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Welcome to April and the new Gold, Silver, & Metals challenge.
Winners for March’s MCM Challenge: first place with an impressive 36 goes to Sharyn! VL almost made it, but has to settle for silver with 34. I managed 17 giving me the bronze, and VT got one point because she made it on the board. Great job, everyone.
Spreadsheet updated and JB moves into the lead with her win this week.
Now, I’m seeing a drop off in enthusiasm. Not so much participation in the monthly challenges, apart from the Core of Four (Sharyn, VL, VT and me.) Do you folks want to keep doing them, or drop the challenges? Shall we have more pop up challenges? Trying to encourage you all to list more, not nagging! 😉
Have a great week, everybody!
Listed only one last week, and I’m going for a justification claim: it’s a yellow duck – that’s “gold” right? Kinda? LOL.
Back in the saddle this week, and I started listing again today. I still haven’t tested the drafts feature to see if it’s working yet. I’m just grateful that I can list, even if I have to do it all in one go. I worked out that I will have to list about 14 items a day if I want to catch up in one week. Nearly 4 weeks behind schedule! Bah humbug! But the weather is great, I’m healthy, and I can list, so it’s a triple win here. I shall list as much as I can and be thankful for every one that’s over target!
Wishing you all a terrific week. I’ll post the MCM challenge winners tomorrow with the spreadsheet update.
Good question. I have a jacket that was returned to me directly in 2017. The buyer didn’t go through eBay and just included a note to “reverse the charge on the credit card.” I never heard back from her, despite messaging her multiple times, and I’ve not felt comfortable putting the jacket back on sale. I didn’t know, back then, that I could reverse a PP charge. So I’m also sitting with a “sold” item! LOL I’m looking forward to the replies that come in!
@Jay. Yes, I only use GSP
@Timo https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/store-selling-fees?id=4809#section7 According to eBay’s own site, it’s 1.65%It was mentioned in the 2021 Spring Seller update under the section
<h2>Expanded support for international selling</h2>
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2021-spring/financials.html
@mickdog Thanks. Somehow managed to completely miss this. My bad. I’ve not been paying enough attention to my invoices. I’ve also picked up some additional charges, like Bold title or large gallery photos, where I know I didn’t request them. So I’ll be reading my invoices carefully going forward. I’ve had an uptick in international sales, but they’re not particularly high dollar, so I’m wondering if it’s worth the additional cost.@So Cal Joe. Thanks. And I will pass on your compliments to the contractor – my husband! 😁
You can browse Worthpoint even though you can’t get prices. When you find listings there, you can post the link to the Worthpoint listings that interest you and one of us will give you the selling price. No offence intended, but you do the work, we help you out. We’re kinda busy to do the research for you! *wink*
Spreadsheet updated, JB wins the week, taking her back to a tie with VL! This is so funny! I wonder how long you two are going to keep this up! Keep it up! Keep it up! Keep it up! 😀
Last day on the MCM Challenge tomorrow. Post by Thursday!
List list list!
So sorry, I forgot to post this as promised a while ago:
eBay Unpacked! How to List Faster
Okay, here’s what I got from the Facebook responses, in a nutshell! I ended up with 10 points.
1. Find like items
1a. By type: e.g. all books, all vases, all shoes
1b. By background color:
– everything that is photographed on a white background;
– everything that is photographed on a black background
1c. By photography medium
– in a lightbox
– on a stand or in the open
– on a mannequin2. Batch up the work
2a. Photos
2b. Research
2c. Measurements
2d. Create drafts, etc.3. Allocate “days” to “batches”
E.g. photos are done on Mondays. Research is done on Tuesdays.4. No descriptions
4a. 4-5 lines of bullet text only
4b. Keywords are picked up in Item Specifics5. Photos
5a. Get a good cell phone camera, use square mode
5b. PhotoRoom app to erase background
5c. Mark flaws on photographs, e.g. use a pencil or take close ups
5d. Don’t spend too much time on photos.
5e. Take “enough” photos – not too many, not too few6. Know your niche
Look up the prices of items BEFORE you go sourcing, learn to recognize items that are good buys. Also learn to recognize items that are bad buys7. Research
7a. Put a time limit on research. After 10 minutes, set the item aside and research something else
7a-1. Research should be faster for low-dollar items.
7b. Use downtime to research items that are time consuming
7c. Beware of procrastinating when you should be researching
7d. Beware of the “rabbit hole”
7e. Add a column to your merchandise log for research results, so logging and researching is one task8. Time
8a. How much time you have available will impact how much you can list
8b. Time yourself – how much time do you spend on each section?9. List your best items first
10. Consider getting rid of MOP* items rather than listing them.
Listing low dollar items takes time away from high dollar items*Oh, forgot to tell you, MOP is my acronym. I know it’s a common term, but Death Piles just doesn’t gel with me. I know why they’re called that, but who wants to deal with something deathly? I renamed mine Money Opportunity Piles. I have MOPs everywhere! 😀
VT, sorry about your hubby’s surgery. Sending him best wishes. And I’m glad you weren’t at the shops when the shooter was there! Horrible times!
VL, thanks! Lucky dog! Next time make it two weeks! LOL
After further investigations, no word from eBay on what happened to my account. It just died, no sales, no listings, nothing. However, it’s back up, got a couple sales in, and I can list from scratch, but not from drafts. All told, it appears that 19 of my listings have vanished without trace. Abducted by aliens or something. What? It’s 2021. Of course it’s going to be weirder than 2020!
I managed to get 5 listings up in total in the last couple days. I didn’t realize what a privilege it was to have drafts and had built my entire listing sequence around them. Now I have to have all my photographs, information, research, title, keywords, measurements, all at once. And then do the entire listing in one go. It has slowed me down something fierce!
This week I’m working to get my taxes finalized, and then will try to make up some of my lost listings. According to the spreadsheet, I need to create 59 listings to catch up. Maybe not in a week, but I’ll do my best to claw my way back to being on schedule! 😀
Oh, and regards the lumber, we’re running out of lumber due to unprecedented building, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Some panic-sellers are on about us running out of trees due to a beetle infestation two decades ago, but I’ve not seen any factual reports confirming this. Predictions are this will ease towards the end of the year, but finding or using non-wood products is anticipated to be the interim fix. Composites are doing well, and they don’t rot or get eaten by insects.
@Lauren My cabin is 12ft by 28ft, so 336 sq ft by horizontal measurement. However, it’s a lofted barn, so the cubic is over 4,000. I posted photos of the cabin as it was fitted in parts one, two, three, and four. I’ve included information on the internal fitting all the way through those posts.
As you can see in part one, I have a smaller, 8×16 ft shed that is run on a window unit. It’s cut into the side of the shed, not mounted in a window. The new barn has the ductless system. We’re on a rural electricity coop, so we have to pay an “availability fee” of $25 for every pole. My monthly electricity bill for the shed alone used to be $50, including that fee. Since I installed the ductless system, it has increased to around $80, so an increase of about $30 per month for the cabin. Both the shed and the cabin run climate control all year, cold in summer, heat in winter.
Sorry for the delayed spreadsheet. On top of all my other hassles, my computer went to PC heaven and my wonderful hubby gave me an early birthday present of a new computer. My birthday is next Friday, so it was nearly two weeks early, but I care not. This is one of those computer/monitor in one, so minimal items on the desk. The monitor is huge and it’s also a touch screen. Interesting things happen when you forget and touch it for some reason! LOL.
However, having a NEW computer as opposed to upgrading my old one meant that absolutely EVERYthing had to be loaded from scratch, including programs. Ye Olde Computerre had MS Office 2016, back when it was possible to “own” a package and so there was an entire brouhaha as I had to create my MS account. I discovered my email addressed had been hacked who-knows-when and belonged to somebody in Europe and I had to get it back. Yada yada… it took me a while to get set up. Eventually I had to register it on another account and, well, long story short, I have access to Excel again. With errors! Sigh.
So, spreadsheet updated, and VL wins the week. Yay!
Final week to post your MCM numbers. Remember, March ends on Wednesday, so you have to post your final numbers by COB on Thursday.
When I built my cabin, we were very careful to get the proper insulation installed. The insulation will make a HUGE difference to how effective both heating and cooling will be going forward.
Next, we purchased a ductless unit. There are a variety of options but after a lot of research, I went with the Mr. Cool like these at Home Depot https://www.homedepot.com/b/Heating-Venting-Cooling-Ductless-Mini-Splits/MRCOOL/N-5yc1vZc4m1Zfyt?storeSelection=
There was another brand that scored higher in my research, but it was a LOT more expensive. This Mr Cool was easy to install and has worked all the way through a Texas summer and handled brilliantly. In winter, the heating system did not hold up due to us forgetting to insulate the floor! LOL. However, once I put in a rug, it did pretty much keep the temps bearable.
It doesn’t fit in the window. You mount the interior unit on the wall, and drill a small hole for the pipes, then mount the exterior unit outside. We elected to mount it on a bracket so that it was off the floor. That’s a choice, not a requirement.
For comfort of working in the space, plus maintaining the integrity of your equipment (printer, computer, etc.) and for long term storage of your inventory, I’m 100% behind some sort of climate control.
@Sharyn Been working with them on FB and via the phone from the Contact page. I’ve tried EVERY way that doesn’t involve getting on a plane and traveling west so that I can knock on office doors! LOL
@Julie No, unfortunately not. This started last week, the server issue is this week. However, I take heart that more people in the FB group are logging the same problem/s, so perhaps it’s not just me!
