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Hey Bro.. Used Auction Tracker for a couple of years. Good as a starting point. Has many Macros running that will automate everything. It is best to start at the first of the year because it only will pull in 3 months going backwards [as per Ebay]. But get it now and you will have May up until now.
Usually they run a Sale later in 4th quarter as they get it ready for the new year.
But, after I discovered WonderLister I moved away from it and came to rely on WL 100%. Plus with SixbIt and WL getting all set on the Auto Cross posting all within one software / dashboard that would leave Auction Tracker out in the cold. But it is a very good starting point especially since all you have to do is, open it up and clcik on update.
BUT.. you do have to use the inventory Tab to log all new acquisitions into the spreadsheet, what you paid for the item [item by item] and of course have started to use a custom SKU number inventory control number system within your business to help the spreadsheet do it’s thing.
Something for those thinking of starting to use a SKU number system. It is strongly recommended that a custom sku number have more than just a storage location to it. Also try to keep the SKU to the same length of characters. Try using a consecutive numbering no. first, then the buy date, amount paid in the middle and the storage location at the end and something like that.
This will help you on all platforms going forward, become a SOP, and also tell you all that data when you are away from your office the information you need to accept or decline offers, tell office helpers where thnigs are or they can see for themselves and leave you free to “buy stuff” 🙂
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
I see only one listing on worthpoint, so check this link.
https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?query=libbey+juice+glasses+Governor+Clinton+Tumbler
mike at MDC Galleries
And the process done in the dark room to get the vignetting [soft-blorred edges] or graduated toneing is called “dodging”. It is done while the negative is in the enlager and being projected onto the photographic paper. You can use your hand to create a tunnel like opening or use a piece of stiff paper [which I used] with a hole torn out in the center. Then as the image is projected downwards, you move the hole into place so the image is shining “thorugh” the hole and you then keep moving slightly around in a circle. The torn edges and movement creates the soft fuzzy edges.
Sharp, hard crisp edges can be created by cutting a square or precise oval in the dodging paper and not moving it. The projected light then creates a hard edge.
Ansel Adams did a whole lot of dodging on his famous landscapes and especially the National Park series. He would “burn in areas” [also termed burning as well as dodging, many sections on a photograph to brings out the rich dark grays and blacks in the skies. he would leave the photo paper in the easel while he did a series of short exposures to the photo print. dodging and burning as he went. Of course you can see the result until you develope the print in the developer tray solution.
Another trick is after several lighter exposures, then while the print is wet and in the tray you can “Pull” the print out early [thus under developing] or “push” the print by leaving in the developing solution longer having it turn darker [also called cooking the print at least in our art school].
Here is one quick blurb .. and of course just Google Ansel Adams in the Darkroom and you will get a ton of info on how much he did in the darkroom. it is a very interesting research topic and many have gorgeous photos of his work using these techniques.
Ansel Adams is well known for spending a whole day in the darkroom, just to produce one print. He pioneered the zone system, which we all loosely know today as burning and dodging. He would paint onto the enlarger the areas of the photo he thought should be darker or lighter than others.
Of course commercial portrait studios started doing this on many of their family and single portraits. It was more expensive because each final shot, thus enlarged projection had to be hand worked individually instead of batch processed which was quicker and cheaper.
And yes hand colorization was used in many of the commercial family and child portraits, in essence to customize the work and of course drive up the cost.
Hope some of this helps …
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Home Depot has a lot of shipping supplies and so does staples but HD is a good bet for the foam board. Most contractors call it blue board because one brand that is widely used for insulation is blue. It does come in various sizes and also several thicknesses.
as Steven says have them cut it down in the store to a size that will fit in the back seat of your car say 3×4 give or take. Get a sheet of the thick and thinner just to have. It cuts easily at home with a utility knife. On the thicker stuff cut a good deep score line then it will “snap” fairly clean on that score. Hit it over your knee or on the edge of a table if enough room.
Good for also taping together and making smaller insert boxes out of it.
Good luck
mike at mdc galleries.
And the last sentence of the Endica web site in qualifying is yes, 20 lbs or less AND MAKESURE YOU SHIP AT LEAT 50,000 OF THESE PACKAGES A YEAR! That’s 916 items per week. unless that is a typo on their site.
If that is not an error, I think I am about 49, 500 packages a year or about 951 pkgs. per week short! LOL 🙂
mike at MDC Galleries
Christine.. You hit our process right on the nose. we do the same. we research solds on several sources and put the highest prices we find in our Notes section in WL. Then when time comes for me to price, I use the higest price sold, making sure it is close to an apples to apples comparison, such as box, no box, cert. of authen. or not, original decals, etc., etc. Then we mark that up 40%. That leaves enough room for us to run a sale 5 days a week at either 15% or 20% Off and take offers. On offers buyers seem to not even see the original price just the Sale price and usually offer 15% to 25% less than the 15% off price. so that usually ends up us taking about 5% to 10% less than the highest price we had researched.
The sale is the “perception of Value” Jay has called it and others call it the Perma-sale Scenario.
So susan and I have been talking this same subject due to the slow Sales in june – july. We decided not to go adjusting all of our listings downwards, but if we want lower prices, even lower than the high we priced at, we will just run a higher percentage off sale. We have done 20%, 25% and even 305 Off One time. That will accomplish the same thing and having not gone and made a “permanent change”, when things pick back up we can either go back to offering less off, or not take offers as low.
It is really easy to do this because we use wonderLister and we just highlight all, click bulk edit and run a percent discount at whatever we want and then pick an end date for that sale to end. just the same as in Ebay only we can do all of our listings 1.002 at this moment all at one time. If we had 5,000, we can do all at once. ebay makes you break it up into smaller batches.
we too are 2 listings over our 1,000 limit and have inventory we bought 3 and 4 years ago, so time for a good, deep discount Sale on those to clear out and maybe get things rolling again.
I just started a 15% Off Sale today and it ends sunday night at mid-night. We also added make offers on all of our inventory on any item of $10 or more. Up until this morning we didn’t take offers of much under $39.99. Like J and R used to say. but I see others and also J and R now taking offers on low cost items agagin so thought we would too. This along with the discount and we will see what happens over the next week or so.
Maybe you could give this method a try also and see what happens and we can compare notes to see if we moved some inventory out.
Mike at MDC Galleries in atlanta
This caught my eye. Do you think it is necessary or better to just put one color per line or 3 colors on one line .. ie. red white blue That is what I have been doing. Which brings me to the Size – Dimension field 8-1/2″ tall x 3″ wide x 4-1/4″ deep all on one line. Should I approach it as only one dimension per line? That would be a real PITA! LOL 🙂 Besides we would run out of field allotment [25].
While we are on the subject what about the fractions and ” [inch] sysmbols in the IS area. should it be 8.5 tall x 3.0 wide x 4.25 deep ?? without the ” inch mark? I know to keep that out of the title but what about IS area?
Oh thanks for that heads up on editing the Ebay provided ones. Yep, I have been just editing theres if it wasn’t the color [or any other filed I want] that I wanted to say. using your example, I do have a custom color field but if Ebay’s color field popped up as red, I would have edited to Burgundy. guess I need to stop that and then just drop Burgundy into my own custom field and let Ebay’s pre-filled filed stay as it pops up.
And for those who will ask, yes, that will mean there will be TWO color fields in the item spcifics and same for Material and or sizes.
If Ebay’s pop up presents M, L, Xl, XXl, so forth… and I want to say Ladies medium with rolled sleeves, yes that will be in one of our custom size fields.
Troy when I talked with JC a few weeks back, we were discussing this same issue and he was surprised that WL would allow the plhabetical rearrangement and that we could add or remove. I walked through the IS with him and it can be done, but in SB it is a walk around your fist to get back to your thumb. 🙂
There are just some things that WL can do and some things SB can do and not do and vice versa. Just how each company coded and built there SQL dBases.
Mike at MDC Galleries
Yes.. sort of. You can’t rearrange the few that Ebay provides but with all of the added custom IS they will be saved alphabetically, providing as T-Satt says, there is something in the blank field so that it stays. The way we get all of our fields to stay is we just put an Asterisk[*] in each field and that is enough to qualify as “copy” and it stays. When we first create or add several to a template they will be at the bottom, but with the asterisk in the field and you save the whole template and then reopen it in the future, they will all be reordered alphabetically. If you notice the last IS field we use is our own SKU number.. well it is named z-mdc galleries SKU:. That way it is always at the bottom.
Same thing T-Satt is doing by using color 1 color 2. The reaswon I like just a small plain asterisk is if we don’t have anything to put into that particular field on that particular listing I just leave it and it still shows up in the listing only it has a small stersik in the field and it looks like it is just a “naturally” left blank field. Saves some time from having to either delete the copy or click the minus – remove button [in WL].
They are, it was an oversight and i will go and edit that. thanks for telling me.
those characters act as a road block for goggle spiders and bots and probably for cassini.
Mike Collins at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Good morning:
Are you guys taking a good amount of time to make custom fields? No they are pre-made [one time investment when we create our Master Template for WonderLister]. and saved in our “Unique-Vintage” template in WonderLister. We have about 20 Master Templates of items we buy a lot of. i.e. sets of glasses, tea sets, dinnerware, stamps, art prints, etc. etc. . First in the blank template we selected the Ebay category and the Ebay ones then all showed up below our shipping information in WL. Then I created custom fields that I wanted to use for that item category and saved it. That then made a longer IS list. When I saved it, I used a short title Glass sets, or Ltd. ed. art prints. Once saved then those IS will be there from now on. From this MASTER Template if we buy one of those items, I click duplicate and that Master creates a listng form that we fill out for that listing. The MASTER stays untouched and saved in the MASTER TEMPLATE folder. I then just complete the balance of that duplicated form. T-Satt does the same thing in SixBit.
Another example is I stated last week that we went to a big auction and bought 326 items. Well there were 11 tea sets [pot, cups, saucers, creamer, sugar, to those sets]. So those “Forms-Templates will have fields that will have more size fields because of the varying sizes of the pieces and the liquid capacity of those items. I have had many email requests, how many ounces does the teapot hold, or how many ozs, do the cups hold,so I just built that info. into the tea set template.
I will just click on our Tea Sets MASTER, click “dup. 11” template and 11 will be created from that Master and all 11 will appear in a new screen all by them selves. I will click on them one at a time and just complete each template as I go. I will click “SAVE” as I complete each of them. when done all 11 will be in our “Ready to Submit” folder. Then I will highlight all of them, right click to Submit, click Ebay, Shopify and Etsy and all 11 will be submitted to all 3 platforms then auto move themselves into our Active folders. Those active on Ebay, those active on Shopify and those active on Etsy. [NOTE! WL is still in last stages of beta with Shopify and mid strides with the Etsy interface so a new user can’t do this yet, but I can because I am doing some testing], but that is the way it is going to work by mid-fall.
–How long does it take to do it the way you do it?Well of course that varies, by the items. On the US Commenrorative Stamps we listed on ebay and Etsy. The US MInt Stamp template had everything in it except, the scott Catelog numbers, the year and the price. The weights, size, shipping methods and all company policies were the same. Those only took about 30 to 60 seconds.
Of course the 14 pc. tea sets will take a little longer 2-3 minutes because I will have to get the dim. on 1 cup, 1 saucer, the pot and also the capacitiy. We keep a gallon jug of water and a funnel here in the office. susan just pours the water from the jug into the pot and one cup, then pours it back into a measuring cup and viola’ we have the capacity. Then dump the measuring cup back into the jug for use another day. we do the same for odd size glasses or pitchers.
If I have a lot of tough ones, and depending on how early I get up, I may be as low as15 +/- a day. If easy ones, I can do 4,5 to 7,8 an hour. And of course we do as you guys do, we lump like kinds of items together and process those in groups. So like the tea sets we will be doing a bunch of those togther. 10 pcs to 15 pcs per set is a lot of pieces to put on the hpto table, then remove, then get them slightly padded and into the plastic bins we keep here in the office. we place and assign bins as we go. Then when we get 4 to 8 bins full, we just carry those and place into their place on the storage shelves. This process allows us to pre-place them into the bins they will stay in and get that bin number into WL as we list.
–Do you just choose info from the pre-filled drop down, or does it make sense to write in your own info?
For the types of items we list, as i mentioned, we select the Ebay category first, and I find that Ebay has very little to offer. We have a lot of old Asian items made in Japan, or Limoges china, Lenox china, Nippon, Murano, Roseville, Hull, Fostoria and Indiana glass. ebay doesn’t have much on those. especially with certain unique decorating processes. I use Moriage on the asian pices when that technique is used, or Cloisonne”, enameled, and Ebay is just not gearing the IS for that. So, I have a custom technique field, or a “features” field. I can place the text “embossed, 3-D relief” pattern in there.
Now you may say who searches for that, well all of the collectors of glass with Moriage decoration on them, or Cloisonne’ pcs, Asian Flying Cranes is popular.
Now the last caveate’. I use all of these fields with specific wording for Google to find all of these listings and in turn pinterest picks up on our items. The ultimate goal is to build the Shopify store to the point whereby all traffic to the Shopify store will be driven to that platform byway of only goggle searches and at some pojnt all those sales made on our own web site and store will be Ebay fee free. we will have a much smaller overhead cost. I know of several artist who got there start on Ebay and or Etsy but closed there stores on those and now only sell through there own web site store such as Shopify, Volusion, etc. So I take the extra time to create as many keywords, even redundant ones, so Google will crawl and pick them up so as the shopify store is built out we can “SYPHON” off traffic from Ebay for increased profits. It is more of an SEO approach. But that is a longer range goal but you have to build the ground work from the very beginning.
And you may ask does it work. Yep. I have hidden crazy, nonsensical words into some test fields that don’t exist in the english language and, yep, Google found them, presented them in the results, at the top of the page of course, then when clicked, it takes you straight to our Ebay store. So now using that process, the plan is to have some of thos keywords found, presented by google and the traffic [searchers] taken to our shopify store. but all of this is just in the very start up phases.
If you wish to see how this works a little bit, have you ever wondered why I also sign at the end of my Scavengerlife Posts, Mike at MDC Galleries at Fine Art in atlanta, well Google is finding that everytime I do it. And guess what, if you type that phrase into google it will show some of our ebay items on their results page and guess what, it also shows scavengerlife as a link, so may even be driving some traffic back to you.
Try these and see:
#1 example… https://www.google.com/search?q=Mike+at+MDC+Galleries+and+Fine+Art+in+Atlanta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
#2 example [love this version because I show as the top 4 and Scavngerlife is the 5th link] ..
https://www.google.com/search?q=MDC+Galleries+and+Fine+Art+in+Atlanta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
#3 example … https://www.google.com/search?q=MDC+Galleries+and+Fine+Art&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
#4 example … https://www.google.com/search?q=MDC+Galleries&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1So after looking at all of these variations of the same words in different order and see the results, then think about the use of your keywords in varying order [without too much or you get caught for spamming] and how then Google may see those and who may search on google, Chrome, firefox, Opera, explorer, etc., etc.
You have said you don’t get much traffic from outside ebay, well have you SEO your site to try to go and grab that traffic in the first place. all the Ebay open comments on how to write titles comes from an SEO awareness approach.
So, A lot of IS are for me, especially considering a goal of ours is to try to start to grab the attention of searches and push them to our own store not Ebay’s. But don’t get me wrong, and you have said it too, ebay is a huge platform with millions of customers being brought to the table, so nothing to take lightly or overlook. We may never leave Ebay, we’ll see.
Google recognizes front links and also back load links as long as they are clean and not purchased links. That was what Ebay was doing that got them into trouble with google.
Hope i got your questions covered correctly and added maybe some more food for thought.
Mike Collins at MDC Galleries and fine art in Atlanta <<<< Of Course
Sure. Here is a link to a newly listed bowl that has a lot of IS and a fairly good description area.
And if you sort items in our store by “Newly” listed, you can check out several other variations of the IS area and less or more content in the description.
One thing to remember as I discussed with T-Satt that we are using SEO and some redundant keywords for Google to pick up as they crawl, not for just Ebay’s Cassini. Our goal is to start to build traffic for our other two platforms one of which would be all Google organic traffic. Our Etsy store gets as much traffic from Google as it does from within Etsy’s search. So that is why we put in so much.
Hope this helps…
Mike at MDC Galleries
