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Sure, and maybe more of a seasonal idea due to weather out there. I’ve mentioned before that we met a retired couple who had stayed in some awesome places using this service. https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/how-it-works/
Hope everyone is healthy in the coming week. It’s such a big part of one’s life.
We have a ton of unusual life stuff getting the way of Ebay – planning to remodel our kitchen finally, my daughter’s orthodontics, birthday party, my son’s tennis, etc. etc. etc.. I just can’t seem to get a chunk of time to sit and list. We also are in the minority of people who are going to get hammered under the new tax act, so I’ll be sending any Ebay earnings to my quarterly payment. It would be a great time to have great sales on Ebay. I listed twice, only 9 items and 2 from death piles. Ugh.Total Items in Store: 444
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $44
Total Sales: $267
Highest Price Sold: $112.50 Needlepoint kit (Paid $10 estate sale)
Average Price Sold: $30
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 9 (ugh)I love this forum and to philosophize and strategize. I have a lot of short blips of time to listen to audio and participate in this during my choppy days – while driving the kids around, work lunch break, having coffee in the morning, etc. I also truly love selling on Ebay because I’ve been at my day job a long time and need the mental stimulation. I am wired though to prefer listing in a good chunk of time, and this is where I fall down. Lately it’s been especially tough to get that freedom and we have some travel coming up to boot.
Sales only happened on two days. One of the days I was shopping on Ebay for my tween’s favorite brand of clothes. She’s finally done with the hand-me-downs and my selected thrifted items but used Ivivva ok. Also made some offers on Poshmark. As a buyer, I love best offer.
Enjoyed the discussion about all of the Ebay’s changes. I don’t love the fee increases but I’m hoping staying ahead of the curve and playing along with Ebay’s preferences will give me an edge over other sellers. Just a bummer to have a big backlog during this time of change because I think it required sourcing pivots.
Ok, now you know J&R that I love to do a little armchair quarterbacking since you share so much. I would love to see you find a way to do a (bimonthly?) trip to the City, you could get a camper shell for your truck, do your city Craigslist/Facebook/Offerup/Ebay furniture deliveries on the way in, hit estate sales and garage sales during your stay. As I’ve said before, you can pick up stuff for more than a buck but less than auctions because you have a great eye, lots of experience, and aren’t afraid to price high. You’ve got the storage to make it work. As always, feel free to ignore me. 🙂
Have been waitlisted. Got an email today that my listings will go in sometime in May. Says will lift visibility. It also includes a link to a guaranteed delivery page under the listings tab that says what you need to change/update to make listings eligible. None are listed at this time, but I guess I will need to switch to immediate pay. A bit unfortunate because I encourage my shoppers to visit my store and then use the shopping cart to buy multiple items. Now I would have to delete all of that language in my listings.
PS. My Cottage, I agree most times buyers don’t probably care about guaranteed delivery, but since the mobile filter is so prominently displayed on top of the search results I will participate.
I’m listing-challenged and somewhat sales challenged lately, but thought I’d chime in with some what solds. No home runs except the Ehrman needlepoint kit cache, which I already issued a bolo about.
Fun retro MCM find. The older ladies at the independent thrift care nothing for stuff like this. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332192711137 Paid .50 cents per cup and they went to San Fran. They showcase the fussy stuff. I found some butterscotch bakelite handles that go for over $150 in the bin they use for household junk drawer stuff. Love it.
Here’s a story. Went to GW and found a cool MCM “painting” on canvas – it’s actually a print upon closer inspection. The friendliest worker offered they had two more “paintings” in the back and they priced them low because he thought they were fakes, which I bought without really looking on my way to work. Turns out it’s by the “world’s most reproduced artist” (ugh!) and the two from the back were just prints on a board not a canvas. But, this small one sold for $55. Not bad and the buyer was super happy to get it! I paid $7.99. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332525884393
This is the kind of retro stuff I can’t resist buying. It took a while but finally sold. Paid $5 at the Palm Springs vintage market. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332174117585
Death pile sale. I think I had these sheets as a girl in the 1970s. Paid $2. Something weird happened to the opening photo. https://www.ebay.com/itm/232637530196
And now for a dud. I was so excited to find this brand I heard about the Youtube but it sat and sat despite price reductions. I finally ran a .99 cent auction to be rid of it. https://www.ebay.com/itm/332573005176
For a long time I resisted free shipping on principle, but about 9 months ago I started adding free shipping to certain items that are under a pound and can go first class or media mail. I also have it on some very high end new items to better compete and presumably show in search. It’s difficult to tell for sure, but I think it helped a bit. One caution is that sometimes the free shipping box seems to get “sticky”, or if I create a brand new listing I need to be careful that the box is checked by default. I’ve been stung a couple of times with $10-15 free shipping surprises on purchased items.
I don’t get many returns so I will be trying out free returns on some items under a pound, maybe more. With all of this, you owe it to yourself to watch your own bottom line when listing and sourcing and anticipate future cost and fee increases. Ebay has steadily increased fees, given us a puny shipping discount, shipping keeps getting pricier, and more online buyers may be getting will comfortable with shipping back returns.
I used to be very list it and forget it, but my current philosophy is that I will try to keep my store more active and go with what Ebay is prioritizing (what they think buyers want) presuming that their search algorithm and filter placement will reward it.
I’m issuing a BOLO to you for a free returns filter in this thread. I just noticed on desktop that it is at the top of the filter list now. Nothing on mobile yet, but I’m wondering if mobile will place it on top of your result as a prominent separate toggle filter, as they are currently doing with guaranteed delivery. I also found one of my promoted listings appears along with the only result showing after I filtered for free returns. My listing does NOT have free returns, so that’s pretty interesting.
Has anyone gotten off the wait list in March? I thought they said it would roll out March 1 for many more sellers. On mobile, it’s a separate toggle at the top. It’s a bit frustrating that they display it so prominently without allowing many to participate. Also noticed good visibility for promoted listings on mobile.
Tough to get to listing last week, but did sit down twice and got 10 itmes listed. 8 were from death piles. I did manage to stop at a couple of thrift stores during the week’s running around (which felt really nice) so I will continue to list those items first and then get back to the piles. Have a great week challenge friends.
As a part-timer with the foot on and off the Ebay gas, I’m probably in the minority strongly suspecting that EBay’s algorithm rewards activity. I suggest you go ahead and try trickling out your listings for a couple of months and see if you notice a change. I’ve always thought about trying that since I cannot list daily, but always just end up throwing everything up the day of.
Total Items in Store: 439
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $69 + $10 free shipping
Total Sales: $415
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Needlepoint kit – paid $10 estate sale https://www.ebay.com/itm/332552008375)
Average Price Sold: $47
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $28 (a couple of thrift stops)
Number of items listed this week: 10Ran a couple of auctions on things that didn’t sell for .99 cents last week. Just had one other item sell after they ended. Got another items in cart message for 5 used items, but unlike last week none of them sold this time after I reduced the price by 5%. 🙁 It felt very crikety this week so I’m glad I did my numbers – only half of the days had sales, they were grouped.
I finally finished listing the box that has been upstairs for a month. My daughter had her surgery so hopefully this week will be better for listing. Have a few new purchases to not add to the piles. Have a great week.
Has anyone shopped on mobile lately? A Youtuber mentioned a bunch of Instagram reseller chatter about changes so I looked. Guaranteed delivery is set apart right at the top of the results display as a separate toggle filter (not just nestled in the filter menu). This, of course, bums me out a bit since I’m still waitlisted. It also makes me wonder if free returns will be treated that way since it’s EBay’s new thing. I also noticed one of my promoted listings keeps popping up on the search results again and again with every scroll down. It’s got a gray tone. Interesting…
One more thought is that sellers of unique items probably are more likely to benefit from social media marketing. Ebay already makes it easy and convenient to share items but this also takes additional time. If older listings are pushed down in search, outside sharing might be somewhat necessary to attract buyers into the site and help people find your item.
I just looked at the boot camp topics. It does seem like it will be most helpful to sellers of new, common goods. I hope you report back to us later if you hear good tips for scavengers or ways we need to adapt if they openly address tweaking the algorithm.
With used, unique items a big factor is seller time investment – to source, list, research, price, sell and ship. Ebay metrics (except maybe view count) seem to to be less helpful. Sourcing guidance won’t be helpful to scavenger sellers. Sellers of used goods will need to rely on item specifics fields vs. product id # which typically cannot be found in the database.
Pricing is more of an art and sellers may need to maximze profits with slow dime selling to make up for the increased time investment. Ebay databases typically cannot offer valuable guidance for used items. Sales data going back longer than 3 months would be more helpful.
Returns may be more common with used goods due to condition issues on average and shipping may be more costly. Buyers may be less likely to expect free shipping and returns for hard to find or collectible items. Sellers of unique items may not see the same sales increase as new buyers if they offer free returns because fewer shoppers are looking for their items.
