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11/05/2019 at 12:35 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 435: List and Forget, Still Works For Us #70093
Hey ya’ll, I’m tired. Q4 is exhausting, but I’m grateful! I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but I hope to soon.
Just got my 60th sale ever on Etsy! Even though an entire nearly year’s worth of sales doesn’t match what I make on Ebay in a week, I find it fun and a good back-up. It’s also a good place for interesting duds that can sell for higher than Ebay or Amazon. I’m currently hovering around 120 active listings on that venue.
I went out and bought more stock this weekend, so now I’m behind on my current listing goals. I’ve created a new temporary storage area in an inconvenient spot in order to make myself focus on just listing that specific pile of new stock first. I got halfway through the pile from the week before, so it’s fine. I have other good Q4 stock I would like to get back to working on by the middle of November. After that, back to listing other recent stock and back to the backlog. I think my favorite estate sale company is shutting down soon (ahhh nooo), and I hate sourcing in the winter, so I should be able to get a ton of work done over the next few months with little new stock coming in to interfere with working through the backlog.
At least there’s an option to get payments once a day. I’m grandfathered into receiving Amazon disbursements once every 24 hours. Most people get paid every two weeks – like a paycheck!
Interesting that Apple Pay doesn’t work yet. That’s supposed to be one of the main features. I’ve paid with Apple Pay using Etsy checkout, so hopefully it will be set up here one day. I did notice Google Pay as a checkout option yesterday on Ebay, which I’ve never seen before. Maybe they’re just slowly adding everything in?
I completely changed the way I photograph items for my store 8 months ago. Doing a quick scroll through my listings, I can tell what is older or newer than 8 months. Out of the 50 items that have sold in my store since October 24th, 20 are older than 8 months.
Now I am going through the listings to see “start times.” Since I last ended/relisted items last summer, I can’t tell the exact listing date of these items. I know many have been listed for at least 2 or 3 years. Here’s what Ebay says for them:
Start time: Jun 17, 2018 04:20:48 PDT
Start time: Jun 24, 2018 09:48:13 PDT
Start time: Jul 05, 2018 04:38:58 PDT
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:19:12 PDT
Start time: Jun 18, 2018 04:55:30 PDT
Start time: Feb 09, 2019 13:07:40 PST
Start time: Jul 03, 2018 03:34:30 PDT
Start time: Jun 30, 2018 03:21:40 PDT
Start time: Nov 01, 2018 09:25:19 PDT
Start time: Oct 28, 2019 16:25:07 PDT (an end/relist one from the other night!)
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:22:22 PDT
Start time: Oct 28, 2019 16:29:02 PDT (another end/relist one from the other night!)
Start time: Oct 11, 2018 09:50:49 PDT
Start time: Jul 09, 2018 03:36:44 PDT
Start time: Aug 24, 2018 11:48:11 PDT
Start time: Oct 17, 2018 12:34:13 PDT
Start time: Jul 09, 2018 03:36:44 PDT
Start time: Jun 30, 2018 03:21:40 PDT
Start time: Jun 26, 2018 04:22:22 PDT
Start time: Jun 13, 2018 04:42:40 PDTI’ll continue to not end/relist and see how sales go. 20 out of 50 sales is a strong showing for the hold and wait ethos. I at this point have too much new stock to deal with to care about ending/relisting and babysitting the older stock as it is, so it can continue to sell when it does and I will continue not caring.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
almasty.
HTML/active content errors from the policy change YEARS ago. I worked for weeks and even hired a helper to remove the code off the basic listing page & in the HTML section of the description fields. It repopulated in many listings, so when I choose to end/relist, I am getting those old error codes popping up. Since I’m still selling listings that unfortunately have active content still in the code, I am choosing to ignore those sort of listings and not end/relist them anymore.
No, I never sought out to insert java/links/etc,. in any of my listings ever. This originally happened in the first place because a paid listing software tool I used included links in the listings, which wasn’t a big deal at the time because it wasn’t against Ebay’s policy. Hah.
I think it’s easy for people to think themselves out of what should be a fun business for most (especially if you’re just p/t) into making it yet another boring work-like task with the associated problems that go along with it. Plus, a LOT of bad overthinking. A lot of the “theories” I read when it comes to selling on Ebay just don’t make any sense. Why would Ebay purposefully block your listings? Or slow them down? Or cause harm in any number of ways? Why always negative? I guess it’s a negative thought rut – once something has been “proven” to be the “fault” of something beyond your control, you can’t change it because Ebay has all the power or something. Uh, no. It’s your business. Not Ebay’s. You can do whatever you want. Keep it fun. Keep it positive.
Actually, when you send offers to buyers it tells you if an item has been listed for 16 months or longer. They ARE searchable by buyers. I send several offers a day that have been listed for 16 months or longer. I however don’t know if items that have trouble relisting are impacted in this way. Since I sell primarily extreme long-tail, including items I haven’t seen in YEARS, I can’t tell what has potential errors and what doesn’t unless I end/relist. I don’t even know if having errors even impacts sales with an inventory like mine, since similar items to the ones with “errors” (listed at the same time and same kind of items, so probably realistically have “errors”) have sold recently.
I had no idea that the business policy for payments wasn’t automatically switched by Ebay. Great. Looking forward to that additional bit of work when I’m forced into managed payments!
What items don’t allow for managed payments? Weird. Will all items eventually be merged into managed payments, or will they forever be separated with Paypal only?
I’ve been noticing an ever growing number of “your item hasn’t sold in 16 months” on my listings, so I tried one night a few nights ago to end and relist a few hundred items. Out of every hundred items ended, 85 would relist with no problems and 15 would have 1 problem or another that needed to be fixed. I gave up after 200 items.
I wish that I could end/relist for the 16 month pop-up, but it’s not worth it if I have to spend 10-20 minutes working on 15 listings for each 100. I could spend the time working on any other number of projects for my business.
End/relist is great for small inventories, but burdensome for large ones, especially with errors.
10/28/2019 at 2:01 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69691I haven’t heard of that guy before. I just saw his youtube link and it looks like he hasn’t made any videos in 2 years. I feel like sellers like that are either completely out of the business of selling on Amazon, or are still on it and having to work really hard and not wanting to give up their secrets to strangers on Youtube (finally, if that’s the case).
I don’t know if you’ve seen this article yet on the WSJ, but Amazon claims it’s going to spend billions of dollars monitoring products being sold by 3rd party sellers on the site:
Amazon Ready to Pour Billions Into Policing Products on Its Site
People on the Amazon forums think that in reality what will happen is that Amazon will just yank a ton of 3rd party sellers completely off the site and not really do much of anything else. Some sellers think that Amazon will eventually completely do away with 3rd party sellers. Who knows?
Since Amazon already has a history of asking sellers of certain products for invoices/distributors/wholesalers/etc,. and then directly competing with those sellers once they have been supplied with that information, I don’t see why they wouldn’t to some extent weed out certain sellers completely once they are able to sell the exact same products themselves. However, Amazon claims that 3rd party sellers make more money than they do on the site,
Jeff Bezos says third-party sellers on Amazon are “kicking our butt”
so I can’t imagine Amazon completely getting rid of 3rd party sellers.
It will be interesting to see how Ebay and Amazon both shake out over the next year, especially with escalating political rhetoric on the Left to break up Amazon, tech companies, etc,. and Ebay’s new direction from the VCs (whatever that will really end up being).
10/28/2019 at 8:06 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 434: Do You Have A Business Destiny? #69648I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet. Sounds like a good one!
There were a few good sales this weekend, so I set my buying budget at $500 and spent it all! Filled the back of an Uber van full of goodies. I’ve been working on listing through it since the afternoon I got back, but I think this haul is going to take 2-3 weeks on its own. Still, I’m excited. Perfect Q4 stock. A few boxes have gone up on Amazon, a few will go on Etsy, but the majority will be for Ebay. I’m going to set a goal of getting it all listed in 2 weeks so I can get back to listing the other good Q4 stock I was working through prior to buying this stock.
I have 1 big buy for my Amazon store coming up this week, but then it’s back to focusing just on Ebay. Amazon. Ugh. I used to stock it 3-5 times a week, but now I’m down to 1-2 times a week, if even that often. It’s going to be even less now that it’s getting colder out. You can really feel the lack of listing activity on there vs. Ebay. Still, it ain’t what it used to be, so I’m NOT going to put the effort into it.
I see people complaining about Ebay policies and glitches, but they do not compare at all to the way Amazon messes up. The most random items will be gated for absolutely no reason. I listed 20 books from the same publisher yesterday – 3 are gated, 17 are not. What?! Off to Ebay those 3 go. There are also “pricing issues” going on for books – that’s the newest fun thing booksellers have to fix. If someone doesn’t list down to the cheapest megalister, it is a “pricing error.” I dislike having to waste my time watching individual listings so closely.
Ugh, Amazon. The heydays were definitely the early 2000s-early 2010s. With FBA, it is hard to keep a toe in the game if you’re FBM. I believe there are now 3,000+ new sellers on Amazon each day? 🙁 All driving the prices down, all believing they’re making more than they are because FBA hides how much people are actually making and it takes them several months to catch on they are making very little, if anything.
So, back to focusing my efforts on Ebay. It’s fun in a way that Amazon is incapable of being. Etsy is just as fun, but still has a long way to go to get up to the infrastructure of Ebay. If they ever brought their listing prices down to a practical $.05 a month from $.20 every 4 months, that would be a real game changer. A lot of items will sell within the first month or two on Etsy, so the additional listing fees are wasted.
Haha! Capturing screenshots of ebay listings and posting them with a theme on Tumblr is now considered someone’s “work.” If he even posts these images on Tumblr like the previous Craigslist “project,” I can’t tell.
He’s just jumping on the hype of the late 2010s mysticism craze & being meta, and the NY Times posts about it because they believe it is hypermodern art.
I don’t believe sellers at yard sales ask these questions because they really want to know what you’re going to do with all of their things. I feel they ask it as a way to beat dead air space, to keep conversation flowing and to avoid awkwardness.
Amazon earnings are also down, most likely due to the race for 1 day shipping. Unnecessarily fast shipping for most of the items people buy online.
Overall, it’s an interesting time in online selling – if you look at the Amazon seller boards, there’s as many slow sales threads as you see on Ebay boards/forums/etc,. Is it due to the number of sellers? Sales tax? Recession fears?
Also, October is always the slowdown before Christmas. People are focused on Halloween, on saving money for Christmas. It happens every year like clockwork. Unless you have Halloween related items in your store, your sales will slow down in October. Christmas items also sell more frequently in October, as do New Year. If you are just selling normal items, expect a slight slowdown. It’s normal.
It looks like they’re starting to mess with media now. I listed a few VHS tapes this morning and got error messages for not having 3 item specific fields filled in – language, studio and actor.
I did have a good laugh when I saw the most popular actor to be filled in is John Wayne. I think there are a lot of people that also don’t care and are just filling in John Wayne as actor for everything.
Depending on what your shelving system is like, it doesn’t matter if mugs are on 1 shelf, shoes on another. If your shelving units are orderly and in a row like bookcases, you can just label each shelf and be done with it. Shelf 1, Shelf 2, Shelf 3. No need to do Shelf 1A, Shelf 1B. No need to have the bookcase be 1 entire unit. Just make sure they are all clearly labelled. What you will want to do is label bins on shelves. That’s where you would get Shelf 1A, Shelf 1B. You could end up with hundreds of shelves, but you would just label them “Shelf 100, Shelf 120.”
I have always listed the shelf location directly in the listing for both Amazon and Ebay. I don’t trust private fields on any of the listing services I use, including Ebay. With 32,000 items currently listed between both sites (ugh), I need to be super organized in order to do quick pulls each morning (or twice a day, depending on how busy it is or how busy I am the next day).
I keep smaller paper items in bankers boxes. I can get 50+ envelopes of postcards in a bankers box. Each envelope contains 30-50 postcards. I label the envelope with both the name of the envelope & the name of the box. That way, I only have to go through 50 postcards instead of thousands. If you have delicate paper items listed, I would recommend creating a labelling system for them as well, and creating a safe storage environment so they will not get damaged while an employee is digging through the box in order to find it. It will also cut down on the amount of time searching through a box with items like that.
In 1 of my listed storage areas for Ebay stock, I have random items from store #2 (vintage toys, nib items, etc,.) just labelled in boxes next to other boxes of items from my niche. With my numbering system, you would not be able to tell that 1 box has toys while another box has niche items. Like shelves, I just label them Box #1, Box #2. Just boring labels. You don’t need to do any fancy Amazon like SKU systems in order to get organized, and sometimes doing #516918 sort of labelling is just unnecessarily complicated and unnecessary.
Also, when you’re listing using your new inventory system, I highly recommend keeping a sticky note (physical or mac) of what shelf you’re listing on. I can’t count the number of times I have said “I’m going to list here,” and then by the time I sit down to list, I completely forget what shelf I’m going to list on.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
almasty.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by
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