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Whoa, I got a mention 😀 Thanks!
Last week was supposed to be my week off from sourcing due to seasonally low sales, too much unlisted backstock and overall burn out. Well, you know how things go. After a combination of good thrift store runs and a large private collection purchased, I spent around $1k on stock. After complaining about lackluster buys over the past few months, I stumbled into a few good ones. Neat. Now, I am off from sourcing for the month! Hah!
I am so happy that it worked out that way. With this nasty heat wave sticking around, I’d rather be working in my office than going from place to place in 90*+ heat. It also gives me a LOT of time to do non-ebay related tasks, like have fun and not think about work for a large portion of time. Yesssss.
Still, I have boxes upon boxes of unlisted stock to go through as well. My husband used the dreaded h word (hoarder) to get me to stop buying in excess off Ebay in addition to us buying in our local area. First, he said I had so much unlisted stock that I would not be able to get it all listed in my lifetime. Then, he narrowed it down to 2 years of listing. Now, I am treating it like a contest to get it all listed much quicker than that, and to reap the “rewards” of my squirreling away of inventory for the past several years.
I have gone over 1 month without buying extra inventory off of Ebay, and am already starting to notice results. Items are selling, space is freeing up, I am filling it with more listed or unlisted to keep the process flowing. It will be a good opportunity to save and to worry less about acquiring for the first time in years. I am up for the challenge.
I don’t think $20 an hour is worth being that miserable at a job over. Since it’s hourly, you’re probably making 40k or less a year. If it was a higher salary, I would slog through it. But for $20…eh
It looks like sql developers normally make 60-85k a year. I’ve read that it’s easiest to get a new job while still in your old one. Maybe try to find another similar job that lets you work for the most part remotely?
If not, temporarily go f/t with ebay, then set aside some of the hours that went into the f/t job for independent study or class time (online or local). With tech jobs, you don’t want a long gap in your resume. I guess if you do have a gap in your resume but show a sql certificate from a local cc that might count for something from employers? Idk.
06/27/2018 at 1:41 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43739I think the expectation that sales should evenly match or outpace year-on-year for items that are one-of-a-kind is sort of head scratching. It is more healthy to look at numbers and consider the purchases that were made at the time to make those sales when comparing numbers even year over year.
Last year, I had a combination of amazing buys and a very strong work ethic to push me through listing all of the desirable items I had purchased. That resulted in strong sales last year at this time. This year, I am working much less, having less amazing buys (but still overall good buys), and as a result, experiencing overall decreased sales. Couple that with the low-point of my business being this exact time in the summer, and you know how it goes.
Overall, my favorite part of having a very large, very long-tail store is that even with an overall decline of sales for this time of year, I am still shipping out items everyday. I am not working as hard, but my items listed still are. People are still sending questions. The store is as active as it ever was, even if I’m not.
I think it’s a little too early to discuss trade war impacting our economy (though there is definitely the possibility of the very beginning of a worldwide contraction/most likely next recession occurring due to this garbage) in terms of selling vintage one-offs on ebay, but there is something going on. I don’t know what, but it is definitely messing up at least my numbers for this month.
I like how I complained about it here and got an international sale last night. I just checked, and my sales are definitely down this June because of the lack of international buyers in my store. The sale last night was the 1st international sale I have gotten since May 31st. That is unheard of in my store. I usually sell at least 1 item internationally a week, if not several.
June is traditionally slow for my niche, so I’m not too worried about a summer slowdown. I have not been listing much these past few weeks, and have also slowed down sourcing. For my slow sales, it is more a combination of me not really working and a traditional slowdown, so I’m not really fretting. When I do list, I sometimes get sales within the hour for items I’ve just listed. I just need to work a little harder, and sales will come back.
I did look at my numbers from last year at this time, and noticed something interesting that I have not seen anyone else comment on as another reason for this slump. A lot of my good days from last June were thanks to foreign sales. While I still get foreign sales on my stock, the numbers seem to have dropped quite a bit from last year. This is due to the recent large postal increase by the USPS this past January.
I ship packages myself to foreign customers. Has anyone else seen a dramatic slowdown this summer in sales to other countries either by shipping themselves, or through the global shipping program? Definitely something to consider for what may be a more extensive slowdown for sellers than even last year.
Summer is so contrary – a period of slow sales, yet also the time of year when the best stock can be found in plentiful amounts. I tend to stock up heavily during this time of the year for the 4th quarter, and not really expect purchases to match sales. Work now will pay for sales later.
I’ve gotten like 20 vero violations at a time and I’m still here. I guess it depends on what the exact vero violation is for, and the nature of other problems on your account.
Happy Birthday, Ryanne!
I believe that most people don’t understand the concept of having time over money because they don’t really know what unstructured time is outside of work. Outside of a normal 9-5, most people just spend time with their families, clean their houses, go on vacations, go to the movies, do whatever they have time to do when it is not time to work (which is not much). To have time beyond that is sort of ???
I found that when I went from college to a f/t job, there was really not much of a difference in how I viewed the use of my time outside of work as compared to school. If anything, I had more time to do what I wanted outside of my expected hours of work than in school. That’s how I was originally able to start selling on Ebay and Amazon p/t. Work wasn’t challenging enough, time to move onto something else.
The jump from a f/t job to just full-on selling online led to a sort of “wow” moment for me, in that all of a sudden I had all the time in the world to do anything I wanted. Or, nothing. It was just a huge chunk of time that was available. It was up to me to fill it with work, because bills still had to be paid.
For a lot of f/t sellers, there seems to be sort of a moment of reckoning between expanding greatly or just remaining on a plateau with better processes. I’m with you guys on staying on the plateau. I feel that a lot of sellers become as accustomed to selling online as they would at a normal f/t job, so it’s just sort of like “what now?” Maybe even with all of their free time they still haven’t developed extensive hobbies or interests in anything outside of work. Maybe they never will, so they just devote their resources to becoming bigger. If not that, then they devote their time to becoming Youtube or Instagram celebrities, but they are still enmeshed within the worlds of reselling and have not really separated themselves outside of selling.
If they want to become the embodiment of work, good for them. However, it is not obviously healthy, as many people question “why not become bigger?” Well, what is the use of all that additional money if you are working harder to gain more free time? Take the time now, not the additional money!
Selling matchbooks is tricky – there are surprising modern sleepers that fetch a lot of $$$, in addition to much older ones that are sometimes good, but the majority are absolutely worthless.
Do they include strikers? What years were they made? What companies made them? What locations do they come from?
There are a lot of nuances that go to matchcover selling that are not really obvious. The depth is there like postcards, but it involves a lot of research and knowledge. Yet, just like postcards, the majority are not worth wasting your time on.
I am curious to see if your projected growth rate will match your expectations once you hit 4,000 items listed. I guess it could result either in the same rate of sales that you have now, depending on how long-tail some items could become, or it could lead to a higher rate of sales than expected, depending on how popular the items are.
I expected a certain level of consistent sales with my store once I reached over 5,000 items, but that has not happened. There are days when I still will only sell 3-5 items. At least it has stopped the 0 sales days.
Now that I am near 10,000 items, I thought I would be insanely busy each day. I’m not. Most days are the same as when I had 5,000 or fewer items. However, some days do get crazy and I have 20-30 items that sell in a 24-hour period. Then, back to a smaller amount of sales.
I am strictly long-tail, but still thought there would be more of an overall stabilization at an increased rate of sales at a larger inventory rate level. I was wrong.
I’ve only listened to the first 10 minutes of the podcast so far, but I have to say that you 2 probably have your s**t (self-censoring myself) together better than just about anyone on the internet that is open about what they do with reselling. It is almost refreshing to hear about the anxiety & doubt from people as put together as you both are.
It’s not good, but it’s a realistic feeling for what feels fine one moment, but then feels like a self-destructing roller coaster the next. It’s fine. It’s rough. It’s disorienting. It’s so many mixed things. It’s definitely not a straight course in life that is just “oh, I’m getting a paycheck.” At least it’s interesting.
Also, happy late birthday, Jay!
I had an interesting “buying” experience this weekend at a super rich person’s place. I had talked the seller down from an incredibly high amount to a more reasonable amount by going with my gut and and just saying from the getgo that I was a reseller and could only afford x amount.
The seller was like, “oh, that’s great!” and offered to throw in additional items. The seller ended up giving everything to me for FREE and thanked me for taking what I did.
It was over $500 worth of stuff that I ended up getting. I usually never, ever say that I am a reseller, but I made an exception in this case and it worked out well.
The place being sold was worth A LOT of money, so at a certain price point for incredibly rich people money becomes an abstract concept. I believe that’s why the prices were originally so high for them – the seller was not currently aware of what the actual prices were to base a good value on them in either direction.
I was supposed to pick up these items the weekend before, so I can only imagine the sort of items that were donated that I missed when I was sick and couldn’t make it.
These people were not “Joneses,” but the type of people that Joneses aspire to become. Still, they were incredibly nice, all things considered, and I’m glad I was honest for once.
I still don’t have a car, so I’m not keeping up with anyone haha.
06/01/2018 at 7:42 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 362: Scavengers Are Always Prepared To Clean Out A Basement #41522Same here about being burnt out.
Even seeing people mention how they’re preparing for q4 is burning me out even more, hah. Oddly enough, I sold a bunch of Christmas items last week.That being said, I am planning to source all day tomorrow and then spend most of the week listing it with little additional sourcing. Work still has to happen, or bills won’t get paid.
One of the methods I use to help ease fatigue is to just stop working. Just shut my computer off, walk away from the desk and do other stuff for the rest of the night when I feel like I have done enough work. Then, I just start fresh again the next morning.
I actually don’t believe in the idea of pushing yourself with this sort of work. There will always be too much work to catch up on, so it’s really not worth pushing it to list just a few more things when you’re really not feeling it.
I understand why you provide so much detail for your listings, but it seems almost excessive. I’m just thinking of it from a buyer’s perspective. The attention span of your average person will just drift off after the first paragraph, if they even get that far into it.
Are you utilizing all 12 photos? Maybe add 5-6 photos of damaged areas, and mention them succinctly in your description field.
From what I’ve read, providing *too* much detail for condition issues is as bad as providing no information on condition issues. It turns off buyers if there’s too much “wrong” with an item, even if there’s really not and you’re just describing all the blemishes.
If any of you ever see a zebra eltron label printer with its power brick out in the wild, grab it! They used to go for nothing on Ebay, but it looks like prices have gone way up on them.
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