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01/16/2019 at 12:50 pm in reply to: Sellers hit with government shutdown? How are your sales? #55260
Instead of working for the government, they’re applying for unemployment benefits and driving for uber:
Driving Uber, freelancing, babysitting: shutdown workers scramble for cash
As the shutdown drags on, government contractors are struggling to afford medication, baby formula and other necessities.
Also, some are selling their belongings on Ebay to make ends meet:
2 very important articles from the NY Times worth reading about the impact of the shutdown:
Shutdown’s Economic Damage Starts to Pile Up, Threatening an End to Growth
and
A Typical Federal Worker Has Missed $5,000 in Pay From the Shutdown So Far
The 800,000 federal workers who haven’t been paid during the government shutdown have each missed more than $5,000 in wages on average so far, according to a New York Times analysis. Combined, that’s more than $200 million per workday.
WASHINGTON — The partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the United States economy than previously estimated, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, as President Trump’s economists doubled projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week the standoff with Democrats continues.
The revised estimates from the Council of Economic Advisers show that the shutdown, now in its fourth week, is beginning to have real economic consequences. The analysis, and other projections from outside the White House, suggests that the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the United States economy into a contraction.
What’s interesting is that my normal bread & butter book sales are continuing like normal, but in much lower numbers. My cheaper ephemera sales have slowed down quite a bit.
I suspect that cheap clothing and necessary books, housewares, hard goods will continue like normal, but cheaper end non-essentials will just stop selling. For higher-end items, it’s probably mixed, depending on how the stock market is doing or not a thought for those with a lot of $$$.
Interesting selection of books, not just the usual mass market fiction you see when sellers are having trouble selling books on here. Considering the number you have listed, getting bids on any at auction is really good!
That being said, having 25 long-tail books listed is not going to lead to instant sales. Books like these have to wait for the right buyer – sometimes within an hour, other times 10+ years!
Books are incredibly long-tail, especially when you start digging in the ditches of older car ephemera and vintage childrens books. Like I posted in the podcast forum earlier, I only sold 1 book yesterday for $10. I have over 10,000 books and pieces of ephemera listed in my main ebay store. I feel like my bookstore is too insignicant to get accurate data on long-tail bookselling. You probably need at least 15,000-20,000 extreme long-tail books and pieces of ephemera listed on Ebay to get a good, steady flow of sales that you can really rely on.
Bookselling on ebay is incredibly hard work for an ok, but not great return. You really have to love bookselling and work really, really hard at it to make what would be considered even a poor income on Ebay.
What type of books are you selling on Ebay? There are so many variables that could explain why you are not getting sales – condition, price, your feedback, the quantity, the types of books, etc,. There’s not really enough information provided to say why you may not be getting sales.
Depending on what the books are, they might do better on Amazon.
I always have tracking on Media Mail. It may not always work, but it’s your best bet to win cases for “not received” cases opened by buyers.
I’m surprised that your sales are down. No one needs ephemera, but used clothing sales should go up during a slowdown, recession or not. Is it possible that a lot of buyers are buying clothes for themselves directly in thrift stores at this point? Or a lot of traffic has moved to Poshmark and other sites?
I have noticed an increase in buyers in thrift stores buying for themselves over the past few months. While some may be fellow resellers (I can definitely tell who the majority are, but sometimes you never know), there are a lot of people clearly out looking for themselves, while also having fun with friends and family.
There has also been a trend of thrift stores renovating and marketing directly to buyers, not just resellers. Brightly lit Goodwills, curated front window displays like a normal shop, etc,.
1/7/19 – 1/13/19
Total Items in Store: 10,200 – Main Ebay Store. 2nd Ebay Store – 200 items.
Items Sold: 41 – Main Ebay Store. 8 – 2nd Ebay Store.
$: $489 – Main Ebay Store. $85 – 2nd Ebay Store.
Highest Price Sold – 2 books at $35 on the min Ebay Store. 1 record at $30 on 2nd Ebay store.
ASP: $11.92 – main Ebay store. $10.63 – 2nd Ebay store.
Combined COGS for both Ebay stores: $55.69
# of items listed: 70+ between both Ebay stores & Etsy.Etsy sales – 0
Poshmark sales – 0“Gut feelings report”
I haven’t listed to the podcast yet, but I will say how I’m feeling about the past week of sales:
It felt like a slow week, and it was a really slow week. Also, a very low dollar week. I didn’t list for several days and only caught up with listing this weekend. That didn’t help. I’ve only sold a few items out of those just listed, which is unusual. I’ve also been too busy to really focus on Ebay like I should’ve over the past few weeks, so I take partial blame. For me to list 70+ items in a week is no big deal, it doesn’t take me much time to list at all, and I find it enjoyable.
At the very least, I’m happy that COGS are very low and that it is still chugging along, albeit poorly. As long as I list, I will eventually sell. I have quite a bit to list, so I’m not worried about future listings or future sales.
However, sales do feel really slow and low for January. January and August are usually my best months, so I’m a bit worried that sales are lagging this much for my stock of items. I think the economy is worse off than people are letting on, and the government shutdown is not helping. I only had 1 sale yesterday, and no sales so far today on the main Ebay store. I am not in panic mode yet, but I am back to a “watch and be cautious” mode like I was back in 2008. I’m pretty much going to curtail my Ebay sourcing at this time and just list down what I have, unless I find really good stuff thrifting.
I also realize that nothing I sell in either of my ebay stores is “essential,” so the fact that I am getting sales on random items is pretty good.
Pleased to see that the 2nd Ebay store has come back to life! I’ve got a bunch to list on that store, so at least these sales motivate me.
If I list 30 items in a day, 10-15 will inevitably be cross-checked on Worthpoint. It’s good to find stats on scarce items that have an infrequent sales history on Ebay. If you are listing more common stuff with many currently listed and solds to compare to on Ebay, Worthpoint is not worth it since you can use current data already provided by Ebay.
2018 was the first year I started grabbing weird, breakable stuff. I bought a box of pewter at an estate sale and my husband was like “whyyyyyyyyyyy.”
Of course, we thrifted this week and he found a glass piece that was actually worth buying and I was like “whyyyyyy.” So, we got it. Of course, it still needs to be washed before it can eventually be listed. 🙁
Weird that a buyer would cancel for that reason. Ebay did give warning about sales tax being implemented this year for certain states. I’m unsure of how they told buyers about it, but I am sure that in their updates in selling manager they had one in December to remind sellers that it would be implemented this year (on a phone now without access to a computer to verify the date, sorry). They had also advised sellers earlier in the year that this was happening.
I’ve had several sales since January 1st with the new sales tax indicated on Ebay no problems with buyers.
The sales tax has already been collected by Amazon for many states on that platform for over a year now.
I’ve had my usual 5-10 sales a day since January 1st on my main store. So far, 3 sales today. I haven’t listed anything in the main store since Monday, so I’m happy with that.
For my 2nd ebay store (200 items), I had 3 sales yesterday! 2 of those items were listed yesterday. Makes me motivated to list more in that store.
I’ve found 3 different reactions to a sale ending in my main store – no sales for 12+ hours oncw the sale ends, normal sales, and sometimes better sales than when the sale ran. Ebay is a fickle beast.
01/08/2019 at 1:58 pm in reply to: Dictionary of literary biography, Japanese fiction writers since world war II #54790It goes for $124 on Amazon with a 10 mil rank. I think the most a bookseller would normally pay for this would be $2, but the majority would leave it behind due to the rank.
At a buy cost of $85, and the fees on an $120 book being I believe around $20 off the top of my head, (will have to check, sorry) there’s very little profit for a bookseller to make on this book, when and if it ever sells due to the rank – maybe 1 copy a year or every 18 months on Amazon, if that lucky?
01/07/2019 at 1:55 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 393: Happy New Year and Returns Happen #54708Listening to the podcast now. In the past year or so, I’ve started taking any “reasonable” offers on items, especially if they have been sitting for awhile in my inventory. At this point, I feel like I’d rather “take the money!” than just sit and wait for maybe a better price…in a few years? I don’t know. I especially do this if an item has been sitting for 2 or more years.
I think it does definitely help to have low costs already into the items. If I spent a lot on the item, I would still expect a higher price for it. I counter or hold off longer for items like this. However, if the item only cost $1 or less and the offer is good with a good profit on it, I’ll take it. I may not necessarily get the high price I thought I would get for it, but it’s money to roll into either other inventory, projects or savings that I would not have had had I continued to sit on the item. It also frees space for new stock to go into. Win win.
However, I feel this method works if you have a large backlog of items waiting to be listed. Like you both said on the podcast, there is the worry that items would be quickly depleted and then you would be left with an unsustainable inventory that would have to be quickly replaced. I take these offers now because I have similar items already waiting to replace these items that have sold. If I did not have a large backlog of items, I would probably be more hesitant to sell for lower prices.
01/07/2019 at 11:10 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 393: Happy New Year and Returns Happen #54693Total items in store: 10,180
Items sold: 44
Sales $: $722
COGS: $64
Highest Price Sold: $100 – Book
ASP: $16.41
New items listed: 120 (118 main Ebay store, 2 on Poshmark).Additional Sales not included in above (other than new items listed):
2nd Ebay Store – 0 (190 items currently active) (haven’t listed in a few weeks!)
Poshmark – 1 for $22 (2 items currently active). Sold within an hour of listing! Accepted an offer. My first Poshmark sale! 😀
Etsy – 1 (23 items currently active)Looking at my numbers from the 1st week of January last year, numbers and sales $ are currently up for the year. The first week of the year seems to be slow overall for Ebay. I noticed that most sales occurred starting the 2nd week of January for my main store last year. I’ve already had 3 orders in the main ebay store this morning, so hopefully the post-holiday buying season has begun!
30 items listed in the main ebay store were backlog items. Another 20 items came from an estate sale I hit this weekend. Still have a ton to list from that sale – should keep me busy over the next few weeks, in addition to the backlog AND catching up with newer items sourced over the past few months.
I currently have a bin of clean clothes set aside to list on Poshmark. Very pleased that I already had a sale! I shipped it and received 5 * feedback, yay! I’m a dork and included some related ephemera to the shirt sold, which the customer left a positive feedback comment about. Yay!
Once I’m done listing through my current bin of clothes, I’ll watch that new Marie Kondo show on Netflix and do another clean through of my clothes. I’m currently just listing through clothes I already own and don’t wear any longer. If this goes well, I’ll eventually start sourcing certain clothes out in the wild to add to my closet. I’m not rushing it. I’d rather just currently make $ on what I already own and is taking up space.
01/04/2019 at 5:10 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Empty tequila bottle, Turntable, Hat case, Cow Head Bell, Album holder, Magazine rack. #54530It looks priced right to me. There are currently no copies listed on buy it now for any lower than his sold price. The most recent one to sell sold for $50, so even more than his copy. There is only 1 1976 printing listed right now on Ebay for $50. There might be differences in recipes or binding in different years printed for this cookbook. This specific edition might be more desirable than others, I don’t know.
Prices on books like this might also go higher during the holidays. It’s cyclical.
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