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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
We 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
I 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 đ đ
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.
We are building in the cost for USPS reg. Prioirty to ship to Zone 6 which includes every state except 8 states from here in Atlanta. Then all that is left are Montana, Idaho, Utah and Arizona and the 4 remaining west of those. Those we have to absorb a couple of bucks to ship to zones 7 and 8.But we make extra for those closer, and the closer they are the more we make which will offset the extra we may have to pay to ship to those 8 states furthest away.
Fair or not, Ebay, Etsy, Amazon and the buyers are going that way and buyers are mind set on it. Had to decline an offer last night over this issue. They said they would rather see a $41.79 item with Free Shipping rather than a $29.99 item with $11.80 calculated shipping tacked on. She thought since in her mind, the shipping was close to 40% of the cost of the item, it wasn’t worth it, so she said either we do free shipping or she would cancel and I said cancel and she did.
So I have set everything up to make a complete one shot change over to both Ebay and Etsy and will do so maybe this weekend.
We are also splitting the build in cost by the pound. So, our build in cost chart looks like 1 .01 to 2.0 to zone six, 2.01 to 3.00 to zone 6, 3.01 to 4.00 to zone 6 up to 5.00 lbs.
From here we it is a toss up if we go the FedEx route up on the 6 to 7.00 lbs. Anything weighing more, we will make a call after we get 7.00 and under set-up, which by the way covers 606 of our 1,221 items. Take these costs and tack them on and then remove Calculated shipping. We will just watch out for taking very low offers and / or having too large of a Sale running.
Mike at MDC Galleries
@HN: We are doing the same thing and in the process of that project right now. We are going to free shipping on everything at 5 lbs. and under and building in the cost at regular over the counter USPS costs to Zone 6.
Doing this one for the same reason you state above and Etsy has now gone to the free shipping format and openly state that if you don’t have free shipping you will be mostly ignored in their advertising and search results.
In our case being a SixBit user, we can make all the changes to all of our inventory in bulk and it synch’s all of that automatically on both platforms. Then when we re-activate our Shopify store, it will have it all synched on all 3 platforms.
mike at MDC Galleries
We have used TerraPeak and also Worthpoint for years for these exact reasons. Plus Terrapeak does more than just sold history. You can do data analysis like trends, research keywords, trends for key words very much like Google analytics, but this stuff is moore if you are interested in SEO and getting the correctly searched words being used by buyers and incorporating them into your titles, in the correct order and having those words in your description area and Item specifics.
There are many who don’t do SEO, see no value in it, put wrong words in the first 5 places in their titles and also have gone to no descriptions and don’t use or fill in Item Specifics. Just two schools of thought and approach I guess.
But TerraPeak is just one of those tools. We stopped our TerraPeak paid subscription a while back but glad to see it being rolled into Ebay’s Seller hub as a benefit for store subscribers.
Now if you like TerraPeak’s one year of data, would you like a 2nd or 3rd years backlog of data? Then subscribe to WorthPoint, they have all of the Ebay data, several photos, sold prices and the description going back for 10 or more years.
If you have an item that has not sold in the last year. It is unusual and a real hard to find item, we like to know that it 6 of them sold 2 or 3 years ago for more than $1,500 or something like this as just an example.
Good morning Country Lane:
Don’t jump on the band wagon just yet. SixBit is not ready to launch the Shopify interface just yet. It went to a small advanced group of Beta tester earlier this year. Then last I heard from one of the tech guy’s is that it has now moved to their larger list of Beta Tester’s. It was, last I heard hoping to be ready to add to the SB group early this fall which is about now.I was talking with one of the tech team members yesterday and still no definite timing but close.
Up until end of last year we were a 5-year user of WonderLister. WL had made many strides over the years as a third-party app. And at that time, we had our Ebay Store and Shopify Store running through WonderLister. But it was buggy and did some of the cross-platform work but not all of it. I was trying to get WL to expedite their Etsy interface at the time, but they were extremely slow at developing it and writing the required code. Long story short, we finally made the transition to SB.
We gained a complete Etsy interface module in this move. List once within Six Bit and both Ebay and Etsy was completely controlled from that one platform. But without a Shopify interface. So, we closed our Shopify store down [just for the time being] to give SB the time to get out of Beta Testing and go live. Then from there own we will focus all the social media posts [Pinterest, Facebook Market Place, Instagram, Twitter, and a few smaller others] to building and driving organic traffic toward our Shopify store. But thatâs a whole other topic.
The way I was told in July is that SB will be adding a third pricing column called the âTrioâ pricing. It will be the âDuoâ price of $99.99 [which we are currently using] and will be adding approx. $30 more for around $129.99 for SB to handle all three platforms. Keeping 3 separate financials and a combined financial P&L for all 3. Also when you create a single listing, photos, item specifics, descriptions and all, when you submit, you will be able to select which of the 3 platforms you wish to submit to, Ebay, Etsy, Shopify, or Amazon all 2, or any combination of 1 or two. But I am unsure if they will keep amazon in the mix.
Then SB will list to that selection and from there on, will handle all the sales, remove the sold items from the other platforms as items sell, and keep all histories for various reporting for all time [as in forever].
If a user will only want two of the three platforms, the Duo will serve you in that fashion and I am assuming, you will be able to select which of the platforms you wish to activate.
We are waiting for the trio version to go live and will add Shopify back into the mix. If it goes like WonderLister did, we will be able to select which products-items-listings we want in the Shopify store then âclick submitâ and the whole Shopify store will be populated over night and the next day the Shopify Store will be up and populated.But you must already have your store designed using either one of there free templates or purchase a custom template and have it all set up with your âFeatured Itemâ area, banners, etc. And of course, have your domain name secured and registered. You can do this with Shopify or with any domain name reseller and have it âpointedâ to Shopify.
I would suggest if you are going the Shopify route, go ahead and do your up-front work on that. SixBit does not handle any design work, HTML, Java Script work. It just uploads data. But donât let this scare you. Shopify handles all this design work automatically and you will use a WYSIWYG drag and drop interface.
Get your domain name xxx.com, get it registered, and then subscribe to the $29.99 Shopify Store level. You will need this level so that you will have Shopifyâs credit card merchant gateway so you can take payments. Then sign up for Shopifyâ University tutorials which are free and go through the beginning levels of setting up your store.
Now that leaves us with State Sales Tax. Up until fall of last year the state sales tax was not much of an issue except for the Sales we made here in GA. And we all know what has transpired over the last year. States have imposed legislation for those who sell from other states and even though they have no real store or physical presence in those states, they want their cut of the sales taxes. Ebay and Etsy handle this for us. BUT, and the BIG BUT is that there is still details to be worked out in Congress and the hub-bub from what I last read on the Ebay Govât Issues update and I think Jay even mentioned this, is that there may be an exemption for those who make less than $200,000, then I heard $500,000 and so forth. That is still pending in Congress. So, if that is true and comes to pass, then we may not have to worry about it if we are under the final decided threshold.
2ND BUT… Right now, there are thresholds in place BUT THEY ARE STATE BY STATE.But yes, if there are states with no thresholds, then we will have to pay those states using our financial reports supplied by all of our selling platforms., Shopify doesnât file or remit sales taxes for you, but they do collect it for you. You must click on what states to include in your set up preferences. They collect it and will provide you with a report of what sales and taxes were paid by state and so will WonderLister and Six bit both, but it will be up to all of us to file and submit.
If we all will have to pay, then something like TaxJar will probably be a good add on option at about $20 a month
BUT, BUT, BUT here is the most current info. directly from Tax Jar, out of all of the states who have currently imposed to collect sales tax from resellers that sell online but DO NOT Have a physical store, warehouse or presence in their state a large percentage of them already have thresholds that are high enough that we wonât have to pay in those states. 33 states to date have thresholds of $100,000 or higher. But that still leaves 17 states with no threshold.
So I am hoping that Congress will get up off their butts and make a decision on this and provide a nationwide threshold limit, [I am hoping for a high number-amount], whereby all of us that sell online in all of the states will only have to pay sale tax in our own state where we reside just like it used to be, and only have to pay in other states if we make more than $250k, $500k a year, etc., etc.
Here is a link to the whole Tax Jar list of states and their thresholds and an explanation of the situation as it currently exists. And for the military people, when it comes to our state and federal officials, it is a âSNAFUâ, [look it up!!] .. as usual! ď
https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/01/list-of-states-with-internet-sales-tax.html
Bottom line for us, $130 for SB to be the Command Central Master Flagship Hub for all 3 stores, plus $29.99 for the Shopify Store and the $17 plan if we must pay taxes in a few states for Sales made through Shopify, for a total of approx. $175 monthly. But remember, Shopify is a web site hosting business it is NOT A MARKET PLACE Platform like Ebay and Etsy. Shopify has no buyers or traffic, at all. âBuild it and they WILL NOT COMEâ unless you market and brand yourself. It takes Googles spiders and botsâ months to crawl the web. Your store will not be found until you start to make a presence on Google, know how to do some serious SEO and Optimize your Shopify Store. It may take a year for you to even start to get a small amount of traffic to your store.
We are doing it first as a back-up to Ebay and Etsy in case either one penalizes us for some odd ball reason and takes our store down. Also, we can design and do anything we want on our own store.
But Shopify University will explain all of this, instruct you in how to. And if you are young enough you will build a business there. We are 70 and 68 years old. My 10-year business plan is to stay alive until then!! LOL ďTake care … ABL!
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine ArtWe too for the last several years have been trying to raise the final selling costs of items in our store to a higher level. We all had a thread here on SL and Jay said he was targeting to do so back then. It is just smarter to sell less volume and have to ship less items to make the same or more money. Sort of “use your brain, not your back approach”.
Last week, we paid $180 for a vase that has 66% percent “solds” of a small quantity for over $400 ++. We will be listing at maybe $599, Make Offer, GTC, free shipping. Currently we have approx. 30% [367] of our store items out of 1,226 total marked at $50 or higher and of the total amount of the 1,226, 10% of our store items are priced at over $75 and approx. 6% are over $100.
Yes that is not the usual 8 to 10 times the money that we like to try to get for the less costly, run of the mill items, but to take $180 and then sell for maybe $425, we will take the $245 and run with it. We would have to sell and ship 14 items at $30 or about 28 items at $15 for the same kind of margin.
We will see how it comes. But we have paid upwards of $100 for some things in the past and hoped for the higher sale price.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
The advantage I see with the felt is 1.) it is $.99 a yard at 60 in. wide, 2.) It sticks to Velcro without having to have the 2nd “loop” strip. Just use the rigid “Hook” half of a Velcro square or round dot or cut a short length. Peel and adhere the “hook” part of a piece of cardboard, masonite, plywood, large piece of foamcore, coroplast or even a p[iece of styro foam sheet insulation board from Home depot. [very light and rigid], your closet door, what have you and the felt will stick and stay just by pushing the fabric against the hard, hook side of the Velcro. Want to change the color, just snatch it away from the Velcro and push up another pc.
So how would you attach a piece of faux Leather to a wall, door or 6 Ft. high piece of cardboard? I am guessing the back of that faux leather is not “fuzzy” like the felt and would require the second half of the Velcro strip [the fuzzy loop they call it], dot or square to be mounted to it. Then every time you would want to hang the backdrop you will have to align the 2 pcs. of Velcro up for it to stick. Been there and done that. Once i discovered that the felt sticks by itself, I can get it to hang in numerous configurations. If I want the fabric to be pleated like a shower curtain, just bunch it up and push against the one pice of Velcro on the wall or cardboard. If I want it draping at an angle same thing. The felt with stick to the hard rigid hook side as long as it comes into contact with it.
Only draw back is mouting the hook piece to your wall. It is there for good because it will pull the wall paint off. That is why I suggest using a piece of cardboard from a refrigerator box as a backing board and just have a whole bunch of little round dots of the velcro Hook side stick in numerous spots on the surface. Then just throw up the felt and it sticks and hangs. If you want a smooth wrinkle free surface just use the upper left and right dots or squares and pull tight across the top and let the rest just hang down.
Sorry for the delay.
Just get a regular office stamp inking pad and treat the cut just as you would a rubber office stamp. Place the metal side down onto the ink pad and push it down a few times to get enough ink on the metal. The make an impression onto a pile of 3 or 4 sheets of plain computer paper. You can do this several times trying different pressure on the ink pad and on the paper until you get a fairly dark impression. Then photograph that paper image and include it as one of your listing photos.
Then wipe the ink off the metal plate with a paper towel or soft cloth using lacquer thinner, acetone, nail polish remover [which is mostly acetone], or even lighter fluid. Just make sure you get the ink wiped off before it dries and sets up on you. Much easier to wipe off when damp than dry. It will dry fast after you make an impression because of such a thin layer left behind.
Good luck
mike at mdcgfa
