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Man.. Mark you are doing some serious coding and customization on WonderLister. Must be great to have those skills. If I want something i have to ask the guys at WL to create the code and modify my SQL dBase with it. You sure are adding a lot. Hope the code doesn’t get all scrambled and forces something in another area to malfunction.
Are you just doing it through the report writer aspects and using data fields that are already there or are you creating new custom fields for data entry and then adding your own? I created 5 or 6 custom fields myself way back when. I added when bought, where bought, actual scale weight, photo location and date photographed, listed on Etsy and of course I had Shopify but the WL team has already coded that into the main dBase so don’t need my custom field any longer. And of course created 6 or 7 custom views that are crunched down to just show the relivant columns I want for those particular screen views. Other than that I don’t mess with the SQL coding from outside of what WL offers, plus don’t have the timew or skill to do so in the first place.
I have noticed lately that the WL team has been slower than usual to get back to me. I think it is beacuse several bigger projects have taken front seat with the engineer guys there and most of the time is going to those other projects as well as making the changes to keep up with Ebay updates.
What I do currently is just create a year end view, show and or hide the columns I don’t want then highlight that whole view and send to a spreadsheet I have. The Excel SS header has all the formulas to calculate the fields I import. That is about it for a year end. But also I close out my year end in Quicken and pull the P&L from there. MileIQ gives me our mileage and a 2nd tab in that SS tracks all the expenses that constitutes our home office deductions, etc.
Very interesting you can and are doing this customization yourself.
mike at mdc galleries and fine art
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This reply was modified 3 years ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Yeah you are right. Drop shipping is legit. I was thinking more along the lines of how they would want to get access to our descriptions, photos, or would they build a store and then link to our store? They will need to show our store items on their own site I would assume, put their pricing on the items which would have to be higher than ours then “showcase” our inventory somehow.
Then there still is the issue of us selling first on Ebay, we cross list on Shopify and Etsy. So they would run a chance of us being “out of stock” so to speak.
Guess I could respond and ask just how they envision such an arrangement to happen.
Well this is a first. Got this email this morning from someone messaging us through Bonanaza….
“May i know if i could resell your products online and dropship it to the customers? This will be a prepay orders before drop shipping it to the the buyers. And also may i know if you have a dealer price?”
Thanks hope to hear from you soon
Cherry 🙂What the heck?? This is most likely some sort of scam or whatever, but I don’t even know how something like this would even work in the first place.
We don’t sell wholesale or offer anything more than our regular periodic sales or take offers. But what in the world is someone thinking? Would they set up some sort of store then “copy” all of our listings and photos and then try to resell. That would not fly having dups of all of our inventory.
But what this made me think about though, is are there others out there who have copied a legit sellers listings 100%, put them up some where else then is selleing someone else’s inventory and then just buying it as it sells. If the original seller has sold the item, the scamster just refunds his buyer and tells them, Ooops sorry this item is no longer available, or something like that.
There used to be an app called CopyScape I think that for a subscription fee, you could have it scan the whole web and it would find any duplicate, i.e. stolen or copied original text that you had created. I used it a few years ago when I did a few web sites for friends and found a few people were stealing some pages I had created.
So wonder how people like this person who contacted us is doing this type of business model, if it is a business at all?
We are going to completely ignore without any type of response.
The second one is definitely a canvass / fabric stretching pair of pliers. Have several of them to stretcher my own art canvasses, used many to stretch silk screen frames in the “old days”. You can look up new ones in any art supply web sites using canvass stretching pliers as the key words.
Good Luck ..
Thanks DT for the link. I set it to fast scan. It was at the 45 minute mark and had done about 780 of our 1,040 and it crashed and all scan results were gone. But as I monitored it’s progess I was seeing multiple photos attached to each listing, but didn’t watch all of them of course.
Guess I should run it agagin. Maybe do it at day’s end so I am not multi-tasking while it is trying to read all that stuff.
Anyway thanks for the link and have now saved-book marked it into my Ebay Utilities folder.
Appreciate the help..
Mike at MDCGFAHey Jay.. can you quickly find that 3rd party app that scans the stores and reports back the number of photos on our stores? I remember during the last time this happened a SL member posted a link to that app which seemed pretty handy. I should have bookmarked it and saved to my Ebay Utilities folder, but figured I wouldn’t need it again. WRONG!. Hopefully we are OK but all of our 1040 listings are now all GTC.
If it is too much trouble I will see if I can search the forum and find it.
Thanks,
Mike at MDCGFA in Atl.08/15/2018 at 5:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47546Hi EbayMom & Troy: That is what we thought we had set-up also a long time ago, but all of a suddent aht auto refund popped in. We think this got changed somehow during all of the Ebay Updates and us opting in on some of the new changes and requirements.
Sure we opted into “Hassle Free Returns”.. as I have said before, don’t phish us for partial refunds, if you are unhappy for any reason, send it back and we will refund you. Most of the time by calling their bluff it never comes back. But Hassle Free no Questions asked full auto refunds is not something we would do either, but this item showed up.
I went and deleted out the rule that indicated auto returns. All tha is left is an auto return rule to generate a shipping label for the buyer.
The existing rule we had didn’t have all reasons selected, but you mentioned you checked off for any and all reasons, correct? I guess that would cover the doesn’t fit, didn’t like it and it’s not the right color, and all that other stuff. Guess our position is and should be, we don’t care, you are unhappy, just send it back. After we get it and inspect it, we will decide on how much to refund. But this gets us into that Hassle Free Returns, but atleast it will no longer be an automatic refund.
I know Ebay is going to look at this and do a review, but goving a buyer a full refund AND the return shipping is like taking an article back to a local dept. store, asking for a refund for whatever reason and that is fine, but then having the gall to also ask the retail store to pay you for your gas, oil, wear ond tear on your car and tires for the trip to bring the item back for the return. Any big box store will say go jump.
I am good with full product refund and even the one way shipping, part of doing business but then the return shipping also? Think Troy [T-Satt] said they will be looking at that and I heard some people at the Q&A sessions asking about that also.
Ryanne.. used to say she didn’t have all of the reasons for a return checked and would accept. But just the ones that seemed to indicate an error on their part as a seller. wonder if Ryanne has decided to check off accepting a return for all the reasons listed? J&R??
Mike at MDCG in Atl.
08/15/2018 at 12:02 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47515Question about Preference Settings on the Returns.
We utilize the 30 Day Free Returns program. We don’t get many returns. In the past, for the few we do get, we have gotten emails form the buyers and we state to request a refund from their Buyer dashboard. We use the Hassle Free returns program so they get an automatic return label. Ebay even says wait until you receive the item back before you issue the refund.
The other day though we get a notice that Ebay did an automatic refund of $29.61 to a buyer. She had contacted us that day and we sent a reply saying to ask for a return and she would get a label to return a pair of shoes. But seems this time Ebay did an auto refund and no request for a return.
So I checked our shipping preferences, which I think Ebay pretty much ignores now anyway, especially in these Free Returns and Hassle Free Returns programs. But our preferences does say auto REFUND of under $250 but only for the 3 or 4 reasons. This request did not fit any of those reasons.
I have checked Doesn’t work or defective, doesn’t match descrip., wrong item sent, missing parts or arrived dameged.
Just wondering which preferences most of you guys are using and what dollar amount you have selected for an auto return. Guess I should lower that way down so maybe Ebay will ask me before doing it automatically.?
In this case the buyer said she bought the shoes for her old mom and they started to pull away or tear at the top seam where the sides attached to the shoe tongue. These were new in the Box NIB and never worn but could have been a few years old. But could be from poor ability to put them on, or over stretch or whatever. So I aksed for them back and expected an auto return label to be sent, but not an auto refund. I know I will never get them back now, but wondering why auto refund kicked in if her reason was not one of the ones checked unless she calimed defective.
So I am wondering if I should uncheck that as a preference reason for auto refund or maybe just cancel – delte the auto refund all togther but think that kicks us out of the Hassle Free Returns which I think then kills the TRSP status doesn’t it?
Just curious. The amount doesn’t make or break us, just cost of doing business and we get so few anyway.
Mike at MDC Galleries
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This reply was modified 3 years ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Just a shot in the dark but maybe some sort of compression tester. So much weight – pressure applied down on some sort of object for a “Given Set” time period.
At first the top half looked like one of our old darkroom timers but the plunger and the open area at the bottom maybe suggest something is inserted in there and possibly under the plunger. Maybe at one time had various weights or ends that could be put in the stem, then pulled up on the top and set the timer and then a test is conducted before something breaks or gets dented down below in that time frame.
But who knows, it could be an antique, electric gee-gaws.
Mike at MDCG in ATL.
08/13/2018 at 1:28 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47389I looked at the WL forum the other day and saw 8,000 members. I actually wonder how many people have subscribed to all of the 3rd party apps out there and use them exclusively to manage online selling on any of the platforms and what that number is compared to those who use the Ebay form only? HHhhhmmmmm….
08/13/2018 at 1:25 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47386Notice I said a “third of a cup”. But these days it is more like another $4.00 plus that $.50. 🙂
08/13/2018 at 1:23 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47385Cool. GDB used to not do that. Think you even said so way back when, but not positive. In any case, pulling that report once a month is SOP. No complexity there, just palin old business sense to have that P&L. Much better than looking at weekly numbers limited to only the way they show here at SL. But still a fun thing to do.
Cheers to watching your numbers!!!
mike at MDCG
08/13/2018 at 1:04 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47377Quicken does the exact same thing BUT it also produces a business Profit and Loss statement, which at the time I research GDB did not. But that may have changed.
You also compare this year P&L to last years, compare by quarter, week, month, etc., etc and compare by categories, how much spent on used or ne winventory this quarter as compared to the same quarter last year and even the year before that AND print all those comparisons out in chart form. It takes no more time than GDB just as Jay calles it a more robust program. And this is Quicken for Business NOT QuickBooks. Very few people need QuickBooks unless you are a gluten for punishment and do billings or invoices for your goods and services to customers or clients.
mike at MDCG
08/13/2018 at 12:57 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 373: Should Running A Business Be Complicated? #47373Bingo .. Amen brother.
Took me a long time [maybe a month or two] to aclimate to WL.
To answer Jay and Ryanne, we do everything within WonderLister. It does everything Ebay does only better and faster but you have to learn what it does, where everything is and how to navigate it, just like you have to do with the first time you ever list on Ebay.
WL has a full WYSIWYG listing & photo editor attached to the description section as does SB. All HTML tools if you want to use them or not. It can save thousands of drafts and we create folders for the different types of template drafts to be stored in.
Our new helper started today. She spent 3 hours training on WL with the help of our first assistant on Friday and then started today. She has created 15 drafts ready for my final review this morning using our generic vintage item template and she has never done anything like this before.
as far as simple goes. To those who already pocess the knowledge of how to keep thousands of inventory items organized, understand business policies in depth and operations procedures, then running an online business like a business IS SIMPLE. Pulling a real P&L stament and reading and comprehending it is just as fast for me as looking over your Ebay statement. Just SOP for us. Also automating as much as possible so it just happens is of benefit also. Ryane you down load data into Go Daddy don’t you? Well you could do that manually by using a pencil and paper to reconcile, but you don’t, but that is complicated not simple. It is only simple because you have pre-assigned categories to each line item and it is automatic and as you have said in the past, all you have to do is go over a few things at the first of each month. So there you go, no difference.
What is complicated is how Ebay creates so many rules then creates exceptions to the rules, then implements seasonal changes, and issuing so many updates and we as sellers don’t know exactly what all those changes may impact. Doesn’t it make you wonder, that most of the discussion here on the SL forums is about the Ebay procedures instead of basic business procedures. We could go a whole year and never discuss basic business SOP’s but bet we can’t go one week without discussing an issue about Ebay, from Ebay or what to do about Ebay things = Complexity to me.
Ebay is the one that adds complexity to our making money online, not our business practices and procedures.
But that is just the opinion of an old, senior artist turned business man and that and $.50 will get you a third of a cup of coffee.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
It is not for Ebay so much as WonderLister auto sends our listings to our Shopify Store and Shopify Stores are highly driven by organic traffic and google searches and so is some of the Etsy cross listings. we thought we would just be better off doing it the right way from the beginning. That is why we started using long enclusive custom SKU numbers from the get go, along with a BIN Storage retrieval process and naming all our photos and incl, our part of our custom SKU in those photo renames. Even though Ebay changes the photo names on their own site, the fact our photos are named and are stored in the cloud server, the photos when attached and sent to Shopify show in Google. Many times we are looking for an object on google and use the by Images filter most of our inventory shows up there.
Once WL gets the InstaGram and Pinterest interface finished, all of our inventory will be auto posted there as well and they will all have the first 5 digits of our SKU and the short name we renamed them and all 1,012 listings are searchable by Google and all of this will be outside of Ebay and Etsy.
Tips we got from those who were successful in developing their own stores and eventually pulling their stores out of the Ebay arena.
mike
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This reply was modified 3 years ago by
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