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06/22/2017 at 10:47 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19714
That is what I was told during my last discussion with the WL Tech Team. We were discussing the Etsy interface and asked specifically if they would venture out with a date. They reply was “early fall” then later it was mentioned “Maybe even early Sept.”. So, that is not engraved in stone but at least something to hang our hats on.
P.S. Guys there was also some talk of by mid 2018 a Shopify interface “MAY” also be on the horizon. So I am looking forward to having my own store under our own domain name on the world wide web, our Ebay AND Etsy store all being run from one dashboard “command center”. Still don’t know how the financials are going to be separated but will know more as the project moves along and gets developed to a greater extent.
WL also had an Amazon Interface but the Tech Team said they saw all the problems with Amazon and Amazon jumping around with all the screwy changes long before everything started to hit the fan and WL gave up and abandoned that work. Instead they acellerated and refocused their R&D toward Etsy and Shopify. I know there was some BETA TEST stuff with Shopify in early Jan. 2017 and I think it may be well into the works of coding. I sure am keeping my fingers crossed on that achievement also.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
“Live to Create and Celebrate”-
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/21/2017 at 9:24 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19660Good Morning T-Satt:
I use Quicken Home & Business version. [Used to use QuickBooks for decades but now that I have sold off my other larger businesses and sort of retired – Ha-Ha] I no longer need all of the full functions of QB so Quicken is doing the job just fine, now that I have the Transactions Categories all set-up.
As you already know, Quicken pulls in everything from PayPal and assigns the categories automatically, but you do have to have “those categories” pre-set up in a “Category List”. Make sure you “classify and categorize the transactions” and Quicken will “remember” those in all future downloads. The only thing is they will not assign the category to individual sales because each of those transactions have a different name on them [the customers name] so each are one of a kind transactions as far as Quicken goes. So every week when I do my auto download from PayPal everything is auto filled in, except the sales. It is obvious which are Sales because the category name is blank and also u can see that the dollar amount is in the deposit column [money into your account]. All I do is hold down the control key [on a PC] and highlight each of those lines [each sale], then right click my mouse button and a drop down menu appears. click on “Assign Category” and then select Ebay Sales [which I already have set up in my Category – Chart of Accounts] and click enter. Then all of those Sales get assigned to the Ebay Sales category and I am done. So maybe less than 30 seconds to categorize any and all sales. Other than that all other transaction are automatically categorized according to my original set up of categories such as dining, inventory purchases, Ebay fees, Ebay shipping payments, and many others.
So check over your set-up and make sure you have set up all of the account category names you want to use and then as those show up in your down load they will be remembered after you assign the transaction to that category. This is just about how Go Daddy works also. Ryanne also has to do some first of the month work with GDB also, and I would guess it is to “assign transactions” as “Sales”, but just a guess.
Any way hope this helps speed up your work in Quicken.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Late to the Birthday Party. May you both have many, many more to come and that are all Happy and Healthy ones.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
and as our store logo slogan says “Live to Create and Celebrate!”06/19/2017 at 12:39 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19590Well that is probably a good reason for it. There are controls as to how often you want WL to update and synch with Ebay, but mine is set to synch every 15 seconds [I think]. So I get fresh information with regards to how many impressions, watchers, number of offers, immediate Sales records, PayPal amounts paid, cost of labels, Profit and Loss statement is updated every 15 seconds which of course requires WL to stay in constant contact with Ebay and PayPal. It is just a few seconds behind Ebay and in some cases [when Ebay is running slow] I even get information from WL before Ebay posts it.
Also I guess you know Ebay just doesn’t allow anyone to access there data. You have to have a “Key” to access it. SixBit and also WonderLister have access to Ebay’s data because they are a pre-approved partner with Ebay. In SixBIt you have to go through a total “key” authorization to allows SB to access your account and so do you when you do the initial set-up with WL. That has to be renewed I believe annually. I don’t know if these programs have to pay Ebay to acess all of this data on behalf of their subscriber customers. And if they do, this may also be a reason for some of the subscription fee. You are aware that TerraPeak is just Ebay 90 data on steroids and Ebay owns TerraPeak [or atleast used to, but think they still do]. If you want the data from Ebay for further back than 90 days, then you have to go to TerraPeak to see it. That is why I subscribe to “WorthPoint”. It gives me data more longer than a year ago. I know you have said you don’t see any value in data over a year old, but many times I have found only 3 or 4 sold items of some fairly rarer item that was sold 18 months ago and I only found it on WorthPoint, along with many times great descriptions, back ground data and keywords I can use.
On another WonderLister note, I have a User Folder set-up called Sold on Another Venue and every time a Sale is made on Bonanza, WL moves that item to my Sold Off Ebay folder and I click on it as a Bonanza Sale.
With the Etsy fall roll out all of the constant synching back and forth will also being done for that platform as well.
As for your two stores WL will keep track of all of this by separate accounts. 5 for us at the Silver level is allowed.
Here is also something I haven’t brought up before. I also have 4 consignors that I sell items for. WL keeps track of all of the items sold by each of these consignors by way of the Consignor Customer Code I have set-up. Each Consignor has an independent code. That is all I need to do is every item I list and upload I click on the name of the consignor. WL then keeps separate financial reports for each consignor. Creates a report for me showing all the fees, shipping costs, and what the percentage of split is. It creates a report I give to each consignor every month that shows what items are still active and listed, what items sold, and what the amount is that the consignor gets “AFTER” the expenses are subtracted.
Also WL keeps track of all of the sales in each state, what items are sold by state and of course I get a report of what the Sale and Use tax is a have to pay monthly for georgia. The user checks off which states they want to see the owe sales tax in. In your case you will check the box for W. Virginia [Ibelieve]. If congress ever passes some sort of internet law where we ahveto pay tax in every state we sell something in, this report will provide the amount for each state for you. [but let’s hope that never happens].
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/19/2017 at 12:24 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19586Mile IQ hasn’t cost me a dime as of yet. Started it Jan. of this year. It gives you 40 “trips” per month for Free. As of yet we are only doing 2 or 3 trips to source per week and as such we have not gone over the 40 trips per month yet.
It sends us weekly reports to review and we have classified them and Mile IQ then remembers those trips to those addresses in the future. It has memorized every thrift store and auction house we go to by now, so we don’t even have to review those any longer. So we only see yard sales and personal trips. Swipe the screen left for personal after each drive. swipe right for business and tap the “yard Sale” category we set up. That’s all there s to it.
We also get a monthly report to print out if we wnat and then of course a yearly cumulative to date summary and finally a year end tax copy. The benefit there is every trip that has been classified by us like the auction houses and thrift store not only shows the mileage, it also has the dates, time, the stores name, address [location] included on each line item I know you see the benefit in that for the Tax man. :-). It is painless, seamless, and free up to this point. If we did more yard less then we would probably go over the 40 free trips. At that point I think it is $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year if paid annually. First time we start to hit 40 trips I will spring for the annual subscription.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
06/19/2017 at 12:14 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19580Well you are going to love this.
But first a comment about the network. You have to remember that you desktop is your main rig. It is what WL is going to call your “server”. That means that the WL database resides on the C:// drive of your main desktop along with your photos. Your laptop is a satellite so to speak. While you will have a WL version installed on your laptop [that is what allows you to work on files independently on the laptop], the “stored data” that is accessed is in the main database on your desktop [acting as your server]. [[ think this may have what confused Jay when I talked about the server topic]].
Now this is no big issue… what you may love and I ceratinly do, is that by using a “remote Acess” app like “TeamViewer” you can drive hundreds of miles away, open up your laptop, start up the TeamViewer app and then access WL while on the road!! Now to those of you who use TeamViewer this is no surprise, but it allows me to continue to do my Ebay business from on the road through WL. The only thing you must do though is to leave your main desktop computer turned on while you are away. But we go visit my daughter in Orlando [we are in Atlanta] and I continue to do business the whole time I am away. The internet does not need to be turned on.
All I have to do is make sure that I do change my handling time as far as shipping sold items go.Also with TeamViewer you can also do a remote boot and start of your computer, but you just can’t turn it completely off. So if you need to reboot-restart for some reason, then do so and then TeanViewer will become live again after the restart of your desktop.
Now I know anybody can access Ebay and also do this directly in Ebay, but Ebay doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of WL.
In any case thought you might find this capability of interest.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
06/19/2017 at 12:00 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19577I also agree about paying your business. Our business is an entity unto itself just as an employee. With a good and proper COA [Chart of accounts] set up which we do], we have a line item called “Retained Earnigs” – OCRA “Operating Capital Reserve Account”. Guess you recognize those terms T-Satt. :-). In any case we make sure that those accounts get feed out of the gross income that comes from the Ebay Sales. We pay the business first before we pay ourselves. But in many cases we don’t pay ourselves “directly” but indirectly by running many things throguh our business as expenses and by doing such we don’t have those expenses in our personal lives that we have to [pay.
Examples, We use Mile IQ for mileage. We can then classify every trip we take as personal or business at the swipe of the phone screen. Well 90% of our driving is business. If we go to an auction or yard sale but need to stop along the way for a personal errand it is still a business deduction. All we did was stop for a few minutes.
Our cell phones are 90% for business so, the business pays for the cell phone bill. Our internet usage / cable is paid by the business because the only interneting we do other than listing research is just very minimal. We also take approx. 50% of all utility bills, mortgage and interest as business expense because half of our house square footage is 100% dedicated to business use. We also use toilet paper, paper plates, paper towels, toothpaste, soap detergent, magic erasers, Clorox, Lestol cleaner, Simple Green, steel wool, you name it as business expenses because we use this stuff all the time to clean, polish, wipe our inventory. So while we may not pay ourselves directly, we do have a much lower payments to have to make to live.
Now don’t get me wrong, we do have to use some of this stuff personally but we do take the deductions for only the part we use in the business.So yes, bills first, company needs second and then us last if anything left.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
06/19/2017 at 11:42 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19572T-Satt:
Yes to work from multiple computers you do need to set-up a local in house net work but that is easily done on a PC. It is a point and click quick process.
I work from my laptop downstairs all the time, almost every night. I also had a helper for a while and she was listing on the laptop over on her desk and I was working on different things and other listings in WL on my desktop. Two people can work within WL at the same time. Only restriction is two people can’t work on the exact, same listing at the same time. Other than that two people can be attaching photos, adding prices, writing descriptions at the same time.
If you also need help setting it up, the WL Tech Support team will help, even do a remote control access and do it for you very quickly.Also a neat thing about WL over Ebay Listing module is you can create “Custom” fields for anything you want and add them to the listing. Mine are mostly private settings whereby the data these “custom added fields” hold is data I want only for myself / my eyes only.
Also you can add as many customized “Item Specifics” as you want, same those in as many different template formats as you want and keep those templates or any drafts for as many years as you want. You can also create as many “User Folders” as you want and keep those different templates stored in their respective and commonly named folders.
Just tons of stuff one can do with WL.You can also create as many different “Views” as you want and name them. This allows you to be able to see only what data – fields you want to see. In my Warehouse view I only see certain columns that pertain to new listngs that are coming into our system. In my Archival View I only see those items that are older than 90 days [a setting that I control].
Also every column and view can be searched with a very powerful search tool that will search by dollar amounts, contains certain words or phrases, does NOT contain those things, etc., etc and then you can sort and filter those results any way you want to see the data.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
06/19/2017 at 10:23 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19566Interesting point Mark. I am unsure how WL does handle the “returns” since I don’t have many at all. But it does handle refunds because I have done a few of those and see them in the financial data.
Check it out. I and you both can report this to the WL tech Team and dollars to donuts they will get it corrected if it is not working correctly or will write code for it and add in the next updates. They are very receptive to what we are trying to do as vintage sellers and are also looking for ways that WL to provide those desired features to us as vintage, one off Sellers.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/19/2017 at 9:19 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 315: Okay, you’re making money. Now what? #19563Hi Jay… Mark is partially correct. You can run both WonderLister and SixBit on your own computer. But what I also said is that SixBit grows so much bigger and faster than WL and that SB takws up 10 times the space [footprint] as does WL.
We have 884 listings in our store and no problem with WL but got a message from SixBit saying our database was getting close to the 10 GIG size limit of MS SQL. SB just has a ton of “bloat” added to it. Don’t know why. A good question to ask SixBit why there data file grows so large so fast. What do they do behind the scenes to make it grow so big so fast.
But in any case in WL the coding and the way they handle, store and compact the data seems to make it a much, much smaller file and in turn it runs extremely fast also. So your own computer “IS” your server.
There are numerous differences to how you can bulk edit. Things like being able to append listings, preprend listings. sorting and filetring them and inserting data in the middle of listings and others that you just need to work with rather than explain here. But the biggest is that you click “control key and the letter A and every listing you have is highlighted, all 10,000, then you change the handling time, click enter and all 10,000 listings will start changing in the background and you can then just go about your business and keep working on listings. 10,000 will take a short while to complete but it is neging down in the back ground as you continue to work. Try highlighting all 10,000 listings in Ebay and ask Ebay BE to then change the handling time. Well it won’t work because Ebay limits the amount of listings you can change at one time. I believe 250 for us Premium store owners and 500 at a time for you Anchor store owners. I have stated this in a prior post but guess it wasn’t picked up. But what a time saver for you guys. The amount of time for you or Ryane to clcik and hit keys to change all 10,000 listings might be 5 to 10 minutes. Now compare that to how long it takes you guys to change 10,000 listings 500 at a time. It will take you guys 20 different times at the Ebay Bulk Editor area to do what you can do in one session in WL.
I think I have heard Ryanne say it tales hours for her to change your setting in Ebay BE. Now if you take 4 trips a year calculate how many hours she spend changing handling time in Ebay.
One never knows how nice it is to own and drive a car if you don’t learn how to drive. Best I can say, you have to try it, use it then draw one’s own comparison. If you run a small store, part time with just a few hundred listings, I don’t think this is for you. But if you run numbers, want all in one financial compilation of data and especially with the upcoming Etsy interface, if one runs two stores on these two programs and you want to run them from one “command central” location – dashboard then it is for you.
Interesting I see mark S. has already stated that he thinks the compiled financial statements in WL he thinks will replace Go Daddy for him. Just think if you run “two” stores on Etsy and Ebay.
By the way WL does allow us to have up to 5 Ebay accounts and it keeps track of all of them. We don’t use that feature, but you and Ryanne “DO” have two stores.
In any case, as you well know, I have covered a lot of bases on these apps and hopefully those interested should just jump in and try them. Personally, I think the cost is just pocket change as compared to all of the savings and benefits we have gained.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Howdy:
Here is the bookmark to Ebay’s Shipping Calculator.
http://payments.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?EmitSellerShippingCalculatorGo ehre and put in the various amounts you want to compare and also use your zip code shipping from and where it’s going to and you will see the differences.
May I suggest you save this location in your favorites and you can then click on it and go there and check any of your sizes and weights in question. Will also help you figure out the added costs when you go over size and hit the DIM Weights and also will show you UPS comparative rates.
P.S. your numbers may be off. 1 lb. 0.9 is already over 1 lb. 1/2 oz.. 0.5 is half an ounce and you are already at 0.9 which is right at 1 oz. BTW USPS will round up to the next oz. anyway so unless you are at 15.99 ounces or for Ebay sellers 1.00 dead on then any fraction or part there of will go up to the next ounce and then be over the First Class Rate.
Don’t know how you are shipping but if in a box, trim some of the cardboard off of all the end flaps, trim your shipping label to as small as you can get. Rerain from any extra tape except what is absolutely necessary. If a bag, split the seam, remove some of the oversized material and re-seal the seam. Anything you can do to try to sub-tract that 0.5 ounce from your package to get your package to hit 1.00 dead on.
Good luck
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
06/14/2017 at 4:13 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 314: Selling on eBay while in the Military #19411Yes WL and Funny you should ask that question. I was just talking with engineering support yesterday and we were discussing the exact same thing. Anticipated roll out of the Etsy interface. As a BETA tester I see some things in my version of WL that some others don’t have, since Part of what I do is try out new things and see if it is glitchy. Well the coding for the Etsy interface has been in the works for over a year. Coding takes a while. At this point it was left that sometimes in early Sept. is the target for the Etsy rollout. Also an interface with Shopify is in the works but in a longer projected rollout. Team is waiting probably to see how the Etsy goes and also will have to work out a few bugs in the early days of the rollout.
There is still some debate about how it will go, if to a CSV file first then get converted or straight into Etsy’s form. Certain Item specific fields were an issue prior but think that is all settling down. Also the exec’s are contemplating if a costing tier is going to be involved or not. So some things still to iron out.As far as listing on other sites, those selections are being picked up by WL from your Ebay site. Those options are available from Ebay also from your Ebay account and the Seller Preferences section. Again funny you should ask because I was in my Ebay account for something totally unrelated the other day and just happened to stumble across those other country selections. About half were selected. I went ahead and checked off all of them. BUT I was under the impression that if you use the GSP [which we do], that all of the countries that Ebay will ship to under the GSP program would also have all of our items listed [being shown] for sale on those respective country’s Ebay sites. But who knows.
Hope this helps somewhat.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/14/2017 at 10:46 am in reply to: Vintage Purina hat – is this the mascot / logo for a product? #19394Hi SalarySlave:
Unsure if this has any value, but ran a search on a separate database we use and found 167 Purina hats. On the first page – 100 all caps only had the Purina standard checker board logo on them, but on the last page of 67 there were a few that had a chicken image and a few with a Horse image.
What I noticed though was that in those cases the Purina checker board logo was included beside the animals, but much smaller. So what this brought to mind was that Purina probably makes food-feed for other types of farm animals, not just dog or cat food. And this made me think that if that is the case, that the Purina corporate logo being the main branding symbol, then that is maybe the reason that on the chicken and horse embroidered patch on the front of those hats, that checker board is included, even though it is a smaller representation.
So I am thinking that if it was a product produced directly by Purina, that for marketing and branding reasons, that checker board would be on the front along with the Puppy image just like these other hats.
So, just thinking out loud and don’t know if maybe Purina allows others or certain authorized affiliates to use there logo and it not be in a prominent spot or not.
In any case all 167 hats were all sold at under $16.95mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
06/14/2017 at 10:31 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 314: Selling on eBay while in the Military #19392Hey T-Satt: Question… for those of us who use a secondary inventory and listing app, we end almost all of our listings after 90 to 120 days. We bulk end the listings and then bulk relist those items. That then deletes the old Ebay ID number and creates a brand new Ebay ID number and it is picked up as a “New Listing” by Cassini and gets the benefit of the “new listing” juice. What does that do to a histogram such as you are using, type of view. I may have had an item in my store for say 1 year. But it has been relisted every 90 days, [4 times] during this period and if I just relisted it yesterday, it is showing as a brand new item that is only 1 day old.
BTW, the app we use does keep track of the buy date, the original list date, each new list date, the amount of views and watchers for each of those periods, and tracks how many times the item has been put on Sale and what % the sale was. But that is another story which we have beat to death in other conversations.
Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Hey Gompers:
You say “little Bigger OK”. I do see in my printed version of Uline’s Spring/Summer 2017 catalog a Uline size box at 9″x6″x2″ at $.48 ea. in a lot of 25 = $12.00. These are approx. a 1/2″ bigger give or take than what you are asking for. Maybe they would work for you. -
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