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Good job. It does feel nice to start getting some breathing room. I’m making slow progress with the piles myself. Working on more kitchen stuff – the better stuff not death. I put up a beautiful midcentury Arabia geometric platter this weekend for $100 that came out of someone’s storage unit. I look forward to sending it to someone who will have it out and use it. 🙂
I have some trouble with this if I bought it to resell. I feel in a weird way that I need to punish myself by listing my early picks but I’m sure I’ll have some cutoff if I get into items in the $10-15 range unless lots make sense. It’ll be a lesson learned I suppose. I have discovered that since I’m only very part-time, I want to list things I am personally interested in to my taste, unless I know for sure it’s very highly collectable to others and will move.
On the other hand, we are doing a great job clearing out our own family cast offs. The school library takes all the books, we have friends who use the kids’ clothes, a teacher friend is taking some toys. I don’t have any problem letting go of the stuff we used and most of it I have no interest in listing.
Total Items in Store: 352
Items Sold: 12
Cost of Items Sold: $27 used + $111 new
Total Sales: $463
Highest Price Sold: $98 Two discontinued Anthropologie chicken art plates (paid $12 Spring clearance)
Average Price Sold: $39
Returns, Int’l Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0! – Week 3 of the No Scavenge Challenge. Went into thrift but bought nothing.
Number of items listed this week: +/-10Great week for me. The two chicken plates I was considering having my kids use at breakfast so I put them aside and was pleasantly surprised when I finally listed them that someone had a search out. I had another buyer who purchased multiples of two different items in my store. Love that. Sold a bulky afghan recently listed from the death piles. Love that. Once I started listing again in my store, sold other things right away. In fact most of these sales are from yesterday and the other day I listed this week. Funny how that works. My kids are out of school today and I’m hoping to slip in some more listings here and there.
I’m with you Paul on the time management challenges, pickier buying (though I’m on a break now) and medical distractions. Also I LOVE your store logo. If anyone can recommend a source please I need a new graphic and cannot figure out how to load a banner photo of the right size. I learned on the very first pcs (ms dos) and a gigantic mainframe in the late 1980s – it wasn’t pretty and I’m still scarred from that black screen with constant error messages. Now I resist learning anything techwise I don’t absolutely need to know. But, I would like a prettier store. Have a great week.
1. Big issue for me – fix the UPC database to include new in package exclusive retailer items with fewer digits or discontinue the good ’til cancelled culling of these listings. The database seems to be very limited and has only worked for me on Lego sets and media items.
2. I would like to see Ebay improve the automation / rules you can set up for combined shipping in the shopping cart. The options are limited and, for example, it doesn’t seem to be able to make the jump if a buyer has multiple first class items in the cart and it goes over a pound.
3. I agree with #1 above, more levels of stores and graduated monthly rates would be best.
4. Traffic reports – I want to know specifically what outside sources my hits and sales are coming from. The top 10 isn’t cutting it because it’s 9 different internal sites usually. I want to know how social media is working for me but cannot tell.
Those being said, I’m very happy with the recent listing improvements – the photos upload much faster and are easier to edit. I also love the newer template feature.
Well Short that looks pretty nice to me. “) At least everything is in bins, and you didn’t overflow them. Except for my Pyrex in a kitchen cabinet – excuse: making sets? – mine is all out of the living space, which looks much different than the crazy garage photos. It is fun to rediscover the backlog. Right now I’m working on some cool retro kitchen items. Selling a few of our things on Craigslist. Things are slow for me on Ebay even though I’m trickling in listings.
Taking pictures of this was a great idea for me. The next time I want to go shopping I’m pulling out this board and steering for home.
Welcome back on the wagon Linda. I’m thinking of posting photos of my piles here. We have a University sale here too. I didn’t buy much last year and I’m mot sure I can clear out by then, but it would make a good milestone. It might be good to report what we wouldn’t buy again.
I’m curious as well about how many items people generally list in an hour. Hi Beth, I sell décor (not clothes) and used to be a lot more careful, take a while with my photography, and put more in my description. I’ve since adopted more of a quick and dirty approach. Some of the lighting admittedly isn’t great in my photos, and I’ve reduced the amount of cropping and editing I’m doing. Ebay has made some welcome upgrades too since I started a couple of years ago and my photos load faster now thankfully. I’m also using the template and custom insert functions – are you using those?
I’m on a shopping hiatus but when I begin again I will definitely be taking into account – among other things – the amount of cleaning, difficulty to photograph, and profit margin. I also admire the Esty sellers I follow – everything looks so perfect and is more thoughtfully researched and described. I’d really like to sell on Etsy but I’ve come to realize that I just don’t have enough time to list things like that right now. I think I’m good at finding attractive items and shipping out quickly, so that’s good enough for Ebay if the photos look fairly good.
Sorry for the lengthy forum post today. Chair sold not surprisingly. 🙁
Wanted to share a couple of tidbits about the reviewing your homeowners insurance. Our insurance is through USAA and based in TX. We live in coastal CA where the land value is 5x the structure and the labor cost is very, very expensive. I had to work with them on a couple of issues scavengers in our situation might want to review. First, they had our structure value too high (based on the property tax statement). Then they have a tangible personal property amount of $500k+ for furniture, etc. tied to the home value so we were way over insured for our stuff in the house. Their program makes assumptions about this, not knowing we have all second hand stuff pretty much and only invest in renovating. Anything really good and you need a rider anyway. Second, their regional estimator had a rebuild at $150 per square foot and was actually from another town south of us. I would love to build a house (esp. kitchen & bath spaces) here for that – not happening. They allowed us to bump that up and pay a higher premium for it.Total Items in Store: 338
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $9 used + $54 new
Total Sales: $178
Highest Price Sold: $40 Williams Sonoma Dishtowel & Spatula RA Set (paid $16 summer clearance)
Average Price Sold: $24 Taking offers!
Returns: 0; Int’l Sales – 1 mug to Canada GSP
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0! No Scavenge Challenge week 2
Number of items listed this week: 11So funny and weird because I just this morning emailed about this local CL Crate & Barrel chair. I think it might be the one in your truck photo. https://santabarbara.craigslist.org/fuo/5899293888.html It’d be more like 2k new so congrats. Mine is stale listing so fingers crossed.
Speaking of scavenging, we are staying at the Disney Aulani later this month. We were so slammed that it was too late to get an AirB&B unfortunately to stay in after my husband’s conference hotel. I talked to the reps and they suggest calling over and over to see if we can upgrade from the standard room to a larger one. He gave me the tip that people normally book in the mornings and cancel in the evenings. Also to try around the 5 day window when it becomes a permanent booking. This particular property has not been as successful as they hoped and apparently there are a lot of cancellations happening routinely. I used Trip Advisor to look at our next hotel stay but booked directly with the hotel, and recently got an TA alert about the price dropping, called and got it down $100 without having to cancel and rebook. Awesome!
Meh week of sales. I’ve dabbled in Williams Sonoma RA and it gets a lot of hits but even their sales prices can be strong. I’m sticking with my no scavenge challenge and I’m taking offers. Thanks to those of you who joined me in the challenge. It totally helps my resolve to have posted it in writing. I’ve got a lot of stuff to clear.
Not great listing #s after the beginning of the week because we are really focused on cleaning out our non-Ebay house and kids stuff. Our thrifts have all stopped taking used toys, so I guess we’ll be freecycling some of that. I put a bunch of stuff on Craigslist but it’s very quiet. I did list a big plastic tub of bulky afghans on Ebay and I’m having a $3 hairy Pendleton blanket cleaned. Thanks for the wool blanket cleaning tips. Some really grab fibers, but the dryer did release things on others.
Have a great week everyone.
Good job. Just keep driving and do what you really should to do instead. That’s how it works. It is a bit painful in one way, but then one feels less guilty on the other hand. The piles will be there.
Good luck Joe. Reorganizing the stuff does help you realize how behind you are too.
Good job staying with the floors. Maybe we should allow a one time pass for events like that. But…it’s a slippery slope!
Hmm, thanks! I should have looked into this further before posting a comment, especially since I prepare our return. More of their factors lean toward hobby than business for me. There isn’t sufficient free time for me to ramp up the # of listings in a significant way, though I after I clear the death piles I hope to more to a better average sale price. I’d rather not open new accounts. I don’t have any losses or excess expenses to use so there is no real advantage there for me. I certainly want to do things correctly, but we pay an obscene amount of taxes so we’re golden.
Do you use Easy Auctions Tracker? Someone here mentioned it so I tried it this year. Haven’t done much yet but transfer the Ebay info.
