Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
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 that’s a whole other topic.
The way I was told in July is that SB will be adding a third pricing column called the “Trio” pricing. It will be the “Duo” 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 “click submit” 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 “Featured Item” 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 “pointed” 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 don’t 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 Shopify’s credit card merchant gateway so you can take payments. Then sign up for Shopify’ 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 Gov’t 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 doesn’t 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 won’t 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 “SNAFU”, [look it up!!] .. as usual!
The Ultimate Guide to States with Laws Requiring Collection of Internet Sales Tax
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. “Build it and they WILL NOT COME” unless you market and brand yourself. It takes Googles spiders and bots’ 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 Take care … ABL!
Mike at MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art-
This reply was modified 2 years ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
We 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
08/30/2019 at 4:24 pm in reply to: Am I the only one who still takes an enormous amount of time to edit photos? #67155The 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.
08/30/2019 at 3:07 pm in reply to: What is the correct name for these Mercedes printing plates please ? #67153Sorry 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 mdcgfa08/29/2019 at 5:40 pm in reply to: Am I the only one who still takes an enormous amount of time to edit photos? #67119You can also go to an appliance store and ask them for an empty refrigerator box. Then cut it down into two pieces that have 2 of side of the box on it. That will give you 2 pcs. refrigerator high by just about 60″ wide. then velcro mount one color felt on one side and another color on the back side. Then all you do is “lean” then up against the wall. White side out for dark colors, colored side out for lighter colors. Lay it down on your floor and use either side up for the color you need. Or lay it on your dining room table so you don’t have to bend over as much. Lean one up vertically at the end of your table and lay the 2nd one down on the table and you ave the perfect “L” shape for having the matching color on the flat bottom and the upright fake wall. If you have the vertical pcs of felt flow out onto the bottom piece you can get that “soft fabric roll” at the seam junction and you won’t have a hard horizontal line acroos at the 90 degree mark where the two pcs. come together.
Just more food for thought.
mike at mdcgfa
08/29/2019 at 5:30 pm in reply to: What is the correct name for these Mercedes printing plates please ? #67118Yep.. done my fair share on stripping also :-).
Were were both a silkscreen shop and offset litho shop with full bindery operations. I came up through the ranks and did it all. Ortho graphic photography, dark room work on a large format camera, screen and plate making, printing on many types of presses, ink and color mixing, all bindery functions, die cutting, guillotine trim cutting, grommeting, spiral binding, punch presses and all shipping functions.
Used solvent inks, UV inks, water based inks, scratch off inks.
Clients, general Electric, Home Depot, Kentucky fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Walmart, West Clock, Stanley hardware, Martin Marrietta, Colt Fire Arms and a ton more plus doing the limited edition fine art print runs for numerous NY artists in our fine art publishing division. And toward the end some government work for Groton Ct submarine base and using elctro-luminesent inks.
But you hit the nail on the head, smack on.. “Times Gone By”.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
08/29/2019 at 5:20 pm in reply to: What is the correct name for these Mercedes printing plates please ? #67115Old Dad: With steel rule dies for cutting hand feed sheets, those Thompsons deliver tons and tons of pressure, depending on how you set the depth gauge during set-up. A finger down at the blade level will take a finger or part of a hand off.
I was running a small Kelsy engraving press one time and it closed nefore I got my hand out. It was my wedding band on my left hand finger that had enough resistance to stop that small of a press. A Thompson, Kulge or Miele and my hand would have been gone.
My partner had to come over and use a long steel pipe which was leaning against the wall luckily and relieved enough pressure for me to get my hand out. My ring was bent and hurting my finger really bad. I went to the local emergency room and they numbed up my left finger and had to cut my wedding band off. Nothing was broken. But I never worn any jewlery to this day ever. No watches, rings, bracelets.
Also all of those metals reacted with the gallons of lacquer thinner I used to have my bare hands in and would blister my skin close to the gold.
As years went by and I grew more knowledgeable and equity share holder, I protected our employees much better than I did myself during our first start up years. Open flw wheels got covered, ventilation, ear protection from the sounds, respirators to filter fumes, etc., etc. But when I first started, there was no protection awareness.
mike at MDCGFA
08/29/2019 at 5:10 pm in reply to: Am I the only one who still takes an enormous amount of time to edit photos? #67113Sonia go to Hobby Lobby or Jo Ann’s Fabrics and get felt. What we bought was 60″ wide by only $.99 per YARD. We got a very light grey, white and a royal blue for clear glass and white items.
The reason for felt is that you can use velcro [pardon me] and stick it up on the wall anywhere. The felt texture sticks to the hard hook side of the velcro. Also felt does not wrinkle or crease like a cotton sheet does. And at 60 ” is more than enough to provide a solid back ground. Want to change the color, just pull on the top edge where you have the velcro on the wall and pull, grab another color, stretch it across and push with your thumb. Easy Peazy.
You can even put all three colors up on the wall one above the other and just roll up the two you are not using. Then unroll another color when needed. AND use a narrow, thin band of velcro to hold the 2 you are not using rolled up. Sort of like having three window shades on top of each other.
Just an idea… 🙂
Mike from MDCGFA
08/29/2019 at 12:51 pm in reply to: What is the correct name for these Mercedes printing plates please ? #67097Hey G/G: Thanks. That is a lot of real old school stuff. Was in the printing / fine art publishing from 1972 until about 1998. Was present during the change over from solvent based inks to UV inks and from the graphic pre-press art depts. to all digital. Have hand cut my fair share of Amberlith and Rubylith color separations in my time and also making camera ready paste up art mechanicals.
But as I progressed and our business grew moved into VP of Plant Operations and Plant Consulting along with the Fine Art Publishing divs. The “good old days”.
mike at mdcgfa
Just a little update on what our Congress is trying to do on Capital Hill with regards to the E-Commerce Sales Tax laws.
Seems there is a bill up in Washington that is trying to get an exemption for the small business from having to charge and collect the Sales Tax in each state. Think they are targeting to exempt the small businesses that are under $10 million dollars which I would think would exempt most small Ebay, Etsy, Posh, Mercari, e-commerce sellers.
Interesting if it goes through. Platforms like Amazon whereby a lot of the Sales comes from smaller sellers if Amazon would have to pay the taxes because their take [sales] would be over the $10 million mark and / or would they pass that along to the re-sellers through higher fees.
???? Just a continuing saga of the unknown…..
mike at mdcgfa
-
This reply was modified 2 years ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
08/29/2019 at 9:32 am in reply to: What is the correct name for these Mercedes printing plates please ? #67074These are called “Advertising Cuts” or “cuts” for short. They are type high. Usually .935 to .937 depending on what type of press and or other foundry type you have invested in as a printer.
They are used in letter press work or on a Vandercook flatbed press. But in most cases wooden type fonts are used on the Vandercook for internal store signage needs. On the more commercial runs of larger quantities metal foundry type is used on Kluge presses.
The zinc or copper plates prior to mounting on a wood block were first painted with an acid resist coating, then exposed to an actinic light source [usually under glass and using an arc lamp] were exposed. Then submerged in an acid bath and etched in the areas where the negative was black thus creating a positive but wrong reading image on the plate. Once etched to the proper depth, the plate was pulled and dropped into a wash bath to stop the etching process.
A product called “dragon’s blood” was used during the acid etching to keep the fine lines and type from under cutting by the acid, which if allowed to undercut, those fine lines without a wide based would break off during the press run when under pressure.
The plates were mounted on precision made wooden blocks to bring them up to the .937 inches in height needed to be level with the metal type slugs of foundry type.
All the individual letters of foundry type were kept in type face font cabinets which I am sure everyone has seen those wooden cases sold that had all the small rectangles in them. Those are called California Type Drawers and each drawer held a certain font size of type and 100’s of small individual letters all arranged in an order of use much like a QWERTY typewriter.
The Journeyman type setter would be handed a handwritten sheet with the news story on it and would then proceed to hand pick every single letter in a word, sentence and paragraph and lock that type into blocks on a device much like the holder for Scrabble tiles. Then that composed sentence would be placed into what is called a lock up chase.
This was amazing and very time consuming because not only did each character had to be pulled but it had to be done in “reverse” order or what is called a mirror image [wrong reading]. Took years to master and be accurate and quick at it. The advertising block cuts were inserted into the column rows as space allowed in between the news stories just like you see in modern newspapers.
Advertisers paid to have the photos and copy for their ads created and converted into a “cut”. Then they bought space in the newspaper and paid by the column inch. In America a column inch is 11 picas wide [or 1.83″ wide] x 1″ deep.
In the case of your Mercedes cut[s] measure the height [top to bottom of the wooden block or the back side of the plate] and Mercedes would have paid a fee per inch x those inches. Then paid by the “issue” of number of times per week, month the ad ran.
The type and cut are all inked in relief, meaning on the high, flat surface [planographic in art terms] by a leather in older days and rubber in more modern types, roller over the flat surface and deposit ink on the flat surface. then as the press closed and pressed the paper against the inked type fonts and inserted advertising cuts, the image would be transferred to the paper as a black “Correct” reading image.
This process is called an “offset image” and is the bases for the modern high speed litho presses used today and why art reproductions done on the modern presses using thin plates now days are called “Offset” Lithographs. OFFSET being the keyword of the transfer of the ink from the metal type to the paper [substrate].
On a Kluge style letter press the inking rollers roll up and auto by mechanical means as the press opens, a stack of blank paper stock that was previously loaded is pulled one sheet at a time off of the “feeder” hopper and slide into proper aligned register against side guides, then the press closes and pressed against the whole story composition of type that has been locked into the platen side of the presses. Then opens again and a second arm with air suckers pulls that sheet off and releases it into the catcher bin underneath the fed stack.
These style letterpresses presses are called “clam shell style” because of this whole opening and closing of one side of the press against the other. Many decades later many of these style presses were converted into embossing or die cut presses. Many decades ago, when I and my first partner started our first print shop JME Graphics in Connecticut, we had two old “Thompson” letter presses which we converted to die cut out the sheets we printed. I have hand fed tons and tons of sheets into those things. Also still had an old Kluge press we printed on. We used all of these for special effects on fine art prints though.
I saw about a dozen of them at an auction a few years ago. I recognized them right away and told my wife Susan watch this, I will get these for a song. I knew that nobody knew what they were. Yep got all 12 for a dollar $1. They all were for Carnation Malted Milk and Carnation Milk Products.
I did not use the word “cuts” as the lead in or first words in the title or description because I knew most buyers would not know that term. I used Etched, Engraved, and put cuts toward the end.
I sold all of them within a few months. I sold the small 1” ones for $29.95. Here is one of the links from Worthpoint.
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/carnation-malted-milk-etched-engraved-1867901379One of the things I did was to ink up the cut and make a hand pressed paper image of the ad block. That way I had a photo of the image “correct reading”, so buyers could see what the advertising said. Make sure to clean the ink off the metal using lacquer thinner so it won’t dry on the metal surface.
Interesting though the link for the smallest ones above was the only ones Worthpoint picked up and is showing. So, FYI, the others sold between $40 and $75 each. BUT with it being Mercedes Benz, that might be worth even more.
So, there you have a rough, brief art school history of metal foundry type, advertising cuts and how they were combined and printed.
I suggest you also hit up Wiki and search on letterpress advertising cuts, foundry type faces and things like that.
Good luck and sorry for the “wall of text”, Jay calls it.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
The team at MDC Concepts, Inc.
Susan, Lisa, Jean, Karen, Christie and Michael-
This reply was modified 2 years ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Sharyn this is true. If a typo took place and any number larger than 1 was entered, then if one sold, the listing would still relist itself, but as you said under the same item number. Also the store listing should say, “1 Sold and Only 1 more available” or “Last One”,…something to that effect.
mike at MDCGFA
-
This reply was modified 2 years ago by
-
AuthorPosts