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01/12/2020 at 11:42 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72810
Amen Almasty: You got a “Sermon” going and I am a believer.
I hear it at social and family gatherings all the time. People will say something about cleaning out or down sizing and the next thing you know, everybody is in the discussion and they are all talking about making money from home by selling things they no longer want, then they segue into where to buy even more stuff, then to wouldn’t it be nice to do it full time.
When anyone then asks us, we tell them that whatever amount they want to make, then they will have to sell triple that in order to end up with what they want. Nobody understands it at these family gatherings. Same reason i cringe when anyone, even here on SL says, I am ready to quit my job. I would say to them, let me see your business plan, Pro-forma and estimated P&L for the next 3 years before you do anything full time. Had this same situation this past Christmas over 2 days at sister in laws house.
Clueless.. Just Clueless. It is the blind, leading the blind, down a dark alley on a moonless night.
One of the neighbor’s said all she wanted is a few dollars and I said, “that is all you are going to get” and for the work involved you will make about $.10 an hour for your effort. I am very pessimistic about anyone doing this, in any shape or form, full time, if they don’t know anything about how a business is run, regardless of what “product” you want to sell.So all that said, I will end with a altered version of the famous Paul Harvey news caster’s famous line… Hello Ebay Wannabe’s, I’m Mike Collins former business owner and current Ebay re-seller. You know what you already know about reselling — in a minute, you’re going to hear the rest of the story. LOL π
Mike at MDCGFA in Atlanta
01/12/2020 at 11:22 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72809Agree 100% Almasty. We only do auctions and estate sales. Know what is still selling in our area of interest. Keep our cost, in most cases, around the $5 and under range and try to target $50 and higher items.
We do still have a bunch of small, weird, cheap stuff piled at the end of one table and are going to just either lot them out or discard.
But we are through with the “buy it for a dollar and sell it for $9.99 stuff. At our age, [71 and 69] and with Susan’s health we would just rather have the time together and not spend it in a 22×14 office over the garage 7 days a week, 12 hours a day.
HERE IS OUR 2020 PLAN:
1. I am going to focus more on helping the guy who took over my spray foam insulation business and doing some art. Throw in a few auctions and estate sales in good weather and call it a day.
2. Not even going to do the Shopify store. Just Ebay and Etsy [which sells very well for us at full prices].
3. Going to do like J and R are doing… Taking off “Offers” on anything under $120. I am tired of constant low ballers and having to counter them. I will run my FLASH Sales from 15% to 30% Frequently and send Offers from my suggested list. That is where our bargains will be and not from low baller incoming offers.
4. Have Free Shipping on most things except anything over 1,728 cubic inches [DIM Weight]
5. Cross list to Ebay and Etsy only using SixBit
6. Use Promoted Listings for an extra boost.
7. Quit watching all the YouTube Videos except for 1 or 2 special ones we like.
8. Spend a lot more time helping my old partner with online marketing of a new residential division for the spray foam business of which, I bill by the hour as many or as few hours as I want.
And that is about it …
I can see that JandR are going toward a more automated approach on their store by doing some of the same things for their own reasons and us for ours.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
I know this may seem obvious but did you try Replacements.com?
I would try for you but am tied up right now with a large bulk edit project.
mike at MDCGFA
01/10/2020 at 4:44 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72762Yep.. and the same goes double for Fine Art. Can’t tell thew difference between something that is not worth the paper it is printed on and an original hand done piece. And in the case of art most times there is no brand [or artist known name] to even use to do research on.
We have covered a lot here on SL about trying to bridge that gap to some very basic degree, but that is a far cry from having 6 to 8 years of college specialty courses on art making, techniques, processes and art history background.
And one of the big points I was trying to emphasis that I gathered from the article is that on mass market clothing items, it is stating that since 2000 the desire and demand for used items made of cloth is diminishing. China has made “new” so cheap, that “used” has no demand. Why try to sell a man’s dress shirt for $9.95 or even $6.95 and have to pay for the Free Shipping when a buyer can get a new mans dress shirt for $2.65. Not talking about designer items, just plain cloth shirts. And as Almasty said, most sellers don’t know much about what they are selling, they just bought off of BOLO lists.
This also touches on a few discussions Jay has had where you can order something from China for a dollar and get free shipping to the states. And I have done it a few times myself and it gets here in a few days.
So take what you are saying, most don’t know **** from Shineola about what they are buying or selling and trying to sell it to a market that is going away to lower cost new. Then with Flash sales, and in the moment instant Trends, the Chinese produce billions of tons of clothes for pennies, create a quick trend, sell all they can in 6 to 12 weeks then dump everything else that is left over into the used recycle market and start the process over again.
I have personally seen barges of used, recyclable materials sitting in the Hudson River when we lived in Ct. and they couldn’t get rid of it. Everybody wants to say they recycle but that is just another way of saying put it in the trash. Yes some things get recycled, but most doesn’t.
Question to every SL Member, when you shop do you actually look for a re-cycled product on every item you buy, knowing in a lot of cases, it even costs more?
Sure many SL members do buy used items so it stays out of the landfills, but who checks to see if the used items are recycled items.
Jay has said it before, as a country we consume like crazy. We create trillions of tons of waste and now it seems it is getting harder to sell used stuff. And just recently someone here was saying the younger and younger people don’t even come to ebay.
Why would anybody other than a camera collector come to Ebay to buy an old used 35mm Film Camera other than a “camera collector”.But again these late posts were just in response to my reaction to that article, and is just a bunch of brain flash thoughts. But in the article it points out that this decline and the degree of the declines have spanned 10 years. None of us have that kind of time.
But we used to have some used clothes and bought them just like you said. Even still have a few pieces, but we have two mannequins we will be trying to sell locally and haven’t bought a piece of clothing in years. Why when that SL member I mentioned earlier will sell you any of their clothing, with a wide selection and variety, for $6-$9 with free shipping.
Even with Ryanne’s mother who taught/mentored Ryanne and was a heavy clothing reseller, is now at about 40% clothes and 60% other collectibles and hard goods and JandR out of their 8,400++ items are about 32% clothes. So what about the other 60% to 70% of both Ryanne and her mom’s store focus. Seems to be in other categories than clothing to me.
Jus been pondering all this type of stuff today and ceratainly have killed off time I should have been listing.
Oh, well..just babbling and wasting bandwidth.
mike at MDCGFA
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This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
01/10/2020 at 1:17 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72759A discussion popped up with us and our helper today when she asked about where we buy such a cross mixture of items.
This is a side bar of that the Cross-Listing Topic and that discussion.
Preface: Sure, cross listing shows your goods and wares to other buyers who may not frequent Ebay. But I say “Buyers” loosely here.
What if nobody wants what you are selling, PERIOD, no matter where it is posted or cross posted? Industries and niches do deplete or disappear entirely and for that reason, the decline in a sellers Sales are a result of something he has no control over?
Clothing sellers have been talking about low sales stating there is so much competition from other sellers, so many Guru’s telling stay at home people just clean out your closet and make a full time living, quit your job, etc., etc.
Well check out this link and keep in your mind… what if nobody wants used clothes anymore. New clothes costing less than old, used? So much discarded that the supply out strips the DEMAND by a huge amount.
We hear about all the buying going on at Goodwill, but we have discussed here on SL that some members, us included, know GW dumps a ton of stuff, grinds, shreds up stuff, etc. If truth be told, how many people who buy at GW stores, bins or thrifts are just re-sellers. Then all those people are just selling the same stuff, that so few people want it, or if they do, it must be sold cheaply and in volume to make a living.
CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE… Quick, easy real. Then think about your store if all you have is a vast amount of clothes. Will cross listing on 10 platforms help you to sell more overall and how much longer can you survive.
I know there are sellers here on SL who make lots of money selling clothes, but at what type of physical effort and constant slaving away hour by hour. Sure, you may sell a $100 pair of socks you got for free occasionally but is that sustainable?
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/no-one-wants-your-used-clothes-anymore?utm_source=pocket-newtab
I have personally seen someone we all know here on SL that were over 6 figure sales make major changes in their high volume store from used clothes in the $25 to $35 with Calculated shipping go to $9.95 avg. price, running sales, offering free shipping, free returns and has Make an Offer turned on for the whole store.
So why, I ask. Well after reading the link above, it hit me, things like the article states that is running and happening behind the scenes is a 10-year process of “changes”, that slowly affect the whole perception of a Market. And if a seller hasn’t diversified the type of inventory then what once was a “niche” is either dying or dead already.
So, for complete clothing sellers, would cross posting on multiple platforms be of any benefit at all. You will be a newbie to those various platforms, no book-marked items, no followers. You are just becoming a seller in a market of used clothes nobody wants and you are spread thin, taking on more work to keep up with everything and all at the same time all the gurus are pounding their “quit your job, make your living on line” to newbies and driving even more competition.
Then on top of that, many newbies do not understand how to properly markup items, price their goods, or understand the difference between Gross and bottom line net profit. So, their answer is to just lower their prices.
I the long run, the variety that JandR focus on keeps them “Internally Diversified” and their sales stay relatively up because as the market “DESIRE” for certain things shift and they, as well as us, have a variety of items to present to that shifting buyer focus.
At what point does selling clothing almost fall in the category of stamp collecting and selling into that market. You can cross post to 50 different platforms and your sales may still be low due to an almost non-existent buyersβ market.
I don’t have any answers and really no hard line opinions on what is best, but if some markets are diminishing, would it be better to spend time to find things to sell, that are more in demand and not in a declining marked or caught in a race to the bottom that the buyers are creating not the Sellers?
OK… I know, a wall of text and I owe Jay for the bandwidth used. π
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
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This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
01/10/2020 at 12:41 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72758@ Jay.. Same thing for us. Bonanza just missed a bunch during the synch process and that in turn alos messed up our SixBit after it synched with Ebay. SB sends an agent iquiry every 10 minutes to Ebay and Etsy to criss cross-exchange data and Bonanza kept messing up it’s synch with Ebay which caused a domino effect of errors.
We deleted Bonanza because of the time it was taking to back track and fix things manually in SixBit. And as you, for so few sales, who needed the head aches. So, been off Bonanza for several years.
mike in Atlanta
01/09/2020 at 6:10 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72734Good info. Amatino. I had forgotten about some of the side benefits of Bonanza. Even if you don’t sell a thing , it has some value and at practically no cost.
Also if something does sell on Bonanza, it synchs back to Ebay [but did mess up a few times for us], but when it is then deleted off of Ebay, our SixBit will pick it up and after a 10 minute cycle and do it’s thing by removing it from the software app and also pulling it down off of Etsy for us automatically.
I like the Google link functions, that will also help with increasing organic searches.
thanks,
mike at MDCGFA01/09/2020 at 3:36 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72724Sharyn, Just took a look and if the same product then it is a few bucks less expensive than the FaceBook company.
We used to pay about $.10 per sq. ft. of small bubble and this breaks out to $.03 per SF.
Thanks,
Mike at MDCGFA01/09/2020 at 2:58 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72721Thanks a bunch Sharyn: Bought dbl. rolls of the large and small bubble..bubble wrap. Much better than the stiff, sticky or static prone, half perf’ed junk I was getting before.
Thanks for the link and have it stashed away in my contact manager under shipping supplies.
Appreciate that and for getting us on the track to better quality wrap at a very low price.
Mike at MDCGFA
01/09/2020 at 12:10 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72711Ok, what is going on. Ryanne did you coax Jay into going out to one of your sheds and lock him in for a few days until you and your helper changed every single one of your Ebay listings over to FREE SHIPPING!
After all these years of Jay digging in his heels on Free Shipping and being a staunch advocate for “Calculated Shipping”, how in the world did you get him to give up the ghost on this subject.
Jay’s mantra of not building in the prices out to a certain distance like zone 5 or zone 6 and closer buyers having to pay more and as a seller further buyers costing you guys more.. I have to assume, you went all in…Free shipping on almost everything you have in your store, what criteria did you guys decide on using to cover the free shipping?
We have always built in a Zone 6 charge by weight and size, except for any DIM Weight and sizes. But now I see you don’t have too many items below the $10 mark and into the mid twenties, so I again I am assuming you guys built something into all the listings.
Did I miss that you announced this move or did it just recently happen and I just never noticed.
To Jay.. Welcome to the Dark side! Jack up the prices, add $10 to $20 to every listing, turn on make and offer and Free shipping and let it rip. LOL π π
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine ArtAnd if they are definitely returning them, don’t issue any refund until you get them back and inspect. Sometimes you may not get back what you sent, etc., etc. Then once you inspected, then decide to follow Jay’s advice on what and how much to refund.
mike at mdcgfa
01/07/2020 at 11:00 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72615@ChristineR: Same question for us as posted by MyCottage. Any type of Sales / Sold Data available for Mercari?
As far as getting items on Mercari, no problem for us because we use sixbit and have worked out a work around, just like T-Satt has to be able to cross list on all platforms and control everything from within SixBit. So, only questions is like MyCottage asks, what are the Sold numbers for the longer Tail Vintage items, quantity of sales and prices items are selling for. Though we will use the same prices we currently use.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
01/07/2020 at 10:39 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72614Probably the latter. We do offer both free shipping on a majority of items and free returns. So maybe as you said, new and not fully implemented.
Thanks for the reply.. mike – MDCGFA
01/07/2020 at 10:28 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72610@ the Seam Store:
Hey, I don’t see the report you mention in any e-mail messages, both Outlook or my Ebay Messages. Maybe only sent to select sellers or maybe only anchor stores?
mike at MDCGFA
01/07/2020 at 10:19 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72609Jay: Same type of experience when we went to the Orlando, FL bins during a few trips down to visit our daughter when she lived down there a few years ago. While no one “claimed” a whole bins, people were pushing and wedging in between my wife and I. Also as we looked through stuff and trying to dig down to the bottom of piles, everyone just threw there discarded looked through items left and right and kept piling the broken and pieces of stuff over on top.
The other issue we had was with the shoulder to shoulder acticity we had to keep our cart behind us and we had several items taken out of our cart when our backs were turned. Finally Susan and I took turns, one of us belly up to the bins, and the other standing with the cart behind. We would grab an item then just pass it back, like a quarterback hand off and the other putting in the cart. We also used our estate bag cover that has sold on it and threw that over the cart.
We have only been 3 or 4 times. We don’t sell clothes and the higher end home decor, collectible items are few and far between and if found were all nicked and chipped up. No Limoge, Spode, Tiffany, Waterford, Roseville, Fenton pieces in any of those bins.
Even though we had our work gloves, many items were extremely smelly, water soured, urine or mold smelling. Susan didn’t like those trips at all and said she has no interest in ever going again. Just not our higher type of items.
Estate sales and Auctions is where we find the higher end types of items we prefer to sell. We may pay a little more, but our return is better. Last year we averaged $6.42 per item purchased and our average item sold price was $52. We just didn’t find items that would give us that type of return in “bins”.
Plus we like to go to auctions early, do a preview then go sit down and eat and take our time running a few apps and seeing the trends and comps, make a decision to buy or not buy and create a specific cut off point of which we won’t go above when bidding. Can’t do that kind of on the spot analysis at a scrimmage push, pull and grab environment.
Again that opinion along with $1.50 gets you half a cup of coffee! π
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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