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I keep vintage ads stored in large rigid mailers by topic. Are the Vogue magazines complete? It might be worth it to sell them complete, as opposed to split up.
I, too, was in shock over the results of the election. I was following it on 538 and was bewildered to see the probability change so radically that night. There is the possibility that something was amiss with the electronic voting machines in wi, mi, and 1 other state. Nothing will most likely come of it, unfortunately. Before all that, I was all excited to go out scouting the next day and high-five complete strangers all full of energy and good cheer. Instead, I stayed inside and just wept for this full-on PKD reality we have to live in. All I can do is keep listing and hope there is an economy left in a few years that will pay for my paper trinkets. This might lead to a worse crash. Who knows. I recently passed 8,000 feedbacks as well. It is nice validation that people like what I am listing.
I just have everything in file boxes and number them from #1, #2, etc,. Smaller, fragile items are in envelopes in the boxes with their own folder numbers. The numbers are indicated in the Ebay listings. #1. #2, #1. Easy.
Amazon sales usually start picking up the second week of November. This is a very unusual year. It might take until Thanksgiving / Black Friday to really get people in the mood for buying.
I have templates saved in the listing program I use to speed it up. I just batch research & photograph similar items together, usually 15-20 at a time. I then put them in my line of sight so I HAVE to list them, usually within the next week or two. Upon listing them all, I immediately replace the empty space with another pile to research & photograph.
It is actually sort of a tedious process. You can list 10 or more books on Amazon in the time it takes to research/photograph/list 1 book on Ebay, even with the batch processing. Ephemera also takes its time. Photos and postcards are pretty quick. They speed up the average processing/listing time overall.
Veeeeeeeerrrrryyy sllllooooooowww. Sales are half of normal on a similar stock compared to a year ago at this time. I had 4 sales on Sunday and 0 yesterday. 0 so far today. Normal sales are 5-12 a day.
I don’t know if this will even turn-around by December. A lot of Coasters might refuse to spend Christmas in the interior with their families. I’ve already seen talk of people skipping out on Thanksgiving when their families are split in such a way.
I have a feeling this Christmas might be a write-off unless you have a ton of Hatchimals and NES Classics.
Looking back at my stats, the first week of November 2012 was very slow. The first week of November 2013 was better than normal. I guess it depends on what stock I had listed at the time, but it does seem to be an issue with elections. November 2008 was very bad, but that was also at the beginning of the Great Recession. That was a really dismal Q4. Had my worst December ever that year.
I’m not sure how this election is going to impact the overall Holiday season, but I am not overly optimistic about it this year. This October did beat last year’s October, but I don’t know if this November can recover enough to beat last November’s. Hopefully, December will be back to normal. At this point, I’m just hoping it evens out overall, at the very least.
The only way I can deal with burnout when it is really bad is to just completely stop working on the business until I feel normal again. However, since I do this full-time, I cannot just put the store on vacation for a few days. What I do is just the very minimum: pull orders that have come in, pack them, ship them, and bookkeeping.
Then, just do whatever you need to do the rest of the day that does not involve work. Clean your house. Read a book. Go for a walk. Exercise.
No scouting, no listing, no glancing at your unlisted items. It will all be there waiting for you for whenever you are ready to come back to it.
To prevent burnout before it starts, take a day or two off each week from listing and sourcing. Pretend this doesn’t exist. It will be refreshing to come back to work after you have had some time away from it.
Italy is a bit of a black hole for packages. It seems to have gotten better over the past few years, but for awhile nothing was getting delivered.
Shipping does slow down during this time internationally. Just be prepared for customer inquiries regarding that and advise them that mail will sometimes be delivered outside of the expected time frame during this time of the year.
I usually sell a bit to the UK. Maybe 3-5 packages a week. Not so these past few weeks.
I have definitely noticed a decline during this past month on all international sales. Instead of 1-2 a day anywhere around the world, there have been days with absolutely no international sales. I guess this explains it. Sales do seem to be increasing to South America, oddly enough. Canadian sales are also picking up.
