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Side note: I’d never heard of Lalique before and wanted to read up on it. RealorRepro.com has some good information, but beware: “Lalique marks are forged more often than almost any other marks on glass with the possible exception of American cut glass. There is such a huge variety of forged Lalique marks it is impossible to list them all.”
My numbers for the week of 2/25/18:
Total Items in Store: 138
Items Sold: 18
Cost of Items Sold: $88
Total Sales: $740 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $91 (Metal tree sculpture)
Average Price Sold: $41.11
Returns: 0I had a great week…in my top 5 ever for highest sales.
Regarding the Free Returns debate, I don’t intend to opt in. To me, it’s not at all worth the $20-ish I’m getting for the final value fee TRS+ discount. And, although I have seen eBay state that TRS positively affects your placement in search, I cannot find anywhere where it’s even hinted at that TRS+ provides an additional boost. That would be the real loss, not the paultry FVF discount. If sales plummet, I can always reconsider. But to be honest my first thought was “Oh, Crap” and my second was “Yay! If I’m going to loose the discount anyways, I am definitely going back to 2 day handling”. It takes away the only part of this job that feels stressful…when the printer suddenly doesn’t connect to the computer, when the substitute mail guy reaches over my packages to deliver the junk mail and leaves the clearly marked Priority packages just sitting there, when the internet goes out, if the power goes out… Yeah, I’m definitely sitting this one out. I don’t do free shipping (except for some occasional First Class items) and I don’t do Guaranteed Delivery (even though I always ship next day) and I don’t do Promoted Listings (the whoever-pays-eBay-the-most-fees gets the most visibility policy). We’ll see how it goes.Christine,
I check completed/sold listings and sort highest to lowest. Once I start seeing a trend on the high end, that’s where I price. But the biggest factor is alot of what I’m selling does not have that many results. If there’s only a few active, I often go higher than the highest sold price. Also I still do auctions, but start with a high starting bid…enough that if it only gets one, I’m happy with the price. The only exception is a few “sure thing” items that are best started at $.99. When I throw in a couple of these to the mix, it seems it boosts sales for ALL my BIN items as well. Sales (and bidding activity) beget sales.Thank you Inglewood and T-Satt.
Yes I could definitely scale up. Finding inventory is not an issue, it’s literally everywhere. I don’t go to Thrift stores much (maybe once or twice a month). I buy most of my stuff in the summer at garage sales and just stop when I have enough boxes full to get me through the winter. I’ve also got a couple of honey holes in some local FB Buy/Sell groups. I could definitely source enough to do it full time, the issue for me is I’m a slow lister. And I really only have part time hours to devote to it currently (raising kids/helping aging parents). My goal for 2018 is to double the number of listings I did in 2017. Minimum of 20/week. So far so good…although double the effort doesn’t always equal double the sales. I find that I get out of eBay what I put into it. And I haven’t come close to maxing my potential, which is exciting for the future.My numbers for the week of 2/18/18:
Total Items in Store: 122
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $57
Total Sales: $456 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $71 (talking disney dolls)
Average Price Sold: $26.82
Returns: 0Regarding the “slow compared to what” question, I have kept a 1 page chart of my gross sales per month since 2013. So at a glance I can see that Feb 2018 I had exactly $99 less in sales than Feb 2017. (But the day’s not over, right?) I love to look at this chart frequently, to see how far I’ve come in just a few years, to reassure myself when things just “seem slow”. The trend is definitly upward and, overall, eBay has improved in their policies and procedures in my opinion. I was just thinking that this morning as I left bulk feedback with a couple of clicks, so much quicker than it once was. And remember Photobucket?!
Sonia, I’m not sure I classify as high price point. Looking at my PayPal reports, my average selling price for 2017 was $40 and so far for 2018 is $42, so pretty consistant. Looking at completed listings, my pricing is definitly within the top 20%, I’m not pricing lower than most. I don’t cull. In 8 years of selling, I have given up on I think 4 things that I have re-donated. I concentrate on buying items with a strong sell through rate. Of course occasionally adding in some longer tail items that will get higher prices. The takeaway is that I do believe my standard faster moving inventory helps those longer tail items get better visibility and sell faster, too.
My strategy definitly takes more time upfront, in the sourcing/research stage. But that is the part I enjoy most…so it works for me.Utahbill, it’s an awful lot of time put in to listing those items. So even if the cost to buy is minimal, those items on the shelf do represent an awful lot of $$$ in the respect that time is money. And even at $1 per item, 5k items is $5K dollars. Not an amount small enough to discount its importance.
Remembering, though, that the Sell through rate tends to have a downward trajectory as inventory grows. The 10% in your example most likely won’t stay steady at 10% as the months go on. And inventory grows with a mix of long tail items that need the right buyer combined with items that just won’t sell, or won’t sell at your price point. I am a firm believer that the eBay algorithm ranks your store as a whole to a certain extent (basically all the data in our traffic reports…listing impressions, click through, sales conversions) and that it is a factor our position in search results. To this way of thinking, sales beget sales. And unsold inventory tends to drag down a store’s numbers, and future sales. We’ve heard eBay call them stagnant listings.
T-Satt, I very much agree with you on your “good inventory” comment. While the concept of “everything sells eventually” still felt true 3-5 years ago, I definitly do not feel it is true today. The idea that a large inventory is some sole inidcator of success, and as a focal goal as a seller, does not make sense to me.
To my way of thinking, I want cash flow. If I am making a profit of 10x what I buy something for, and only selling 10% of my items…I’m just spinning my wheels dumping everything I make back into a large inventory. That equals no real cash. I guess it’s the same as Growth vs Income in investing, but there should be some balance. I understand Growth, but a bigger number of active listings could easily be just a lot of bad bying choices that pile up.
I’m not claiming my way to be right and others are wrong. It’s just a different view. I absolutely realize I am in the minority.“As a scavenger, how do you run your store to have the lowest inventory and maximum profit?” That is the golden question.
Personally, since starting on eBay, I have always done a decent amount of pre-research. I continue to try to educate myself on what items (within the categories that are easy to find in my area) have high sell through. Finding items that sell quickly AND at the top price point means they don’t hang around for long, building up an inventory. This only works for me because of the items I choose to sell. I’m not an “antiques” type of person and only a handful of things I sell need to wait for that right buyer. With a full house over here (family of 5), I really don’t have room to store thousands of items. But even if I did I wouldn’t want to. I see every one of those active listings as time invested in listing it, money invested in COGS, so each one that sits there is negatively impacting my cash flow. Not to mention the costs and risks associated with storage (whole bunch of people are flooding right now). Jay and Ryanne, you guys are obviously successful and on a different level than my little part-time business. But I do see many sellers in the 400-1000 listing range who seem to be focused on getting to a certain number of active listings, while their actual sales are pretty close to mine, and cash flow wise, I wonder how they are making that work at all.
OK…if I’m being honest, I have had my eye on one of those little sheds to put in the back yard! Like you’ve said in the past, we all have to find what works for our situation.Inglewood, I completely agree with you on the “goal” of a high inventory to be backwards. It seems to be a quirk of eBay sellers to focus their goals on the number of active listings…which is really no indicator of success at all. Having come from a purchasing background before doing eBay, I would have been fired for having a goal of growing inventory (ie tying up revenue). Increasing inventory turns was the measure of success.
Actually there is a problem with your math. It doesn’t take into consideration the fact that store owners get a discount on final value fees. Non store owners are charged a flat 10%, while store owners get a discount variable across certain categories ranging from 4-9.15%. That extra percentage can quickly add up to cover the cost of a store with much less than 157 listings, depending on your average selling price and what categories you sell in.
My numbers for the week of 2/11/18:
Total Items in Store: 131
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $61
Total Sales: $584 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $150 (Star Wars Tank)
Average Price Sold: $44.92
Returns: 0Nice to have a week where some higher priced items sold. Still averaging a 10% weekly sell through rate.
My numbers for the week of 2/4/18:
Total Items in Store: 120
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $34
Total Sales: $293 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $69 (Brand new FitBit I found at Goodwill for $7)
Average Price Sold: $24.41
Returns: 0I have the flu. 🙁
My SmartPost calculations are not fixed. I just checked an item I have to ship. It’s 12x12x9 and I’m actually sending it Priority for $7 and change but if I switch to FedEx in the print labels screen it is showing $16.86 for SmartPost and $12.40 for Home Delivery which is crazy!
