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Good job, no purchases for me either. I made one friend of the old timer pickers. He told me about a great 3 day estate sale in a multi-million dollar part of town happening. But, I was like nah – I’ve got the piles plus a lot going on. Halo for me this week.
Listed: 16 items, 15 from death piles, 2 listing sessions.
Listed some items that I was super unexcited about – antique hand painted plates and vintage user guides that are worth less than $10. I want to make myself learn what not to buy and eat my vegetables with what I bought, but it’s probably really not worthwhile to list the stuff that is worth less than $10. I dunno. Right now I have a box of paper goods that is easy to list. Then I really should do Easter. I only have one box of that.Total Items in Store: 468
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $79 + $13 free shipping
Total Sales: $414
Highest Price Sold: $120 UK Needlepoint kit, paid $10 estate sale https://www.ebay.com/itm/232662616338
Average Price Sold: $35
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 16
Number of listing sessions: 2Part of this week I caught an unexpected school hours break from my day job and spent the time working on kitchen remodel planning (ugh), Ebay bookkeeping, and Turbotax. Doing my COGS and determining my net profit was only $8.5k. On one hand I’m thrilled that amount kind of from nothing in my spare time, on the other I can’t help but feel disappointed. I’m currently moving away from RA for a couple of reasons, and I think I’ve got a pretty good eye for vintage so hopeful that this year I can make the same sales with better margins. I only have so much time for reselling, so I need to figure out my optimal mix and pricing. Continuing to work through the piles and towards my reward goal of going to estate sales. I only got to listing twice this week, but did get a sales boost both times. This is unlike January and early February when I felt no boost occurred.
There are some news articles being discussed on FB about Ebay changing the algorithm, which they apparently announced at the last Open event. No hard facts yet to share but I’m wondering if that seller boot camp Ebay has coming up will shed more light on things. One of the changes apparently has to do with stale listings. I’m going to make myself cull some old stuff and create lots, since I am also getting over the break even point in my basic store anyway. This is probably my least favorite task of Ebay – admitting that I have duds.
Regarding the Podcast topic, it really sounds like a lot of the stuff in your area is super long tail and you are making the most of it. Again, I’d love to see you spend some time in the urban areas during garage and estate sale season and scoop up goodies to bring to your warehouse. You have the knowledge to pick relatively inexpensively and the space to store items. Maybe you’d enjoy a better sell through rate without overspending. Feel free to ignore me. “) Have a great week!
Love the Dansk Summerhouse because the handles are easy to spot. I’ve sold it before and have some white to list.
Thanks Steve – amazing sales. Bread and butter for me but some nice looking retro items to share.
Paid $4.99 I believe for this eye catching enamelware set at GW, took a best offer of $40 https://www.ebay.com/itm/232467891750
Some of my death piles Dansk items are selling. Paid $3.99 for these https://www.ebay.com/itm/232637150969
Love this retro kitchen fabric. At my favorite indy thrift the older ladies carefully measure it and write it on painters tape, which is great. I’ve got a bunch of fabric neglected in the piles but this got listed because I thought it was so cool. Paid $7 I think, https://www.ebay.com/itm/232509704098
I do pretty well with these Folkmanis puppets and I have a photo of the tag in my listing in case you are interested. I don’t love my photos here but it’s my new just-get-it-up in my dining room style listing. Paid $8 at indy thrift https://www.ebay.com/itm/332459638644.
Listed 40, including multiples
Items from death piles 8. Everything I bought very recently is listed and I didn’t go shopping this week.
# listing sessions 3Total Items in Store: 449
Items Sold: 8
Cost of Items Sold: $58 + $12 free shipping
Total Sales: $228
Highest Price Sold: two @ $43 (tie – Folkmanis puppet (paid $8) and used Anthropologie dinner plate (paid $2))
Average Price Sold: $28
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 40 (some multiples)
Listing sessions: 3You should reflect on your achievements for sure and they are impressive. But what I’m really excited about with is that you are so consistently working hard and making good choices. It’s a million times you make yourself do something you don’t really want to do and many good decisions big and small. Eating healthier is another example of this. Your self discipline is really remarkable and this is an area of personal growth that I am working on.
I was somewhat surprised to get my first $23k gross Paypal 1099-K. I paid taxes on my hobby Ebay income in the past but it didn’t amount to too much and I have a lot of $200 sales weeks. I still need to do the COGS bookkeeping to determine my profit and finish our taxes. Looks so far like we didn’t pay enough quarterlies last year for the first time. I’ve got a lot of incentive to resist buying and work the piles! Even though I’m working on my time management, I am proud that I have worked Ebay into my life and made some extra money for the household even though it is taxed on top of our other income. Plus, I just really enjoy doing it.
This week was complete crickets until yesterday. I listed in the morning and got 5 sales within 12 hours. That used to happen a lot but the last few months I wasn’t seeing that result. It is a holiday weekend so there’s that in the mix.
Quick question for Ryanne on the descriptions. You said you used to add something quick like the “piece of history” toolbox comment but now you usually stick to bare bones. I assume that anyone who clicks through to view your item is also attracted to it. Do you think they need that little comment as confirmation of why its cool and why they should pay that high price? Or do you think it is just better to be focused on throwing up more and more stuff as quickly as possible? Does it depend on the price point to you more recently?
Have a great week.
Hello, let me start by saying that I am not a tech person, so I don’t know the hows of it.
I try to pin my items after launching a new listing when Ebay asks you if you want to view the listing, but have not been consistent. I don’t bother pinning some of my low dollar or kids’ clothing listings. I definitely pin items I have multiples of and throw them into the parties. Vintage, collectibles, period clothing, discontinued retail arbitrage items, costumes and accessories, jewelry, home decor are all good for pinning. When I pin others’ listings from FB, I dump into one board on Pinterest.
For my own listings, I’ve created a few specialized subject boards. The boards have short names with a few broad keywords. Ebay items carry over their own title keywords with the photo I believe (again, not a tech person).
There are private FB groups online for ecommmerce seller support. I belong to these and you may ask to join: International League of Thifters, Vintage Ebay and Etsy Sellers, The Thrifting Board, GotVintageShops, and The Original Pinterest Exchange Marketing Group. Everyday most of these have a theme to follow on their Pinterest party, you may copy in a link to one of your items for others to pin, and you must pin one or more appearing directly above yours in the post, then others of your choosing (usually at least 3 total for each one of yours). I also pin the admin’s links out of courtesy.
I have sold a number of items the day I posted to a party. Also, since I started pinning, I sell more often to a buyer with zero feedback, which makes me suspicious that they came from Google or Pinterest, rather than from inside Ebay. Ebay shows that you get a spike in your traffic from outside Ebay with a dark bar. The great part is that it takes very little time, and it’s scavenger friendly free. You haven’t really invested much if it doesn’t work well for you.
Here is a video on the topic by the founder of one of the FB groups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQH_qs6hV6Y. There are many others I’m sure. I like that your photos are clear and close up. People who collect that brand are likely to find your board and start following it. Also, Pinterest suggests boards to members. Good luck!
I like your items, art and photos. The prices seem high to me. I’m sure if I were an outsider looking into my store, I might say the same about mine. But I have another job so I go for the “slow dime” rather than the fast nickel. If you need to get cash flow going at least short term, you might get a good sale going. If you don’t have trouble sourcing where you are, I’d recommend that you take a hard look at pricing. I also use Pinterest to expose art and other interesting items. It’s fast and free and google likes Pinterest. Good luck!
I tend to call them my piles, because unlike R & J I did not cherry pick the best items out and leave the others sorted by type. I simply overbought for a good year and a half and didn’t have an organized method of listing. So, there is good and bad in my piles, easy and hard to list items, but all of it’s been sitting over a year since I cut way back on buying with the no scavenge challenge. Now if I do allow myself to shop, it’s gotta be listed first, then back to the piles. My goal is not really to win the challenge but to stay pretty true with keeping the outflow up and listing more often every week than I was before.
It sounds like most of us are still shopping a little bit (but a lot less than before) and I’d rather not make you redo the #s, so I’m ok as is. Yes, I was tracking # times listing and just remembered that was my goal.
My relatives from Sweden visited us last year and we had an interesting discussion about the differences. It made me feel a lot better about our relatively high tax burden here in California after speaking with them, though I wasn’t feeling so good about our public schools. At least some of the taxes were in 40-50% range if I recall correctly, but they were very confident in their government to provide both quality health care and education among other things. Simply put, lately I’m not feeling so comfortable to rely on ours with the lack of integrity and strong influence of special interest $ polluting the greater good philosophy. No time that I can remember has this ever been so barefaced in government. And really we just have a individualistic mentality going on that people don’t want to share and are rather resentful about strangers taking from the till. I think most Americans are kind and feel differently though if it’s someone they know or someone who really can’t provide for self who is receiving the benefits. If we could get back to the middle somehow and balanced fairness, it would be so good for us as a country. It’s good too to remember how lucky we all are. I try to remind my kids all the time. And I applaud Jay’s way of thinking – even the state of education we have is very expensive.
Pinterest is super easy to use and fast. Easier on the desktop than the app though IMHO. It’s just a virtual idea bulletin board and you can make ones for different subjects if you wish, but you could pin all onto one board. Inside your Ebay item pages is a little red link for pinning. So you can sit with your phone somewhere while waiting or on your computer and pin all of your active items. I also view and pin new listings as I make them. You have nice photos and interesting items, so I think you would do well. Only downside with the parties is that you have to pin some godawful items of other sellers as a requirement. LOL.
Many people go to Google first rather than starting in Ebay and Google loves Pinterest. I have used Pinterest when we have a theme costume party to go to our my kids have a project, reno project, Halloween ideas, etc. though I don’t have much time for it now that I look at Youtube reseller videos. I’m sure hard core collectors often use Pinterest.
I’ve listed all of my new purchases (so as not to add them to the piles) and I am back on the piles again. Going to go to some fun midcentury china and lamps next that I have been avoiding like the plague. Shouldn’t we only get credit for DP items in this challenge Amatino? I think someone brought that up before.
