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[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Herman Cain used to have a saying either at the beginning or end of his radio show, “Those that are going our way, then jump on our wagon, those that ain’t, then get out of the way!”. 🙂

mdc at mdcgfa

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Geoff: I would think that serious resellers would just set up some kind of rotating buying line. Have 3 or 4 people going in every hour and buying a small quantity, then rotating people until a large quantity is purchased.
Seems to me that determined, clever buyers will figure out some type of simple work around to get thei buying done. And seems like a cost to Target to patrol the check out lines.
Hhhmmm..

mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Troy: Good point about the “networking” mentality. The only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. So ask your partner and if they don’t have the skills sets to dig into the question, then reach out to someone else.
Susan just couldn’t throw back detailed answers on the relational database issues, so when I heard you mention something way back on the forum, then Bingo.. A light bulb went off and I told myself and her, that this is a guy I need to talk to, especially with you and I having the same manufacturing backgrounds.
It was the conversation with you that pulled my focus away from WonderLister, especially with their current hold-ups-roadblocks about Etsy and aimed me toward SixBit. Then after I informed you of what WL did for the Shopify interface, you said for me to inquire with SixBit, let them know about some solutions I found by working with WL and dig into those issues. Which 2019 is the time that is going to happen.

But the point is having someone, or this forum or even our helpers to build that sounding board of brains around yourself and it will make things so much easier.

mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Sorry to hear about the situation at the University. What a kick in the pants at Christmas time. Chin up and get focused on the back-up plan. Maybe you will have enough time for the switch to plan b full time-hard core.

good luck mike at MDCGFA

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Steve.. Love the musiv at the end. Fits the dogs just tooling around on the path. Cute.

BTW, the foggy background shot would make an interesting frame to “freeze” and print out and frame up. Nice, soft, landscape shot. Maybe print out a small test shot and see how the rez comes out.

Enjoy the Holidays..

Mike at MDCGFA

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

But Mark.. Here is a tip, if he takes any country record and puts in on a record player and plays it BACKWARDS, he will get his business, wife, money, hound dawg, and truck all BACK! 🙂 LOL

Mike at MDCGFA 🙂

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

OK.. I know you are not expecting this, but I had to run some clean up utilities on both our computers, sort of my year end house cleaning and it was going to take hours, so I went way past the simple, we jumped to a premium store at about 400 ++ items. Can’t remember the sales volume.

But I have tried to show a different way of not only thinking about what level store, but what level do I need to be at, period, in this game of “Online Selling” on Ebay.

So, here goes..

I understand you are asking for opinions of the SL members on the threshold of when to jump from a $25 store level to a $75 store level, but also you may be interested in using this Ebay calculator to take a broader look. Overall, personally, the difference is small when compared to everything else, in perspective. Though, granted $600 is no small amount, when you run our example through the calculator link below, I think you will see my point.

One you can use to find profit, either by putting in one item OR drop in your whole quarter or annual numbers and do a what if using it. May help shed some light on what to expect to live from after fees.

🇺🇸 US eBay Fee Calculator

This calculator is fun if you have your total annual sales, know about what your avg. selling price is, what your avg. price you have paid over the year, then fill in the other couple of fields. You may be surprised at what you are left with. Comes much closer to the figures T-Satt and I throw out at Jay at times.

From the stated bottom line subtract what you pay out [expenses] to run your business such as First your annual store fee at $75 per month premium or use $60 per month for yearly pre-paid. [which saves money and we are going to start doing that this year]. You can change that expense, but that is all your store fee is an expense, we put it into the “Rent” category in our accounting program. But when you finish this example you will see the difference between Basic and Premium is very little in the overall scheme of things. Either $25×12 mo= $300 per year or $75×12 mo. = $900 per. = $600 difference.

Then subtract estimated car expenses, home office expenses such as increased utilities, and then office supplies and you will see that the remaining amount can start to fall into the under 25% of the gross sales figure. We mention this occasionally of SL but it usually starts a string of I can’t believe that replies.

So, here is an example:
* Let’s say you are planning on or hoping to sell $40,000 gross per year,
* now divide that number by what your average sales price is per item, [which u can get from your Ebay stats]. We will use $35 per item = 1,143 items sold in a year
* Now multiply those 1,143 by a guestimated avg. price you charged the cust. for shipping. We will use $9.50 per item or $10,858 charged [now put your number or ours into the second field]
* Next, put a guestimate of what those 1,143 items may have cost you. Our overall avg. purchase price [which we track in our accounting software as well as WonderLister {{soon to be converted to SixBit }}] is approx. $9.00 per item, so insert $10,287
* Next since we are a Top-Rated Seller plus, we get some large shipping discounts, as high as almost 40% at times, but I am going to use 20% overall average, so the $8,686 “charged” shipping only costs us [less 20%] at $8,686
* Ok, now this is where you can play “what if”. Input your store level, click on premium or basic, or toggle back and forth, do the Same for Top Rated Seller status, and then just leave International sales as a no for this experiment.
* The final light at the end of the tunnel. With my example numbers above, $40,000 in sales, [avg. sales price per item at $35 ea. gives you 1,143 items sold], avg. cost to purchase an item at $9 ea., next the avg. shipping cost charged to the cust. at $9.50 ea., avg., avg. cost to ship we paid [less 20%] is $7.60

Then toggle and “play what if” with which store level you want and or top-rated seller and you will see what I think is an interesting final number.

My example plugged in shows that out of $40,000 in annual sales, the profit is showing at $25,259 or approx. 63% left over for a seller meaning Ebay, PayPal, shipping, fees, everything is close to 37% of what you sell.

NOW, subtract all the soft costs many of us have mentioned over the years here on SL as well as any taxes you will have to pay on it, and you may find 50% or more of what you have sold {GROSS} has been eroded by all the factors [that some us do actually track] as a cost of doing business online. The bantered about 16% to 17% figures of what Ebay costs are fine except they do not encompass the whole story.

So, now you will see that $40k in sales may yield, after all is said and done maybe $20,000 to $25,000. But sticking with what is showing, the $25,259.00 dollars, clicking between the Basic, Premium, even Anchor stores doesn’t move the number, what does move the number is by being a top-Rated Seller, it moves the final amount by $366

NOW… go back and play the “what If” game. Input higher or lower annual sales, higher or lower avg. selling unit costs, any number you want, the bottom line numbers will still show what I think to be a much higher “COST OF DOING BUSINESS” than most people think or consider. And never over estimate the amount of “soft” [hidden costs]. They are there, believe me, electricity, water, heat, A/C, square, office supplies, magic markers, paper towels, silver polish, shoe polish, storage bags for shirts, dry cleaning costs, lint roller brushes, paper clips, rubber bands, staples for your stapler, ball point pens, windex, ink, toner, printer paper, tape, footage portion of your mortgage, paying yourself, and of course the Non-liquid-direct out of pocket cost of having 1k to 8k of hard goods sitting in bins on your selfves [using even a $5 per item avg COG] that is $5,000 to $40,000 tied up in inventory.

Think about where that money came from??? And to find even $5,000 of SPARE CASH using a real accounting program and the calculator numbers that means I have to sell $15k to $20 to generate that “reserve capital” to plow back into inventory in the first place. Jay says, to slowly grow your business, well that is a forced given nless you take out a $5k business loan to invest into inventory or use OPM [other peoples money]. If not think about this, Jay and Ryane have taken over 15 years to build up an 8,000 plus item inventory. That came out of “reserve profits”. Sales over and above what the cost was to replace what they sold, and live off of some of it also. Let’s say and average cost of $3 per item, then they are sitting on $24 in inventory that took a decade and a half to build. That is only $1,600 per year hard cash pulled out of reserves. Not much when looked at annually. That’s only approx.. $133 per month, but steadily invested [plowed back] into inventory that was over and above what was sold. No small feat indeed.

So, For those planning on quitting your job, look hard at being able to sell $40,000 of merchandise a year and then living from only $15k to $25k that will be left over and having $5k to $10k sitting in plastic bins. All of the YouTube vides do not paint the whole story by a long shot. But they will be willing to sell you a .Pdf file of how they do it. I even wonder if most of those YouTubers even know what their real bottom line, actually is??? HHhhmmm.

Again, just think it all over deeply. It is not as rosey of a picture as some make it seem, and that it doesn’t even have to be an extremely detailed look at it either.

No arguments wanting to start here, just saying, this is how some of us here that participate on SL look at the overall picture, barring all the little spread sheet nuances we all use and differ in how we use those numbers.

There is a cost to selling online, there is a cost to Ebay and the difference between a basic store, premium store or anchor store only means something in the smaller, month to month scheme of things not so much on the grand scheme level.

There used to be a calculator used to answer your question directly, without providing an opinion, just a dollars, cents and fee look at when the calculator says to “jump to the next level” store, but I haven’t seen that in a long while and think that this new calculator is its replacement.

And as Sonia mentions above, you will get another few dollars per month in supplies from Ebay, then divide that by 3 months to get a monthly value in dollars to aide your contemplation.

So, that’s my monthly wall of text and not a Dennis Miller rant. Just an opportunity to play “What If” with friends. [Joshua says to Dr. Falcon], “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of Chess” 

Have fun playing what if and contemplating if full time selling and at what level store is needed and if this way of life is the way to make a living.

Ok. I expect the coming bombardment but be forewarned I have very little time for rebuttal since we are now involved with building 4 spec houses and permits being pulled by Friday.

Have a great Holiday everybody and may the coming year be one of great sales, growth, progress and always remember to always be applying KAIZEN as you go forward.

Kindest Regards and Happy Holidays to All from
The management team, Michael, Susan, Lisa and Christie at
MDC Concepts, Inc.
MDC Galleries and Fine Art
SmartParts Small Equipment Parts divs.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Thanks Temudgin: That surfices for me. Not worth it at all. We have too much vintage stuff to sell than trying to make a few extra bucks from cleaning out my admin. office supply cabinet.

It was seeing Ryanne list some of her software that got me thinking. But why even chance it, and we are way too busy to have to stop and deal with any issues. We need to focus with any spare time we have making the switch on our listing software and starting to build 4 spec houses than to have to deal with a VERO, copyright, non-authorized re-seller and everything else you mention.

Into the trash those 4 bags will go.

Thanks
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Well this is a timely post and replies. I had asked a couple months ago about 4 zip lock nags of old software I had laying around. All of it was mine, has been used and I have most of the manuals for it.

I got several replies here on SL that covered several concerns. So not really knowing I have just let them lay.

Each bag has about 6 to 10 programs in it. Each bag is a separate category of programs, i.e. one is all photo editing apps, one is all utilities, one is drawing, cad or art-publishing and the last one is all old version of MS Windows and office. We photographed each bag-lot separately and were going to make 4 separate listings by category type.

Many of the discs and manuals have the old used master-key written in magic marker on them. They were photographed with a bunch of keys showing.

My questions were, should we even list these, if recommended that we do what would be the correct verbiage or description to call them other than used, as is so we don’t get into trouble with the buyer thinking these may all be working, seeing the keys were used already. Many go back to before the year 2000.

So any thoughts on listing these, just skipping because of potential pitfalls and bounce back issues? We specialize mostly in home decor and art prints and objects so this is out of our wheel house. If there were potential issues, I would rather just dump them rather than get a neg. ding. I wouldn’t donate because the key is written all over the place. One of my old habits so I didn’t forget them or misplace them.

What the thoughts here?

thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Amen to your 2nd paragraph. Selling quicker – earlier then put the money in the bank. Even a lowly savings account is now starting to pay some interest. Death piles dont draw any interest at all.

Tom Cruise as Jerry McGuire… “Show me the Money!”

mike at mdc galleries and fine art

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hay Jay:
In response to: “Usually people start spending more time selling on other platforms and their eBay sales go down. Same money just coming from different places. But maybe these crossposting shortcuts you guys are exploring will change that.”

These shortcuts we have been using is just because WonderLister didn’t build the Etsy interface as of yet, but SixBit has. That is why we are dropping WL and migrating over to SixBit.

Now here is what WonderLister was working on but has yet to have completed it and Sixbit has done a lot of this, but still a work in progress. Since we have not migrated to SixBit yet, then this is the way I am understanding most parts of it as well as the experience we have had using WL to cross post on Ebay and Shopify. And for the most part Troy mentions the SixBit team is listening, learning to some degree themselves and making changes as they update. Troy says they may be interested in what tid bits I may be able to share with them to help SixBit improve. We have 3 times as many items as Troy and Veronica have already in our Etsy store, so SixBit will have a broader base to gather information for improvement on. Troy mentioned that if I am willing to share information with SixBit just like I did with WL that they may have an open ear, if it will help with making improvements.

Within the SB software we will build listing templates just like we have within WL and Troy has done in SB. The all you do is fill in the SB listing form. One form, in one place. Then you will click a tab that says submit to Ebay and click a second tab that says submit to Etsy [we do this now for Ebay and Shopify].

From there, all synching of prices, discounts, sales, sold items, the deletion[removal] from both platforms will be done by the software.

With regards to tags, we use tags now, even in WL on our generic template. That is just good SEO for any store, any where. tags are food for Mother Google. Tags are nothing more than one or two words that describe your item, objcet. Our one template we use for both stores is in the WL template we fill out. If they have no use on one platform but do on the other, then the software will place it where it goes and just ignore the platform that does not have a “mapped” line for it.

Let me say it another way. You use InkFrog now. You fill out one form I suppose and then click to submit to Ebay. Well the only difference would be what if InkFrog had two morw click buttons, one that said submit to Shopify and one that said submit to Etsy. Click those 2 buttons in less than 2 seconds and InkFrog sends that “One” template-form you use to list your item to all 3 platforms simultaniously. From then on InkFrog handles all synching, adds and deletes items as sold, if you edit a description it makes the changes on all 3 platforms.

So, we will use SixBit going forward as a one place to add, edit, create promotons, discounts, anything you may want to do and send it to all platforms, or just to one. Want to add a 15% discount to our whole Ebay store, we can do that now, but not have it on the Shopify store, Yep. Attach photos in one place and those will be sent to all 3 stores with the one uploading.

The manual part is if there a few lines here and there that are not on the generic listing orm then a quick review and fill does the trick.

So bottom line, we hope to start creating every listing in SixBit and almost everything required by the 3 platforms gets sent simultaneously to all 3 and they go live.

Now just hoping this all pans out after we get finished customizing the main form in SixBit.

mike at MDCGFA

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

That will probably be hard to get a grip on early in the year because of the movement of so many new items due to the use of SixBit. Going from 346 Etsy Items to over 1,000 in a matter of months will most likely skew those numbers. Sure our Sales will grow, hopefully, but will it be to just the sheer increase in the volume of items listed. Then we are still looking to add another 1,000 of newly purchased inventory. It may take a year or more for the inventory to sort of plateau out, get on more of a maintenance level and then see what happens. But we will try to watch it. With building 4 houses all at the same time the first 4 to 6 months of Ebay or Etsy will be at the mercy of my time availability. we are just now at the permitting stage of the first two. Which one is under contract already and we have another strong interest but no offer yet on the second one. That is a good sign to get two spec homes sold before a shovel has touched the ground.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Funny you ention the $1 per item. That was a rough metric I used 3 or 4 years ago, when I spread sheeted every SL member who posted weekly numbers. I roughed guessed that if I could have a store with a given number of items and averaged $1 per unit in total sales per month regardless of total units sold I would be fine with a 2,000 item store.

Funny thing is that metric also worked out on most of the regular SL posters who listed their numbers.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

I got you. That will require elbows, “T” connectors or multi corner connectors. Yep that will run the cost up and if 2″ dia. PVS then all those verticals will start to add up. 12 – 2″ dia. spacers will take up 24″ in lost space.

10-4 copy that the custom configuration can be utilized.

mdc at mdcgfa

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Tell you who was doing well on Etsy and sort of was the inspriration to opening our eyes there is a member whom we haven’t heard from for a good while here on SL and that is “Omfug”. If she still haunts the SL forum, maybe she would chime in.

I am unsure if she would want her store named so I will leave that to her if she chimes in, but currently she shows 620 current items lsited,, 419 5 star feedbacks, 639 Favorites for her store, she used to say she does better on Etsy than on Ebay, both total sales and the costs are lower on Etsy so she was making more than on Ebay.
She has been on Etsy since May of 2014 = approx. 54 months. She lists about the same items as we do, vintage, older home decor, jewelery, photographs and ephemera,vintage collectables and some vintage clothing. Total sales since 2014 is 1,390 items = approx. 25 per month and that would also include the slower start up period and lower number of items to start in the beginning.
She has about the same bread and butter mid price ranges as J&R and us with the $20 to $40 and with some on up the scale.
So making a very broad assumption-guesstimate take $30 as an average x 1,390 in solds = $41,700 divided by 54 months gives an average of approx. $772 per month.. BUT THIS IS A SWAG! [scientific wild ass guess]. But after ghosting for a while and hearing her SL posts we decided to give Etsy the plunge.

We have identified 8 other SL members who have Etsy stores and they all seem to vary but they are still present, listing and selling on Etsy.

Hopes this helps.

Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta

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