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P.S. Simply put we don’t stock any FedEx bags, mailers or boxes. We use our Ebay or USPS boxes for all FedEx shipments. 🙂
We use FedEx a lot for both Ebay and Etsy. We use any type of box we can that fits and works.
We know the owner of our FedEx store and has said to us and we have done so many times, that FedEx will take any box we want to use.
We use Ebay boxes, we use USPS Boxes, both priority and flat rate, we use poly mailers, both plain, Ebay and USPS marked and we use Ebay tape. Anything seems to be fine with them. They don’t seem to care, as long as the FedEx label is clean and clear.
They used to use a section that asked if you were going to use there packaging or your own, but we haven’t seen that in a while.
Ebay has had for a long time, the FedEx Tab right beside the USPS tab when we go to purchase labels. Many times we put in the shipping weight and box size then toggle back and forth between the two tabs to see which is the cheaper rates and select the one that is cheaper.
We do have a FedEx account but you don’t need one. You can ship with FedEx right through Ebay.
I think what you are seeing is that FedEx is going to make purchasing the FedEx label chaeper than in the past.
Other than lower rates, I don’t think anything is going to change from what it is now.
mike at mdc galleries.
Hey Sharyn:
Your post made me re-read the article and I guess it depends on how I interpret the wording.” … Available shipping services
Global Postal Shipping includes an international shipping service through Etsy’s partnership with an Asendia affiliated company. It includes an affordable international shipping option that uses First Class International Parcel services. This option will appear for packages that meet the requirements for package size and country destination.I took it that they will offer a “regular” shipping service to foreign buyers for all packages and that they ALSO WILL HAVE a pop up additional OPTION for smaller packages that qualify for the First Class prices.
If it is what you are stating, only for First Class International, I think they could have said that in a better manner. Something like this service is for First Class packages only, instead of using the word “as an Option” so much. Option to me seems to imply “an additonal services for the small stuff” in addition to the regular service.
Hhhmmm… guess we will have to wait and see.
mike at mdc galleries
You bet Sonia. No harm, no foul. I too didn’t mean for anything to be negative. Actually I started out with the link that referenced the clothing industry in general and the impact of China and the diminishing market. Hope you read the article the link went too.
It made us well aware that we were glad to have given up on the used clothing market years ago, other than a few shoes, hats and couple of coats.
Check that article out. I just wanted clothing people to think about that market a little more broadly and longer range, than buying an item from a BOLO list or from what a YouTuber Hauler may post.
Then as far as BOLO’s go sure doesn’t hurt to have a reference list, but in my art and art print market and Asian Home Decor we seem to well guided from our own Master of Fine Art Degree, 35 years in the printing and art publishing industry and years of reading Kovel’s Antique Pricing Guide and studying their web site. Then we throw in enough general stuff as we see fit. Like my wife used to say at our Antique Booths, we need to have something for the kid’s too! 🙂
mc @ mdcgfa
Sonia.. I didn’t comment on BOLO lists.
My reference to the clueless and blind, was a personal experience sharing what I heard and observed at a family gathering of people talking about doing online selling and yes, they were clueless to the process, sharing tons of mis-information and guidance suggestions.
I apologize if the wording of how I shared that experience here on SL bothered you, but it doesn’t change the fact of what I saw, heard and my opinion of it. That group was the epitome of running off about things they were clueless about and yes, they were all blind to the facts of how to do it, about Ebay and Etsy polocies and had no idea on how any type of business runs.
The overall point then, is still, know what you are doing, do your research on how to run a business, how the platforms work before quitting your day job thinking you will replace a full time job in a short amount of time. I know you know how much work is involved in doing what we all do.
But again, didn’t mean to be ugly about it. Out of my almost 800 posts here on SL, almost always, I have shared tons of positive information on how to do things. Enough that I could probably write a small book on how to accomplish buying, sourcing, art recognition, seeing color, packing, handling bad customers, etc., etc.
So, think I may have a little leway on expressing my opinion, and that is just what it is, on what I saw and heard from a group that had no idea or factual information about the subject of online selling. Wish you could have been there. I just went outside to get away from it.Oh, and I said I too do follow a couple of YouTubers that do provide good information. AND, do you know what I think is one of the best BOLO Lists anybody could ever have… Just listen to over 10 years of JamdR and enter into a spread sheet every what sold item and the top dollar they got for it. I did that for 1 complete year about 5 or 6 years ago. Then sorted the list by category. Used that list for years. Had thousands of BOLO . What better list than items that sold for top dollar from all the SL members.
But, tis what it is.
One of the SL Members has a very useful web site with great shipping tools but he also has a section of various Ebay tools and a link.
click this link to go to his site, then click his link to go to the Ebay site, etc., etc.
and here is even a 3rd way to get to your store discount coupon
https://www.flippertools.com/tools/wheres-my-ebay-coupon/mike at MDCGFA
Here you go. Click on this link to go to Ebay site,
https://www.sd.ebay.com/?afsrc=1&rmvSB=true
then click on the upper left discount coupon and you will see your discount number pop up. Highlight and copy this number [it will stay on your clipboard].
Then go do your shopping and remember before you check out to make sure that you paste your coupon code into the discount field for it to apply. Then when you check out you will see your total less the discount amount and the balance you will owe.
Check out and pay..
Mike at MDC galleries and Fine Art
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 🙂
Mike at MDCGFA in Atlanta
Agree 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
Yep.. 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
A 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 buyers’ 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. 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
@ 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
Good 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 MDCGFA
