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08/23/2018 at 2:33 pm in reply to: New login page for Ebay – Sign in with your username OR Facebook #47891
That’s interesting. I am logged into Facebook right now and see that there is a Payments setting under settings. In it, you can add your credit or debit card (or Paypal) directly into Facebook.
I guess it’s there for in-app purchases, or to send money to friends for “campaigns” they host during their birthdays or other times.
Would logging into Facebook on Ebay create a guest id for the buyer on Ebay? Or, would they create a username for that Facebook person that can be used repeatedly (but still look like one of those annoying guest account usernames?).
What is annoying is that this change isn’t mentioned under selling announcements on the dashboard, or in the fall update. It’s nice that they brought this up for the few hundred sellers that went to Ebay Open, but the majority of sellers don’t attend it, and should not have to rely on message boards to hear about changes like this.
Store #2:
August 13th-20th:
Items in Store: 125
Items Sold: 5
Total Sales: $240
COGS: $9
Average Price Sold: $48I’m starting to get more serious about my “everything else, random” store. The niche store is on auto-pilot, so my experiments with selling online are now going into the 2nd store. It was hovering around 50-75 items for the longest time, but I have been working the past few months to get it over 100 items.
Since my 2nd store is just random stuff like the type of stuff people normally post here, I don’t have the space to store a ton of odd-sized, weird items. As it is now, I am having trouble finding places to store what I list. Space I cleared out for items from my niche store is now being used to hold stuff for store #2.
I’m happy with the results of the 2nd store, especially since it is just a basic store. It is paying for itself, and is worth having to keep items separated from the niche.
I find it helps keep me motivated to go out looking for stuff for either store now. If I don’t find something good in my niche, I can look for the 2nd store. I don’t have to walk out of somewhere empty-handed because it didn’t fall into a narrowly-defined window of what I consider appropriate to list.
I just scrolled through 500 older listings and picked 10 at random. They all have all of their photos.
I have not had any sales in the past few hours, so I don’t know if it is impacting just sold listings in that way.
Sounds like a glitch that is hitting some, but not all accounts?
The rates fluctuate based on your current sales. If you’re having weak sales, your loan fee amount will be higher than if you requested a loan during a better sales period.
If you tried to get a loan during q4, your fee rates will probably be lower.
08/14/2018 at 2:18 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47464I think an easy fix for going over the 1k free listing limit would be to remove all items that are under $10. Depending on how many listings you have in the lower price range, that should bring you back into “free” listing territory.
08/13/2018 at 2:47 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47403Just finished listening to the podcast.
I think a lot of people prefer to do the beginning parts of any new thing that catches their interest, and then maybe or maybe not to proceed to go through with the rest of it.
Write a novel? Buy a new laptop. Maybe write on it for a few weeks or months. Never get anything published.
Start a band? Buy a fancy new guitar. Play on it for a few weeks.
New Year’s? Exercise until the middle of January.
Start an ebay business? Wow, there are all these intricate parts to it. I can pretend to be a business person for a few weeks, while never actually listing anything for sale. It’s so interesting to think of all of what goes into making a business. By the time they are done reading up on it, they’re exhausted and will move onto the next thing.
OR
If they start out getting good stuff and do well with it for a month or two while thrifting, get exhausted by month 5 when they realize they have exhausted all of their thrifts and knowledge. Complain when actual work and research is involved. Quit.
For third-party tools, yeah, it is sort of exhausting to have to buy all of these extra services to “help” what should be easy. Still, it is the actual knowledge of which services to buy, how to use it in your business, how to set-it up so it makes life easier for you, etc,. that eventually do make your life easier. If Ebay was any easier to use, there would be 100000x more people doing it. Having at least a little barrier to entry to make it a little more difficult to use is a good thing for f/t sellers.
08/13/2018 at 2:36 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47399Something else to consider is taxes. While everyone should be deducting their probable taxes from all of their numbers, if they’re going to go that far with getting costs down to the finest detail, they don’t. A lot of small-time sellers don’t get 1099ks and don’t report their taxes. A lot of small-time sellers will never pay taxes because they never cross the threshold to report them.
That really divides a lot of the f/t sellers on this forum from the p/t ones. I do see numbers of some p/t sellers on the forum reflecting that they do get 1099ks and pay taxes on them, but I suspect that’s not the case for a lot of resellers (both on this forum and elsewhere).
Reading this thread made me curious about Poshmark, so I signed up last night. There were a few clothing items on there that I intended to buy anyway, so I thought why not. I also have some desirable clothing brands that I intended to do returns on but didn’t in time, so Poshmark seemed the ideal venue for them.
My initial impressions from a buyer’s perspective:
Clothes sell for really, really cheap on there. I purchased 1 clothing item for $4, and another for $6 after negotiation. Since it was my first purchase, the shipping was $.99 for the first item, bringing the cost down to $5. The 2nd came out to $12 and change. The items I purchsed for myself were 3-5x more expensive on Ebay.
Having people you automatically follow right away is creepy. I figured out how to delete them all right away.
Having people follow YOU right away is also creepy.
Skimming through the closets of some of the people that follow you right away reveal sellers with 100 or less items in the closets, most of which are priced very low. Why are they spending so much time following people? Are they just churning through their clothing listings quickly? Are they actually doing well for themselves on there?
I thought it would be a more fashion-focused site than it is. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time on there, but a first glance look on it makes it look like a creepy flea market with stuff listed for barely anything, which in my opinion devalues the site. If an item is worth only $2-$4, why is the person taking the time to sell it on Poshmark? It makes me think, what is wrong with the item? It looks like people are working really hard to make very little.
08/10/2018 at 10:05 am in reply to: Buyer asks to ship to different address than on the account: Do or Don't? #47282What I normally do for different addresses requested is cancel the order and put “wrong address” as the reason. I relist the item and the buyer repurchases it and inputs the correct address through Paypal.
This is the only way you can maintain your seller protection through Ebay and Paypal.
I still have a store, but that’s because I’m up to nearly 10k items listed. My store mainly consists of books, ephemera, cds, cassettes, records, dvds, etc,. with thousands more to list (and source). I’m still wishing they’ll up the anchor store to 15k listings so I don’t have to spend additional money to get it all listed. This fee increase will not prevent me from listing everything.
I do think that if they’re going to raise the fees on books & media, that they should either give FREE listings for those categories, or reduced listing fees. Perhaps even have a special category of store tiers set up for sellers that are primarily book & media sellers with the same fees, but stores that are double or triple the size of allowed listings than normal stores.
I have way more items listed on Amazon and only pay $39.99 a month. I have less on Ebay and pay $299 a month. It’s ridiculous.
They might be working in the direction Amazon did with their fee increase – have the lowest item listed raise up by $1 or $2 in price. If sellers don’t raise the bottom ends of their listings, they will either break even or pay the selling sites to sell their items – $-1 – $-3 a book in fees for a lot of mega sellers is not uncommon with very large inventories. They just make up for it in volume.
Hahahah!!
“Do you have a lot of space out in the spirit world to hold all your belongings? Or do they only give you the equivalent of a studio apartment? Do they have thrift stores like they do here? So, tell me, what are the estate sales like when ghosts move on, or move elsewhere? Does your ghost spouse help you in the business, or are you doing it alone? Do you have any other duties you have to do as a ghost, or is it like being retired?”
LOL!
Patrick Swayze in “Ghost” is friends with other ghosts.
Casper is friends with Wendy.
Ghosts are the nicest.
If I found a ouija board from the 1800s, I’d probably have it on display for a little while. I would eventually sell it because it’s worth $$$, but that would be so cool to find and have for a bit.
If I had deep pockets and was the “target audience,” one of the collections I’d have would consist of mid 1800s-1970s spiritual type literature, games, cards, photos, and other items. The imagery is so good. I’d have a large wall full of folk arty type ouija boards.
Noooooooooooo. I seriously just filled up my bacpack with books and dvds from a thrift store to sell on Ebay.
Guess it’s time to sell trucks or whatever that industrial equipment cat. is that got a reduction to 4% fees, haha.
The under $300 items are also easier to source out in the wild, even at thrift stores or estate sales. I find there is a larger audience for them online, as well. You might have to pay up sometimes for them, but if you know what you’re doing, $100-300 items are pretty easy to pick up and list.
The $1k listings require real intense research prior to purchasing them and listing them in order to explain why it is worth so much, if it’s not some obvious vintage electronic item or other obvious very expensive high-end item. Or, just dumb luck.
I DID source a book earlier this year that I listed on ebay for $1.5k. This was a dumb luck scenario book, actually. I paid $2 for it in a thrift store, barely looked at it until I got home, then once I got home realized it was very special. No other copies for sale online I believe EVER, a completely forgotten book overall that due to its provenance was an “oh, wow, this exists?!” sort of item. With research and knowledge, I created the market and price for this particular item. There was nothing to compare it to. I just knew that if I found it special, someone else would as well.
I think I could have gotten 800-1.2k for it if I waited, but someone offered $450 for it within a few months, so I took it. Maybe THEY can get over 1k for it. Or, maybe they just wanted it for their own collection. I don’t know. I think a lot of it is venue. Having the right buyers that look to you to provide specialty items. Ebay is not really conducive for such items sometimes. Maybe people will look for items like that more at an antiquarian book fair, or at an auction house. If I had more time, I would have done the same. Alas, I was happy to see it go, and for a high amount for a completely ?? item.
I haven’t looked in years for items like that, but when I did it, it was online in a veeeerrry specific niche. The key was to buy off 1 venue cheaply and flip it on another with a price for 4x the amount. I’m sure this could be done buying off ebay to resell on ebay as well.
I’m sure that even now you can do that with items you have a deep knowledge of that other people might not. I don’t know if you will have the same spread of 200-1k, but I’m sure there are items on Ebay now that most flippers will not dare buy on auction or even potentially fixed price for 100+ to potentially make 500+. Just have to have knowledge, money and time to look.
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