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Can he afford storage? From what I’ve seen (just on tv) what they see they can’t part with. If you could honestly tell him you had it safely stored for him, that might bring him peace of mind. Also, I’d ask him what means the most to him if he’s up for that. If he can remember it, it can stay. Good luck! Get some gloves!
06/28/2018 at 8:42 pm in reply to: Trash Elf Twins Challenge 2018 Thread #2 From Week 19 (May 7-13) #43919Thank you! I just finished listing all but one and the last one is unattractive to me. I really did not enjoy that but I’m happy they are listed! It’s funny how much you can like buying something but then not enjoy listing it. Lesson learned.
Yes, many people on Ebay for Business live update comments were complaining bigtime about this change yesterday. I think most were under the impression that it applied to brand new and sell similar new listings only, not older ones with revisions or ones previously on sale.
Looks like they took the barrage of FB comments down. LOL. Supposedly reps were going to come in to comments and respond since the speaker was using prepared questions, but I think they must have been surprised by the reactions and no one did.
06/28/2018 at 8:15 am in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Massager, Hats, Car parts, Bomber jacket, Yosemite Sam, Harley Davidson Cooler Radio #43793I kind of look at hats but never seem to find cool ones like you do Steve. Sharing a few sales. Noticing a trend that some of my newest listings really move quickly, so I’m sharing some of those.
Vintage Brass Door Knocker sold for full price, paid $6 at now closed down storage locker hoarder thrift shop.
Pottery Barn Kids Panels, sold almost immediately, paid $19.98 at a local thrift.
This also sold immediately Pischke Pocket Needlepoint Kit I wish I had had the tote bag too and not just the pocket – one comp sold for over $100!
This also sold immediately. The rest of our Halloween is in the attic unfortunately. I now wish I would have bought more on clearance! Paid $34 after Christmas sale. New Williams Sonoma Platter Interesting that this went to the UK. Apparently, Halloween is catching on over there.
Hard to get good prices at our local Flea Market, but I know Martha Stewart Craft items can do well. paid $2. Martha Stewart Paper Punch
I love these Blenko Glass Candle Holdersand overpaid a bit maybe at $12 local thrift. It took longer than I thought to sell and sold for less. I can’t recall if this is one of the older listings I tweaked.
Listened to this while picking up the kids and peeked in FB at the comments. Sellers on Facebook are certainly not happy. I thought there was not much substance and he was defensive of Ebay trying to compete in the retail landscape. But, at least he admitted they have too many glitches. Better would be that they are taking concrete steps to improve that by adding staff, improving testing methods, contracting with quality programmers or something… There were a lot of comments from people wanting a break on fees due to the picture glitch.
06/27/2018 at 6:08 pm in reply to: Trash Elf Twins Challenge 2018 Thread #2 From Week 19 (May 7-13) #43761Lousy so far, but I hope to make it back to listing by weekend.
Jay agreed. I know I’ve been dancing along the lines today with free thinking. I had actually good sales last week for me. I’m not really a consipracy theory person just more of a need to know kind of person. Do I trust Ebay to tell me what I need to know to get the best results for my time investment? Enh, not sure. Part of the attraction to Ebay is the game aspect of it. I like to have access here to bigger seller’s observations and experiment results to spot patterns.
I think we are on the same page that sellers of more common items will be affected more by the changes at Ebay. Also on the same page that moving in fresh listings never hurts your chances of selling items.
Last year when I was less consistent about listing, every time I listed a few of my older items would sell within 24 hours, sometimes in the same category. Lately, I’m not seeing that happen. This spring, listing would result in no older listings selling. Recently, it’s my newest listings I’m noticing are moving right after a session (in better numbers than they used to).
I like the forums for sharing observations and evidence since Ebay is not always transparent. It’s up to the reader to make their own assumptions or conclusions and maybe experiment with potential improvements.
Let me preface this comment by saying that I am not a tech person. Generally, Ebay would not want to hide listings from buyers. But, what if Ebay does not have sufficient server capacity to show all shoppers all of the possible listings? One theory is that they have been doing rolling blackouts to avoid server overload. Then they tweak the algorithm this year to heavily favor the freshest stuff. Sellers in more competitive categories would notice a difference. Sellers of unique items not so much. If this theory were true, Ebay should be showing accurate impression and view data to show good faith. They might get more specific about how much best practices help your listing, like maybe emphasizing a bit more that months old listings should be revisited and price trumps best practices in best match (if true).
Also with the move to product pages, they decided that modern shoppers are getting to many hits to sort through and might avoid or stray from the cluttered platform style. My understanding is that only some items with a product page adopted will show to a buyer if the product has many listings. Will this gradually alleviate the server burden? Am I missing something?
I’m just seeing more brand new listings sell off – not really at exceptional prices btw. I went back and tweaked older listings and some did sell. So, as much as I like list it an forget it due to limited time, I think it’s a good idea to go back to older listings and tweak them. There are theories about the minimum changes you need to make to refresh. I don’t want to do 30 day listings because I’m not sure I can keep up. I hope ultimately Ebay just limits the categories they apply the product pages to. It really doesn’t make sense for certain collectibles and more unique items. It makes a lot of sense for ipad cases.
06/25/2018 at 1:32 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43444Thanks Julie. I find their sales are unfortunately not as good as they used to be as of 9 months or a year ago. I used to score mornings online and locally at the extra 40% off sale sale – they rarely discount that deep now and people are totally on it online when they do. For that reason and because of all my vintage death piles I’m not buying much RA. I’m getting a bit nervous as my RA inventory is now about 30% of the peak. If you lived near an outlet though, wow. That would be great to hit up!
06/25/2018 at 1:16 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43439Someone just started a thread about that post I saw.
06/25/2018 at 1:14 pm in reply to: Trash Elf Twins Challenge 2018 Thread #2 From Week 19 (May 7-13) #43438I listed 20 items, 17 from piles. Time to hit the afghans – ugh! thanks for the challenge. My daughter is here sick today so I might get in some listing as I’m home from work.
I did go to the college rummage sale – not much to resell – and bought some gorgeous ’60s Sascha Brastoff pottery at Goodwill. Fun! but after the afghans it’s my policy to list the new stuff, so other piles will wait.
I’m doing some finer organizing into banker’s boxes by type and I feel like it really helps you feel a bit less overwhelmed. I also have my list of seasons I want to list certain types of items in. Bite size pieces and a plan.
06/25/2018 at 1:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43436Total Items In Store: 441
Items Sold: 11
Total Sales: $622
Cost of Items Sold: $202 + $24 free shipping
Highest Price Sold: $255 New Duvet & Shams (paid about $130 clearance within a year)
Average Price Sold: $57
Returns: 1 partial cancellation / buyer mistake
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: About $50
Number of Items listed this week: 20After the photo fiasco, I have to confess to you all that I went over to the dark side, looking briefly at ecommercebytes and Ebay forums. I found an interesting and lengthy post from a large seller whose sales had dropped “off a cliff” since December. The gist of it was that in March, Ebay changed the mysterious algorithm to treat high sales history less favorably and effectively punish sellers or listings (not certain which he was alleging) with staleness. Discussion went on to say more than 60 days was stale and furthermore that staleness might trump best practices in best search placement. I bring this up because I noticed that my newest listings are selling, and I did some price drops and tinkering with my stale listings having watchers and sold a few of those. The remaining items have been quiet. I’m wondering if anyone else has noticed this pattern.
I also read once that Ebay has a hard time competing for tech talent in the Bay Area. It really seems like they need to work on managing change better and notifying sellers when there are important issues to show good faith. I would not want to be a rep for them at the open fielding questions! Have a great week.
06/25/2018 at 12:30 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 366: How To Run A Small, Local Business #43427In my tiny retirement account I make individual stock picks (most of our retirement is in my husband’s accounts and in funds). About the time when Jay and Ryanne soured on Amazon, I figured Amazon small sellers would turn to Ebay, and Ebay vintage sellers may turn to Etsy. I bought stock in both. Etsy said they raised fees to do marketing. I think they will be very wise to captialize and grow given Ebay’s current focus and issues. I currently love Ebay because it’s comparatively quick and dirty to list, and you can list anything. But, as I move away from RA selling to more vintage, I’m hoping Etsy will step up it’s vintage game and draw shoppers. Maybe after a few successful Christmas seasons and better advertising, shoppers will start thinking of Etsy. If Etsy items show up better in Google or Mercari than Ebay items, that’s a big factor too.
06/22/2018 at 12:34 pm in reply to: Trash Elf Twins Challenge 2018 Thread #2 From Week 19 (May 7-13) #43169Yes, let’s do it starting Sunday morning. I would love to price to sell and clear this bulky stuff out. I could literally pick up an afghan every visit to the thrift store and I like to rescue them because of the work someone put in. But, unless they are really exceptional and I’ve cleared most of the piles, I don’t think I want to store them. I have a bunch of baby quilts too. Same rescue weak spot but I think people are less inclined to buy used baby stuff and they get a lot of new gifts.
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