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Yep.. That is why I switched away from WonderLister and went to SixBit last year. SixBit already had a functional Etsy interface and I knew through the grape vine that Shopify was being worked on. They came out of BETA last month and went live. Now SixBit will synch / coordinate / balance financials and inventory and storage for all 3 and add in Pirate Ship to ship from all 3 in one spot there is the 3 tier diversified model. BUT.. Shopify is a web site building and hosting, e-commerce merchant gateway app only. You have to build your own traffic and customer base which requires knowledge of SEO, active social media presence on all available outlets and content writing on blog pages. This will take a lot of time and work to SLOWLY build Sales. Your only search engine will be mostly Google and you will have to rank well and work hard to be found and seen in high page rankings on mother Google. But I know some of this already.
So SB is like our command central to keep 3 platforms co-ordinated and we will have to start building the Shopify stores brand and presence on all the social media outlets.
So our plan for balance of this year and all of next is to build as strong of a presence as we can on all 3 platforms, keep listing on all 3 stores and keep buying our used, vintage items.
If not and Ebay shuts down or shuts out old used stuff, I will just go full time into my studio and start making the heck out of my custom artwork and hand made home decor items and just focus on new handmade artist stuff and let it be what it will be.
Yep.. we all will just have to wait and see and as R. Crumb said in the late sixties.. “Keep on Truckin'”
mike at mdc galleries
Me too. Do check out the YouTube video link above. Only about 15 min. This guy is pretty good. Has passed on a ton of good tips for me.
The interesting thing is not only has this come at the start of 4th quarter BUT we are going to be moving toward Ayden as the company to handle the upcoming Managed Payment System. Talk about a whole roller coaster ride for all of us. Then add to that the Ebay board of directors having to replace Wenig and the “New Kid on the Block” coming in and trying to take up and make a mark for him or herself, control changes AND Deal with Ayden taking over and using the delayed payment system they use.
As Betty Davis said, “Fasten your Seat Belts, it’s Going to be a Bumpy Night” or in our case maybe 4th Quarter or Year would be better used to replace “night” in that phrase. LOL 🙂
Mike at MDCGFA in Atl
Yep.. All over the youTube Ebay guru sites I subscribe too. Several know Wenig personally and have a lot to say about what things he brought to Ebay and most just increased Ebay profits at Sellers expense but very little to make things better for the Sellers. They are hopeing the Vice President may get the job because he is very pro Seller.
Here is a guy who has been mentioned here on SL before and I subscribe to his Video-casts. Many are long and tedious and not for many vintage sellers but this one is short and he covers some points about Wenig being at Ebay and some good points about where he thinks [his opinion] Ebay should place it’s focus. In my opinion, all good points.
from Daily Refinements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0bqDmE0tbY&t=1055s
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Thanks for the link and info Julie B. I currently have a Brother Laser printer like what Ryanne used to use. It has been a while since I bought a toner cartridge, but when this one gets depleted I will switch to a label printer instead of buying another Toner cartridge for the Brother at about $40 to $50 bucks.
I have bookmarked your link and will check it out when times comes.
thanks
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta [Dacula, GA actually]Here is a link we often use to see where Ebay is having problems.
https://downdetector.com/status/ebay/map
It is called “DownDetector”. The above link takes you to the Ebay world map. Use the zoom in feature in the upper right corner. You can zoom in and scroll to see your part of the USA and even zoom into your city, keep zooming and it will show you what part of your city, down to even an small area or neighborhood where the Ebay outages or problems are. The problems are color coded to show the severity of the problem
Example the Atlanta area right now from zoomed far out shows a yellow and red glow, zoom way in tight and it shows the red area to be over in Athens, GA about 35 miles east of Atlanta. That is where the University of Georgia is located. So maybe campus related.
BTW.. Georgia ranked 3rd in Nation plays Notre Dame tomorrow and seats are at $611 each, an all time high.
When things are working I first and quickly hit this site. When the whole East Coast is covered in red, then all of us are usually experiencing some issues and we hear about it here in the SL forum.
mike at MDCGFA
@D&C: I am with you and also one of several reasons why I am also going to Free Shipping on most of the items in our shops.
From a few things we have been watching, like amount of questions, especially about shipping costs, a greater number of offers, amount of low ball [more than 50%] and normal offers [most being an offer that is almost exactly the same as the Cal. Shipping cost would be.
We are of the opinion that as many video posters state that many people see it, want to buy it, and don’t want to spend the time or don’t know how to make offers, wait on our responses, play around with bouncing back and forth with possible counter offers from us, etc., etc.
They see it, want it and just want to pay for it. Too much trouble or time consuming to have to add things together like item cost and shipping or they don’t even know about the shipping tab and entering their zip codes to discover what shipping will be, and god forbid have to add those two numbers together. Ebay says a lot of abandoned carts are due to the buyer actually seeing the cost of shipping for the first time because they didn’t take the time to “see” the shipping on the listing, get freaked out and then abandon the cart.
So to D&C point: PL doesn’t cost a thing unless it sells, the promoted fee I have at 3% across the board is less than having to take offers lower than 30% OFF ++ or speeds up the process to a point of “See it, Want it, Buy It, Right now and Ship it Fast as you ca” syndrome of what, in our opinion, is becoming the way, we feel most buyers want to buy.
Too many people in this world seem to be too busy to deal with a yard full of details, the “WEEDS” as Jay calls it. They are sitting in their car waiting to pick up the kids at school, in a parking lot waiting to go into work, getting off work, buying at work [yep] and just want to see one photo, decide if it’s “cute”, click buy it and be done with it.
We feel that newer items that are not “old and stale” instead of the “list and forget” method is now a better way to go [end listings and relist automatically [with SixBit], cross post, run a small promoted listing on all, always have some sort of flash sale going and ending, build up our own domain website, social media promotion to drive traffic to all sites and eventually wean buyers over to just our store, then use Google ads to replace platform promotions [because all that does is drive traffic to Ebay and Etsy and not specifically to our store and specific item.
Then we will see where we go from there.
So rather than worry about the “weeds” of whether Ebay is showing 1, 2, both or none is too time consuming for us now and we need to focus on building the business, infrastructure and our own traffic. Use PL at a low rate and let it ride. You only pay if they buy and 3% of the Sale is peanuts compared to the fact we run Sales with as much as 25% to 30% off at times or cave in to low ball offers that add up to about the same percentage off. And we are hopinh to get instant sales instead of potential sales we have to have a conversation about.
We have settled on “See it, like it, buy it… an Ya’ll please do come again!” approach.
And as always, just our team’s opinion [their are 6 of us now] and that and $1.00 will get you a third of a cup of coffee! LOL 🙂
The team at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment
Capitol Atlantic Properties, LLC
and now JR SprayFoam, LLC [yep back to the spray foam business partially]Susan, Lisa, Jean, Karen, Michael, George
Mark: Are you running the the “Duo” version of SixBit? For 500 items it is very beneficial to be using the Duo version so, as Troy says, that SixBit will handle everything in the background.
The biggest problem trying to do it manually is that you have to have access to your computer every minute of the day or night. If you sell one thing on Etsy then a customer looks for another item because they want two of them, then they buy the one they see on Ebay and it turns out it is your same item, you get burned by selling two of something you only have one of.
But by letting SB handle it in the Duo version, after you upload to both Ebay and Etsy, you can sit back and relax and SB will keep both stores in synch, sort of like Bonanza used to, or was supposed to but didn’t at times. 🙂
Also SB will keep your reports showing Sales to both platforms separate. Like Troy said doing it manually and you will miss something and have items still listed that you sold, even weeks or months ago, so it is worth the extra cost to pay for the Enterprise Duo version. $99.99 per month.
The process inside of SixBit is fairly easy. With the Duo version every time you go to create a new item listing, you will select one of your templates and input the data just as you would any other time or just as you would on the Ebay App itself. Title, price you paid, item specifics, weights, colors, your own SKU number and other items that Ebay doesn’t offer. Now once done, you are ready for an Ebay upload, but wait, you want that to also be posted on Etsy. If so, you will see an Etsy Tab right beside the Ebay tab. Click on that and then click on the “Propagate from Ebay” and SixBit automatically copies all of the data you put into the Ebay fields over to the Etsy fields, if they are mapped the same. Etsy uses a few less fields.
Then as troy has mentioned in the past, there are a couple of blank fields you fill in to complete the Etsy form.
Now it is time for you to select “Submit” and there is a pop up window that says Ebay or Etsy. I select Ebay first. Up it goes, then I come back and click submit again and choose Etsy and hit Submit and it goes to Etsy. Then it is residing on both platforms.
Now I will say, that I made this short and more of a quick over view. There are a few more details you will have to learn and how to set up an allocation plan and make sure it is set on both tabs before submitting and a few other things. But those can be learned from the tutorial videos, the technical guide book and also when you upgrade to the Duo version, one of the tech guys can jump on and do a remote in session and set it up for you.
Then all you do is first test doing 2 at a time to get the feel of it. Then dare to do 4 at a time. Once comfortable, you can highlight all of the listings, select submit, choose Etsy and walk away. With 500 hundred listings it will take a few hours to upload all the hptos and populate all the Etsy fields.
But you need to learn how to make the descriptions, create a standard wrapper you want to use for a template in your description area and things like that. Everything is in the manual [kind of +/-] or you can ask the tech team. As has been said before, SB and WL does have it’s learning curves and one doesn’t just walk away in a day or two and have it all down. I am still struggling somewhat with the “Batch editing” process. Not that it is bad, but SB can just do so much, and can handle so many various sorts, filters and customizable screens, it gets somewhat overwhelming unless you know coding like Troy and can make SB do what you want the way you want.
I have spent a few weeks getting SB set-up to make the transitions we wnat for the 4th quarter. It does take time.
Troy is better at it than I am and he has helped me understand some of SB. The team can take a while to get questions answered with them, but they have been great. Steve Leah, Dustin, J. Ryan, and a few others.
Good luck with it..
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
Jay: Our Etsy shop did about $2,412.48 4th quarter 2018 with about 350 items listed. Now we have bumped our listings up to the 661 level and a small promoted listing budget of $1.00 per day we have done $5,122.82 as we have slowly been building the amount of items up about 100 listings per month.
Now that we are getting ready to bulk list from within SixBit about 500 more listings all at once over the next week or so AND also have built in the shipping charges to Zone 6 into all 1,200 items and going FREE SHIPPING.
We will see how the 4th quarter goes. Also going to bulk up load all the new shipping costs into our Ebay items going to also go with FREE SHIPPIING on all items in our Ebay store.
Then all of those will be exported into the Shopify Store in a month or so, again with all FREE SHIPPING. And Yes we have a chart that shows from 1 lb. up to 50 pounds and each item has a shipping charge based on it’s estimated weight [and we are very good at estimating the actual weight we will be shipping at], will be built into the price of the item.
We also have enough built into our margins to even run a 10%-20% Sale and take a small Offer on most items over $29.95.
We will see where we are at the end of March next year 2020.
mike at MDCGFA
You are spot on Troy. We are at 661 at last glance but dealing with the new Promoted Listing upgrade Etsy threw in it’s Fall updates and also with switching over to FREE SHIPPING Build Ins as you already know.
We have it almost all worked out in SixBit and will probably go live in about a week depending on Susan’s treatments.
When we go live with our bulk changes, that will bring Etsy up to almost 1,100 listings. Every item will be cross posted except for the items less than the 20 year vintage time frame [newer items in other words].
Then the next big step will be to [MAYBE] go with the trio version and export everything into our Shopify store.
And you are spot one, without a robust program like SixBit to handle all of the simultaneous back end data, these mass bulk updates and synchronizations across multiple platforms it would be impossible to do manually.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
Dead on RTWV. No way to store cards at all. Those binder folder sleeves are bad to slide cards in and out of. They catch and flake-chip the paper and ink printed edges and create surface scuff marks by sliding them in and out, even if only done a few times. At a card show dealers will not look at most 3 ring binders or if they do, they flip through them real fast and try to spot a very old card, which they can do in a heart beat.Will mess up a cards grading in a heartbeat.
My neighbor solicited me to list a lot of cards for him years ago. He was a “professional collector” and brick and mortar store owner. He taught me to grade cards and with my printing back ground I taught him a few things also. Centering, too much ink on the printing plates, how the cards are cut with a die cutter [clam shell or roll] or guillotine cut [worst method]. How to check of color alignment, then the over all centering which is usually thrown off during the cutting process, front and back alignment to each other, paper content, fading [color brightness] and I could still add a few more.
Most cards after 1970 are worthless and doesn’t matter who they are.
Cards kept in “wax packs” and original boxes and cartons can have some added value.
Now comes the test. Most cards to hold a higher value in the real collector market place need to be graded, preferrably by PSA, slabbed [sealed in clear cases, and contain a PSA Grade of 7 or higher and many collectors only go for 9 to 10’s for the bigger dollards.
Anybody can have their cards graded and slabbed. BUT … PSA has a minimum amount they allow to be sent in, takes weeks for them to do it and they cost $5, $10 or $15 each to have done and less with larger quantities.
Most cards in albums are the $.99 each variety especially from 1980 forward.
AS RT says.. you may get lucky with a few in the $50 range, the others even lotting them together you won’t get more than a few bucks.
Mu friends professional advice is check to see when the next local trade card sports memorabelia show happens in your area. Then take everything down to the show, put them on a hand truck and go dealer to dealer and see who will give you the most for the whole, ding-dang lot.
I went with him a few times and and I saw attendees at the show doing exactly that. Pulling boxes of cards in binders and what they call penny sleeves around in wagons, grocery carts, up right dollies trying to dump what they thought was their retirement plan only to sell thousands of cards for a few hundred dollars.
Now slabbed, graded PSA and BCS cards in the grade 9 and ten, the dealers will put those out on their tables and take a look and may make an offer.
So good luck..
mike at MDCGFA in Atlanta
09/13/2019 at 3:12 pm in reply to: In preparation for Managed payments…best points card for business expenses? #67770We are planning the same thing. Our bank provided Business Enhanced Visa Crad when we originally opened our bznz checking. It provides points which can be redeemed for cash. Every few months we redeem for $200 and $250 and that goes directly into our bznz checking account.
We have but never used our PayPal Debit card much plus debit cards are not safe to carry around. Once managed payments are here to stay and we transition, we will continue to use the same bznz Visa card and have most of everything run through it. We already have Ebay charge our Ebay invoice to our card. We un about $1,250 to $1,750 through it per month = approx. $18,000 +/-
We try to keep as little as possible in our PayPal acc’t and move money from them to our bznz checking every week or so depending on sales etc.
mike at MDCGFA
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MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
09/11/2019 at 3:22 pm in reply to: Ebay: When you take down a listing w/ relist option LET ME ACCESS IT! #67678I am with you SS: But we use SixBit as our front end engine for all of our stores and we do have the history of every item we have ever listed, sold and all buyer data.
But in our case we were discussing to edit or change the GSP and omit those countries. But we had a fun time trying to decide how to edit. We had a french bread basket that has a bread knife attached to the side of the basket and a 1950’s set of Carvel steak knifes killed by Ebay about a week ago.
We all got laughing as to what to call them if we edited. things like, meat slicing utensils, a set of manual, handheld steak slicers, a bread trimmer with easy to hold handle, as things like that. Both are still sitting in our waiting to list folder. LOL 🙂 🙂
mike at MDC Galleries
Yes if what you are asking is there a way to buy. Yes but you are not buying anything from shopify, you will be buyinf directly from each store owner. If you see our store or item on “Mother Google”, click on a link, you will be taken to our store mdcgalleries.com, and if you buy you can use any form of payment we allow and those will be listed when you “check out”. How do you shop on HomeDepot.com, or WalMart.com, well shopping with us will be the same.
mike at MDCGFA
Yep.. We have owned our own domain name for years. Just never used it much until a few years ago and now will be using it as we re-open our shop.
Using Shopify as a host won’t mean anything. No one even will know that Shopify or any other Host, Wix, Volusion, InMotionHosting [our domain host BTW], or any other host is connected to your store. Your reputation is yours and yours only.
On our site their will not be any mention of the name of Shopify other than a payment gateway.
mike at MDCGFA
SixBit Shopify IS OUT OF BETA and it is integrated into the new major SixBit update that came out day before yesterday. Both our rigs are updated and working in harmony :-). We are working on re-opening our Shopify Store this week and will get everything in our Ebay and Etsy store cross listed into our own store then go live again.
Our store was live when we were on WonderLister but when, after 5 years of WL, we jumped software ships and migrated over to SixBit we closed our Shopify store until SB got their interface out of BETA.
Shopify has a built in Payment Gateway, one of their own and of course you can use others.
They have tons of courses and training on every subject for “How To Do”, you can think of and it is all free. They call it “Shopify University”. That is where I started when I first opened our store a few years ago.
Yep, Shopify through its recent purchase is joining the ranks of Amazon with its own distribution centers but unsure how all of that is going to roll out and how it will be offered to store owners.
Jay is also correct in that Shopify is, currently at least, only a “store hosting” site. They give you all the tools to build a web store / web site and all the tools to teach you how to market it, design it, SEO all the titles, descriptions, allow you to have a BLOG to daily post, your own email marketing and interfaces with every known social media group there is. But they do not market or present you as a store owner to any buyers. You must build your own traffic, visitors, lookers, watchers, in other words “people that are potential buyers”.
But for $29.99 per month that is a lot of tools to create an independent online e-commerce store AND TO HAVE A SAFE, place to park a complete clone of your store. For $29.99 you have a complete duplicate of your store, only prettier, nicer, fancier than any Ebay or Etsy store, placed in a “vault” for safe keeping. But don’t leave it just at that, why not spend some time marketing it.
And buy the way you can back link every one of your items back to your Ebay store, if you want, and have anyone who does find a particular item in your store, they click on the “Buy it on Ebay” link and they jump right to your Ebay listing. But why in the world would you really want to do that and end up paying the FVF.
Shipping is handled through Shopify, payments go directly into your banking account, less shipping.
It is just a whole other world. This is also where most of our artwork will be listed, sculptural, large paintings, limited edition art prints, etc. We have never put much of anything on Ebay. We can curate a Shopify Store very closely to the way we had our antique booths set up, every store is highly customizable, you can include videos of working pieces, oh just so much more. But again, not a platform that will bring people into itself as Shopify and then have an internal “Search Box” for the general public to come there and search for specific objects.
You have to market yourself, be found yourself on social media, have your well written copy, text, photos, found on the web on Google, then entice web surfers to click on “your personal images, links, blog articles, etc. and they will be taken “To Your Store” directly in our case MDCGalleries.com and they won’t even care that we are on Shopify. That is just where our private domain name is stored and hosted. It is a “Business Shell” for you to build your own sales.
I know and have book marked many artists web sites who started on Ebay and Etsy and after building their email list of followers and admirers, moved to Shopify under their own domains and do much better on their own and make a whole lot more. I watch many of their stores every week and marvel at how well they are doing on their own.
Shopify is like your landlord. You go and rent Jay’s new store front on main street and then go inside on the first day Jay gives you the keys. You spend 4 weeks decorating the insides, painting your themes on the walls, setting up shelves, then hauling your items into the store and placing it all on the shelves. Then on a Monday you hang a sign on the door that says, “Open for Business”. Well guess what? You won’t have one customer or one sale, until you do what? Market yourself and your new business.
You will need to network, buy ads in the local newspaper, attend fairs, join the local Chamber of Commerce, pass out thousands of business cards and brochures, get on a local radio show, have a Grand Opening and have the media there, etc., etc. Well it is the same on when you build a store on Shopify.
What we have done on both WonderLister and SixBit is unlike Ebay, is we have accumulated the names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of every single person who has ever bought anything from us for years and years. WL & SB collects all of that from Ebay and Etsy and unlike Ebay, we have it captured forever.
The buyers on Ebay, are “Ebay’s Customers first and yours second. Ebay owns your store indirectly and you only are a V.P. of Operations. They can also fire you and you won’t be running your store any longer. They own your store, how you operate it, what will allow you to do or not do and most of all they don’t care if the buyers come to you or your competitor, because they really see the buyers as their customers. You didn’t bring them in, Ebay did. If you are not attractive as a seller or the buyer doesn’t like your item or store, then Ebay “Presents” them with a hundred more alternatives.
So while waiting on SixBit to get Shopify out of BETA we have been planning our postcard mailing campaign to our thousands of customers whom we have their home addresses, planning our e-mail blast campaigns, getting photos and short worded articles on various subjects lined up for our daily Blog posts, which our domain comes with due to WordPress and the built in Blog which is all interfaced into Shopify. And in a few weeks, we will have re-built our own domain brand named store and we will start the process of trying to build traffic.
Every order we will from an Ebay or Etsy sale we ship will include a postcard introducing our new store by our name, not Shopify’s [who cares about where we have “OUR” store hosted. We will special discount coupons enclosed, timed campaigns, SixBit will be thanking every customer automatically for their recent purchase but we will not ever mention Ebay or Etsy’s name ever again. We will be trying to drive every person who has or will be buying from us to our web site instead.
The whole new “distribution center thing” of Shopify can only end up being a “service” that can be made available to us sellers because we own our stores and Shopify only stores our electronic digital data for us. Maybe they will offer the shipping for us from their D/C as a paid service and as such may have some rules, but if we can still handle our own same day shipping, we have ourselves covered.
Just another early morning opinion and as always, that and $.50 will get you a quarter of a cup of coffee.
mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
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