Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
And for further clarification, lighter fluid is butane, not benzene. Benzene is highly regulated and very carcinogenic, so I don’t think they would use that in lighters any more, though I’ve been wrong many times. Could possibly also be naphtha, which is some sort of crude oil product, sometimes petroleum spirits, but it’s still hydrocarbon based. The most common dry cleaning fluid is tetrachloroethylene, just FYI.
And for me, I typically use ethanol for most cleaning. I use as strong as you can buy. Methanol works too, and is probably easier to come by for most. Those alcohols are pretty good and getting most things out. I feel you can get methanol at the hardware store. I work in a chem storeroom so I have lots of options ;). If you have access to other things, ethyl acetate and/or hexanes are pretty good cleaners, but you have to be careful as they can also dissolve plastics. They are esters and hydrocarbons, not alcohol based. Alcohols are pretty gentle to most plastics (but not all).
The best non-hydrocarbon cleaners I have are coffee pot concentrate (a.k.a. strong vinegar or dilute acetic acid), ammonia (stronger the better), baking sodas and washing sodas, and soda water. Those work on a lot of things surprisingly enough.
I need to hire out my mom when it comes to this thread. When I go to goodwill then get home and notice a stain on something, I typically take it to my mom, give it to her for a day or so and come back and it’s almost always perfect. She uses combinations of the non-hydrocarbon cleaners I listed above. Gets out a lot of sins. Quite impressive. I take her out to dinner quite a bit for her time, and just to hang. So she still lets me bring her things 😉
The hardest thing for me with used computers is taking out parts that don’t need testing. Typically things are such that you don’t really know if it’s working or not. Maybe it was working and upgraded, maybe it was thrown because motherboard/memory/power supply failed. Typically those boards are fine and it’s the hard drive/power supply that give problems, but not always. But I agree, most profitable for me has always been motherboard/cpu combo and video cards. Worst is memory (unless it’s old and hard to find) and cd/dvd drives.
Another thing I was successful with is old operating systems. At work back in the day we would buy computers. They came pre-loaded, but we were supplied with a licensed, wrapped copy of the OS that got shoved in a drawer and never used. Windows 98 recently sold for me for $95. So that was nice.
I did sell a power supply to a guy who then told me it didn’t work. I refunded totally, said don’t send back, but he still sent it with the label created by eBay automatically. I thanked him for it in a not so nice way, as it cost me an extra 15 for that send back.
As scavengers I think many of us look at the big picture of keeping things out of landfills and in circulation, but we would profit much more if we would adapt the take apart and part out approach. I have an old sewing machine that I’m selling right now for $100. Shipping is $40 to most of the country due to size and weight. I’m fairly certain that if I took a few minutes I could take it apart and sell each part for $20+ with free shipping. I’d probably make 300 on the machine pretty easy, then just throw the rest away. People need single items and parts on eBay, not full sets of china and totally working old projectors/sewing machines 😉 At least that’s what I see when I sell things.
I feel it’s one of several things all with the same function. It’s either a movie/film projector piece or it could be something from a scientific instrument that uses light, like an old microscope piece or an old spectrophotometer. Though I do like the thought of a movie theater light, I just don’t know if that would be bright enough. They all work to focus light down a path to maximize lumens. The brown case seems to be a projector though, I’ve seen many with that vibe. Typically the lamp would be on some sort of thing that could hinge out as the bulb is a consumable and needs routine maintenance.
I just recently started selling on facebook marketplace. I just moved, though I still own my old house. I left furniture in the old house that we didn’t want any more (or need), and I’ve been slowly taking pictures of it and selling it on facebook. I have to admit that it’s much nicer and easier than I imagined. You simply take some photos, come up with a nice description, and list it. And you can even list to local groups (we have a few local area garage sale groups that I’m a part of), to spread it out there even farther, though I’m not certain that really helps.
Anyway, I’ve had good luck getting nice prices for things that I felt were worth something (not junk) but too big or difficult to sell on eBay. I’ve used eBay local pickup only a few times, and I have to admit that facebook marketplace seems easier and more efficient. And frankly no fees, which is really nice. I sold an exercise bike for $100, an old pool table for almost $200, and a few other odd things, so it’s a great way to make a little cash and clean out those big things.
I do not do facebook at all, but I do use the facebook messenger app, so that’s useful for selling. People message me and we can just text and arrange pick-up and payment options. Works well.
I have not tried to actually sell something on facebook that requires mailing. I’ll leave that to eBay. I feel more protected on eBay, and so for now that’s where I will do most of the online selling. But marketplace is a nice way to move some bigger pieces.
So I fell for the retail ground thing once, without realizing what it meant. You have been able to select it as a shipping option for a bit, but in the end when you go to print your label out, retail ground is not an option (you have to do it at the post office). So I once selected it, sold the item, and then couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to print the label with the proper shipping amount as retail ground was not an option. I didn’t think to go to the post office, so I just ate $10 or so and picked the next cheapest way to ship. Now that I know you go to the post office, I may be willing to do it again, but being located in Indiana I find that priority mail is very typically the cheapest way to mail most things (besides first class and media mail of course). Very large heavy things are the exception, but those are rare for me.
In the past few months I think, Griff talked about the eBay issues with resisting. He said something about the fact that relisted items don’t go through the duplicate check, so you can relist something several times and then have more than one of the same thing for sale.
As a result, for quite some time I’ve been using the link that Simon shared above. About once a month or so I just check my store to make sure I don’t have any duplicates. Especially after adding a bunch of new things. Sometimes things sit in the queue for a while, and I forget if they have been listed or not. It happens, easy to do. So it’s nice to have a tool to be able to recognize that and fix it. With that, sometimes things that go through the whole unpaid item assistant process end up being listed a second time, as it generates an ended listing but also typically relists the item for you. If you forget and then relist that ended listing, you end up with a duplicate.
Good luck.
So you all have covered many of my issues with eBay selling page, but one thing I would like would be to have actual costs of shipping be something that shows up in the excel report page (or whatever it’s called, where you download excel spreadsheet with all info). Often times buyers pay market price for shipping, and we get a discount of varying percentages depending on the package. I would like to easily be able to calculate how much I made on a sale when all is said and done. Sometimes I lose on shipping, but often I make money on shipping (not on purpose, it’s just part of the system), and as such it would be nice to keep track of it.
Right now in order to see what you paid for shipping, you have to go to each individual sale and look at the sales record for that sale. I have a small store so it’s not a huge deal for me, but as my store grows I notice that it’s more and more annoying, and something I tend to not pay attention to.
I realize it’s pennies and sometimes dollars per sale that we are talking about here, but I like to know what I’m paying and exactly what I’m making at the end of the day. Helps me test the validity of selling certain items.
Thanks
Great podcast. You both have a way of making me laugh. It’s great. So I have never posted numbers in part because I’m still figuring things out myself. I do numbers, but just in a different way, not weekly. My numbers are monthly, so I’ll post something here:
Store size: about 2 months ago I went from a basic store which is 250 fixed price listings per month to a premium store, which is 1000 fixed price listings per month. I’m still working my way up to 1000 listings, right now I have around 460 or so things listed at all times. I’m trying to get to 500, but I’ll hopefully soon be closer to 750 or so.
Monthly sales: My month is based on when the store subscription goes in, so starts on the 15th and ends on the 14th of the next month.
From 8/15 to 9/14 I made $1380 in sales after fees and shipping. Gross sales including fees and shipping was $2100.
Total items sold: 71 things
Average price per item: 19.50
I sold several things over 100 this month, which is rare but good when it happens. Sold an IU football to a guy who played in the game for $75, a cracker barrel IU rocker for $100, a dynamometer which was at a thrift store for $5 for $125, and a set of Ping Zing blonde woods that I bought at the salvation army for $10 and sold for $125. Other things were just the random collection of dolls, game consoles, china, and art, all around $20-30 each. The X-box went for $60, but maybe that was last month. All in all a fun month, nothing horrible to pack.
I love the list it and forget it idea. It was something I was doing, but it’s great to hear how well it works, and I’m constantly reminded of it, as this month I sold a lot of things that I listed over a year ago and totally forgot I even had. Most of the list it and forget it things that sell are items that go full price randomly during the middle of the night, around 2-3 am (hmm, after bar time, wonder what that means).
I’ve had some luck this month with offers. I’ve been more aggressive with them, using the offer button both on the website and through the app. I’ve had people counter my offers, and sometimes I take them, sometimes I counter back, and in many cases it works and the thing sells.
I’m constantly amazed that people pay me to clean my basement. I love it.
So I’ve noticed going from 250 items to 1000 (450 now) items my revenue has gone up, as one would expect. I’m guessing as I get closer to my limit that things will continue to improve.
For me, this has been a big experiment to determine if I can retire early. And by retiring I mean quit my day job and do eBay full time. I still have my day job, and do eBay on the side, so it’s slow expanding, but it does happen. Right now I’m not sourcing too much, and when I do it’s amazingly cheap as I’m going to local garage sales, finding things for $1 or less and selling them for $20-30, sometimes more.One thing I’ve learned from all the podcasts, if you don’t want to sell it whole, take it apart and sell piece by piece. You’ll almost always make more money, and it’s much easier to ship. It sounds scary to take a working thing apart, but really, in the end it’s much easier to deal with, and it will lead to greater profit. Having a bigger store gives me that luxury.
Thanks again for everything. Love the podcast and the community. It’s lots of fun. Take care all.
Yes, that was my use with clay thought, but I couldn’t think of the details. But it is a wild guess, I’ve searched around and can’t find it. My other thought was a spindle holder of some sort – kind of like those things that you put in corn to hold your corn on the cob- but much bigger scale, holding big spools of something (one on each end) – but there are no holes in them so I don’t think they would do that. But along those lines I was also thinking of something to hold on an old carriage wheel. It’s probably something really simple and basic and about 1000000000 miles away from anything I’ve said so far, but it is fun throwing out RAGs (Random Ass Guesses). Good luck with that
What if it’s a mold for something – either side. One side I could see for clay pots or something, the other side I have no clue (food, i.e. bread or cake)??? I’m totally just pulling things out of the air, I have no clue what they are for. I was thinking something scientific, but I can’t figure out what they’d be used for.
You are right about file exchange – it was a bit disappointing. The main thing it has is price and title, beyond that it’s fairly useless as far as I’m concerned. I did want description (even just simple text would be ok), and it would be awesome to have pictures. I had a VERO situation the other day where the listing gets totally abolished, and I’ve had other issues in the past where listings just sort of go away (maybe if somebody buys something, then doesn’t pay, …..). I don’t remember specifics, but occasionally things disappear, so I was just looking for a way to back up all of my data.
What would be really nice would be the ability to download user defined specific fields in whatever order you wanted. So if I wanted an excel file that included start date, description, title, price, ….., I could make that. All that data is there, and I’ve seen data that suggests that somebody is downloading that information as indicated in reports, so it would be nice as a user to have, but it’s OK as is I guess.
With that, can we specify the order of the fields that print out in the sales data report? I usually just download it and then manually manipulate the fields, though I could do that using excel formulas I think. Just curious. Thanks for all the help
So file exchange might be working, I can’t tell. The link is there, and it let me submit a job, so I’m just seeing what that does. States it will take a day. We’ll see if it ever shows up. I found that link right after I posted the original question. Thanks for the quick reply Jay, I’ll look into Inkfrog. That was the name I was forgetting.
So I had a barcode reader, and then just realized that your phone is probably the best one around, and there are lots of free apps out there that will use your phone camera to read a barcode – so you might just want to sell that barcode reader if you can. I use my phone to inventory all of my chemicals with no issues. I use an app called Bar-code (simple enough) – works well on my iPhone. And I made an excel spreadsheet that will make barcode labels for me that I just print out with an inkjet printer. So you could stick those either on your bins or on individual items. I’m not sure what all it will do for you though – unless you use that custom field in eBay to put the barcode number. That might work. And in excel you store where that barcode is stored?
I feel that it would be tedious and maybe even just plain difficult to go to the item level using the eBay system. I like the idea of location/bin or shelf/bin level inventory management. I can find things as long as I know what drawer to look in. That seems to make the most sense to me, and the easiest. But again, I’m small, so maybe I’m not thinking big picture. Why would you want to go to the item level for this? Are shoes stored in boxes? You could think of boxes as bins, and do a shelf/bin or shelf/box level inventory.
I actually have W1, W2, ….., and H1, H2, ….. The W stands for Work, the H stands for home. I have things in 2 locations, as I sell for myself (H) and for work and a local thrift shop (all stored at work). So the letters let me know the major location. So if you have different storage buildings, I’d use letters to say that.
For my chemical inventory system, I use a pure number system to tell me location, but it’s based on room number. We have 45 rooms in our building. Within each room I label the shelves. So for example, in room 350 I number my shelves from 01 – 99. So in the inventory system I put them in as 35001, 35002, etc… up to 35099. So I know its in room 350, shelf whatever. I didn’t do that for eBay as it’s all in my basement, so I just designated by home or work as that seemed easiest. You could use a shelf/bin number if that was something that worked for you, but again, I’d keep it simple and unique. Every bin just needs to have a unique number in the end.
One thing I did find out. Just use a simple label (like W1, A1, …..), not a label with a space (I started using box H1 etc…). When you add the space, it gets harder to find things in a specific box using the search criteria. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem to do contain searches as well as I hoped (I wrote a better search algorithm for my system). So I just removed box/bin and gave it just the label, works well now. And, it matters if you capitalize or not as it should (so w1 is different than W1). Just saying.
My store is small, but I’ll give you my 0.02 here anyway.
Just FYI, My real job involves running a chemistry storeroom, which I have been doing in bins for a very long time. I’ve stored glassware in bins with no padding (just piled on top of each other) and very little if any breakage over the years. With that, I have huge space and lots of unique items – so I store items based on type/size, a different bin for each one. Take a lot of room. Many of my bins are half empty (or more), and so that’s a total waste of space, but it works for that system.
With eBay, we have limited space and so I feel you just need to keep it simple – label a bunch of bins in a good way and then fill those bins with whatever. My shoes don’t all have to party together – I just have to know where each pair is located. I use the custom label field, which I too wish would work on the mobile app as that would help tremendously. But, when something sells, it tells me where the item is located – so I just have to go pull that bin and get the item out. Not too bad.
The biggest thing I have noticed playing with this is to make sure you use a number system that you can retrieve by the search function in your eBay app of choice. I just think every now and then it’s nice to pull a bin and check the contents, and so I like to be able to search my current sales and find everything located in bin H1 (for example). I don’t want to see H10, or BH1, or any other bin that has similar names. I just want to see H1. If you use more than one word (Box A1), and you do a search where you have the custom label contain a value, if you type in Box A1 as I have it above, you will get all of those, but you will get anything else that has Box, A1, A, ….. (I can’t totally figure it out – but you get a lot of things). If you do equal to, then of course you get only that box. But if you forget what all your box numbers are, it can be problematic.
I wrote a program for a barcode inventory system that I use for storing chemicals (I have over 5000 unique chemicals, and for the most part I can tell you where they all are right now). I was thinking of using that for my eBay store, but then realized I hate just copying data to excel and manipulating that data – why would I think I’d want to add a step to the data storage issue.
So I’m just trying to work within the limits of eBay and use the fields they give us in a way that makes finding items easier in the end. I keep it as simple as possible, basically storing items based on size/weight and bin availability. I try to fill every single bin as full as possible. I use clothes around fragile items at times just to help keep things from breaking. I’ve really expanded how much I can store this way – which is helping me remove my death piles as storage was becoming an issue. I’m just growing my store now (only 450 items or so), and so I’m trying to do this now and get ahead of it instead of wishing I did it later when I have a lot of things.
Everybody has great ideas and it’s cool to hear what others are doing. Thanks for sharing, it’s appreciated. Enjoy and take care.
