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My Store Week Nov 18-24, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1121
Items Sold: 12
Gross Sales: $584.48
Cost of Items Sold: $41.49
Highest Price Sold: $152.50 (Alden Shell Cordovans, paid $5)
ASP: $48.71
STR: 4.6%
Returns: 2
International: 1 Sale
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $42
Number of items listed this week: 3I had two sales over $150 this week which boosts the numbers a lot. Also most everyone has been paying full price and buying immediately, which I am really loving. I feel as if the Holiday shopping frenzy may be starting…
My Store Week Nov 11-17, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1106
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $358.03
Cost of Items Sold: $32
Highest Price Sold: $44.95 (Allen Edmonds Shoes – sold cheap b/c they needed a heel repair)
ASP: $22.38
STR: 6.2%
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $5
Number of items listed this week: 6Well, it has been a pretty average week with lots of lower dollar sales items. I will be listing less going into Christmas as we are very busy at home and I have decided I want to sell off some of my older less desirable inventory (will probably throw up a low priced daily auction) to boost my STR and next year will focus on better quality over quantity. I am still recovering from the “early days” when I first discovered the Goodwill Outlet Bins and I would literally be throwing anything and everything into my cart in order to hit the “35 lb. limit” when our price drops from $.79 cents to $.59 cents a pound. A lot of that stuff is pure junk… and has been sitting in my inventory since 2015 (yet STILL sells.. everything sells!). I am MUCH MUCH more selective now and don’t mind stopping into a thrift store on my way running errands and only walking out of the store with one $50-$100 item or even nothing if there is nothing good to be found.
I sold 2 items from the “send best offer to watchers” this past week and they both paid!
I had one “issue” an antique geological booklet simply went missing.. I dropped it off at the post office in the big package delivery drop (Get to skip the line this way.) Well, 15 days later no scan and no trace of that package. It is the ONE and ONLY label that I had printed off with the new eBay shipping label page… so hmmmm … hopefully that has nothing to do with this. I’m going to have to refund my buyer.
Great news is that after all this time with limited or no GSP sales, I had 4 International Sales this week, through GSP, so something has “kicked in” for me. Glad that is picking up.
And last but not least, I sold my shell cordovans that I bought last week last night so a good start for this week for sure. All of my Alden Shoes (Smaller Sizes 8 and 8.5) have been getting many offers and bids all from Japanese buyers – so maybe it makes sense to end auctions for Asian time Sunday night whenever that may be. It has definitely been a trend for me for this brand so just thought I would mention it.
Hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving with family and friends!
You guys have inspired me… The next time I feel like culling an old worthless item from my inventory – I’ll try to promote it at 100% and I’ll let you know how long it takes to sell 🙂 I can see using a 100% promotion only if you are at the very end of a quarter and wanted to use up your $30 / $55 quarterly promoted listing credit rapidly (on an inexpensive item?), knowing that you can recoup the money. Otherwise.. it seems pretty pointless, why would anyone want to work for nothing?
Millionairedojo – thank you for posting that link! That is a cool “hack” – It was able to work for me (even though I don’t have the new seller overview page yet.) I sent out as many offers as I could late last night – I was aggressive at 50% off. One lady sent me an offer back this morning which was 50% off of my 50%! (It showed up as an offer and not a counter – so I am not sure what method she used to send the offer, but I recognized her user id). I have had these shoes since 2015 and so I accepted … and nothing so far… after checking her feedback.. I can tell it is a “Grumpy Old Woman” who has a very high percentage of returns and negative feedback left.. oh boy… I don’t have a great feeling about this $15 sale… but we’ll see… I felt a little strange sending unsolicited offers to buyers. Did you guys leave a personalized message? I just left a generic “Thank you for your interest…” I can see some people getting offended and annoyed or suspicious that this is some kind of phishing scam, though… Hope some of these pan out for everybody. Keep us posted.
Hi Retro,
Good data… good post! I completely agree with what you are saying here… in fact I’ve been doing promoted listings for months now and recently had backed off a bit and have been watching my traffic plummet. I don’t have the data in a nice layout to share right now, but I have noticed the same trend. When I promote at trending – it helps – when I promote lower (1%).. it doesn’t help at all. I have weekly minimum goals I try to hit sales wise and lately I have been falling short – so I crank on the promotions and it helps me to hit them. The problem is… when ALL of us turn on our promotions… well… it is going to drive the trending rate up so high that it is not worth while to promote any longer – we will be handing over 15% extra to eBay by default! It seems like trending rates go up and down in cycles. I do like your idea of only promoting older listings because a lot of the newer “good stuff” is going to sell on its own without needing to give away extra profits.Sending well-wishes and prayers for Veronica that she can put all this past her soon and getting back into her groove…
Interesting Article, Jay – I like the “Scary Mommy” blog… The sad thing is that I have met a lot of stay at home moms through church and so many of them are attracted to these MLM’s like Lularoe clothing (yes it really does require a $5000 initial investment and then $1000’s more – can you imagine?) and Norwex (Cleaning Supplies) and It Works (body wraps to reduce cellulite) and Stampin’ Up and Mary Kay and all the others – the consultants get sucked in with the idea of being able to supplement their income and spending time at home with their children not having to do the 9-5 grind – but after several “parties” it gets harder and harder to find new customers and you eventually give up and are left with a bunch of product that you can’t sell. I have tried to tell many moms looking for extra $, Why not sell on eBay? It is easy, fun, and you can work as little or as much as you want – no startup costs if you start selling stuff that you don’t need or want any longer from your own home or garage. A lot of people are always very intimidated by the shipping aspects – they don’t think they can do it.. etc. You just need to start, DO IT, and listen to all the scavenger life podcasts 🙂 and learn as you go…
Thanks for your responses. I also tried googling some of my listings and the ebay listings are coming up, followed by my Bonanza – so I have decided to keep my Bonanza store active for now – especially going into Christmas.. Marconi, thanks for sharing that article, interesting info about the content scrapper sites… I hope you see an uptick in your sales soon.
I think an even better question I should ask to Joe, Jay, Mike, and anyone else who has cancelled your Bonanza store – Did you notice any jump in your eBay traffic and sales after ending your Bonanza booth?
Hi Marconi, Joe and others…
I just saw this post and it has me worried – the part about google suppression of duplicate listings! I haven’t heard anything like this before so I am going to search for some more info but if anyone has additional experience with this, please share. I have a Bonanza Booth and YTD I have received 10 sales from it. I like having it… I have had no issues (Except once or twice I have sold hats “twice” before the Bonanza booth had time to “synch up” – I canceled the Bonanza sale and apologized – no big deal. I don’t have ink frog or pictures backed up – so I love having the Bonanza store as a poor woman’s “back up” – and I don’t use scheduled listings so that is not an issue for me. So what I really need to do now is figure out if the Bonanza booth is hurting my eBay sales – maybe I will unlist everything on Bonanza for a few months and see what happens? I’ll update later on what I decide to do….but appreciate anyone’s thoughts in the meantime!Hi Everyone,
Listening to the podcast now and I will try and find time during the week to come back and read everyone’s comments… Here are my numbers for the week:My Store Week Nov 4-10, 2018
Total Items in Store: 1143
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales: $213.99
Cost of Items Sold: $20.19
Highest Price Sold: $49.95 (MBT Shoes)
ASP: $26.75
STR: 3%
Returns: 1 (Crumbling Soles.. you are talking about this in the podcast.. it has happened to me several times in the past months .. ugh!)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $59
Number of items listed this week: 16I did not have a great sales week, but I did a crazy? fun? experiment that I wanted to mention. 5 days ago, I was not quite sure what I was thinking but I had to fight the urge to put my entire store on auction. I was wondering “What would happen if…. ” if I put everything on auction for $.99 ? How much could I make quickly? Could I make $1000 in 5 days if I really wanted to? Thank Goodness.. I didn’t pull the trigger on that.. but what I did do, was move ALL of my clothes and shoes over to a 5 day auction (at the same high Buy It Now price.. I did not change my pricing.) I also added Best Offer to every auction listing – I had just under 500 hundred auctions going. It was a totally different change of pace for my store. A few items that have been sitting for years received bids right away (must have just been a different type of auction buyer at the right place at the right time) and almost all of the offers I received were at 40% or below minimum bid so I countered most of them to no avail. One guy gave me an offer above the auction price for a pair of shoes, so I took that immediately. Another lady wanted to buy a hat for her golf tournament in 2 days so I sent her a full price offer and she accepted. If I would have accepted all the auction BIN offers that came my way, I probably would have made an additional $130.. but I felt those items (pairs of high end shoes) were worth waiting it out to get double or triple that amount… Tonight (when the auctions were ending) I have to say it was quite the rush to hear the multiple series of cha-chings going off one after another in a row this evening after dinner time. I can see why some people get hooked on running auctions. I had 5 auction sales for a total of ~ $140 this evening, which are not reflected in my weekly numbers above but I’ll roll it into next week. All in all, it was a fun exercise, but it was a hassle changing the listings back over to BIN with the bulk editor after they expired and I didn’t make the $1000 I was shooting for… I also learned that adding the Best Offer to the auctions (while increasing the offers flowing) for the most part I think it prevents people from bidding as they are trying to see just how low you can go – and I probably will only be using that feature on things I really want to push out of my store in the future. I still have a lot of cheaper items I need to move on out if I want to start making better money.
This past week I had some good finds while thrifting – I found another pair of shell cordovans for $5.00.. and a new ralph lauren vintage down puffer vest for $6 that I plan to list for $250. As I was about to list it, I noticed a security sensor still attached… haha… so someone probably shoplifted it and I need to figure out how to get the darn thing off without damaging the jacket. I also scored a custom shooting vest for $5 that I think I may be able to sell for $200+.
Well, have a nice week and going to finish up the podcast now! Thanks Jay and Ryanne!
D&D.. Drapers and Damons – I had to go look that up just to figure out what you were talking about – oh my gosh I was laughing and groaning at the thought of listing a death pile of those things… that would be my worst nightmare. I am glad they are selling well for you and may you get no returns!
Thanks everyone, for your responses…
ctebay – Thank you! (I knew you intended to reply to me 🙂 Unfortunately, the pdf print ap (or maybe it is my printer driver) that I have just does not have any radio button to shrink, I have gone through every possible option and 3 different browsers and nada… however, you inspired me to find another ap that can handle this (may have to pay a few dollars but I want to have a solution to go to in place in case I ever need it.) I appreciate your help.
Sharyn – Thankfully I am going back to the classic label page for my label printing – but – we know this may not be around forever, hopefully they will never take it away. As for our shared name – pretty funny because you are right it is not too common these days… I have almost mentioned it a few times as well.
Retro & Castle Rock – Good point about changing the ship from zip codes. There are times when I travel that I have needed to use this feature as well. Hopefully someone from eBay is listening…
Hi ctebay – I need to be able to shrink/adjust labels also (not only for small packages – but also because I ordered 10,000 peel and stick labels and they don’t have paper around the margin edges – so I need to select “minimum”/narrow margins or shrink the label to 98% so my laser printer won’t print the dotted “cut line” against the slick area where there is no paper to print on, or it ends up messing/ruining up the 2nd label on the paper with ink smears. I am able to easily adjust with the classic label page – but I am really hating this new label page. The pdf print option does not give me the ability to shrink or adjust my margins. I have tried downloading the label, as you mention, but I still do not see a way to shrink it. I can “zoom in” or “out” but it still prints the same size (free .pdf program on my PC). What am I missing here?
Thank you,
Sharon
