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Good score!
Low-end parts that aren’t worth selling can go to http://boardsort.com/
Metal bits (case, etc) go to the scrap yard and you’ll get the going rate for whatever that stuff is.
10/31/2019 at 3:53 pm in reply to: USPS Doing a Study on the Cost Effectiveness of Continuing to Provide Free Boxes #69872I once received a heavy piece of equipment that was entirely packed with Padded Flat Rate mailers. After that, I knew the days of free supplies were limited.
This is on point. Negative though ruts are pervasive on most other reselling forums – just read the comments on your average reselling YT video and you’ll be convinced that eBay is actively trying to force every seller off the platform for some asinine, undocumented reason. Thankfully when the same kind of topics are discussed here, there’s some reasoning behind it or an attempt to prove it via some method. I appreciate that.
As others have said, trying to beat the system is not worth the effort. Sales come and go. I had a $1k weeks followed by a $300 week, but my confidence in the platform remained the same throughout. I trust the process.
Craigslist Hunter – arguably one of the most successful eBay sellers that still falls under the “scavenger” umbrella – said that the move to GTC killed his sales. His strategy beforehand was to start at the minimum BIN time (7 days?) and then work his way up until finally hitting GTC. He said most items sold before hitting GTC.
Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoUwEd0FiJY
His solution – as you discovered – was to manually end listings and relist them. Problem solved.
However, other sellers have taken the same route of massively canceling and relisting items only to see a very minuscule bump in sales. When I did so it had almost zero effect and I haven’t entertained the idea since.
Obviously it’s about what you’re selling and how you’re going about it. I’m still a firm believer in best price + best shipping always winning out, but if you’re selling in cluttered categories with a lot of closely-priced competition, then something as simple as having a “fresh” listing can be huge.
If I want $300 for something, I’ll list for $350-$375 and start working the price down as time goes on. I stop lowering the price once I’m able to send offers, after which I do about 2 rounds of offers (low, then lower) before going back to lowering the price, sending offers again, and so on. When I hit my low threshold (ideal price + $xx), I stop micro-managing it and let it sit, continuing to sending offers for my ideal price. I’ve been doing this with great success for the last few months.
I don’t understand the logic in listing multiple hundreds of dollars over your target price. I know some antique dealers who do that, but that’s all in-person haggling and part of the experience to some degree (as I understand it.)
I see best offer as a way to get 10% off an item, not 50%.
I say “I’m addicted to deals” and leave it at that.
10/22/2019 at 9:27 am in reply to: Ebay / Xerox VeRO-d me and I need some insight and advice? HELP!!! #69418Don’t relist. Flip locally. You’re talking about a $1k loss vs. a lifetime of never being able to see on eBay.
Xpost to Craigslist (or your regional equivalent) and FB Marketplace. OfferUp/LetGo. Be prepared to take a lower deal, but you should be able to move them fast if the right person gets a hold of your listing.
They’re trying to account for the switch from PDT->PST in November, but have it working retroactively on dates beforehand. Also, when I go to select an end time for a sale, I see: 10:30AM PST, 11:00AM PST, 11:30AM PST, then 11:58AM *PDT*.
There’s a laundry list of other date/time inconsistencies on eBay. Baffling.
I refunded a buyer and they complained that I was keeping the sales tax from them. Shouldn’t eBay be doing that automatically? I told them to call support and haven’t heard back.
Great info as always. Thank you!
Unfortunately the buyer already ran off since I refunded them, and I only got a picture of the item and the box out of them. Not great photo quality either – only one side of the box and a bad closeup of the item.
I was glad to see it wasn’t an automated return from eBay where they just print off a label right away. Next time I’ll use your trick of having them send a minimum amount of photos as a condition for the refund. Smart.
The process is simple and he clearly knows what he’s doing, I’m just not sure donations could cover his costs for offering anything other than one-off backups. IMO, effective backups are ones that are always happening or scheduled frequently, so when when eBay suddenly shanks a listing you did two days ago you’ll have the data backed up and ready to go. I toyed with the idea of launching my own service that did this very thing, but couldn’t lock down a price that was fair to the user and made it worthwhile for me to maintain.
Anyone can access a listing’s details via the API if you have the item ID. There may be a few details missing, but most of it’s there.
What’s really funny is that eBay offers up all the data you could possibly want about a listing (and more) via their developer API, but they give users basically no access to it at all. It would be trivial to dump it all out to a file and grab the images, so I don’t see a reason why eBay is cagey with it when just about every other site (Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc) allow you to “take out” your data whenever you want for archival purposes. After the disappearing photo fiasco I expected them to offer such a service.
I have my inventory system syncing the stuff I care about (title, condition, used/new/etc, description, and images) and the rest is there if I wanted to store it. The one quirk is that eBay hides full-res images from users. I had to do some nutty work-around to get the “original” (the one that shows up when you’re hovering over an image) to download, and I’m not 100% sure how eBay feels about people doing that. If you’re willing to dive into it, there’s a Python package for the eBaySDK that it pretty easy to use. Once you set it up it’s as simple as calling GetActiveListings and then iterating through the pages of listings. It’s just JSON structs.
10/04/2019 at 9:37 am in reply to: Interesting Promoted Listing "Trending Rate" Inconsistency #68564This is awesome. I love that eBay has these interesting little features tucked away for power users.
10/03/2019 at 4:26 pm in reply to: Interesting Promoted Listing "Trending Rate" Inconsistency #68556Interesting! You’re talking about eBay’s “file exchange” for editing PL rate, right? I was under the impression that feature had been taken away.
10/03/2019 at 9:20 am in reply to: Interesting Promoted Listing "Trending Rate" Inconsistency #68548It’s easier for me to believe this was just a one-off bug than eBay employing some kind of low-level algorithm that somehow interprets minor quality differences between two identical items only mentioned in text, especially since it was wrong in this case and gave the worse item a higher TR.
I’m in agreement as far as search placement goes. I’m not trying to crack the code on it, only get some understanding of where I need to be putting the rate if I’m competing against a dozen+ listings with 1000+ quantity sold.
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