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Mark, Rummage Sales seem to be interchangeable with Garage Sales around here…they happen mostly in the Summer. That said, I have never looked too hard to scope them out. By this time of year I generally have about enough purchased to last me through the winter. I am part time so I don’t want the pile to get bigger than what I can list by about March.
What area of Michigan are you in? I love Ludington!My numbers for the week of 9/24/17:
Total Items in Store: 80
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $26
Total Sales: $396 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $98 – Dansko Clogs
Average Price Sold: $44
Returns: 0Welcome home Jay & Ryanne!
I really like the “seasons” of eBay. Just finished up what I consider the buying season. The garage sale list is getting shorter every week here in Ohio. The mornings are colder and darker. Time to hunker down for selling season!
There was a glitch around Labor Day to be aware of. Several of my items that shipped out on that Tuesday (9/5) were showing on my Dashboard as “Uploaded on time but no carrier scan”…but they DID have a carrier scan along with full tracking via USPS. I called and they said it was a known glitch and they would manually correct my metrics. They did correct all but one that I just contacted eBay For Business on…I miss my 100%. It’s a good idea to check out your Dashboard to see if you were affected.
Off to tackle my busy Monday!I found my info directly on the Mercari site here: https://guide.mercariapp.com/us/shipping/type.html
Maybe that post you pasted is out of date?
So how does a company like Mercari (so much smaller than eBay) offer better shipping rates to their sellers?
It is possible that eBay HAS negotiated better rates, and just doesn’t pass the savings on to us. It’s possible they don’t have a very skilled negotiator as their person in charge of it. I don’t know. Lots of possibilities.Just for an example (I don’t sell on the platform) Mercari offers a shipping rate to it’s sellers of a flat $3 for up to .5 lbs and a flat $7 for up to 5 lbs, claiming on their website that they have negotiated special rates with USPS to offer their sellers the best pricing. A 5 lb package (lets just assume 12x12x9 dimensions) would generally cost me $8-9 with eBay’s discount, and over $20 to ship to the west coast! I do not believe that eBay can’t negotiate better for us.
My numbers for the week of 9/17/17:
Total Items in Store: 77
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $35
Total Sales: $391 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $75 (Carhartt Aztec Jacket)
Average Price Sold: $32.58
Returns: 0 (one $53 sale included in the numbers had to be cancelled because of invalid address…didn’t even have a street name or state in the address field when I went to ship)I have a couple of opinions to share:
ChristineR…for the love of God don’t listen to anything that 10Konthebay says. They seriously have no idea what they are doing. I sometimes read stuff over there when I need a laugh.Watermarks…Linda I feel so bad for your situation. I know there are plenty of sellers with 1000+ items all with watermarked photos. It’s my opinion that changes like this should be Granfathered in rather than a straight out change in policy. I hope you get a resolution.
Free Returns…I truly believe the psychology/behavior of shoppers can change when “free returns” is offered. This could work as a positive for a big company, but it’s not going to work for me as a tiny seller and I won’t opt in. Example: Zappos offers free returns. It is actually quite customary for buyers to order multiple styles or sizes, see which they prefer in person, and return the rest. When I wanted to purchase a pair of Birkenstocks, I ordered from Zappos BECAUSE of their free returns policy. I don’t usually order shoes online because of fit, and would have preferred to buy in person but couldn’t find the combination (color/style/size) I wanted locally. I wouldn’t have considered somewhere else for this purchase, even if it was cheaper. That’s the positive (for Zappos). The negative…the first pair didn’t fit quite right and I promptly “free returned” ’em for a different size width.
The above brings me to another thought I have about the cost of postage. Why hasn’t eBay negotiated a better discount for us? They are big enough to, other companies have it. They are making lots of changes to appeal to customers with the push for free shipping and returns. I feel that they should be doing everything they can to make it affordable for us sellers to opt in.
Hi Guys! I hope you are having a fantastic trip! Your photos look amazing!
I haven’t posted in a while. I took a couple of months this summer to get some house projects done and do some family travel. Despite not listing a single new thing for 2 months, the summer sales kept rolling steadily in. It was unexpected as usually I experience the summer slowdown but I’ve heard you report you didn’t ever get really hit with it either. That makes me hopeful that eBay is making positive strides as a platform.
So I started listing again at about mid-August. Unfortunately I was one of those sellers who was getting my new listings showing in the International Sellers section at the very bottom of search results. đ It really affected my sales for a couple of weeks. And I kind of missed the window of opportunity on some back to school backpacks I listed. Bummer. The issue seems to have been fixed and the sales followed. Here are last weeks numbers:My numbers for the week of 9/10/17:
Total Items in Store: 74
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $47
Total Sales: $378 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $58.49 (Dino Train Lot)
Average Price Sold: $27
Returns: 0What stresses me out? It is the shear number of changes that eBay makes. It makes me uneasy to really go for it and go bigger. It makes me uneasy with the platform that they can’t seem to stop tweaking. I have kept selling on eBay as a side thing for years. I think about going All-In with it all the time. Spring/Summer/Fall Seller Updates…I feel like I continue to adapt to each change. During the summer I took time to take a link out of my description (it was a link to my store…within the eBay site. It should not have shown as active content but it did and I had to take it out of each and every listing one by one because bulk editing did not work.) But it’s rather easy with my small number of listings. For larger sellers, what a headache! The newest Update came out yesterday. I really feel for the sellers who have watermarks on all their photos.
Ebay has been through some big growing pains and I feel like it has come out the other end better than it was in alot of ways. But the process has definitely stressed me out at times.I understand the reason. If you talk to buyers they will tell you. The site is too cluttered with junk. And not one man’s treasure type junk. It’s like when you go to a garage sale and maybe 70% of it is something that no one is ever going to buy. Ebay is like that now, and it was never supposed to be. it was supposed to be the culled 30%. It kills the sales for browsers because there are too many weeds to wade through. You can only find what you want with a very specific search, or with a whole bunch of time invested.
Ebay is trying to clear out, make the site less cumbersome and the search more effective for its buyers. I understand why they are doing it but also see the negative implications to long-tail sellers.
Historically, when they are trying to accomplish something and the sellers don’t cooperate (ie: low item price/high shipping to avoid fees, forced return policies), eBay has moved to less subtle means to the end. What do you think will happen when they are telling sellers to cull and/or update their old listings and they are instead just relisted without any changes? My guess is that eBay will move to the next step of forcing compliance. Not sure what that would be, but I have a few ideas. It would be easy enough for them to actually delete the listings (not have them available in unsolds) or to take away the “Sell Similar” function and only allow a relist after changes have been logged.
To answer your question: what am I afraid of? This change doesn’t affect me much. And most of the changes in the recent year or two have been for the better, in my opinion. I do feel a little unnerved with putting all my eggs in the basket of a company that feels the need to change rules every 3-6 months. It is not the sign of a strong company but of a scrambling one. I guess I am just wishing the “platform” I have chosen to stand on was a more stable one.My numbers for the week of 5/21/17:
Total Items in Store: 107
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $13
Total Sales: $240 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $75 (vintage Disney sheet)
Average Price Sold: $34.28
Returns: 0I didn’t work on eBay this past week and my numbers reflect that.
I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but read the blog post. There are no less than 5 people on different FB groups I belong to who got the email from eBay and had many of their listings removed. They are saying that the listing are in their Unsolds, so they don’t completely disappear out of the system. That’s good news. But to relist them without making any of the changes they are recommending does not seem to be a good plan. They are not refunding those listing fees on the removed items. And merely relisting them, they stand to get removed again. One of the “victims” said the Rep she worked with said this policy is being rolled out. Here’s the relevant info from the eBay help pages:
“If your listing was removed because it hasn’t had any sales in more than a year, we recommend that you don’t relist it unless you take steps to improve the likelihood of it selling. You may need to review your pricing strategies and best practices for listings, or consider whether some inventory needs to be removed from eBay if it won’t sell.”
Link this was copy/pasted from (bottom of page): http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/questions/listing-ended.htmlSo no big deal, then? Just a matter of tweaking/updating older listings. She was upset because (for one) she paid those listing fees on the ended items, and had to pay again to put them back up. I guess that would not be a big deal if it only happened once. But if they are rolling this out as a regular thing, seems a little off to collect the listing fees and not provide the service.
Nope, not the same person. But the same email from eBay (received on the day of the listings being ended, no prior notice). There was a second person on a different group with the same story as well. And a couple commenters saying it happened to them, too. Happened yesterday (Friday).
From one of the Facebook groups I belong to:
“I got an email today from eBay saying that all of my listings that are over a year old were going to be deleted. And, then they did it… out of 1060 listings in my store, they deleted 420!”
There were others that commented saying the same happened other sellers they knew of. This would really change everything for List it and Forget it model sellers, like I know many are in this group. Has anyone here had this happen?Paul, I completely second the theory that “activity” bumps up your store in general. I still run auctions often (more for newly listed, sure-thing items I am listing than for stale items, though). I have been following this method for quite a while and it never fails. When I have a few very active auctions going, there is a definite uptick in older BIN listings that sell, too.
My numbers for the week of 5/14/17:
Total Items in Store: 110
Items Sold: 10
Cost of Items Sold: $41
Total Sales: $292 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $50 (American Girl Doll – Wellie Wishers)
Average Price Sold: $29
Returns: 0The summer slowdown came fast and hard for me the week before this past one. I only sold 4 items that week. I can’t even remember having such a slow week (it would have to have been during the summer of last year). But I’m ok with it for 3 reasons: 1. Can’t do anything about it anyways. 2. Although I do NEED to bring in a certain amount per month, my eBay income is mostly supplemental for our family. My husband has a good job so for us it’s not nearly as stressful as a full time, main breadwinner situation. 3. I have always viewed eBay as having a seasonal flow…Summer is slowest for listing (because kids are off of school, more outside work, vacation) and obviously for sales. But it is “Buying Season”! I’m in Ohio so the Garage Sale season is really only a little more than a quarter of the year. Time to stock up! I buy and stack everything in boxes, listing a bit as I go, and my hoard will last me through “Listing Season” (end of August when the kids go back to school till about March/April…if I do it right). I like buying season, but I think I like the hunkering down for the winter and listing season almost as much. So it works for me to view my business in this context.
I made some awesome buys this past week…Franklin Mint Model Cars and a HotWheels Micheal Schumacher Ferrari Model (all in cases), a vintage all leather backpack, A rare Sherman on the Mount Cookie Jar, a clay pot style bongo drum from Morocco (artist signed). Enjoying the season!
Rayanne, a few weeks ago I found my best item ever…a Herman Miller fiberglass shell chair. I could sure use some advice on how to pack/ship it. I have never dealt with such a large item before. The legs are epoxyed on so I would not want to remove them. What would you suggest? Where should I even get a box??? Also, if I end up doing local pickup, I have heard you guys collect the $ through PayPay first, which is what I have done as well. But I have also heard the argument that it’s best to do a cash deal, since there is no real proof of delivery/tracking. This is a larger dollar item so I want to make sure I’m covered. I appreciate any advice you can give.My numbers for the week of 4/30/17:
Total Items in Store: 104
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $46
Total Sales: $544 + shipping
Highest Price Sold: $84 (FurReal Dog, NIB)
Average Price Sold: $32
Returns: 0The first quarter of 2017 has been really good for me, hardly slowing down from the holiday season. And the first week of May continues the streak. Now that we’re into the second week, I’m feeling a sudden slow down. Really happy to have made such progress on my goal of listing my stockpile down and getting everything listed that was purchased pre-2017 (not including some seasonal things). I have only a few boxes left and really want to get it all done by the time the kids are out for summer break. I have less than 3 weeks left! Wish me luck.
