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Ahhhh ok, good! Not as convenient, but at least Parcel will still be an option in general. Thanks for clarifying!
I found y’all via Afford Anything too!! Thanks, Paula Pant!
YES exactly! I’ve been meaning to finish out my sleeve anyway ;P That has been a guiding principle for me too… it’s only now that I can afford to hire people to take photos for me some of the time that I have the bandwidth to tighten up some of my processes, though tweaking listings will probably never be in the plan. Still though, the biggest ROI is for sure just listing, listing, listing!!
Happy 5ooth Episode!! It really is a remarkable milestone, because I think that level of consistency is a rare treasure in and of itself. Thank you guys so much for your commitment to this community! Also thank you for the coffee. I’m a serious consumer of it myself, and Southern Split is giving me liiiife this week!
First of all, I too love a good cummerbund. I always buy them when I find them, usually for like 50 cents in a hole-in-the-wall thrift store. They’re fun! I also totally agree that it’s SO nonsensical that we have to now specify things like “department” which are so obviously inherent to the category choice. Come onnnn.
In any case, I have been B U S Y working on getting my over 10k items inventoried properly (thanks for the push in that direction, lol) as well as continuing to muscle my way through my storage unit full of estate items. Both are going much faster than I expected, but with it has necessarily come a second storage unit. I’ve cut out most other sourcing for now to focus on finishing those major projects within my business, and it’s working pretty well so far.
I am already reveling in the higher degrees of organization, but also trying to keep on top of the activities that generate revenue — namely, listing! It’s been awesome having helpers relieving my bottlenecks to keep the drafts piling up; thanks to them, we are going to surpass 10k active listings by the end of this month. That’s a super exciting milestone to me, and thanks to the free listings in collectible categories, seemingly indefinitely, we can keep building from there if we want.
The milestone of 500 episodes has me reflecting on my own business and where I’m at in this present moment, too. I find myself continually catching a bigger vision for my store/business as I climb a little higher… there’s a totally different view from the vantage point of 10k listings than there was at 3k. Both of them feel like equally huge numbers in a weird way, but I can envision much more clearly how to scale up and oil the machine a little better while retaining the heart/integrity of the scrappy beginning. I find myself wanting to tighten up processes more now, and really be intentional with how a given process works when I do it myself before I teach it to one of my helpers or something. Feels like it going to be a year of optimizing, or at least a Q1 of optimizing as we continue to build!
And now for some numbers!
Jan 31-Feb 6
Active Listings: 9606
Items Sold: 45
Gross Sales: 1561.60
Net Sales: 902.83
Highest Sale: Linearism Framed Art Print, $362***
Average (Gross) Sale Price: $34.70No returns, no sourcing costs! I lost track of my actual number, but I think the COGs for what sold this week was under $50. Love it.
***This art print was HUGE. I constructed a double box to send it to California (of course, lol) and I think the long side was like 44 inches or something? HUGE! Anyway, this item was purchased outright for full price, I’d had it listed for well over a year, maybe more like two… (paid $5 for it!)…and when I went to print the shipping label, I noticed the buyer only paid like $40 for shipping. I thought it was weird. Well. It was. Somehow, eBay had defaulted my shipping dimensions to 10x8x6in. The weight was as I had originally listed, but those were the dimensions. I went back and looked at some of my other large item listings from pre-2019, and all of them had that default 10x8x6in dimension plugged in! I ended up paying about $65 for shipping via Fed Ex label through eBay, which is great in my opinion — only having to eat about $25 was well worth it considering I would likely have taken a lower offer on this item than what it sold for. Has that happened to anybody lately, where the shipping info on older items is just wrong?
Yes, exactly!! I have a ton of matchbooks (with matches in them) that I can only ship through USPS Parcel… it hasn’t been showing up as a shipping option for me for months, and I’ve been printing those labels through my stamps.com account. However, if the post office itself is doing away with that service… that’s gonna be a problem. I’ve never even looked into what the other ground services cost, because I’ve assumed they’re probably more expensive. We shall see!
Hey everybody! This has been a really fun episode thread to read – Happy New Year! It’s been a crazy time around here, so I haven’t even put together my numbers from last week yet. Right after Christmas, we had a covid exposure, a death in the family, and started installing new flooring in our whole house (ourselves… our quarantine project). A chaotic kick-off for 2021, lots of moving parts, lots of feelings BUT… even with all of that, I am so thrilled that I was finally able to finalize my numbers for 2020 and I’m happy to report that I’ve almost tripled my inventory (from under 3500 to over 9k) and almost doubled my gross revenue (23.5k to 55.5k) since last December. I also got to keep more of that revenue than ever!
2020 was a HUGE year of building for my eBay store. I am really proud of it, and I can’t wait to see what 2021 brings. Once these floors are in (lol) I’m going to take some time to sit and dream and plan and goal set for my store for this year; until then, I’m just shipping stuff out as it sells. I’m thinking I may move the majority of my inventory to storage unit and reclaim my garage for shipping only (and other personal storage, like, oh I don’t know, maybe one of our cars?) and spend a little time getting my inventory system whipped into shape, as well as tightening up some other processes. I’ve focused a lot on building a large inventory and not as much on streamlining/optimizing… I’m expecting to hit 10k active listings by the end of February, so I think at that point I’ll sell and ship as usual, but also take some time to assess and optimize.
One dream I have on the horizon for my store is to somehow start another branch, or possibly a second store remotely in the midwest with one of my best friends from back home. We’ll see. I haven’t figured it out yet, haha. In any case, I’d love to know if anyone besides me neurotically sets goals/plans for their store, or if most of us go with the flow instead of trying to push the river (spoiler alert: it flows by itself). Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far, and I promise normal/actual numbers next time I post!
Also, the Cameroon coffee is BOMB! I swear, I can’t decide which roast is my favorite! I’m super grateful for Broadporch though, because I’ve got a LOT of listing to do in the near future and coffee is, in fact, for listers! 😉
Wow, glad to hear most of us are seeing some good sales numbers this week and that our postal carriers might not hate us after all for scheduling regular pickups! Good news all around 😉 It’s been a great week in my store too. I’ve sold several things that have been listed for 3+ years. The podcast episode was great, as always!
December 6 – 12, 2020
Active Listings: 8600ish
Items Sold: 68
Gross Sales (including shipping): $1822.99
Cost of Items Sold: $52.16
Highest Price Sold: $142.92 (Vintage Pizzelle Iron/Baker)
Average Price Sold: $26.80
Returns: 1 (blouse, for fit)
Sourcing Cost: $129 (impulsive goodwill run)I say my sourcing was an impulsive goodwill run because I had kind of sworn off sourcing for the moment, since I have a storage unit full of estate sale stuff to process. I have seriously been pulling items and packing up bins for my helpers to photograph from my unit, and after removing over 500 items already for that purpose, you can barely tell a dent has been made. It’s a little overwhelming, so I try to just take things a bin at a time! I am super grateful for the stash of inventory, but whew! It’s not how I usually source! Hope everyone has a great week this week! Cheers!
@julie-b I have the same question! My carrier has been an absolute champion this year, and I sometimes feel bad for scheduling pickups, too. I’d love some insider intel on this; I really appreciate all she does! Sometimes on Monday or Tuesday I have a ton of packages for pickup, but I kind of feel bad about that, too! I like I don’t want to be overwhelming to her, but I also don’t want her to have to bother with a pickup if it’s only a couple of things.
I’m still team copper. It’s beautiful! Also, the Queen’s Gambit is pretty awesome (speaking of chess sets @sharyn). Highly recommend – it might make you want to play chess, too! It mostly just reminded me of how terrible I was at chess when I used to play, haha! A captivating show nonetheless. Numbers and then notes!
November 29 – December 5th, 2020
Active Listings: 8150ish
Number of Items Sold: 78
Gross Sales (including shipping and TAX – a note about that later!): $2092.21 – my biggest week EVER, to date!
Cost of Items Sold: $38.10
Highest Price Item Sold: $170.33 (vintage glass store display jar for Lance crackers)
Average Price Sold: $26.82
Returns: 0
Sourcing Cost: 0It’s been a pretty great week – definitely felt like I was shipping my socks off! I already hit my gross sales goal for the year, so I’m having fun thinking about next year’s goals and when I might hit 10k in active listings; I believe I will hit 10k ITEMS by the end of the year, but probably won’t get to 10k listings until the end of January.
By the way, thanks so much Jay and Ryanne for the book shout-out!! I was grinning ear to ear when you said that it’s an actual/real book! It is in fact, but it definitely still feels surreal to me, haha!! It made my heart leap to hear you mention it!!
I wanted to also mention that I’ve had a few packages delayed by weeks (some first class, some parcel, some media… basically anything but priority). 90% of them arrive on time, but a few have been totally, utterly stalled in Atlanta. I actually asked my local postmaster about this, and he said USPS is currently understaffed by at least 6 thousand people (maybe just in the ATL area, he didn’t really specify) and that there really is a massive bottleneck in the main ATL processing center. He recommended sending things priority if at all possible, so I actually changed my first class business policy to be first class OR priority for the time being, so as to give buyers the option to pay a little more but ensure it doesn’t get stalled for weeks. Plenty of people are still choosing first class, but it’s interesting behind-the-curtain info from the postmaster, in any case.
One more thing about sales tax… before managed payments, I pulled the info about tax on each item from my paypal statements. I don’t typically do this for every single item, but I do have a monthly rundown spreadsheet where I track shipping costs/fees/taxes/cost of good sold, etc. I do that to get the most accurate net profit number for each month, because when eBay tells you your item sold, and you are looking at your list on the solds page, the total price paid DOES include the tax. However, if you go to the Payments page (with managed payments), the eBay fees (based on the gross payment from the buyer, including sales tax) are shown to be deducted if you click through the individual payment record for an item, BUT weirdly, it’s not documented in the monthly statements.
So, I was thinking, crap, am I going to have to pull each individual sales tax number for each sale to get the total for the whole month? Because when I’m tracking my own sales, I have always used that gross sale total from the Solds page for each item. The answer is in fact, no! It turns out, we can pull those gross sales numbers to track my sales as they happen, and at the end of the month, pull the sales tax total for the whole month from….the Sales page, under the Performance tab. I’m assuming that this it not included in the Payments section because eBay collects and remits taxes on our behalf, so technically they never do show up in our account…. but that means the “total” of what an item sold for is different on the Solds page vs the Payments page.
TLDR: if you’re tracking your own numbers, you can find sales tax totals on Sales (under Performance tab), NOT in the Payments section.
Thanks for bearing with me. I just wanted to share this info in case it helps people as they start thinking about compiling info for filing taxes/polishing up all your records for the end of the year! Cheers!
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<div class=”bsp-mentions”>@lukastreasuretrove Merry Christmas Sales to you! That’s awesome!</div>
</div>Yes @simplicio!! This is one of the main reasons I include shipping in my gross as well… I’m always trying to run my numbers with tax prep in mind, plus I like to think abut every sale from the buyer’s POV (as in, how much did someone all-in pay for this thing?)
Hey all! It was a pretty solid week last week, though for me it hasn’t felt like holiday sales yet (and my numbers would agree!). Actually, some semblance of them may have kicked in on Sunday, but it truly remains to be seen, so I’ll save that for next week.
A couple of cool book-related things happened this week; first, I released the kindle edition, and second, I was contacted by the director of the historic public library in my small, midwestern hometown. She wanted to get a copy of the book for the library and have me present on it at the next virtual rotary club meeting! It’s going to be fun I think, but I already feel like it’s going to be a challenge to explain to a bunch of non-eBayers about this world in 10-12 minutes haha!
I was planning to post my numbers on Monday but got sidetracked rescuing a lost dog from rapidly dropping temperatures. It was an incredibly fun detour, but I sort of got a day behind in my work because of it! He was so sweet though; a beautiful white pure bred boxer whom I called Mr. Dog the whole time I had him at my house… I thought it would help me not get attached, but I don’t think it worked. I had 35 things to pack on Monday, so that was an interesting challenge with a strange dog bopping around my house, haha! I did eventually get everything in by the deadline, and we were able to locate his owners through social media within a day! I’m back on track for the week now, and I’m sure Mr. Dog is enjoying being back home. My cats are finally considering forgiving me, I think. Numbers time!
November 22-28
Active Listings: 8150ish
Items Sold: 61
Gross Sales (including shipping): $1390.94
Cost of Items Sold: $38.60
Highest Priced Item Sold: $114 (Coach Wedge Sandals)
<span style=”font-weight: 400;”>Average Sale: $22.80
Returns: 1 (not yet shipped — a sweater, for fit)
Sourcing Cost: $100ish (assorted incidental thrift store finds)
</span>On another numbers note, just today, for the first time in over three and a half years, I have added some sum and average functions into my eBay store spreadsheets. Let that serve you as a reminder that in many cases, small improvements to our workflow are certainly better late than never! Have a great remainder of the week, everyone!
It always makes me smile when you mention your habit of making lists, Jay! I am a chronic lister as well, and I recently found out that my grandmother (who died when I was 5 years old) was also! No one else in my family seems to be, but I it was fun to discover that I had this special list connection to her.
