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I’ve had a few requests from prop departments over the years to ship items to them asap via their own fedex accounts. The last show that asked was “Masters of Sex” a few years ago. They will usually message you with, “Hi, I work for blah blah show, and we are filming an episode that requires this specific item in next weeks episode. Could you please send it via our fedex account so it can arrive on time?”
For the ones that don’t, it’s fun to play the game of “I wonder what show/movie this piece is going to?” when you see a studio lot in the ship to address field.
I’ve only listened to the first few minutes of the podcast, but I think I understand the mindset of the people contacting ya’ll asking for help. They believe that if they can quit their jobs, work for themselves and do everything on their own, that somehow all of the problems in their personal lives will simply disappear. What they don’t realize is that even if they work for themselves, they’ll still have all of their problems. That is something that goes way beyond selling on the internet. It sounds like people are asking for free therapy on top of selling advice.
Selling on the internet does not make the problems in your life go away – it exacerbates them if you have to go go out on a limb to pay for rent/mortgage, food, health care, stock, everything on your own with no support net and if you are already having a hard time finding stock, getting it listed and selling on the internet. It is not some magical cure-all.
In terms of the everyday little tasks that need to get done, I actually purchased one of those Rifle Paper Co planners this year. For each weekday, they have this two-column space you can fill in your to do lists for the day. I’ve started putting in what I need to get done on the left-hand column, and filling in on the right-hand column what I have actually gotten done for the day, or the results of previous work on that day. For selling online, I’ll write “listed 30 items on Ebay today,” or “25 packages went out today.” Just little notes of encouragement to myself that my seemingly small efforts are actually paying off in the long-run.
I just listed over 10 items in my store, and they’re all showing in active listings. They appeared in active in a normal amount of time.
This link is supposed to explain it, but I still don’t understand it:
After the 20% deduction, would you still get the traditional standard deduction as well? Or would this replace it? Standard deduction for 2018 is 12k for individuals, 24k for married, filing jointly.
Those trash can sales are great! One of my favorite finds ever in the wild was of a vintage metal trash can at an estate sale. I’ve been using it ever since, and that was over 5 years ago! Even those can go for 20+ consistently on Ebay, more so for ones with vintage cartoon or sports designs from the 50s-70s.
Sales the first week of January were down 50% from the last week of December. I was running the biggest sale of the year during that week in my store, so lots of items went out the door at that time. It was nice to clear out some very old inventory without too much effort.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to list much last week, so sales declined. Not much will be listed this week, either. I am spending the larger chunk of time I do have to work on photographing and prepping items to be listed when I do have the time. It’s better to squeeze in a few listings here and there than do nothing because I haven’t given myself the time to get the prep work out of the way.
OMG, even pinball machines. That’s like my dream. A few pinball machines and a 1954 mutoscope drive yourself road test. Or, a 1940s one. Whatever!
I was a 90s kid, but I grew up by an old arcade that was filled with pinball machines and other weird games from the 40s-early 90s. Love that stuff.
Here is an update:
The case had not gone through to Ebay to decide on yet when I initially wrote this post. It was close to them stepping in and deciding in her favor. After Ebay declined to help, I returned to advising the customer that the item was shipped and delivered. She stated that it wasn’t. As to not be accusatory, I did not initially state that she was the same buyer that had purchased the first item that I had shipped to her and that she had received. I just plainly repeated that the book was delivered, here is the tracking information.
After she stated again that she had not received the item, I finally wrote to her last night, “okay, your book shipped with another book you purchased a few minutes before that with a different guest id. They were in the same shipping package. They went to the same address.”
I received no response from her. Instead, in the middle of the night, she just closed the case and the item payment went off of Paypal hold in Paypal and back into my account.
I called anchor support AGAIN just now and told them, “hey, she closed the case for this item. She has acknowledged that she has received if it she did so, right?” and the rep. agreed with me, checked tracking for the item that I had put in the case, saw that it was delivered to her city and zip code, and removed the feedback since the feedback stated “I did not receive this item.”
This whole transaction was over 2 books worth less than $15 apiece. So not worth it. Feedback is back up to 100% again. I blocked both of her guest ids, but that’s not to say she won’t create a new guest id to purchase from me again. Guest ids are the perfect way to get around blocks.
It sounds like Ebay doesn’t have an actual official policy prohibiting combined shipping for multiple ids if they allowed you to do so. The rep. on the phone told me that there is absolutely no way they would allow anyone to combine 2 items into 1 shipment for 2 different ids. He said that if I had called when this had happened, they would have told me that it is not possible.
It sounds like I might need to call back and state my case again to another associate. The policy should not be this flexible from one seller to another. It should be do this 100% of the time, not okay, we’ll make an exception just this one time.
I would not trust what the rep. told you to do in this case. If the buyer comes back and says he didn’t receive it, they will be on his side. You’ve lost your seller protection in this case, even with the email to the buyer since you can’t upload the tracking # with the second purchase. Hopefully what you shipped wasn’t too expensive, and hopefully Ebay will keep their word with you if things head south with this one.
That is a very good idea. I’ll contact Paypal when their refund goes through on Ebay’s end and will update this thread with the results. With the way the rep was talking, I don’t think Ebay is going to budge, unfortunately. Maybe Paypal will see it differently?
Yep. It was a costly mistake – for my feedback. I will definitely just ship as many separate packages as I need to in the future.
The name, address and email address were the same for both buyers. The only thing that was different were the buyer ids; they used 2 different buyer ids to buy 2 similar items to be shipped to the same address within minutes of each other.
It was an individual buyer, not a forwarding service.
Most sellers have consistent sales because they’re pricing their items correctly? I think that’s the gist of it. Raising prices will not necessarily result in greater or even equal sales, even spread out over a period of several months or a year in order to compensate for the raised prices.
I know that a lot of sellers have the feeling of “oh, I priced it too low” when an item sells within a day, or even a week. I used to sort of feel that way, but now I see it as a relief! One item, listed and gone in the blink of an eye. Bye! Bon voyage!
It might also be because I have developed such an extensive backlog that I just want to get stuff in and out at this point. My store also includes difficult to find items, many of which have no pricing history. I just do better research and price accordingly from the start, when possible. If my pricing is wrong, I run a sale. I have lost the patience required to play the waiting game, unless it’s for an expensive item.
Vintage spray cans are definitely big now for collectors of street art:
http://www.rogergastman.com/art-in-the-streets/
so pretty:
https://www.manmadediy.com/users/chris/posts/1379-amazing-collection-of-vintage-spray-paint-cans
Oh, I meant normal places to buy, like thrift stores. I just got done buying at my favorite place and it was practically empty and nice for once. Everyone else was hitting the normal shops for last-minute shopping. Also, uber is like half the cost it was last week, so that was a nice bonus.
Goodwill Outlets used to be one of my main sourcing spots for many years. From 2003-2011 or so, they were my jam.
In the very early days, they were amazing. Hardly any other resellers, nothing had been sorted by Goodwill for resale online, at least half of the items had never even made it into a retail location.
Eventually, the hordes came in by 2006/2007. I blame this on the invention of the scanner. Before the scanners became available, you had to know books. Scoutpal was around in 2005/2006 before the actual bippity boop scanner, but it was cumbersome, slow, and not really that useful. You still had to know what to look for so you wouldn’t be stuck in a Goodwill for 8 hours a day.
By 2007? Everyone wanting to sell books had a scanner. The goodwills were teeming with book dealers, and goodwill started to notice. They already had an online bookstore out of their Portland location, but individual stores selling online started to spread across the country at that point.
If all you had to do was pick up a scanner and point, anyone could do it. Especially the thrift stores. That was when bookselling became less fun. I love books, but I hate the aggressive competition that considers them to be merely commodity items. By 2011, I had enough of that toxic environment and had to stop going.
Of course, even with the scanner, there have been lulls in selling. The 2008 financial crash. The introduction of fba. All of the new sellers brought in by the lure of fba. All of the changes amazon has had to make to cease the neverending flow of fba sellers. Huge fee increases.
A lot of people left at the outlets are from the early days. They’re trying to maintain their old style of making a living, even with all the new competition and fee increases. They ate working harder for less, and becoming more outwardly hostile ad they do so. It is a negative spiral.
I don’t even understand how after all of the years of going daily, that they don’t have enormous backlogs to draw from and can be a little less desperate. It’s so weird.
