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Steven: Always love seeing your fur babies at the end. Poor Kitty wants inside and out of the snow! :-). We lived in CT. for 22 years and the avg, annual snowfall was approx. 8 Ft. per year and would at times drift to the gutters of the house. We never care if we see snow ever again.
But Spring is around the corner and if the old saying is true, then March will come in like a Lion and go out like a Lamb and we all will be out in the warmer weather scavenging again
mike
BrianB: If you have your First Class business policy set as to stated .. ” I thought I had First Class in my business policy for items over 1 pound, but that was not the case. I had Parcel Select, Retail Ground and Priority Mail.” Is this correct. First Class setting should be for anything “UNDER” 1 pound. If you have heavier items [more than 1 lb.] with the First Class bznz policy that may be why Ebay is saying “your weight exceds the max.”. Well sure it does, if they are over a pound.
So, that needs to be corrected anyway regardless of your handling time. You will need to go through your listings, see which ones are “over” a lb. and bulk edit them so they have one of your policies that handle over 1 lb. packages. Then do the same for all of your listings that are under 1 lb. and make sure they are set for first class package.
But by you saying you thought you had First Class set up for items OVER a pound may be the issue. Just thinking out loud.
Mike
Simon: Your phrase in the donut hole is a perfect explanation and reason Ebay should have and needs a middle tier store in there somewhere.
Yeah Retro.. Sorry to hear about your kids. Hopefully, everything will level out in short order and things will start to stabilize and the kids are all well again.
mike
Jay.. There is an easier way.. Write down what you make. Individual, corporation, whatever, then send in 10% of it. Called the Flat Tax system then their is the Neil Boortz “Fair Tax” where the tax is built into the type of or category of item you purchase and it is added to your purchase cost. The luxury items are bought by the wealthy and they would pay more than someone not buying a yacht or an expensive Tiffany diamond bracelet.
But simple is not something Washington understands. Man how easy would 10% straight across the board be for everybody. Make a buck send in a dime, make $50k send in $5,000, make $100,000 send in $10,000 and on the corp level make 1,2 billion then send in whatever 10% of that is???
But we will never see anything like that, at least not in my life time. Oh, well
mike at MDCGFA
I have the same question as Julie.. are there some zeros that were left off or added to your numbers in error? If you made $20,000 in “Profit as in NET PROFIT”, you will owe a whole lot more in taxes than $200, try thousands unless you itemize your expenses and those will need to be a lot to lower taxes on $20,000 net.
If you made $20K GROSS all sales plus shipping and any other income, then that number can be whittled down, again, by uses your expenses [deductions] and also the new tax laws.
BUT.. BUT… I see you stated you are closing down Ebay in May, then if you are only having to do your taxes for last year and will not be doing this going forward, maybe just get someone to do your taxes for you this year, provide what numbers you have and let them report it back to you and be done with it. BUT AGAIN if you are going forward with anything as a business, then as Jay says, get yourself set up as a business as far as your infrastructure goes.
A big suggestion I would offer is not co-mingle your personal money and or checking accounts. If you are going forward as a business go to your bank and open up a business checking account. Your branch manager will tell you everything you need, but that may incluce a county business license, a Federal ID number and a few bank forms. You will get business checks, a business credit card. Then set PayPal to transfer all your Ebay Amazon earnings into your reg. business account every few weeks. At years end, your banking statements for your business account will only show transaction in and out for your business only. And my bank allows me to classify all transaction directly in their online web site so statements and of course your bznz. credit card statements will only show income [deposits] and out go [expenses] just for your business.
Then from there use GoDaddy will aslo pull everything from Ebay-PayPal and your bank accounts also to track all your business transactions and you can categorize them from there. at years end you just print out reports to give to your accountant.
Hope this adds to everything Jay has already said, but if this was just a year or two’s effort and you have no intentions of going forward as business in the years to come, maybe everything is over kill and just let a local accountant help you out for filing the 2018 tax year and then move on.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
As T-Satt says.. Well Done Jay and welcome to the Weeds! The devil is in the details and the answers lay in the weeds. The God Send to Salvation is in the “details” and the Angel of Mercy is being able to explain it all to someone else, thus “The Infamous Wall of Text”. … WELL DONE!
I have been just to busy with everything to be able to do much replying here on SL but will be back at creating some “walls” later this year I am sure.
Mike at MDCGFA in Atl.
02/18/2019 at 10:47 am in reply to: How can I get customers to read and look at pictures for this item? #57170Mickdog:
Couple of suggestion for you.
#1 is to correct the spelling of Biege to BEIGE
#2 is to take a look at the dictionary def. of beige and you will see it is a yellowish, tan, brown. So make absolutely sure these are even beige in the first place
#3 search this forum for my longer explanations on how males and females “see color” and “color blindness and “color deficiency”. Males see color defirrently then females, many males are red green deficient and can be 1 in a thousand or so while females may be yellow blue and is not dominant so only one in about 10,000
#4 go to this web site https://enchroma.com/pages/color-blindness-test and test your own color ability and get the test result. It’s free and only takes about 5 minutes. Actually everybody here should do it. If you are deficient in certain colors, shades or ranges you may have to have someone double check your color categories.
#5 I have laid down a good argument in the past about monitor variance. I use two monitors and can see the different on both monitor’s when side by side. So your buyer may have a monitor calibration issue combined with their inability to see color correctly.
#6 Test your “white balance” on your camera or camera phone. Use a 20% gray card to balance for grays coming through from the camera. Many whites shift toward Gray which can be either warm or cool gray. Warm will show some reddish in the white hue and cool will show some blue. Add to the “cool gray” scenario any flourescent lights and that will throw your photo even more toward the blue side. Daylight from windows outside will shift your photos toward the red spectrum. No flourescent, overheads, LED [which flicker by the way only you can’t see it] will distort any true color.
to test this… shoot a plain white piece of paper, then print out your solid white square and then hold it up to your refrigerator white appliance and look at the difference. Hold your phone photo up to the refrig and see the difference.
#8 do test shots on every setting until you can shoot and maintain a good, clean white
#9 make sure you do the color test at enchroma and see how you eyes and brain are seeing and interpreting color.
#10 Go to this link and check for your Ike bowls. https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=ikea+365+bowls . Tell me which ones are white or [variations of white], is it lighting, cameras, monitors, human eyes, males or females looking at them??? Look at the other colors and the dark lighting. How many have their white balance set correctly or evevn know what white balance is.You wont be able to see the prices without a subscription but you can read the titles and definitions. If you want some prices, post back here and ask for any of us who has a subscription to Worthpoint to give you the prices.
By the way as a tie in to last weeks comments on studio lighting. We use the Cowboy studio lighting. We have multiple tri-pods with two and four bulb heads for a total of 12 110 watt [equal to 500 wats] for a total of over 1500 watts of light. We use 4 bulbs to light up the the background behind our object [not on the object itself]. Then we sit the object about 6 to 10 inches in front of that and then we hit the object from the front, sides and top with the remaining tri-pods at a 45 degree angle. try to light up enough so you don’t cast any shadows at all. If so bring the lights closer.
Lastly we have a MSWord document among our many SOP about color and we cut and paste in a reply to any customer who brings up color. Lastly we do not accept any returns for color. Do you think any buyer has ever tested their color vision? They may see pink as white, gray as white, tan as white, light brown and light green as white. A beige with light brown in it, the male will see it more as an off white or light gray.
BTW, all of these facts are certifiable with some research. We learned all this is art school both undergraduate and graduate.
Good luck and have fun experimenting…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
02/17/2019 at 4:26 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #57134We are the same as T-Satt. Used EAT {easy auction tracker] for two years. If you are familiar with spread sheets and know how to write formulas, there are areas that you can add your own columns to customize it also.
One thing that I suggest before you start doing any type of inventory management is that you develop a unique inventory control numbering system. Code it in some way that each number is unique and attach that number to the item by way of a tag or label of some sort. Then it will help you with using EAT and also in the future if you go to a more robust system such as WonderLister or SixBit.
EAT will not track any type of cross listing and if you do cross list it won’t track it automatically but you can do manual entries by entering items in your inventory tab, date purchased, where bought and sold price.
They also have some video tutorials but not many nor too in depth. I believe, and is my guess from asking questions and getting replies that this is a one man show, who developed an elaborate spread sheet and loaded it with Macros and got Ebay to approve him. Questions take a long time to be answered because I think this guy also works another job. But don’t let that sway you, it is more a guess on my part.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
02/14/2019 at 6:38 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56994Seen the movie many times, never figured out which poisonous cup was the “real poison” until he keeled over. π But honestly, you got me on this one. I didnt remember that line.
But yep.. I bite off more than I could chew and now will just fall back into a slower online selling mode and make the eating, sleeping changes, then exercise when doc says it’s ok and move forward from there.
another one .. “Here’s looking at you kid!”
mike at MDCGFA
02/14/2019 at 3:46 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56988OK Mama Jay! LOL You, my wife, my daughter, and our assistants Christie and Lisa all are saying the same thing. Daughter Kim is already sending me emails of heart healthy, low sodium, low carb diets.
I have to get on an eat six times a day in small portions schedule. Maybe thinking about a mail order plan like Balance by Bistro MD. Seems better than nutrisystem and less costly.
Plus doc says I have to sleep 8 hours per day. No more working until 9 and 10 pm and getting up at three to pack and ship, then try to get to job sites by 7:30 which were 45 minutes away. Doc even said she wasn’t crazy about me driving until the wide sugar level swings and bouncing betty blood pressure levels stabilize. All doable she says, even to a point where she would stop all medications but only if I drop 25 pounds as fast as I safely can, get on the scheduled eating plan and start walking 2 miles min. per day AFTER she clears me next month. But no exercise or stress for now. She said she wants me to go to my “Happy Place” for a month. I said that would be my art studio, my online businesses {ebay, Etsy, Shopify], changing over to SixBit and of course back to doing some Scavengerlife Posting. She just had a deer in the headlights look on her face and said that she said “REST”. I said that is rest!! LOL
Then we went out the next day and bought about 50++ items and hauled them home.
mike at mdcgfa
02/14/2019 at 3:30 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56986Same as ours, but we also have to do a state return in Georgia.
so we end up with our S-Corp filing, our personal joint and the GA. and he electronic files all 3 for $975mike at mdcgfa
02/14/2019 at 3:05 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56981You are correct.. Topo!
Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together! π
Bad news from my doc. on Monday. Due to some very high sugar levels and blood pressure she told me I need to pull out of the house building projects and let someone else take over. I have a whole regime I have to start doing and she concluded running 5 businesses which includes the art studio PLUS the houses was too much especially since I was doing some of the physical work. So just rest, diet and another Dr. visit in 30 days and if weight lose has taken place and blood work and blood pressure is down, then she will OK me but just for the online type of work. Uggh. So had to turn the Supervision work on the houses over to some else. Phooey.. was counting on some good extra FU money from that. Will get paid for work down to date but that may be it. But doctors orders.
Susan and i did hit a good find at a thrift store on Wed. when we went up to the house lots to turn the blue prints over to the new supervisor. Doctor said I could do picking as long as I took it easy and no heavy loads until after my next appt. in 4 weeks.
mike at MDCGFA
02/14/2019 at 2:47 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 398: How To Buy or Not To Buy on eBay #56979Aaahh …T-Satt you are just so “sweeeet”. LOL π
Here is one for your trivia memory. Hint from a TV show..who is the character and what show?
who said: “Aaah.. Eddie kiss me goodnight!”
mike at MDCGFA
I went through the same scenario last year and we even had a fairly good thread here on SL. You can try search for a few keywords.
But try this: Google search Danni Ackerman. Look up some of her YouTube Videos that she broadcast from Las Vegas. She lays the ground work for the “Pro” side of the argument. Based on not the fact that it is all built in but the perception of FREE shipping as Jay mentions but also the problem with the younger crowd, math, and their perception of what it really costs. Her vids are about an hour and has some good information and you can jump ahead to the ones about and where in the vids she and a co-host talk about it. Think there are 2 or 3 out of all of her vids that specifically address the why’s and why it’s good.
Personally, we don’t unless it is under 15 ozs. and again we build it into the price. Zones 1 through 8 also make a difference on how you do it. Tough to build a $27.00 FREE SHIPPING into a $25 item.
Good luck
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
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