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This is very consistent with what I’m finding. I haven’t kept track closely, but I think I’m in the ballpark of 1 out of 20 offers to buyers accepted. All have been under $25 and most have even been $15 or less. It occasionally helps me move out old, low-dollar items, so I keep doing it.
Thanks Jay. I will try to keep posting my numbers here – it helps my motivation.
Yeah, you could lose your shirt on free shipping if you’re not careful. I am doing free shipping for items that can go first class, media mail, or in a Priority FR envelope – that’s about half my store. Definitely nothing with higher or more variable shipping, for the reasons you mention. If the item was $25 or less, I took off best offer AND raised the price by $5. Those are the items where I am really seeing results. I’m not making a ton of money on them, but they’re selling fast.
Congrats on the big sale, and thanks for the podcast this week!
First time posting my numbers. I told myself I would start participating once my store was consistently at 200+ items, which seems like the level where I start seeing consistent results.
Total Listings: 207
Items Sold: 5
Gross Sales: $253.61
COGS: $28.09
Highest Price: two-way tie (Diane von Furstenberg dress and random ephemera item, each at $75)
ASP: $50.72
New Inventory: $9.77
New Listings: 18
Returns: 1 (the $75 dress above was returned for fit, relisted immediately and sold the next day)I’m doing a free shipping experiment, and I kind of hate that it’s working. I think Jay opined once that free shipping is “Un-American,” and that’s kind of how I feel. Buyers are paying for shipping one way or another. That’s just business. I changed a bunch of low-dollar “loser” items to free shipping, raising prices as needed and removing best offer. Ever since then, I have been selling a “loser” every 2-3 days. Some of them have been around for a couple years with no interest whatsoever until now.
I more or less eliminated my death piles last month, so I did something I’ve been wanting to try for awhile, and bought a huge box lot of ephemera on Ebay. Most of it was literally garbage, but I found plenty to salvage and relist item-by-item. I finished that out this week, and sold one item so far for $75 (see above). I’m going to get another box lot soon. I can list ephemera pretty fast, and it’s fun to research. I will need to work pretty hard to keep my store at this size, since I do this very part-time and sales are already picking up for fall.
I’ve had someone reach out to me once about some pottery I misidentified, and once about a typo in a brand name. I was grateful for the correction both times. OTOH, if someone contacts me with an unsubstantiated complaint that I’ve overpriced something, I ignore it.
I don’t think I’ve ever done this myself, unless I was interested in buying and wanted clarification from the seller. There are so many misinformed listings on Ebay. I’d probably do it if the seller was someone I know or admire, and they had underpriced something. Just seems like a kind gesture.
This is really cool! Especially for free.
I think the question of whether you want to ship it comes down to whether you feel like it’s worth the hassle. You can totally ship this – there are some great tips on here about packing fragile items and calculating dimensional weight.
It looks like this could sell for $200+, which to me would be worth all the packing drama. If the going price was $20, then no.
I’ve done this twice – last year for about 6 weeks because we were selling our house and moving across town, and this spring for over two months because I was traveling every couple weeks from late March through the end of May.
The first time, I ended all my listings entirely. The catch there is that Ebay will start deleting your unsold listings after a while. So I briefly reactivated after 30 days, crossed my fingers that no one would buy anything, then ended them again. Probably not the most practical way to do it.
This spring, I just did the vacation mode thing. As far as I know, you can run vacation mode indefinitely – you don’t have to set an end date. I checked the “Keep people from buying your fixed price listings” box. That’s not totally reliable though – someone still found one of my listings somehow and made me an offer. I messaged her to say I was traveling but I’d be in touch later if she still wanted the item. A few weeks later we made a deal – I gave her a good price because she’d waited so patiently. She was a really great customer.
Haha, y’all, don’t hate me because I don’t have death piles! It’s been a long slog. Some of what I just listed this week is stuff I bought in the early 2000s!
I like this approach – I’ll try to stick to it going forward. I really hate the idea of death piles. I often tell myself “I will sell 0% of anything that’s not listed yet.”
Interesting, I have never given any thought to RA. I can see how now would be a good time of year for it.
Honestly, there are so many unprofessional sellers out there that I don’t think twice when someone sends me a message to please pack carefully. They’ve probably had purchases they were excited about show up destroyed because the seller was careless. It has happened to me more than once. Unfortunately it’s a reasonable thing for them to worry about, so I don’t take it personally.
+1. Don’t buy anything right now. Use your phone and experiment to find the best light in your house. I take all my photos on an iPhone 6 in a north-facing spare bedroom that gets lots of indirect light. All my photos look way above average after some basic editing.
Just wanted to say that when I first started listening, I noticed Jay’s occasional stutter and thought how cool it was that someone who doesn’t have “perfect” speech would choose to do a podcast – because he has important stuff to say, obviously! I also thought it was great that other people with speech issues might hear it, and think, “Maybe I can do something like this, too!”
Thanks for educating us about the causes and treatment of stuttering – lots of stuff I didn’t know. I always find it odd when people take it upon themselves to give unsolicited advice about other people’s issues, especially people they don’t know well. It’s much more kind to assume that the person in question is aware of the options and is making the best choice for themselves.
Thanks so much for the photos! I actually saved a couple of them as inspiration for when I have the space and resources for something like this.
Thanks for the podcast this week!
I rarely look at Reddit – maybe moving the forums there would convince me to participate, who knows? Honestly, this forum has a high barrier for participating, and the upside is that all of us who run the gauntlet to get in are very motivated to be here. So the conversations are constructive and professional, which is what I’m here for. With a low-barrier, public forum I’d expect a lot more negativity and one-shot “How much is this worth kthxbye” posts. But I’d still give it a shot. I imagine that running the forum takes away time from more profitable endeavors, so I respect whatever decision you need to make.
Just wanted to say thanks for posting this, craig rex. Glad this approach is working for you. I will need to refine my search strategies quite a bit if I pursue this further, similar to what you’ve done. I’m experimenting now with some targeted keyword searches and following certain sellers who run a lot of auctions.
