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02/24/2020 at 5:15 pm in reply to: ebay Spring Seller Update is this Wed Feb 26, Town Hall Feb 25 #74354
Will they provide a transcript? I would like to read their responses, but I don’t have time to sit for an hour or two and listen to them talk.
02/24/2020 at 4:04 pm in reply to: ebay Spring Seller Update is this Wed Feb 26, Town Hall Feb 25 #74349Here are some of the questions they’re going to answer tomorrow:
02/21/2020 at 2:43 pm in reply to: What to do with rare signed presidential historical documents? #74215How did I miss this thread originally?! $35 for a trunk of rare historical documents? Wow! That is an incredible find.
I’ve long heard that the Washington DC area is one of the best areas in the country for books & ephemera. I thought the competition was pretty stiff, but I guess a lot of the old-timers are starting to retire and it’s a matter of who’s at what sale when.
It’s still worth it to sell on Amazon, but it gets harder each year. Textbooks are going digital, first of all:
The Radical Transformation of the Textbook
“Digital-first. Open source. Subscription. The way textbooks are bought and sold is changing—with serious implications for higher education.
Pearson is one of the biggest publishers of educational books in the world, with a roster of 1,500 textbooks in the US market. Last month, it announced that going forward it would adopt a “digital first” strategy. It’ll still produce physical textbooks, but students will rent by default with the option to buy after the rental period ends.”
If you do have good physical textbooks to sell, you may be restricted on Amazon and need to sell them directly on Ebay.
Amazon is removing books at their whim:
In Amazon’s Bookstore, No Second Chances for the Third Reich
“The retailer once said it would sell “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Now it has banished objectionable volumes.”
Let alone the increased competition for books out in the wild, plus increased competition once you’re able to get a book listed from both FBA and other MFA sellers, including the mega sellers (BWB, Goodwill, library systems selling directly, huge warehouse sellers, etc,.) and other smaller sellers.
You have to work harder to maintain your prior sales levels, but that seems to be the way it is to sell online now. It’s hard, a ton of work, but doable.
Yep, us booksellers have been dealing with this for years. I’m surprised it took this long for someone to figure out how to scale clothing in the same way.
Newer clothing items have tags on them that make it easy to search by SKU number. Some of them even say what season they are from right on the label. With a ton of comps available, it is easy to figure out how to price the clothing. Unless you’re dealing with vintage, there are really no surprises with most newer clothing from normal brands over the past few years.
I wonder if sites like ThredUp or other similar larger retailers have repricing software. That has been a tremendous problem with bookselling for years – as soon as you have an item listed, someone has already beaten you on the price.
The ThredUp model for clothing also reminds me of Better World Books. There’s a feel good component of donating your books or selling your clothing to an organization that worries about the environment, man. Even though they’re both huge for-profit organizations that make a ton of money, they make us small sellers in comparison look like greedy capitalists. It’s so annoying, haha.
ThredUp:
We Are What We WearLet’s Make a Real Fashion StatementChoose Used
Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world behind oil.
That’s a lot of dirt on our backs. If fashion helps us express who we are and
what we stand for, then our clothing choices matter. It matters that we throw
26 billion pounds of clothing into global landfill every year. It matters that fashion will drain a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. It matters that a single T-shirt takes 700 gallons of water to produce. The choices we make matter.
To our planet. To our kidsBetter World Books:
Do The Right Thing
We strive to do the right thing at all times, with all people and all issues.People, Planet, Profit
We’re more than just a business. We equally consider our shareholders, our customers, our employees, our community, our planet, and the lives changed by our common cause. Through our business we strive to enable people to make sustainable positive changes in this world. Thanks to you, we’re well on our way.Doing good is at the heart of Better World Books, but our customers make it all possible. Here are some of the ways our customers enable Better World Books to make a difference one book at a time.
02/16/2020 at 5:25 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 450: Chatting with Troy about Other Jobs, Cross Posting, Numbers, Hard Goods! #74022Yay, thank you for posting this interview on a Sunday! It motivated me to do my bookkeeping early while listening to it, as well as more work on my taxes. I should be done with all of my bookkeeping for taxes tomorrow, sweet!
Selling online is definitely trickier now than it used to be. It is true that the only constant is change. The way I sourced, listed, shipped, etc,. in 2004 is so completely different than the way I do so now makes me almost feel bad to say they are the same business. Yet, here we are. Still roaring along straight through the 2020s!
Due to constant adjustments that need to be made when it comes to reselling, I find it difficult to trend how exactly my business may be one year from the next. I do agree that you have to be cognizant of how to at least maintain a basic level of sales going from week to week or month to month – if you don’t have the basic knowledge of “I have 300 items listed here at this listed price and I need to add x to achieve this level of sales per month,” then it will be hard to maintain this as a f/t business for long. If you’re unable to maintain your required level of sales due to supply or sales issues, you need to make up for it somehow. Whether that is by sourcing more, placing items on sale, sourcing new types of items, working longer, spending more, spending less, whatever. Sometimes you just have to do what you need to do in order to pay the bills. If that requires more listing, more time sourcing, do it.
At the same time, people need to do more of what they enjoy doing. There is a point when this can become way more stressful than a 9-5 job, even when you have been doing this forever. If you’re listing stuff that you are for the most part not interested in, it can be a real drag. When I had jobs, I looked at the clock many times throughout the day. If I sold only items I wasn’t interested in, I would be doing the same thing. At least with a job you have a steady paycheck and hopefully good health insurance to make it worth it. With reselling, it’s sort of primal and you can find yourself in competition with strangers (both those sourcing & the ones you are listing against online) depending on what you sell. If on top of it you’re not really feeling it, it can be really stressful.
With the combination of the deflation of prices and the increase in competition (both sourcing & online), it is stressful. I have seen the competition increase & decrease (sourcing) throughout the years, but it is definitely peaking right now. How long will it last? I don’t know. I’m happy I was able to get a good Q4 out of 2019, but this year will probably be the year we actually do head into a recession. This will only result in more competition (sourcing) and the continued deflation of prices from both new resellers and people who straight up just list what they have straight to Ebay, ignoring whatever the established prices are. It’s going to get even more interesting out there.
Wow, that sucks. I’ve been fairly lucky with software. No returns. I have hardly any of it listed anymore, but when I was selling it more frequently a few years ago, I did well with it. That includes software with previously used codes.
The condition/description would include something like “Previously used. I don’t know if this works or if the code still works.” I would put it in both the description and condition fields. Always list it as used/acceptable even if the condition was minty just in case the software didn’t work.
If I ever got any questions on the software, I would just ignore them. Anytime anyone asks if the code works or if I got it working on my computer, you know you’re in for an instant return. I suspect that in a lot of cases the scams would go: the customer would ask if it worked, you would respond with yes or I don’t know, the customer buys it, IT DOES WORK and they have successfully installed it on their computers, they write you back saying “gee, it doesn’t work. You said it would,” and then an immediate return. So, I would just ignore any question period about the software and it seemed to work.
While I rarely ship anything to China other than Shanghai, I do ship to Hong Kong once or twice a month on my other selling sites. I am currently tracking a package shipped to Hong Kong on January 25th. There was no movement on it from the 31st until today. It appears it is finally moving within their postal system and should be delivered shortly, hopefully.
Not sure what to do when it comes to mailing to China and Hong Kong. Will Ebay and Amazon be advising customers that their packages will be delayed? As of this morning, I’ve still seen no indication from either site on this development. I haven’t had any orders from China or Hong Kong since the 25th, so I am not too too worried at the moment. Still, if an order does appear, do I just ship it as normal and hope that Ebay and Amazon have told the customers there that there will be delays?
I also just made sure to stock up on all my shipping supplies. Some prices have doubled over the past month or two, some are out of stock, some prices are unchanged. I bought what I could. Not going crazy or anything with stocking up, just ordering 1 more of everything now rather than wait a month or two when I’ll need to repurchase items anyway. I’d rather pay more to have shipping supplies on hand now than in a month or two when they may possibly not be available or 3x or 4x the price.
In all my years of reselling, I have never seen such a potential disruption in shipping. Not even during SARS or H1N1 or any possible similar incident. This is different. How different it is and how it may impact how us resellers conduct our business remains to be seen. I’d rather be cautious and have a little bit extra in order to continue business uninterrupted.
Oh, that’s good to know. That could be a good back-up if anything happened to the Zebra and I didn’t feel like fixing it at that point.
Listening to the podcast now. I’ve been using the same Zebra Thermal Printer for the past 13 or 14 years, mainly on Windows computers. When I transitioned from Windows 7 to Mac over the summer, I thought that I too would have to buy a Rollo printer. However, all I had to do was buy a new USB to IEEE1284 CN36 Parallel cable that was specifically made for Macs and figured out how to find the drivers for Mac by doing a little work under the hood using CUPS that led to a universal driver available that was compatible with my Mac. It worked! I guess that’s a long-winded way to say that I’m really cheap, didn’t want to buy a Rollo and enjoy tinkering under the hood when given the opportunity.
My main issue with Rollo printers is how you have to have a little tray behind the printer to hold the paper. I like how the Zebra printer is just self-contained. My problem with the Dymo printers is the labels become expensive if you have a lot of packages to ship each day. I really dislike proprietary labels. I like being able to buy a large amount of cheap labels off Ebay once or twice a year. So, I did what I had to in order to continue using the Zebra printer.
Okay, back to work. This is day 3 of my listathon.
Marketwatch on the stock market’s response to the offer:
Shares of eBay Inc. EBAY, +7.39% shot up 9.5% in afternoon trading, after The Wall Street Journal reported that New York Stock Exchange-parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc. ICE, -4.90% has approached the e-commerce company multiple times regarding a takeover. Citing people familiar with the matter, the WSJ report said ICE has made an offer to eBay that could value the company at more than $30 billion. The stock’s rally on Tuesday has lifted eBay’s market capitalization to $31.15 billion. The companies are currently in formal talks, and there is no guarantee eBay would agree to a deal, the WSJ report said. EBay’s rally comes just two days after the stock closed at a one-year low. Earlier Tuesday, activist investor Starboard Value said eBay was “deeply undervalued,” and urged the company to separate its Classifieds business in an effort to boost shareholder value. The stock has now gained 7.5% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.68% has advanced 21.3%.
02/04/2020 at 2:38 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 448: Revisiting Numbers with TSatt aka Troy Episode 377 #73663Yikes, well, that was an unexpected pile-up! Please note that I never said I watched it – but I do google the time of the Super Bowl and can tell while I’m doing other things that sales are coming in during it. I am curious, sorry.
Let me name other shows I haven’t watched since I was a kid but take note of in case sales do or don’t come in – the Oscars, Golden Globes, VMAs, Tony Awards, basketball playoffs (is that what they do?). Also, any Holidays – I don’t participate in the majority of them, but I do know when the major ones happen so I will plan accordingly on the type of material I might list for it. Political events? General current topics in the news? It’s nice to be aware of what the majority of the world (or the US) is focusing on?
02/04/2020 at 2:25 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 447: 2 Month Free Shipping Experiment #73661I 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?
02/03/2020 at 3:08 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 448: Revisiting Numbers with TSatt aka Troy Episode 377 #73632I had 26 items sell yesterday, 10 during the super bowl. 1 person bought 8 items, another person bought 7, so it came down to 13 packages overall to be packed and shipped this morning. I was still not expecting that quantity to sell yesterday, so I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought most people would be busy partying, not sitting bored on Ebay. That’s how it has been every other year.
Of course today I’ve only had 2 sales so far, haha.
02/03/2020 at 1:44 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 448: Revisiting Numbers with TSatt aka Troy Episode 377 #73626Anyone else have a busy day of sales during the Super Bowl? I’m used to it being slow, so I skipped listing yesterday other than a few small items and worked on my 2019 taxes instead. Big mistake. Got a ton of orders in during the middle of the Super Bowl. Oh well. Next year, I’ll list instead of doing tax prep. Spent all morning today packing orders and then immediately went back to working on current bookkeeping and 2019 taxes. Fun times, being a reseller!
I had my 100th Etsy sale this past week! It took over a year and a half to get there, but 100 seems so significant to me that I want to try to invest more time into listing on it if I can. Currently hovering at 150 active listings, the most I’ve ever had on the site. If I can get up to 200-250 listings, it should leave it being a little bit more “list it & forget it” type strategy store. As it is now, I have to promote it a bit in order to nudge in sales sometimes. Still, it’s fun to work on and I enjoy it. Next goal is 200 sales!
Surprisingly strong sales on both of my Ebay stores and Etsy for the last week of January/beginning of February. Feels more like normal January sales than most of January did. I’m hoping the momentum continues throughout February. Amazon is weak, but I’m also not restocking it as much as I should. It’s my own fault. I did hit up a rummage sale this past weekend (odd to find one in February) and got everything listed from it on Amazon that day, but it’s still not like spring/summer/fall sourcing. I’ll make an effort to get out there at least 1 day this week to get more items for it.
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