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This would annoy me because I don’t know how you’d simultaneously account for items purchased that year AND the cogs for items you’ve previously purchased before that have sold, but haven’t been previously accounted for in taxes.
When I photograph items, I just tend to do it in natural light and don’t adjust brightness in the photos at all. I still sell the items. As long as it’s not too dark in the room and the color shown is the true color of the items photographed, it’s fine.
A lot of people disappeared off the forum after the 2016 election, I recall. Other people disappeared after they became instagram or youtube popular. Others, who knows?
I like coming on here because it’s easy to ignore topics you’re not interested in, and help in others when you can. People here are pretty rational and bring up interesting topics on reselling I don’t see anywhere else. Facebook groups are toxic, and the formatting for groups is bad. Ebay forums are toxic, if anyone is left even posting on there. Instagram is full of people trying to sell mentorships, and pretty repetitive. Reddit flipping is overfilled with beginners posting the same stuff repeatedly.
Thanksgiving – 6
Black Friday – 9
Saturday – 4
Sunday – 3
Cyber Monday – 6
Tuesday – 5If you have a lot of Q4 type items, you’re probably doing well. I had a lot to ship out at the beginning to middle of November, but it was all Christmas specific stock. It has completely sold out now. If I had any of it left, it would be selling REALLY well right now and my numbers would be way up. Since I am just down to the normal types of items I sell, it’s back to normal.
When you do this for a living, you are not looking necessarily at each item representing a final result of x on a per-item basis. You are more looking at a group of items all purchased the same day, representing a final result of x, and within those items taking into the consideration of time, price, listings, shipping, etc,. A lot of f/t sellers are more likely to buy out large collections of items for lower prices because they have the time to deal with them, be it from auctions or the bins, or any number of sources. Thrift shopping or shopping for 1 item is still doable, but is not largely a means of purchasing as it is when doing this p/t. When you’re f/t, you most likely need to get bigger in order to absorb a combination of purchasing new items, having money tied up in existing stock, and the cash flow generated from items that are selling.
It is a good mental exercise to go out and attempt to look for $50, or $100, or $200 items. It is good to sometimes limit yourself to purchasing just those sort of items, if you have a large backlog, are doing this just p/t, and don’t have that much money to spend on sourcing.
When you do this f/t, there are a myriad of other factors to consider. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe in buying junk just to justify going out for the day. For example, on Tuesday, I sourced at 3 thrift stores and only purchased 4 items over the course of an hour and a half. BUT, when doing this f/t, there are a number of ever-changing variables to consider that seem seriously seem to change on almost a daily basis. What works 1 day doesn’t work the next. A month later, it suddenly works again. What to do in the meantime? What type and price level of items to sell when no one’s buying $50+ items? Buy nothing? Buy more of the same and wait it out? Buy items you wouldn’t normally consider, but can still make a profit on, to tide you through until people are more spendy again? There’s just so much to be constantly thinking about it in order to maintain just your normal level of sales, let alone expand.
I’ve currently got 8,700 items listed worth under $20, and 1,300 items worth over $20. What I find interesting is that looking at last year’s numbers, my sales and sales $s are actually UP, even though I have greatly increased the number of items I have listed under $20.
I think there are a LOT of people out there willing to purchase an item for $10 without a second thought. For $20 and up, it might conflict with another item they were considering purchasing, or just might not be worth bothering with if it’s not essential.
Cheap items add up. My sales $s for today so far: $8.50, $8.50, $8.70, $35, $14, $17, $12. If I had just stayed with an arbitrary “high dollar” value of $20+ per item listed, I would have only grossed $35 today. Since I added in the cheap stuff, I have already grossed over $100 today, and it’s still early.
I think it’s also different when you’re selling online f/t vs. doing this p/t. Someone might not need that additional $75 gross with additional packages to go out, but if you’re going to the post-office every single day anyway AND are making a profit on an item, even a very cheap one, it’s still worth it.
I use a Canon Canoscan Lide 210 for books and magazines, and a Canon Canoscan Lide 220 for postcards and ephemera.
I like using 2 different scanners because I find there’s a lot of dirt on books and magazines that can impact the quality of scans for ephemera and postcards. The dirt is so bad that I usually switch out the 210 scanner each year in order to maintain good quality for photos.
The 220 allows for multiple-items to be scanned at once and has an easy interface to use with the scanner. I think the 210 isn’t being made anymore, so probably even 2 of the 220s would work well. The last 210 I bought was off ebay, but I’ll probably switch to a 220 next year for books and magazines as well. I just personally wouldn’t use the same scanner to scan both types of items if you’re dealing in large quantities of them.
I would only recommend having 2 scanners if you have a large quantity of books, magazines and ephemera to deal with). Otherwise, just 1 would be fine, as long as you clean the scanner frequently.
For slides, I use a separate slide usb slide scanner, the ion omni scan. I think that’s also not being made anymore, so I would recommend reading reviews of similar slide/film scanners on Amazon that are currently available.
Yeah, these are the vintage ones. I even have several rare ones priced reasonably, but they’re not moving.
It might also be because I have them listed in adults only. When I first listed them, the number of ones active on ebay was split between normal ebay and adults only pretty evenly. I feel like mine have gone into a black hole on that portion of the site, though. Ugh.
I bought an amazing collection of tijuana bibles in the spring for around $200. There were 60 or so, with a cost of roughly $3.50 apiece.
I haven’t sold out of the darn things yet, or even made my money back from the buy. I’m probably going to move some to etsy, or just try to sell them directly through instagram. Ebay has not been my friend with these.
11/17/2018 at 10:40 am in reply to: Promoted listings experiment RESULTS: Reducing all promoted listings to 1% rate #51859I would be curious to see a seller experiment with 1 month trending promoted listings, 1 month no promoted listings, 1 month 1% listings, all in a row. Maybe February – April, so as not to interfere with q4 and beginning of q1.
I run sales, but I don’t touch promoted listings at all. It sometimes feels like sales jostle something in the system if sales have decreased. I wonder if promoted listings work in a similar way.
11/16/2018 at 1:13 pm in reply to: Promoted listings experiment RESULTS: Reducing all promoted listings to 1% rate #51811Hmm, in that case, another thought:
When did the trending rate option directly appear in individual listing pages? Last month? Maybe more sellers that weren’t aware of promoted listings before are choosing to promote listings now, bringing the trending rate up and the amount of competition for promoted listings up to a point that it is impossible to compete with?
I wonder if the 1% trending rate would have had more of an impact before that change in the listing pages, in August or September, but is pretty much being washed out at this point due to the increased competition?
11/16/2018 at 12:13 pm in reply to: Promoted listings experiment RESULTS: Reducing all promoted listings to 1% rate #51809I wonder if there is a correlation between listing less items and seeing fewer promoted listing sales? Perhaps the popular types of listings that would get a boost from promoted listings sold more in October, while the less popular items left are still selling through promoted listings, but there are overall fewer of them to make a correct comparison against?
I would love to post numbers like this, but 95% of the shipping I purchase comes out of the same shipping service I use for Amazon and other sites. I do have my ebay cogs separate, but it’s 2 separate ebay stores. Would partial stats be ok?
Oh yeah, I read this sub a bit a few years ago. I like how the membership has grown, but the scams have stayed the same. Nothing changes.
The NXIVM scandal involves an mlm turned into a cult. The leader was a former member of Amway. You’d think a story like that would shine a light on all the mlms, but they have just continued onwards.
Whoa, the gofundme link on that page for people to START their MLM businesses with. With sob stories. Daaaaang. I knew they encouraged them to get credit cards to start their businesses with, but didn’t realize people were asking friends and family to also help through crowdsourcing. I don’t see any recent campaigns, so maybe that stopped a couple of years ago.
Of course, Ebay sellers posted BOLO videos of the Lularoe they sourced from Goodwill and on Craigslist, devaluing the brand even more. Circle of reseller life.
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