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Thanks. I don’t mind sharing my process with others. Looking to pick up some pro tips as well.
I would love to share the process, I will take the time to make a detailed post sometime soon. I am here to learn as well. Something is holding me back, be it SEO, ebay’s algorithm, marketing, etc. I’ve actually had a slight decrease in sales during the past 18 months despite a massive increase in posted listings. It wasn’t a gradual decline either, it was a flat drop that has not recovered.
I have no idea. Possibly because I am supplying information that only somebody with access to my ebay account might have? It might be the e-mail address too, I recall one time I tried to contact anchor support via the e-mail address associated with my primary ANCHOR store about an issue in my secondary non-anchor store and they directed me to call the problem in.
I also recently had a number of mysterious late shipments appear in my metrics. I offer 2 working day shipping, and these were shipped within my parameters, but obviously delivered late by the post office. I just sent them a list of the item numbers via e-mail and they took care of it right away. I have pretty much given up on calling ebay anchor support in favor of e-mailing them at rswebhelp@ebay.com and cc’ing powersellersinfo@ebay.com and facebook@ebay.com. I would usually get my issues taken care by calling them, but e-mailing them seems to be a lot more efficient.
So, gewgaws. I actually have never heard anybody here in Pennsylvania use that in a sentence. I came across it for the second time when my then-3-year-old-or-so daughter asked me what a “thingamabob” was. It is mentioned in a Little Mermaid song that she was obsessed with. So I went into a thesaurus rabbit-hole and came up with some good ones for her, like gewgaw and gimcrack. This kid, if she doesn’t become a surgeon, is definitely inheriting my business.
The first time I heard the word was a while back. My wife used to own an art gallery, and one of the featured artists (neat-o assemblage) at the time had a personal trunk sale of his unused pieces and parts in her gallery one weekend. He advertised the event using that word.
Even farther, usually south though. Any good recommendations in Wheeling? I haven’t been there scavenging in several years. I should consider it though, it is fairly easy to get to.
I list whenever I have a chance, waiting on the school bus, or for kids to get out of after-school activities. I use a time-card app and swipe in and out when I’m on the clock. Figure that is the one fluid part of my system. I use Auctiva to list, for the most part. It has my historical data going back 9 years now, so it makes it so very easy to copy old listings. In some instances I’m simply just changing the photograph and the SKU (how I keep bin and shelf locations straight). When I’m motivated, and the product is the same or similar to something I have sold in the past, I can list up to 40-50 items an hour. So that’s a snap. When I photograph, I try to stay organized by shooting a run of similar type items. When I list, I pick 5-10 of those similar items to list at a time and then move on to the next one. Some people have death piles, I have death folders, of items photographed and inventoried months and months ago that I am lax to list. The whole system seems like an assembly line process, which makes it sound boring. Sometimes it is, but I love finding something new and interesting and doing the research on it (the history major in me).
I put in 50-60 hour weeks, keep a tight schedule. I offer “two business day shipping”. Monday is 8 hours of shipping, with some posting in the evening. Tuesday or Wednesday is an hour to three of shipping, followed by a full day of posting. The other day is used solely for acquisition, be it spent at The Bins, a day trip into West Virginia for some backwoods thrifting, a trip to an auction, or simply spending sometime in a coffee shop buying undervalued things on ebay. Thursday is about 5 hours of shipping followed by some photography and posting. Friday is a full day of photography followed by some posting. Saturday and Sunday are devoted to doing fun things with the family, with some occasional late night posting. Also, “fun time with the family” totally sometimes includes ducking into a thrift store somewhere for a quick look around. My 5 and 7 year old daughters LOVE “the goodwill” (their name for any thrift store).
I sometimes question myself “why wasn’t I doing this all through my 20’s and early 30’s?”, but then I quickly remember that I wasn’t disciplined or organized enough to maintain this type of schedule.
Yeah, handmade fake poop. It started as a joke (how else!), with me a few friends setting up on the sidewalk of Carson St on St Patrick’s Day, thinking it would be a fun prank. After a while I posted them on ebay. I sold thousands of them…but it was a terribly inefficient business. There is a limit to what you can charge for fake poop.
Yeah, I wish it wasn’t 15,000 items. I list 200-300 items each week consistently, working by myself. In the summer when I don’t have to spend 2 hours of each day getting kids on and off buses and helping with homework I can sometimes knock out 400 a week. 90%+ of my business is on ebay. I have one main store that I keep just under 10,000 items in to stay under the anchor store limit. I have a couple of other ebay stores with dedicated niches. I buy in bulk, on ebay, at live auctions, and at “pay-by-the-pound” thrift stores. I mainly focus on vintage action figures, especially Star Wars from the 70’s and 80’s. I also love selling vintage items that are small or easily stored. I figure if they are going to sit for a while at least don’t take up too much space. Pens, pins, patches, parts, gewgaws and curiosities. Makes shipping easy too. I have listings in hundreds of categories. Strangely though, I have had a slight decrease in sales in my anchor store since September 2016 when I only had about 5,000 items in that store. I can pretty much count on selling exactly 30 items a day, every day now. Take home each month averaged $7K this past year.
