71%
Average Days Listed: 461.82
Longest Listed: 1778
New items listed: 10-
Yeah, we used to argue here about why sales dont grow as you list more. Many of us realized sales just become consistent. For items that we find and sell, there’s only so many buyers of these items so it doesnt matter how many vintage lamps or pre-colombian vases you list. There’s not a bottomless demand.
If we want to continue to grow your sales, I feel we need to find different kinds of items to sell.
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Here is a tidbit I just discovered doing some research on hat sizes.
Use the following equation to determine your Hat size:
US Hat Size = circumference of your head in inches / π (3.14)
For more information, see the link below:
https://www.levinehat.com/pages/the-origins-of-us-hat-sizes -
5/2/21 – 5/8/21
Total items in store: 2300
Items sold: 41
Gross sales: $2150.10 (up 14.5% from one year ago)
Net sales: $1586.72 (up 26.3% from one year ago)
Highest price sold (net): $149.23 — a PSA graded Bowman Chrome blue autograph of Trevor Larnach, Minnesota Twins top young outfielder who was called up for his debut last week
Lowest price sold (net): $8.71 — printing plate of former hockey goalie Felix Potvin
I sold almost nothing last Sunday, just one sale for $23. I love a good conspiracy and I listened to the podcast on Sunday night, so for all of Sunday evening I was thinking about Jay’s throttling theory. Then as I was falling asleep, I remembered that I had kept my premium store this whole time, after debating a downgrade to basic. I hope to grow the store to 4000 items by this time next year so I figured let’s leave it at premium for now. So I couldn’t blame eBay throttling for my lack of Sunday sales after all! Well, of course I could still blame eBay if I really wanted to…but that’s why I like to hang out here. Our theories are all tongue in cheek. We know that the real solution is to list more.
So that’s what I did, 20 or so items each day, from last Monday to Wednesday. Then my sales were consistent the rest of the week and my weekly numbers are roughly where they’ve been for the last few months. It still “felt” slow in terms of numbers of items sold but this week, most of my sales were in that nice $50 to $100 range. Other weeks I usually sell a few more items and hit that sales number through quantity. But it mostly all evens out.
In “eBay fixing a problem that doesn’t exist” news, my main niche of sports cards received a big jolt this week in terms of eBay categories, subcategories and required item specifics. This was the message I received in the eBay app yesterday:
We’re optimizing trading card listings
Starting May 11, you’ll be asked to add new info to your listings that will help more buyers discover your items.
Learn more ➔
Now you can list sports cards by product type
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Sports cards will be changing from sports categories into product type categories. Select from singles, packs, boxes, and more.
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You’ll be required to choose a Sport under item specifics when listing.
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If you don’t update your listings to the appropriate category, they will automatically be categorized as Sports Trading Card Singles.Item specifics are required for all trading cards
After July, you’ll be required to fill out these item specifics to keep your listing live:
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“Sports” under Sports Trading Cards.
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“Game” under Collectible Card Games.
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“Franchise” under Non-Sports Trading Cards.New options for graded and ungraded cards
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You’ll also be required to select if your card is graded or not in item specifics for single card categories.
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Graded cards have additional item specifics, like Grade, Professional Grader, and Certification Number.The biggest negative change so far is the combination of individual sport subcategories (Baseball Cards, Basketball Cards, etc) into one large Sports Trading Card Singles category. Now buyers who are interested in, for example, particular types of Panini (manufacturer) Prizm (popular set) soccer cards (like autographs or popular numbered variants like gold vinyl prizms or white sparkle prizms) have to wade through thousands of basketball, baseball and football Prizm listings. Before this change, that buyer could easily search for their prizm cards in the subcategory Soccer Cards. Really bizarre what eBay is thinking here.
This change has also created a glitch where I receive offers even if they are below my minimum offer price. I’ve used the decline offers below setting for so long that I forgot about how many buyers make offers that are just silly — $5 on a $30 listing and things of that nature.
Also, any time I try to send a counteroffer (regardless of the buyer’s original offer price), I receive the following error message: There is an issue processing your request.I assume this error is specific to trading cards categories, otherwise there would be a post about it on the forums. There is an easy workaround which is to decline and send a message with the price I want, but it’s already tedious after 24 hours and maybe 6 offers. I love (almost) all my buyers, but I don’t want to exchange love notes with them to make a sale.
I am hopeful that all of these issues will be resolved, or at least acknowledged as problems by eBay, by this time next week. Surprisingly, my sales were fairly steady yesterday and today despite all of the changes. I hope that continues into this weekend since 8 of my 10 highest sale days in the last month have been Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays. For now, I am going to grin and bear these changes as much as possible. Very little about my listing flow has changed since I already used item specifics, and I already have my eBay store organized with subcategories for individual sports and types of cards. But who knows what other changes eBay has in store. I will certainly read the next seller update a lot more closely, that’s for sure!
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eBay has gone all in on the categories and item specifics. It’s not great that they keep asking for more info which just creates more work for sellers. I assume their motivation is better search.
Good news is that some sellers give up when eBay requires more work. We just stick it out, do whats required, and keep selling.
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Completely agree with you about how easily many sellers give up, Jay, and I’m especially grateful this week for the podcast and the forums. Because I knew about all of the chaos surrounding item specifics when they were introduced for clothing, I’ve used item specifics with my trading cards and other collectibles listings ever since. So there has been very little change to my listing process. I assume the item specifics are taken into account with search rank as well because my sales are relatively normal despite all of the changes. I suspect that would not be the case if I had not used any item specifics at all, even though item specifics are mostly unnecessary with unique collectibles and unique trading cards where interested buyers are using very specific title or description search terms to find what they want for their collections.
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Jay wrote
If we want to continue to grow your sales, I feel we need to find different kinds of items to sell.
Just sold a model locomotive tender (that’s the coal truck that follows the locomotive). Paid 40 GBP, listed for 125 GBP, 35 views, 5 offers, went for 110 GBP after 4 hours. I overpaid for it in the first place, but I fell in love with it 🙂 Apple green with gold lettering.
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