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[dearmila]

Hi Jay, when you screenshot, if you choose “save to photos” it’ll save the photos to your phone, where you can then crop it square. As for other saving of photos, I don’t think there’s another way that photos are saved to your phone when you list on the ebay or poshmark app, but they are there on the app, as long as the listing is live of course, and then for a little while at least on the ebay app as completed items.

& bcfol440, interesting that you screenshot the text, I would have never thought of that. & yes, because “condition” is separate on eBay, I do sometimes get questions about condition on Poshmark, because that’s not always part of my eBay description, unless there is a specific issue with the item. So now, I am also including condition in the eBay item description, so that when I copy & paste, it’s there too for Poshmark.

[dearmila]

Hi – I’m listening to the latest podcast right now & taking pictures. The subject of offers to watchers came up & wanted to share this, maybe it’s come up elsewhere in the forum, but I learned about this on instagram. If you go to the link below, and put in the item number at the end of a watched item, you may be able to send an offer:

https://ofr.ebay.com/offerapp/sio/createOffer/

I just did this this morning. On my seller hub, it showed no listings to send offers on, but I had about 25 watched items. One by one I entered the item numbers and was able to send offers on about 16 items. For some items, it wouldn’t allow it, maybe because it is a new listing, ending too soon or too many offers had already been sent to the same person, I believe the limit is 3.

Next time I’m going to include a message and see if that helps.

I’ve had mixed results w/ offer to watchers, but I figure it’s something to try & it does work sometimes.

Thanks as always for the great podcast.

[dearmila]

Thank you for the podcast! I always look forward to listening to it.

Week of 1/6-1/12
Total Items in Store: eBay 301 Poshmark 131
Number of Items Listed: eBay 35 / 12 x-posted to Poshmark
Number of Items Sold: 20 (eBay 18, Poshmark 2, etsy 0) (1 int’l sale)
Total Sales: $359.89 (eBay $299.92 / Poshmark $60)
Average Sold Price: eBay $16.66, Poshmark $30
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $20
Cost of Labor: $10.5 (paid stepdaughter to crosspost to Poshmark)
Highest Item Sold: $35 tied: lot of wooden toy furniture & a Cache animal print wiggle dress
Most interesting item sold: lot 14 used pantyhose ($30), sold within 2 days, to Canada.

Didn’t hit my goal w/ listing, but did better than usual & much better than recently. Tried a different strategy w/ Poshmark: sending out offers only once a week on Fri night (rather than nightly), BUT, I also wasn’t crossposting regularly to Poshmark, will continue to experiment.

[dearmila]

Week of 12/30/18-1/5/19
Total Items in Store: eBay 256, Poshmark 125 (all crosslisted from eBay)
Number of Items Listed: eBay 0, Poshmark 0
Number of Items Sold: 21 (eBay 18, Poshmark 3, etsy 0)
Total Sales: $274.26 (eBay $181.26 / Poshmark $93)
Average Sold Price: eBay $8.63 ouch! auctioned off a bunch of stuff I wanted to get rid of, Poshmark $31 (one sale was a bundle, love those bundles)
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $21
Highest Item Sold: $70 (St. John Couture blue velvet, floral, pencil skirt).

Oof, too long of a break from listing, and my listed numbers are taking a nose dive, was at 500 on eBay during the summer, then just wasn’t consistent with listing at all… too much procrastination & rationalization. Didn’t crosspost to Poshmark this past week, and sales were almost non-existent toward the end of the week. Went over numbers more this past week, and since starting Poshmark in earnest, in September 2018, sales grew each month, and were even better than eBay in December, which was surprising & hopeful. Swapping days w/ a friend this week, my daughter will be with her Monday, her daughter will be with us on Wednesday. So Monday is for photographing my brains out, Tues-Thurs will be for listing my brains out & back to sourcing on Friday. I’m determined to do better w/ listing this year, my main resolution.

Thank you as always for the podcast!

[dearmila]

Week of 12/23-12/29
Total Items in Store: eBay 275 (low because of cleaning out inventory), Poshmark 132 (all crosslisted from eBay)
Number of Items Listed: eBay 0 (end of year clear out, no listing), Poshmark 20+ crossposted from eBay
Number of Items Sold: 22 (eBay 16, Poshmark 6, etsy 0)
Total Sales: $310.69 (eBay $193.69 / Poshmark $117)
Average Sold Price: eBay $12.11, Poshmark $19.50
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $22
Cost of Labor: $30 (paid stepdaughter to crosspost to Poshmark)
Highest Item Sold: $40 (Raquel Allegra top, but… wah wah, it’s getting returned, but they haven’t sent it back yet, maybe they won’t).
Most interesting item sold: a collection of about 20 post its I found at the bins, love notes/reminders from one partner to the other. Most of the notes were about food left in the fridge for them, usually it was eggs, but always also saying they loved them. Someone offered $5 for them, I just took the offer, there’d been no interest in these notes & I was just tickled that someone else thought they were interesting.

Took this last week to go through inventory, donated a bunch, caught up on putting inventory away, investigated a kid’s consignment store to get rid of some inventory (kinda depressing), but then looked into a twice yearly childrens consignment event that I may try, that seemed more interesting. I reexamined our household budget in order to make better work goals & plans for the new year.

Happy New Year!

[dearmila]

Nov 19 – Nov 25, 2017
Total Items in Store: 379
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $16
Total Sales: $205.63
Highest Price Sold: $30 (Lululemon pants)
Average Price Sold: $12.85
Returns: 0
International Sales: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $47.76
Number of items listed this week: 36

Oof, it was a slow week w/ a couple of $0 days, yikes. I wasn’t too focused on it though since my main goal was to get my active listings up, w/ a goal to be at 500 by the end of December. I was so close to 400 yesterday, so I pushed through and got to that goal — even resorting to looking for items that had dropped off mistakenly, I found 2! I know there are probably a bit more. But enough is enough w/ the low sales, so back to giving that a bit more attention by running a sale and some auctions. And for the next couple days, will be cutting back from too many hours on eBay and giving home some attention, it’s a wreck. Have a good week everyone.

[dearmila]

Nov 12 – Nov 18, 2017
Total Items in Store: 354
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $20
Total Sales: $ 313.54 (but $220.57 if cashmere sweater/0 feedback customer doesn’t pay)
Highest Price Sold: $92.97 Armani cashmere sweater, but looks like they’re not going to pay, so let’s go with $47.99 for an avocado green chevron afghan.
Average Price Sold: $15.67 / $11.03 (low.. been auctioning off inventory I want to purge)
Returns: 0
International Sales: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $55.48
Number of items listed this week: 16

Meal prepping really helped this past week. Smoothies for breakfast, salads for lunch or dinner… & sometimes also for breakfast if I didn’t remember to defrost a smoothie. This week will do it again, and hopefully up the ante w/ some hot food prep. Love the podcast talk about the airplane meals & soap conservation. Here’s to a good week of sales and not eating out.

[dearmila]

Thanks BethGreen, Sonia & T-Satt for your replies and suggestions! Yes, I’ve heard that things don’t grow at the same rate as your store grows.. faster in the beginning, and slower later. And I’ve also started thinking, given the rate at which I’m able to work at this point, I’m not sure that I would be able to keep up the numbers of a REALLY large store. But, I guess at this point, I’m just looking at the next goal, which I can control, get to 500.. as I’ve heard Jay mention, get to 500 as fast as you can! I’ve also heard some resellers also say that things seemed to change for them when they hit around 400. I’m close.

And I agree, soon I’d like to weed out “the bad guys”… lower priced things that keep rotating around in my store not selling. Now that I’m focused on getting my numbers up though, I don’t want to flat out purge anything right now. But once I hit my goal, and can maintain around 500, I’ll be purging. I’ve been doing a form of purging by running auctions on things that are remorse buys and things that have flaws.

[dearmila]

Nov 5 – Nov 11, 2017
Total Items in Store: at the end of this week… not sure exactly, but in the 300’s.
Items Sold: 21
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $21
Total Sales: $312.59 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $65 (Free People Sweater)
Average Price Sold: $14.88
Returns: 0
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $48.76
Number of items listed this week: in the 20’s
Avg per day: 44.65

In skimming through the threads, the food topic caught my eye. Food/eating out costs are usually the main budget category that can be trimmed. Like Jay said, committing to not eating out will make a huge difference. Make ahead meal prepping is trendy these days, but I’m totally buying into it. Having food ready to go can help the budget & health. I love batching work, including cooking. This week my friend and I had a smoothie/salad prepping party. We made ahead 12 smoothies in jars and froze them (put in fridge night before, good to go in the AM). And we prepped 12 salads in jars for the week (wetter ingredients on the bottom). Yes, mason jars… also super trendy, but they’re such cheap containers. It’s already helping my days alot.

Have tried a different approach w/ my eBay schedule recently and am liking it, more batching. Fri: sourcing/washing, Sat: photographing/editing, Sun: drafting listings/measuring, Mon: final listing (+scheduling out listings to go live all week), Tues: loose ends, organizing, ordering supplies, thinking about the business… Wed/Thurs: more attention to home life… cooking, paperwork, cleaning home before I bring more stuff into it on Friday! It’s been a better flow, but still need to work on getting more total listings up each week.

And also trying a different approach w/ challenging myself. It may not matter, but it helps me to have goals. My goal is to have 500 items listed in my store by the end of 2017! It’s doable, and at least I will know that my store is growing. Each day by the end of the day, I’ll make sure that the live listings are at a growing number (already marked on my calendar), by listing/relisting. After working at eBay slightly more seriously for about a year, I wish I had made an incremental goal like this from the beginning. I feel I would have a bigger store by now w/ probably a more consistent income, probably also w/o stressing myself out so much and feeling like I was failing. At first I was trying to do unrealistic listing goals daily, and then would get burnt out and not work consistently. At 500, I will reassess and plan the next goal, it will probably be to get to 1000. 1% of 1000 = 10 sales a day at asp of $20 = $200 day/ 6000 a month. That’s been my real goal, which at first seemed increditble, but learning about how the numbers work out, etc., and making some progress over a year, I think it’s possible and would be a very comfortable income for us and would exactly replace my salary from my last job, which would be more than great.

Even if nobody reads this, this is therapeutic for me. Have a good week everyone 🙂

[dearmila]

Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2017
Total Items in Store: 351 Ebay / 41 Etsy (items are crossposted on Ebay)
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $14
Total Sales: $329.98 excluding shipping costs ($295.98 eBay + $34 etsy)
Highest Price Sold: $61 (Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater for a 24 mos year old, decent offer overnight!)
Average Price Sold: $23.57
Returns: 0
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $40.90
Number of items listed this week: 35

Surprised by another random Etsy sale. I joined a “vintage team” and have been playing along about once a week w/ their hearting/viewing items “games”… that might have something to do w/ getting another sale, but also adjusted all prices recently, so who’s to say. Not that exciting of a week sales-wise, but just focused on at least 5 every day listing goal. Halloween was fun for my 6 yo “unicorn princess”. The most memorable treats she received in her jack o’lantern were: a standard #2 pencil, a flourless chocolate cake slice from Whole Foods (from a friend) & a frozen otter pop. Have a good week!

[dearmila]

Oct 22 – Oct 28, 2017
Total Items in Store: 337
Items Sold: 23
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $23
Total Sales: $ 325.35 (excluding shipping costs) + $25 on Etsy = 350.35
Highest Price Sold: $32 (VTG purse)
Average Price Sold: $14.15
Returns: 1 (issue w/ item – my fault for missing flaw)
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50.30
Number of items listed this week: 25

Steady sales daily last week, hovering around $50 a day… half my goal, but still, glad it’s been steady. I attribute it mostly to making sure new listings go up every single day. Trying to beef up my listing muscles by upping daily listing goal each week. Last week it was 3-4, this week it will be 5 new listings going up each day. Thank you for the podcast!

[dearmila]

Oct 15 – Oct 21, 2017
Total Items in Store: 356
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $48
Total Sales: $310.35 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $59.99 (Ferragamo shoes, sz 4.5!)
Average Price Sold: $16.33
Returns: 0
International Sales: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $59.21
Number of items listed this week: 18

Got back to sourcing this week and it was good. Thank you as always for the podcast, look forward to it every week 🙂

[dearmila]

P.S. Also spent the good part of one night this week going through all of my listings to make sure the box under the pictures (“Display a large photo…fee MAY apply”??!!) was unchecked. I had run across an expired listing where the box was checked! So in a super paranoid manner I had to check all my listings. I did find a handful of others that were checked (all non-clothing items). Each time I found one, I was simultaneously relieved that I caught it and furious it had been checked in the first place, not by me.

& what I’m working for… to be home w/ my daughter, to work for myself on my own time, terms & schedule, hopefully soon have more time for some more artistic pursuits & travel! Have been so inspired by Ryanne & Jay’s story.

[dearmila]

Oct 8 – Oct 14, 2017
Total Items in Store: 358
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $20
Total Sales: $358.46 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $63.48 (Anthropologie jacket )
Average Price Sold: $17.92
Returns: 0
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 13

Had a couple great days of sales this week, but it didn’t last… but I know I have to list a whole lot more. Took a couple weeks off sourcing, but back to the bins this Friday. It was fun to hear about one of the caller’s 1st experience at the bins. YES, eat before, get a good night sleep… I have it kind of down now… charged phone, earbuds, small backpack containing: water, my wallet, charged charger & 2 zip IKEA bags (instead of using the Goodwill plastic bags that are a waste, too thin & hard to carry). I never source the bins that people are waiting for, it’s too crazy. I find lots of good stuff in the bins nobody’s looking at. Thank you as always for the podcast!

[dearmila]

Oct 1 – Oct 7, 2017
Total Items in Store: 363
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: approx. $17
Total Sales: $ 334.18 (excluding shipping costs)
Highest Price Sold: $60.00 (Alberto Makali sequined dress)
Average Price Sold: $19.65
Returns: 2 (for fit… when I get returns, though not often, they seem to come in clusters)
International Sales: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 24

Like Ryanne mentioned, I also noticed you can’t rank search by # of views in your listings anymore, that was sometimes useful to see what’s getting alot of views but no watchers/buyers. At times when I tried to spruce up these listings, they would then sell quickly afterwards.

Love that you can now run sales and see if an item has watchers at the same time, have been employing this, this week (less % off on items that have watchers, more % off unwatched items).

I’ve noticed a little bit of pattern about what happens after a sale ends, invariably the next day, I usually get a surprise full price sale on an item that has multiple watchers. So I’m a believer about giving sales a rest day after they end.

Have been following the thread re: email going out to watchers when someone makes an offer. I’ve been waiting longer to respond to offers if they’re not a slam dunk… so far nothing is different, but I’m hopeful.

Took a break from sourcing last week because I was behind on processing things I already had, and also took a whole kidless day to declutter and rearrange kid area of the living room. Got a better, streamlined storage unit from IKEA, and purged a bunch of little not as functional furniture, so glad I did this. Next project will be my work area, another section of the living room, want to make it not so much of an eyesore.

Looking forward to the next podcast! Happy travels.

[Author]

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