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Also important to note that eBay removes all metadata from the photos as well when they are uploaded. You can mitigate this and increase SEO by including self-hosted photos in your description.
Thrifted Sister, don’t be confused with the google search results. Results are still due to the broad brush stroke of searching on eBay categories and not on individual listings. The objective of any SEO strategy with eBay is that YOU are found on the internet, not you and thousands of your competitors.
Based on eBay’s own CEO comments in their latest quarterly filing, they hope to crack the ceiling and have the answer of improving internet search by June 2017. So until then, 64+% of all eBay sale still come from internal searches.
Merry Christmas Everyone,
My e-commerce store is built on a WP site using WooCommerce with an add-on that allows me to integrate my eBay store without any issues. My cost is fixed without any limitations or restrictions. I may have posted this here before, but everything wrong with eBay is right with running your own store. I’ve come across more successful examples of stores moving (running) from eBay that to them.
On more than one occasion I’ve ended up only winning one or two low cost items at an online auction that would have resulted in an expensive road trip. In some instances, I just ended up paying the invoice and let the auction house keep the item. I figure my time is just as valuable.
If you pay $1 to an employee you report. You must issue a 1099 to contractor that you’ve paid $600 or more.
If you don’t want marks against you from eBay, I would suggested using a separate selling account for items that will not have tracking information. This is especially true since eBay is now confirming delivery times. Use to be you could just print the label and that was enough. Now it has to be delivered within the time frame promised.
Forgot to add that your state’s treasury website should have all the information you need.
You as the employer are required to withhold taxes and remit payments to the federal and state treasury. This also includes filing 940 and 941. With just a handful of employees, it’s expensive to use a payroll service. Have you looked at seeing if you can treat them as an outside contractor? It would be less of a hassle overall. Your only filing is a 1099 at the end of the year. You can find this information on the IRS website.
Is this part of Amazon “gating” policy started last August?
I love this week’s podcast. Jim and I could have been cut from the same cloth. What money means to me is security and choices.
I definitely credit my parents with teaching me how to accumulate money through a solid work ethic and need to further education beyond high school. It wasn’t until high school that I started focusing on making my money work harder for me. Not sure exactly where my entrepreneur spirit came from because it started in middle school and has been with me all of my life.
It is the subject of learning on how to make my money work harder for me that I feel has benefited me most in life. Not necessarily from a financial standpoint, but also for learning and understanding of making honest and conscious decisions throughout my life.
Looking back, I can credit two “Ahah” moments that solidified this learning.
- The learning and understanding of compounding. When you hear financial people talk about the need to start early, this is the what their taking about. Also not just from a savings standpoint, it equally applies to debt as well.
- I would have to say of all the hundreds of personal finances books I have read thus far in my life, the one I also go back to and credit the most for learning how to manage my money is the book I read in high school titled “The Richest Man in Babylon” by George S. Clason. I gave this book to read to my children as well as to my wife. If you can get past the biblical verbiage, the teachings of this book is priceless
During high school I remember two conversations pertaining to this. One with my father who at the time was 56 and making about $40k as an engineer and we got into a heated debate that I was crazy to imply that I would be making $100K+ by the time I reached his age. With a low inflation rate and time on my side, that figure has long come and gone.
Second conversation was with a friend’s brother who laughed at me when I said I was going to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. Again, time on my side but under estimating my lifestyle, it took 22 extra years to make it.
Here’s a link to it on amazon. The best $7 dollars you’ll ever spend.
The Richest Man in Babylon – On Amazon“>
Again, I really enjoyed the podcast. Wished the subject of compounding and how it applies to scavenging would have been discussed. I think it really would open many people’s eyes with respect to what decisions they are making.
Don’t focus on watchers. They mean nothing in building interest in your item. Instead, it’s important to keep an eye on views. In the land of eCommerce, views are huge. You cannot have a sale without a view. The more views, the higher the probability of selling. Views also helps you in refining your listing. My recommendation is look at the # of views before you relist an item and then decide if you need to modify your listing. How many views should you have? More than zero. For a 30 day period, a rule of thumb is > 10. A more pragmatic method is to apply an appropriate conversion rate to the number of sales in your category or more definitive, your search. This is what your listing should have in # of views. Conversion rate is the number clicks (views) that turn into sales.
What I mean by this is, do a search on ebay where your item would show. Change the search to sold and BIN. Take 1.5-2.5% of the number of items sold and this the range of views your item should have. If you are greatly below the range, look at modifying your listing.
We’re getting into the weeds here and the goal post keep on changing. The point of the matter for collectibles is that you must determine a fair market value and when, practically and reasonably. How you decide to do it, is up to you. It’s like I said, I’ve never came across the 50/50 rule and that’s neither here or there. I personally feel there is better and more reliable way… comps, appraisals. My myself, if I were to sell my collectibles, I would start by looking what I pay to insure them on an annual basis.
And honestly, if this coffee pot was the only collectible that I had sold, I wouldn’t worry about. 5-10 times that amount, yes. Or a houseful of collectibles? I would get an appraisal. In Michigan, I pay less than $300 for an appraisal on personal, collectible and business assets within 3500 sq ft home and the insurance co accepts it.
Personal property coffee pot example. Unless it falls under the one of the IRS exemptions or you have used it in your business or have taken some sort of business deduction (storage, selling expense, cleaning etc…), there is no taxable event when you sell this item.
The rules are clear, individuals tend to make it difficult by applying them.
The IRS has dedicated a whole page related this this business online selling. I encourage everyone to review it before taking with their tax person.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/tax-tips-for-online-auction-sellers
Again, the IRS is very clear with examples on their website and pub 551 on COG for PERSONAL property. Not verbatim, but selling personal property that someone had purchased or acquired for personal use does not trigger a taxable event. Due to age and depreciation and generally price paid is less than it’s selling price. Some of the exceptions I know are coins, stamps, collectibles and artwork. In which case, it becomes a taxable event and must treated such.
It doesn’t really mean anything, but never heard or come across, specifically, a 50/50 rule. All I know is for a business, you need to reasonably and pragmatically, determine an assets value or GOG if you intend to sell or include it in your business.
If a seller of many years selling their personal items on ebay wakes up one day and decides to legitimize their eBay selling as a business and starts taking business related deductions, they will need to determine the value of the personal assets that they are adding to their business. This is their equity in lieu of cash.
The way I apply and think of it is this. Nothing of usefulness in a business has a zero cost bases. You may have something on the books of zero value due to being fully depreciated, but not a zero cost basis.
The IRS is very clear on this in determining GOG on inherited property for resale.
IRS Publication 551
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p551/ar02.htmlYour last sentence explains it all… “…I never purchased them”.
For individuals, most generally, inherited property has been assigned some value in order to settle an estate and that value is what knowingly has been passed on to the recipient. In determining COG, you as the recipient need to determines how you will spread that value across those items. You can also dispute the valuation and have the items reappraised, but cannot take the loss as a deduction if the items reappraise less than the value originally received.
I would start by looking at it using average cost. If you find something that should be divided and sold separately, use the average cost and divide by the number of new items.
Okay, I have to ask. Is there that much of a savings in $$ or efficiency in using shipping labels and/or a label printer for shipping packages? I print labels from a laser printer on a regular 8-1/2 x 11 paper, do a quick trim and slap 3 strips of clear tape and call it done. I think in all, less the a ½ cent in cost. Eon’s ago, I tried shipping labels (2 to page) and found it very costly. Reprints, paper jams, miss prints, etc… What am I missing?
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