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Thanks for the birthday wishes. I really appreciate the forum on my reselling journey even though it is more of a slow climb than a hot start up business.
Total Items in Store: 373 Ebay, 60 Mercari
Items Sold: 10 Ebay, 4 Mercari
Gross Sales: $331 Ebay + $94 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $84 + $32 free shipping + some items ours
Highest Price Sold: $65 Ken Edwards Mexican Pottery Paid $2 at moving sale
Average Price Sold: $30
Returns: 0, but DIM weight calculated shipping ding cost $24
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 1 Ebay, 15 MercariA lot of life busyness, transitions and milestones for me this Fall. I turned 50 yesterday. That kind of gets your brain buzzing with philosophical thoughts. I’m grateful for my life.
Since it’s faster to list on Mercari – no measurements – and I’m trying to clean out and organize our home I’ve been listing clothing there. I still love Ebay but I have a lot of competing interests for my time. I’ve been getting some pretty low offers while I run that experiment in Ebay. Makes for smaller profits but I’m clearing some older inventory. I sold something on Mercari in a couple of weeks that I’ve had on Ebay for almost two years. I paid too much for it and I’m so happy to see it go and get my money back! On Ebay I’ve been getting a lot of questions from cautious potential buyers. Perhaps that’s because I have fewer new items left in my Ebay Store. I’ve not been shopping and I’m consolidating inventory in my garage boxes. Still have more organizing to do.
Just started the podcast after school drop off. Hope you find the perfect rental in the urban area R & J. Don’t forget rummage sales. Also maybe check on tripadvisor or yelp to find great cheap local food.
Amatino, it feels good to get a project done. Glad you are doing better.
I listed only a couple of times, 1 Ebay item and 15 items on Mercari. I’m really enjoying listing on Mercari as it is so fast vs. Ebay. Hope to unload some of my clothes I don’t wear anymore and keep my closet lean and mean. I’m willing to promote and go lower on these items so I have had some sales there. I’ve also sold a few coffee mugs and things that were listed on Ebay for a while but I haven’t really tried Mercari out for home and vintage yet.
A lot of life going on outside reselling. I’m hoping to get a school day off and just sit and list in peace and quiet. We’ll see.
I made an offer on an auction item this week. Of course sellers running auctions are hoping to get more than the starting price not less. So we will see how often that works out. As a buyer, I like the option.
Total Items in Store: 418
Items Sold: 7 Ebay, 1 Mercari
Gross Sales: $303 Ebay, $79 Mercari
Cost of Items Sold: $51 + $30 free shipping (+ some items ours)
Highest Price Sold: $100 best offer (West Elm Duvet and Sham Set paid $10 at indy thrift, free shipping $17)
Average Price Sold: $43
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 4 Ebay, 9 MercariExtremely quiet week on Ebay, with a big bang on Sunday afternoon. Busy life week outside of Ebay. Enjoyed the podcast and love the exposed brick!
I put best offer on all of my items over $10 and removed the auto-reject floors. Kinda burned myself on one item that I paid too much for so I’ll have to watch that going forward. I’d like to try an experiment soon tweaking older listings. A Youtuber suggests tweaking as many as you are doing daily listings.
I’m continuing to use Mercari to list our clothing. I just sold my daughter’s Patagonia jacket for more that I paid at Backcountry Steep and Cheap brand new. So we used it for free. Like you said in the Podcast, gotta love that. Also, we sold a Pottery Barn dining room set we bought used, used for 9 years for only $125 less. The top coat had white heat pizza box marks that were turning people off. Then I discovered on Youtube that a steam iron on a towel fixes that right up. The table sold immediately after I fixed it. Have a great week.
Hi – crazy outside ebay couple of days. I listed only twice unfortunately. 4 items on Ebay, 9 items on Mercari. None from death piles this week.
Sharyn, I think there are a lot of inexperienced and sloppy Mercari sellers, so some haters. However, I’ve had really good experiences so far. And Mercari is doing a big advertising push in cities. Like I said, I clear my balance pretty regularly and don’t list really expensive items (my cost or asking price) just in case.
@silverfox Love those paint by numbers and the story about your rescue. I never find them.
Thanks Mike. So had an email exchange with the buyer indicating that I couldn’t say what kind of plastic it was and had found some other sellers with same thing new in a box that didn’t indicate that. Also found out they make repros of these if the buyer is concerned about modern health standards.
Apparently the issue was color for this buyer. Interesting…New message from: centrework
You’ve done some good research. No — not concerned about the health issues bc I basically want them as art objects. LOL. The
Original melamine pieces are not stark white but seem to a different weight and a bit off white. Thanks so much!Thanks Sharon. I haven’t had any issues with my iphone8 other than sometimes the suggested category is off base and I don’t initially see the two levels of subcategory. I don’t seem to be able to find drafts on the desktop, only the app. I know Mercari has some functions on the app only so far, as they added the desktop fairly recently. I read online that some people had their accounts closed and money frozen, so I’ve been emptying my account pretty frequently just in case.
@Sharon, I’ll be interested to know about your experience on Mercari. I’m really happy with it so far, but I haven’t tried selling vintage yet.
Easy Auction Tracker is great for me. It looks cluttered at first glance but is very easy to use without even using the tutorials and has all of the basic numbers I need at this point. I just have to enter my COGS from my paper records, which I wish I did monthly, but alas I do toward the end of the year. I didn’t know about or overlooked the Fall special. Thanks Mike!
Feel better Amatino.
I listed 20 items on Ebay, at least 10 of those from death piles, plus 4 on Mercari. I listed three times, so not too bad but hoping for better this week. Incidentally, I get up really early and like to burn a nice candle while I sit and list. Our weather here is almost always the same but we do get foggy mornings and it’s a little bit crisp in the air lately.
Quick ps. re Mercari. It’s been really interesting to see how simple, fast, and slick it is and what they are doing that Ebay is not. For example, they (not the seller) prevent you from making lowball offers. Not certain but I believe the cutoff is something like 75% of the asking price. Also, they do a great job with alerts about price drops and new items you are searching for, something Ebay has just started to do regularly. As a seller you get reminded to drop the price on items with more likes, or asked if you still want to sell old listings. So they kind of get involved with your inventory management on Mercari.
Total Items In Store: 427
Items Sold: 7
Total Sales: $338
Cost of Items Sold: $127 + $3 free shipping
Highest Price Sold: $117 (Set of 4 new bowls, paid $34 Spring clearance)
Average Price Sold: $48
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of Items listed this week: 20
Mercari update: Listed 4 our winter clothes, 0 sales this weekSo I’ve not been shopping much at all and I’m selling off the last 35% of my RA inventory. Some of the returns are not as great, in part because they are the last of my new inventory to move.
I’m becoming a more seasoned seller, but I’m still working through my newbie backlog piles. Therefore, I don’t spend much time analyzing numbers despite having a business background. In terms of what to buy (used and vintage primarily now), I will continue to buy what I like and consider valuable with a better eye on the potential net vs. time investment. Even with the California pricing, the mark up is so high that I can virtually always make at least 4x and sometimes much more. I really don’t have much use for forecasting since my schedule and time for Ebay listing is so variable. Finally, I don’t want to look too closely at the numbers for one big reason. Our family pays such high taxes (even higher this year), that I really don’t want to know my after tax #. 🙂
Enjoyed the podcast though. Starting last year I did start to group my backlog items by season and focus on listing those 2-3 months ahead. I also lowered the priced on my Christmas stuff during the season, since I didn’t want to hold on to any of it for anther year potentially. I’m also paying closer attention to my initial pricing. I have more shipping time capacity and would like to see better velocity. In the past I tended to price higher than solds and wait it out.
Have a great week on Ebay.
@mycottage as usual I like your post and it’s good advice no matter the size of a reseller’s business. There is always more to be learned, and listing as consistently as possible is key. I would just add with respect to #2 that initial pricing strategy is also a key component and one I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
