Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Had a cancellation request as soon as I logged into Amazon this morning. Since I hadn’t processed the order yet, I just cancelled the order, messaged the buyer that the order had been cancelled, and immediately relisted the book on Amazon. Yay.
I would just cancel, relist and move on.
As a buyer, I’ve had to cancel 2 orders placed on the internet this week and was pleased at how quick and efficient the sellers were in canceling the orders. If the sellers had been difficult about it, I would’ve been frosty myself as a buyer – both cancellation requests were made before shipping had been purchased and tracking uploaded.
Sold for $20
Aww shucks, you’re making me blush.
It’s really easy to become enthusiastic over a new venture and think it will go the course – from selling objects online to relationships. Dopamine burst. It’s all the same. People anticipate needs far off in the future when just settling in and getting used to what you’re doing is the key to becoming successful over the long run, if it’s a good fit and if it’s capable of lasting that long.
Goals are fine, goals are great. It’s just odd to start anticipating certain results in the future when you’ve been doing a project for only a few weeks and have barely gotten a handle on the basics. Just have fun. Enjoy the process.
I would not worry about setting goals for a business/side income that was only started a few weeks ago. I would also not take sales during Q4 as the standard for what your sales will be like next March.
If I was just starting out, I would have fun with it for the first few months and maybe think about what I ultimately wanted to do with the business when it ran more like an actual business.
How you invest/reinvest profits is up to your future goals of your selling – do you want to do this 2 years from now? 5 years from now? Do you just want to pay off bills and fund vacations over the next several months? Just get rid of excess stuff out of your house? I feel these questions are premature for just starting out a few weeks ago.
It’s snowing out! First significant snowstorm of the year is happening today. The mail was already brought in, so now it’s just a listing day.
I had 23 sales on Black Friday on my main Ebay store, which I was not expecting at all! I thought I would get 3-5 sales total for the day. Just running a 10% off sale, nothing special. Sales on Amazon and other venues were also surprisingly strong for Black Friday. I think a lot of people are getting sick of fighting the crowds in stores, so they’re just sitting on their laptops/phones/tablets shopping instead. At 2 sales for Cyber Monday, but I don’t expect to get much today either. I need to catch up on listing, so it works either way.
Starting dates from my past 10 Ebay sales (Sunday afternoon through this morning). 1 item sold within 2 hours of listing, yay! This is what a long-tail store looks like that doesn’t end/relist every month or even every 16 months, per Ebay’s suggestion:
Start time: Jun 15, 2018 03:13:25 PDT
Start time: Jul 03, 2018 12:44:54 PDT
Start time: Nov 01, 2019 10:31:07 PDT
Start time: Jun 03, 2019 12:05:40 PDT
Start time: Dec 01, 2019 11:51:29 PST
Start time: May 10, 2019 11:02:27 PDT
Start time: Mar 26, 2019 14:02:24 PDT
Start time: Jul 25, 2019 13:27:54 PDT
Start time: Nov 11, 2019 12:44:35 PST
Start time: Jun 28, 2018 03:44:45 PDTCurrently at 14 sales on my main Ebay store for today. 1 sale on my 2nd Ebay store. No sales on Etsy today, but a few items have gotten likes.
No Ebay sales in the past 3 hours. I’m hoping more people continue to shop overnight when they’re back home and bored after shopping at the mall.
I find that even when your spouse is your reselling partner, they don’t want to hear you babble on about selling online. Forums like this are a good place to get your additional selling ideas/frustrations/comments out of your system.
There’s this forum, there are a ton of Facebook groups, thousands of resellers on instagram, Ebay forums, the 150k person flipping forum, etc,. You might meet people in your area that also resell through one of these forums that you could thrift with or go out to coffee with, as long as you’re both not looking for the exact same stuff!
Poshmark hosts in-person meet-ups, plus an annual meet-up. Ebay has an annual Ebay Open in Las Vegas where resellers meet up. People use these opportunities as a tax write-off and to be social.
Even though we knew it was coming, it’s still scary that it actually is happening!
I’ve got inkfrog set-up as a back-up for my 12,000 Ebay listings now, yay. I just need to figure out how I want to set-up my Shopify store. I have some problematic listings that I need to sell off or change venues on before I do so, and it should be fine.
I’m pretty positive that Ebay will continue to exist for years to come, but it doesn’t hurt to have the items backed up on Bonanza or Shopify just in case.
When I process orders, I bulk mark them as shipped and immediately leave bulk feedback for them. I just use the random feedback provided by Ebay.
40 items shipped out this morning. 20 packages shipped out Saturday. 20 packages ready to go out tomorrow. It has been busy, but slower than the past 2 weekends. This is definitely the calm before the storm. I got the 40 packages in on my own this morning with an Uber and had a nice, brisk walk back. This might be the last week of fall here before winter settles in, so I want to walk as much as possible before it gets too cold out to.
I purchased $400 worth of stock this past week, but I haven’t listed any of it yet. :'( . That’s even with skipping 3 estate sales I had planned on going to yesterday. I’ve instead been listing still from the large purchase I made in late October, as well as stock from over 6 months ago and another bit of stock I purchased in September. I’ve also been sorting through additional stock I purchased in mid-October. The large stock buy I did in late October was a good buy and I am still doing well with it with a bit left to list, but it really got in the way of my listing plans for Q4. I also have had a box set aside from June to list for right now during Q4, but I misplaced the box somehow? Ugh.
For the data nerds out there, I thought I’d continue posting my last 10 sales on Ebay’s starting listing dates. Since last summer, I don’t end/relist my items ever, even for items with the 16 month warning beneath them. These last 10 sales are from Saturday afternoon-Sunday evening:
Start time: Oct 29, 2019 10:51:50 PDT
Start time: Oct 28, 2019 11:37:06 PDT
Start time: Nov 24, 2019 09:25:59 PST
Start time: Jun 28, 2018 03:39:15 PDT
Start time: Nov 19, 2019 08:30:19 PST
Start time: Jun 02, 2019 11:29:06 PDT
Start time: Aug 26, 2019 14:55:13 PDT
Start time: Jun 27, 2018 04:24:23 PDT
Start time: Nov 06, 2019 09:45:15 PST
Start time: Nov 10, 2019 12:43:08 PSTWhen I’ve had garage sales, I’ve occasionally refused to sell an item to someone because I realized it should’ve never been out at the sale in the first place. Sometimes people get into a mode of “get rid of all of it!” as they clear things out and realize during the sale they never fully meant what they originally thought and would really like to keep a couple of the things.
For the thrift store, it sounds like the district manager got upset that an item didn’t get priced. Maybe it’s a recurring problem at that store? That’s it. It’s not greed. Most employees make minimum wage and don’t care about working there. They’re just putting in their 8 hours to get a paycheck.
Dunkin coffee actually tastes better than Starbucks! Plus, better snacks. Nothing’s as good as a real donut shop, but when it’s a choice between expensive Starbucks snacks & sandwiches or a cheap donut with your coffee, it works.
Starbucks and independent coffee shops can co-exist. Especially if one is “quirky,” or maybe has a stage for open mic nights. Weird decor. Specialized coffee that you can’t find at Starbucks. Delivery. It can be done.
It is a different atmosphere in 2019 vs. the last recession. Thrift stores still had cheap prices – now that we are not too far out from the next recession, I wonder what will happen when prices come down all over? Will thrift store prices go up or down? People are thrifting more out of fun now, not necessity. When thrift store and used prices are an actual bargain for those that need bargains, not unnecessary items, how will the thrift market change in order to accommodate these new sort of buyers? There are a ton of used items to buy, but a lot of them are already marked at premium prices.
Flipping on reddit is up to nearly 150,000 people. There are millions of 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Resellers on instagram have 10k-50k followers per prominent “influencer.” While there are more people buying online, there are more sellers than ever. There’s also a huge audience of youtube/instagram type people that both resell and don’t resell that watch resellers like they’re tv shows. It’s bizarre. During the last recession, we resellers just kept our heads down and tried to get through it and no one was paying attention. How will it look this next time when it is televised?
I do agree there are more buyers. There are more sellers. There have always been a lot of sellers. The thrifts and sales have always been full of resellers. The newest class is full of a lot of braggarts and wannabe documentarians that call attention to what they do. Will they be more dependent on youtube than ever when the recession hits? Bringing even more publicity to reselling to those newly out of work who have never heard of reselling before? It will be interesting to watch how it plays out. I just wish it was in another field!
-
AuthorPosts