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140 orders shipped out last week. Sales were down a bit for the week or two before that, but they appear to be back to normal now. Several orders were multi-quantity consisting of 2-15 items per shipment. The bulk were individual orders. I’m keeping busy!
Buying is sort of crazy right now. I’ve been buying collections daily for the past 2 weeks it feels like. Anywhere from 5-500+ items at a time. I haven’t seen buying opportunities like this since the 2008 recession, but we’re in a completely different economy now. It just feels really weird out there now, but I’ll take advantage of it and buy when the opportunity arises.
It depends on what sort of books you have. Collectible ones do well on both Ebay and Abebooks, but the rate of sales on Abe is generally lower than Ebay. Amazon is good for newer and collectible books as well, but their catalog search makes it really hard to find books by title these days when you search directly in Amazon.
If they’re mainly ISBN type books, it’ll probably be easier to list them on either Ebay or Amazon with their catalogs already in place. Abebooks doesn’t have a catalog system in place to input an ISBN in and have it automatically come up when you list a book, but you can enter ISBNs into the listing page and have it come up in search results that way.
It’s becoming more difficult to list this material on other sites as well. Strange days ahead for us adult sellers.
If you think there’s too much money sloshing around now, you should look up NFTs!
Amazon changed the way pages look again over the past month or two and have made it difficult for the average buyer to find choices in listings. The whole site is a mess right now. They’ve become a decreasing amount of sales for my business, so I’m not too concerned about it. There’s been a definite sales decline since it started. If I had all my eggs in one basket over there, I’d be peeved.
That’s interesting. I didn’t realize people were actually sitting around clicking through item specifics. That seems very time consuming. Perhaps it is increasing due to the amount of time people have to sit around and explore listings on Ebay due to the pandemic? I always thought keywords were more important than item specifics.
Has Ebay posted anywhere how many and which fields we will need to fill in for these newly added categories?
New item specifics required for collectibles and media. Two of my main listing categories. I’m really looking forward to updating thousands of listings rather than having the time to list new ones! This is annoying! Do item specifics really cause that much of a difference in search? I’m so confused by their overall relevance.
Congratulations on your 500th episode! Considering the amount of work you do with Ebay, your rentals and the coffee shop, I’m amazed that you’ve been able to consistently provide time to work on your podcast as well.
I’ve been too busy to chime in much over the past several months, but I continue to listen to episodes when I can and I’m continuing to work hard on Ebay/Etsy/Amazon as well. Still working through and adding to the backlog when I can, though it has been more difficult to source due to the normal winter sourcing doldrums on top of the pandemic sourcing doldrums. I can’t wait to get back to it this spring!
I seriously feel like I’m playing whack a mole today in terms of answering customers shipping questions on all the venues I sell on. As soon as one question on one site is cleared out, another one pops up on another.
Try selling primarily books that go out media mail during this time of year! Hardly any have been delivered over the past 2 weeks from any of the sites I sell on, but at least all of them show last scans back to the 16th at the latest. A lot of them are being rerouted thousands of miles away from both the origin and destination points.
I’m not looking forward to the inevitable avalanche of INR cases and negative feedbacks – I’m already fighting one I received on Etsy today for an item that is in transit but won’t arrive in time for Christmas – not that I promised it would be!
I stopped creating new listings on any of my venues 10 days ago and will continue to not list anything new until the first or second week of January. I’m just doing ship outs 6 days a week of items already listed. I have a 2 day handling time but have been consistently getting all shipments out within 1 business day over the past few months.
I’ve got 2 ebay stores. My main store is a premium store with nearly 14,000 listings. My second store is a basic store with nearly 4,000 listings. 2 completely separate and different inventories. Thanks to the free listings for collectibles/books/music, I only use about 50-100 listings per month outside of the free allocation for my main store. I actually use more in my basic store, maybe 100-150 per month in “paid listings.” I pay less than $100 a month in listing fees for both stores. I had an anchor store for years and years before the changes this year in free listings. Thanks, Ebay!
In all of my years of buying and selling on Ebay, I have never seen it this bad with the USPS. This might make March/April initial pandemic shipping of this year look like nothing. Couple that with the fact that we’re about to get a major snowstorm in the NE and this season’s going to turn into a wash.
For the first time during a holiday season, I’ve gone on a listing break. I don’t want to ship out items that may or may not get there. I’m continuing to have daily mail pickups 6 days a week for items that are already listed and sold, but I don’t want to add on any additional holiday type items that will probably get to their destinations by January at this point!
Yeah, all of those would do great on ebay, etsy and possibly poshmark with the right keywords. Those are all cute patterns/design styles that someone will love. If you have closets full of them, the better. You might also want to try selling them outright to a vintage clothing dealer in bulk.
Sales $$ are down for the past few weeks, but sales volume has stayed consistent. Nearly 120 items shipped out last week. 3 bins of mail ready to go out tomorrow, with an additional bin’s worth of mail that needs to be packed tomorrow morning.
I’ve been slacking it over the past few months. My numbers could be much higher if I had put more work into it for Q4, but I didn’t feel like working very hard. I’ve just been riding on a large listed inventory with a few new items added each day in order to keep the store “active.”
I managed to listen to the podcast this week. It was a good one, like always! Thanks for staying consistent during the pandemic.
I feel like doubt, and a general sense of unease just permeates everything these days. What should be a normal expansion of business is just complicated by what will life be like post-pandemic. It is just another layer added to the normal question of “will this work out?” There’s always a normal level of anxiety when one starts a new line of business. It’s completely understandable to feel more anxious than normal when starting a new line of business now.
Sales have remained consistent over here, no matter how much I list. 120-150 orders each week on all venues. I did not experience a summer slowdown this year, but I also didn’t experience much of an increase either. It has stayed oddly consistent. This year is an odd one.
Since not much is changing, I’ve slacked on listing as much over the past few weeks. Each day feels like another day to work or not work. Sometimes I just work in the morning. Sometimes I work all day. It’s hard to do this full-time and not work, there’s always guilt but I am starting to get used to it and not feel as bad. I find it is healthier to just take more breaks these days and not stress as much over the business, or anything sometimes. Everything is going to be more difficult no matter what. Just have to take it easy.
I’ve been full-time reselling for 16 years without a car. Here’s how I’ve managed:
Bring a rolling suitcase with you, or a rolling backpack with an additional backpack stuffed inside of it. Get to thrifts via public transportation or uber during the pandemic. Leave your bags up front, be friendly with the cashiers and they will let you put your bag(s) behind the counter.
Haul your stuff back via public transportation. If it’s too much, get an uber. If it’s too much for an uber, get an uber van. I’ve never learned how to drive, so a rental van is out of the question.
If you believe your haul is going to be too much for 1 uber van (you plan to go to an auction), bring someone along (a friend or significant other) to get a 2nd uber or uber van to haul off the excess. Tip well. Be kind. Thank everyone.
It sounds like the buyer is trying to get a partial refund.
I would apologize and let them know that I would be happy to accept a return for a full refund. They’ll either at that point return it, ask for a partial refund, or do nothing. When offering a return option, I would just not even mention the smell, because it is like you’re admitting that there was indeed a smell when you sent it (who knows?). I would just say “I apologize that you are unhappy with this order. I would be happy to accept this vintage item back for a full refund” and see what they do from that point. I just wouldn’t engage and get into an argument with the customer over a smell (non-existent or not).
