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This weekend was HORRIBLE! I’ve actually been having a pretty good April and May up until this past week. Amazon is also way down. This is one of the lowest points of the year for what I sell, so I’ll just use it as an opportunity to stock up and list when I have time to do both.
Seller Hub is currently showing me down 10% from last year, while the market is down 1% from a year ago. For the past 30 days, I’m up 1.4%, while the market is down 2.1%.
05/31/2019 at 7:02 pm in reply to: Apparel retail earnings haven’t been this bad since the Great Recession #62758These numbers should in a way be positive for online resellers; maybe just check the brands more to see what what is good to buy for resell, if a lot of them are still around in the next year or two. Article pretty much says traditional retail is dying, Walmart/target non-mall brands and online retail are making up for the lack of shopping in this regard. Still, I don’t personally believe it is overall as positive of a thing as they are making it out to be by the end of the article.
JP Morgan is saying there might be 2 rate cuts this year. If that’s the case, there will be a recession January 2020. Agreed that being frugal is the best, but being aware of any potential change in economic indicators definitely helps if you’re already living as close to the bone as possible.
Just a general “why?” about the anxiety and haste people experience with death piles.
Why eliminate? Why not reduce? Death piles are a necessity for those times when one is too busy to source, experiencing dry patches in acquiring inventory, bad weather, etc,.
Exceptions are for items about to expire, trends that need to be jumped on right away, etc,.
I haven’t really been focusing on Ebay that much this past month, but I’ve been having fun sending offers to people! I probably sent 200 offers on Friday evening between both of my stores, and got 15 sales late Friday night – Saturday on them! Sent a few offers off this morning that resulted in 1 sale within an hour. I think it helps that this is a weekend associated with large sales in stores/on the internet, so people were in a spendy mood if a good deal popped up.
I’ve noticed something interesting this past month while I’ve been thrifting muuuuch less than normal. Sales of brand new clothing in stores are now comparable to prices in Goodwill, if not cheaper (at least where I live). Of course not mid-range to designer brands, but where I live I can buy a brand new shirt at H&M for $4.99 or spend a minimum of I believe $6.99 at Goodwill for a used shirt. In my area, nothing is ever just $6.99. Most shirts are usually priced individually at $9.99-$30 apiece.
As a teenager, I used to go to H&M to see if I liked anything, and then go to a thrift store to buy the vintage version of it that was way cheaper. Not anymore. As a 20 yo snob that refused to shop non-vintage, I would probably be laughing at my future self now if I realized I had to buy new because it was cheaper. I have also been buying a lot of clothes off of Poshmark for myself over the past year because I still thought that clothing stores were way more expensive than used, but boy was I wrong. I guess it’s back to shopping for new clothing for me.
Oh, this past week I had my 30th Etsy sale! Yay! My store is a little over a year old now, and I sell more in a week on Ebay than I did on Etsy during that whole time frame. Still, I feel very happy and proud for the little guy. Those sales have motivated me to get more listed on there!
I totally miss hauling mail in with a bike. I used to have a cargo bike with a front basket, postal bin attached on the back rack AND a separate attached cargo cart. Used it for everything from daily mail runs to grocery shopping, thrifting, yard sales, estate sales. It was so much fun to ride up to a yard sale, “park” at the foot of the driveway, quickly poke around and get back on my bike all during the timespan others would spend on just finding parking. At estate sales, I would just tie it to street signs or other random objects and get quizzical looks from people waiting on line.
If I only had 10 or 15 packages to go out, I wouldn’t even bother hooking up the cart. I just put them in both baskets, zipped to the post office and zipped back. I tried to make it work with a normal bike, backpack and front basket for a few months, but that doesn’t work very well during the summer.
Yeah, I totally get it. If I had more time, I would be buying shipping directly through Ebay and Amazon as well.
1 more thing to consider about scan sheets vs. non scan sheets – I have been told by 1 po that if I didn’t have a scan sheet, had a ton of packages and there was a long line behind me, that the postal clerk would send me to the end of the line after each 10 were scanned. I don’t know if this is true, but it really makes me double-check that I have a scan sheet when I go to that PO. That attitude has put me off from going there moew frequently.
Just checked for you. $7.55. Sucks. I know that Amazon also provides cheaper shipping rates like EBay, but for convenience, have always found it easier to pay a little more to just get the ship out over with as quickly as possible through 1 central program.
I’ve been using Endicia this whole time. I don’t know how it compares to EBay shipping rates. I use EBay shipping once or twice a year, max. Endicia is a stand-alone program for your computer. I use it with Windows. Haven’t tried installing it on a Mac yet, which I realize I should actually do as a back-up.
Between all my selling venues, I usually ship out 15-30 packages 6 days a week (more on Mondays). Scan sheet is accessible via a click down menu on the Endicia website. I don’t know if you can get it through the stand-alone program. The scan sheet is 1 sheet with the total number of packages to be shipped on it. It also breaks down the number of priority, 1st class, standard type packages. I don’t know how this compares to other scan sheets.
I created my own shipping labels for it to use with my Zebra thermal printer yeaaars ago. They also have an instruction guide on how to create labels for whatever printer you’re using. They also provide shipping label presets (?) for international 1st class/priority and apo/fro shipping that I just use with a laser printer. I haven’t been bothered to figure out how to use them with a label printer yet, which I think might actually be impossible due to the additional customs information required, or multiple forms needed for priority international shipping.
It looks similar to the Ge’ez script? Ethiopian?
I sold another item overnight from the offer pool! 2 sales already since 7 pm last night. A few non-offer sales also came in. Before I had sent the offer in, I was at 1 sale all day on EBay after having a great sales day the day before. This seemed to have jostled my store overall.
Sent out another 30 offers this morning. This is a lot of fun!
Thank you for posting this! I’ve just sent out at least 40 offers to buyers. Hope to wake up to a lot of sales in the morning(I wish!).
OMG I just got a sale before hitting submit on this post. This is AMAZING
It might seem counterintuitive, but I find I get more work done overall when I’m busier. I guess you figure you’re spinning so many plates as it is, adding just one more to the pile isn’t a big deal.
I realize we’re a forum of people buying and selling stuff, but at the same time stuff is just…stuff. We see the huge quantity of it when we go to estate sales, thrift stores, auctions, etc,. There’s plenty of it out there. After seeing so much of it all of the time, it almost becomes meaningless, whether it’s “fancy” or not. It’s just stuff.
It is seriously like playing mental tetris – my end goal is z, but in order to get there, I need to move and configure areas like x and y.
Another issue with configuring space is looking at the time available – I could be listing, but instead I’m just moving stuff around??? Yet, just taking the time to clean and organize can actually result in a gain of space that you will need to utilize at some point in the future. So, the work is actually worth doing, even though at the time it seems pointless when you’re in the thick of the buying season and desperately need time to list!
Yeah, I’m feeling this thread. I’ve let a lot of listed stock encroach on my actual living space this past winter, so I’m trying to dial it back now and reorganize everything.
If the items in your storage unit are listed and you run out of space, then filling up another storage unit for $200 is fine. That money is working for you. I feel like you are not losing $200. If you need space for active listings, you need space.
However, if the first storage unit is full of unlisted stuff for $200, and then you add another one for $200, that money is not being used effectively. You are losing $200 or $400 a month. You can always get new stuff for cheap (if you’re willing to work hard to look for it), so why pay such a huge fee to maintain an environment for unlisted stuff?
Having unlisted stock in your house for the set price you’re paying for to live in is one thing, but having additional space that you are paying for and doing nothing with is ???
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