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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.
T-Satt: Would you mind keeping us up to date on how your SP charges pan out? I thought the problem was the SP jacked up the rates based on DIM, not that Ebay was miscalculating the estimated fees. Thanks!
Hi Paul, hope things turn around by March. February has been my worst month historically. Maybe try pinning some of your items on Pinterest. The time investment is very minimal. I also participate in three Facebook groups some mornings who have pinning parties exchanging pins. This takes only 5 minutes. The three groups are Vintage Ebay and Etsy Sellers, The Thrifting Board, and International League of Thrifters. I believe it has helped my sales and I have sold some items immediately after I posted them to the parties. Google likes Pinterest better than Ebay and some people don’t really think about going to Ebay to search for items.
I had been really good for a while, but I’ve been feeling the itch lately. Rummage and church sales are my favorites and I get an alert from Craigslist in my email when one happens. There are not too many rummage sales each year, so maybe I’ll catch a break. The worst was that estate sale up the street from my house. The 9 items were all craft kits that should bring over $100 each. If I let myself go to estate sales I know I would get hooked but maybe couldn’t process it all. I’m saving that as a reward for the death plies purge.
At least selling old hats on the internet is easing the pain of paying more for everything! #TeamCali 🙂
My husband works at the hospital so we get great benefits, including a self funded pre-tax plan of some sort. I believe the way it works is we have to decide in April each year at reenrollment how much to put in there for the following fiscal year, and if we don’t use it by the end of that fiscal year, then we lose it altogether. I’m not sure if this dental stuff would be allowable either. He’ll have to look into that. So, always a challenge since you never know when you are going to get a whammy like this. Anyway, I did ask about insurance at the dr. meetings to let them know we were concerned about cost. I think I get to talk to the office ladies about payment later and it can’t hurt to ask for a break. It was extremely bad luck, not a routine case. Anyway, time to list on Ebay and rebuild the emergency fund!
Thanks Jay. The good news is that we have really capable people on board to address this hard case and they can save the adult problem tooth. We haven’t gotten the $ news yet from the surgeon or the orthodontist, but only some of the orthodontics will be payable this year. We do keep an emergency fund for things like this thankfully and can pay cash though I”m not sure how negotiable this will be since these people are in high demand.
Regrettably easy numbers this week for me. I’m listing new purchases so as not to add them to the death piles. Listed only 9 items, none from death piles. I think I will have a better week this week, even with the kids out for the holiday weekend.
Total Items in Store: 410
Items Sold: 9
Cost of Items Sold: $56 + $13 free shipping
Total Sales: $238
Highest Price Sold: $36 new pie plate
Average Price Sold: $26
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $26 (one church sale)
Number of items listed this week: 9Wow. It really felt like I sold no items this week. Finally listed yesterday after a three week break. We recently found out that one of the children has a rare problem and will need surgery and major specialized orthodontics. Despite a high likelihood for disturbance to roots of adult teeth, not considered medically necessary for insurance purposes since she can still eat with missing teeth. So, time to tighten the belt a bit more between that and additional taxes we anticipate this year without the SALT deduction.
One of the ways I’m saving is to use Walmart.com for groceries shipped free in 2 days. Love it! I’ve completely abandoned Amazon at this point due to my non-prime orders not shipping out for a week, because Amazon is annoyingly not showing the lowest price by default, third parties getting $3.99 to ship, etc. Also need to make time to hit the grocery outlet we got last year. Finally, I’ve majorly cut back on RA purchases and will keep focused on the death piles. It will be interesting to see how this affects my numbers and velocity, though I have a couple of thousand in RA inventory I bought in the past with Ebay profits. It probably would be wise to price the vintage items more competitively than I tend to price them. (Gears turning in my head…)
Smartpost was like triple what the buyers were charged for me and these were not huge packages – one
was an afghan I crammed into long medium flat rate – it was going to be $38! It’s so weird that you guys are not having a big problem also. Jason T. Smith did a show on this last night, though I still don’t know that I have any items SP would make sense for at this point vs priority. Most of my items are smaller than a large breadbox. I find USPS parcel post is often more expensive than priority by a tad. I donnno. My takeaway as a hard goods seller is that I need to give future purchases more serious thought if the item is not particularly valuable and can’t go flat rate or first class.One last thought. I bought a like new top that is one of my favorite retail brands – Velvet by Graham and Spencer – for like $10 bucks on Ebay. This seller was priced well below others and new would be like $125. Made me wonder if they didn’t do their research, if the market is flooded with bin sourcers, or if they are just cranking out volume. In any case, I’m definitely looking for clothing deals on Ebay, especially for my kiddos who are growing in leaps and bounds. Have a great week. BTW, love Queer Eye, but Carson’s humor really made the old show for me.
