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My Store Week Feb 23-29, 2019
Total Items in Store: 7488
Items Sold: 71
Gross Sales: $1,153
Cost of helper: $20
Highest Price Sold: $120 (Large collection of French CDs)
Average Price Sold: $16.24I agree – Corona Virus is a wildcard. There is reason for concern that orders will fall along with the broader slowing of the global economy, and there is reason for hope that orders will rise from people becoming less inclined to shop in physical stores.
The background tool is bad; not developed enough to be useful. But I think it is a positive indicator, that eBay is trying to develop tools for amateur retailers to market more professionally, rather than just trying to convince them to sell their things cheaper.
Regarding the Paypal call:
I was surprised by both the question and the answer to it.
I routinely empty my Paypal. My account is linked to my checking, so if I need to spend money on something and there is an insufficient balance, Paypal takes the difference automatically out of my checking. I assumed that everyone had it set up like this; I would recommend that everyone just do this instead of having to calculate how much money to leave in their Paypal.Thanks for bringing Troy back. I really hate paying too close attention to the numbers side of sourcing and listing. My mindset has always been that I should just buy cheap things that sell well, and that there isn’t much analytical work to be done. I think Troy definitively proved me wrong today, and I am wondering whether I should incorporate some of this analysis on my own business. I’m not sure what will make the most sense for me to start calculating, but I think I should start with sell-through rates.
Like Jay, I find it reassuring when I hear others talk about eBay difficulties from the past year. I have been doing fine since Christmas season, but my numbers were so low for so many months in 2019 that I was consistently worried about bills.
Total Items in Store: 7443
Number of Items Sold: 65
Weekly STR: .9%
Total Product Sales: $1,005
Average Sale Price: $15
Highest Price Sold: $100 (Grateful Dead Woodblock Print)1/19/20 – 1/25/20
Total Items In Store: 7,364
Items Sold: 90
Total Sales: $ 1,754
Highest Price Sold: $ 250 (Grateful Dead gold record)
Average Price Sold: $ 19.49First strong week in something like 6 months. Followed by two sub-$100 days in a row. There is no predictability anymore.
I just wanted to say that what the teacher caller said really resonated with me. There is strong potential for value-consumerism right now. eBay could really improve its branding with Millennial-age people by focusing marketing on that, which its enormous secondhand market truly stands out for. Instead, their clothing marketing focuses on high-volume sellers of popular brands, something they have no substantive competitive advantage in, and something for which they face too much competition for to really stand out.
Thanks for the kind words. The interview was super fun.
This week’s numbers were sustainable, but still very depressed considering how much my inventory has expanded.
1/12/20 – 1/18/20
Total Items In Store: 7,360
Items Sold: 73
Total Sales: $1,096
Highest Sold Price: $100 (Broken laptop)
Average Sold Price: $15.01
Returns/Refunds: $49Jan 5-11 2019
Total Items In Store: 7.432
Items Sold: 86
Cost of Items Sold: Around $18
Total Sales: $ 1,264.84
Highest Price Sold: $195 (Broken Daiichi Machine)Hello, from Amtrak! I’m taking my first-ever trip on here to pick up my dad’s new car in Western Mass (made a last minute-sale of the 1999 Corolla for a whopping $300). I have never been on anything so comfortable. I’ve been listing the Sports Illustrateds my helper photographed for me yesterday for 2 hours now; thought I might take a break to examine my numbers. Looking forward to this special show you have coming up.
I’ve looked to Paypal before for this, but I think they didn’t have First Class as an option. Do you remember whether this is the case now?
Yes, as a buyer whose order I did that through recently informed me :X I thought I was being clever by doing it through orders that didn’t include tracking. If Stamps.com offers the same rates, I’m just going to do it through them next time I have something to ship. Those orders were always rare enough that I never bothered to establish a serious process for it.
Yes, but I only ship through informal arrangement. I accept payment over Facebook, Paypal, Cash App, and Venmo. People give me their address, and I create a shipping label through a previous order on eBay – I’m sure this violates some sort of policy; I’m planning to create a Stamps.com account. This doesn’t constitute a large percentage of my FB sales, but it’s always interesting when people can send payment on trust alone. I buy quite a lot through Facebook, and I’ve had people ship to me as well.
Facebook did create a formal payment/shipping system. I haven’t used it myself, but I am a part of a group created by the Marketplace team for about a thousand high-volume sellers. People on there complain that the system is messed up in all sorts of ways, and caution not to use it until it is properly developed. I created a thread on this question there. Might be able to screenshot it if you’d like more info.
2019-12-29 – 2020-01-04
Total Items In Store: 7,382
Items Sold: 107
Cost of Items Sold: $ 57
Total Sales: $ 1,221.86
Highest Price Sold: $ 75 (US Army All-American Jersey)
Average Price Sold: $ 14.98A bunch of small-dollar sales over Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist, but those are trickier to keep track of.
Moderately better week than I’ve been seeing this winter. Sales starting coming right after Christmas, still catching up with shipments.
I really appreciate that you guys spent some time talking about cross-posting because this is something I have been thinking about lately: the fracturing of the online secondhand retail market. It worries me because for a large part, it seems like it is disrupting the market (taking sales volume away from eBay and Amazon) without adding much to either the buyer or seller. We can leave Poshmark and Etsy out of it because they offer a more crafted, efficient experience for people shopping for higher end and crafty things. But the never-ending direct eBay competitor-aspirants – Marcari, OfferUp, LetGo, etc – are bad for everyone. For the buyers, they offer a much smaller selection for prices that aren’t better than ebay. For the sellers, it is as you said: the volume that gets sold is so low that it doesn’t compensate for the opportunity cost of spending time creating cross-listings.
Personally, I cross-list to Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. To my eye, Facebook Marketplace is the only new selling platform worth getting excited about. It doesn’t just disrupt; my impression has been that it has the power to meaningfully expand the broader secondhand market. I have seen scores of people my age (millennial) who share the strange standard prejudices against eBay and Craigslist (randos, danger in internet anonymity and non-accountability), become perfectly comfortable to buy something secondhand from their neighbor if it is through a Facebook account. My impression has been that this is creating both non-traditional sellers (much less daunting to try to sell something for the first time when it is a simple process through a Facebook account you already use every day), and non-traditional buyers (there is something reassuring when the seller is someone who lives near you with a Facebook account you can access anytime you like).
Unlike eBay, Facebook and Craigslist don’t have any strict listing requirements. What my Cross-Listing looks like is that while I list on eBay, I keep a tab open for each site. When I list something I think would sell locally, I copy/paste the title, description, and 1-3 photos. People are usually even less attentive to descriptions on local platforms, but when someone has any questions/requests, it is even more efficient to communicate over Facebook Messenger or Email than it is over eBay Messenger.
For backup, I contacted some scrapyards and dealerships. We were offered about $200 from scrappers, $330 from dealerships.
I agree with the consensus here: If I find someone who wants to give us $1000 for it, we are going to take the money and run. I think the most likely scenario is that I will make a direct sale like this. But it isn’t everyday that I get to sell a car, and my scavenging instincts are always to at least investigate every potential opportunity. Engine and transmission would be worth over $1000 on their own, but it would take hours of expensive mechanic labor to extract them.
