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Cool finds.
I went to the high school flea market which I usually skip. I bought the following items, each for $1: fairy pop up book, deluxe cover stories book, a large basket, a wooden art carved mushroom, 2 unused premium sticker books, a vintage linen pillowcase, 3 rag throw rugs in great condition. Also got a chalkware dog for $4. Most of this I’ll take to the farm sale coming up, but I listed the pop up book for $25, and still need to research the sticker books.
I also bought about 25 vintage books at $1-2 apiece at the Planned Parenthood book sale.
Man I kind of blew it this week with only 9 listings made 3/7 days. I did some fun sourcing this weekend and I’m feeling super motivated to list before we leave on vacation Wednesday.
@seamstore I like that approach. Are you doing that fee as a handling charge?
I listed 20 items last week but didn’t list any more days, probably only 3/7. My sales were crap over the weekend and it’s really tough to get motivated but I’m feeling better today. I’m getting cranky waiting for Ebay to throw me a bone. In the old days, I would see sales the day after a big listing day pretty much every time. I have been putting off starting cross posting but I think I will do that this weekend. I’m running a little better discount sale since yesterday and sold a few lower dollar things.
@Jaepete who do you watch on Youtube? Btw at Ebay open in a a workshop there were two guys from the trust and safety team who were really great. They actually acknowledged audience members who mentioned missing listings and phantom listings as an issue in their own stores. I guess when they don’t want to admit things directly, the are allowed to talk about their own stores.@japete it’s not too hard to run the numbers and see how you end up for the year. I’m calculated and do not pass on the discount. I ran my numbers for last year and using the profit to buy any non-recycled materials (mostly large bubble wrap and packing foam), I came out with a $400 “profit”, which is pretty much breaking even on shipping. So, I really like calculated shipping for this reason.
However, yesterday I started an experiment and put some retail arbitrage items on flat rate shipping at 1 and 2 pound rates. I looked at some recent sales on similar weight items going across the country and went a little under that. I’m hoping the Google crawlers will come and find those items, some of which are Christmas. I’m going to check after 3 days since they said at Ebay open it takes that long for the crawlers to find your item.
@Mycottage Commonwealth picker. Thank you for putting a name to what I was discussing. I’m so low tech.
I post all of my Ebay listings in Pinterest. I do get some traffic but don’t get to see if it turned into sales.
@Mycottage are you currently using the newsletter feature? This was suggested by the rep at my review. On 9/29 I have my zoom review. I’m curious what they will say and hoping it is someone more experienced than the live person they gave me. So I’m going to wait to end and sell similar until after that meeting.
It’s in my nature to overanalyze and I can’t help but think about why aren’t my sales better. I’m pretty confident in the vast majority of my items. I feel like my listings are pretty solid with the exception of a few of the photos and my old bad lighting. I’m sure it’s pricing to some degree.
I don’t really know how to use Instagram effectively honestly. I just kind of be myself and post what I want and inconsistently. I like humor and music so I throw that in there. Right now I just use it to promote pop up events that I am doing. My Ebay sold and listed posts do the worst in the algorithm. My daughter told me to try to pick trending music clips. Once in a while someone posts a follow me and link your account and I picked up a few new followers that way. Instagram stopped showing my business stories in my own personal account. I have no idea why.
I heard an interesting theory on Youtube this week – hypothesis I guess actually – that Ebay is trying to get people to use free or flat rate shipping (true, apparently) and this is because the new buyer AI helpers will need non-calculated shipping to compare. So people will just soon skip over Google shipping and go straight to chat GPT and ask what is the best place to buy this item at the best price. And others think we are headed for just skipping the clicks altogether. So the person speculates that Ebay will start encouraging its sellers to prepare them, just like it did with item specifics before that was required.
I also found out that making a shipping table for your flat rate pretty much negates any advantage you would have, which makes sense. So if you are coastal, you are stuck with overcharging your nearest people with flat shipping and potentially losing some sales, but maybe getting seen on Google shopping and/or by Ebay customers who are further away from you. Still seems like crossposting with Posh is better all around at least while they have this deal for ground for under $7.
I miss Ryanne and Jay doing a much better job discussing these things than I am doing!
Evidently Ebay has found a way to work with Google if you pay per click on a calculated listing. I would certainly like to show up in Google shopping without paying extra. A local friend of mine does flat rate, and encouraged me this week to switch but it’s easier to get Posh exposure I think with the software. Someone else said you can make rules for Ebay flat shipping based on where people are located, but I haven’t confirmed that.
I also have a huge backlog and hate to go back and revise listings. My “coach” at the open said to do so after 90 days but I think they were not allowed to tell us to end and sell similar. When I do, I get to make tons of offers. However, I REALLY should make myself go back and look over pricing. I know I was using too long of a period (including pandemic era pricing) before to price.
It’s always a challenge to decide where to spend your focused time, but I do feel like working the levers at Ebay is neccessary while getting out from under their algorithm with very little extra work and paying for software is quite tempting.
Incidentally, I ran a very specific search to buy and sorted low to high. There are not a ton of this product under $20. I looked through it all and then later discovered omitted listings I liked in an area at the bottom of the screen labeled “deals for you”. I wish they would have just showed me those in the search results. I’m wondering if this is the new buyer AI working and they find hidden listings…
I’m not a big ChatGPT user but I had a chat with it today because one of my favorite Youtubers does not use cross posting software for the reason that the automatic delisting has been unreliable. it seems like this is more of our problem with the Vendoo product. Vendoo and listperfectly do not use the cloud for this feature while nifty does use the cloud. This means that because I have spotty Internet at times I should be safer using the nifty product in terms of keeping my eBay account in good standing with fewer defects. Just thought I’d pass this along. Because of the greater visibility and the cheaper shipping on Poshmark, I definitely am going to get on Poshmark. I’ll let you know how that goes during fourth quarter.
@Ryanne ps. At eBay open i got to ask the Cassini guy a question and asked him about dialing up freshness and old items dragging down your whole store. He couldn’t answer directly I guess but anecdotally told me he had two stores, one with something over a year old that wasn’t getting sales / performing as well. So basically don’t have anything over 1 year old. Then eBay is tracking 30 vs 90 days and a supervisor from the review team in the ladies room said “you don’t want any of that”. Message received. I’m also taking offers on fresh items more readily. Will refresh every 30 or 60 days. Because of Pinterest I might use 60 days.
Yesterday posh just lowered their rate on packages up to 5 pounds six dollars and something. I’m definitely going to cross post!
I launched about 25 fresh listings and have more pictures to do. I’m letting myself go to the thrifts as the Halloween gets put out (slowly ugh) but I’ve been starting to get into the death piles and I’m caught up with summer purchases except linens. Last week I did not list that many days. I should have a better week this week.
I bought a couple of shelves and this allowed me to put my pop up market stuff away in one space, and then we got my son’s car back in the garage since he moved to Boston.
I’m feeling excited about Fall and totally into the business. I have a really fun farm market coming up in early October with a lot of cleaning, price tag removal, and prep to do.
@VT, I failed at after coffee challenge but I have improved my frequency of sitting down to list. I will keep working on it. I worked about 4/7 days on listing last week, shooting for 5 this week. It sounds like your husband is really going through it and I’m so sorry to hear that. Take good care of yourself as well.
@Ryanne, I really suspect that Ebay turned up the freshness factor in the algorithm in the past couple of years since the podcast ended. I made a post here after Ebay open showing that Ebay tracks your store’s percent 30 (“stagnant”) and 90 (“stale”) day listings. I’m probably going to cave and get Nifty software that will automatically end and sell similar. I will likely set it to 60 days for now. I definitely do feel though that people are cutting back on wants in favor of needs except the very wealthy. I had to do a lot of sales and extra % offers deeper and still didn’t have a very good summer on Ebay.
