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Any of his “What sells on eBay” videos if you’re looking for sourcing ideas.
If you’re not already selling electronics, this is a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zog2ziqjbsc
Buying large amounts of items from warehouses (timestamped to the action): https://youtu.be/k6Ay5KBM3To?t=179
His livestreams can be good sources of info, you just gotta scoot around a bit or play them at 2x speed.
Through Oct 1st to the 18th my sales dropped something like 60%/70%. I chalked it up to a lack of consistent listing in the latter weeks of September, the surprisingly good weather of early October, fall break, etc, etc. Things are OK now.
Trying to figure out why sales are slow just ends up with me wasting a bunch of brain power on something I ultimately can’t control. A true grin and bear it situation.
Look on the bright side – less stuff to ship means more time to list. More listings = more sales (presumably.) Eventually it all works itself out.
Goodwill has a sister store called “Vintage Vogue” where they take higher-end items from the regular stores and price them up. The stores are trendy and often placed in areas where the more, uh, “hipster-y” folks are hanging out at. I suppose I don’t have an issue with them doing this given that they aren’t hitting you over the head with the charity aspect there.
I’ve seen GW do some wacky stuff with the pricing of electronics. To be honest, I wouldn’t have an issue with paying up for something if it was confirmed to be working, but that’s almost never the case. E.g., I once saw a Sony home theater system that had the front completely smashed in stuck with a custom-made “$30” price tag, as if to say I could safely plug the item and expect $30 worth of performance from something that was missing a power button and volume knob. At other times I’ve went to the trouble of testing items priced suspiciously close to eBay solds only to find that very basic functionality (like the tray of a CD drive opening) was foobar. In that case, they’re taking the time to plug the model into eBay but NOT plug it in and test. If that’s what’s really going on, then they think someone like me is rolling into the store, buying electronics, then listing them directly on eBay with zero effort. Strange, given that Goodwill’s original mission wasn’t just to employee the unemployable, but also train them in the kind of common repairs I’m doing with equipment I’m buying from them now.
I can’t say all their stores work like this – most of them are reasonable IMO – but fringe cases like this paint a bad picture overall.
I had this issue as a buyer about 3 or 4 times, and each time the package would get marked as delivered only to show up days later. Eventually I caught the USPS truck driving up to my place for about 2 minutes only to pull away without delivering anything. The tracking then updated to show the package as delivered.
I don’t know how true this is, but apparently this behavior started when Amazon was using USPS as their primary carrier – USPS workers were told to pull over their trucks at 5PM and mark all Amazon packages in the truck as delivered in an effort to keep Amazon happy. I’m not sure that’s the case here, though, but I found it interesting regardless.
Makes me wonder how often this happens to stuff people buy from me and I just don’t hear about it.
Great starting point! 90% of my listings use policies similar to those.
USPS becomes cost-prohibitive after a certain combo of weight/size. I use FedEx for larger items. If you haven’t already, plug some dimensions into eBay’s shipping calculator (make sure you hit “eBay Rates”) and find what works best for you.
Shipping calculator: https://www.ebay.com/shp/Calculator
For smaller, heavier items I use some of the Flat Rate boxes that USPS provides.
I use a heat gun for stickers. It loosens up the adhesive and doesn’t damage the surface underneath unless it’s really sensitive plastic. Mine is made by Paper Studio I believe. You’ll want to get one designed for craft use/”embossing”. A real heat gun will straight-up melt anything it comes within a few feet of.
Interesting. I’ve been tearing through listings recently and haven’t had this happen. Maybe it’s specifically scheduled listings and not drafted ones? I’m curious as to what the Javascript code is – could shed some light on its origin.
I’d be a little suspicious if eBay canceled the order on your behalf. I’m also curious how the buyer wasn’t automatically refunded upon cancellation of the order, although I do remember something like that happening to me a while back when an order got automatically canceled once.
Mistakes do happen, though, and I’d give the buyer the benefit of the doubt if the price was low enough. I think the time eBay canceled an order for me was on a $15 item that I shipped anyway – everything turned out fine.
However. you should follow eBay’s advice – relist, then message the buyer with the link to the new listing. It’s not exactly the smoothest process, but it’s also not going to take more than a few minutes for you and the buyer.
This burnt me today, as I sold a rather in-demand item that would have gone within the 14 days for cheaper than I wanted.
Anyone know a way to just put items on markdown that are 14+ days old?
Ask for photos. No photos? Okay, open a return and say you’ll cover return shipping. 9 times out of 10 they’ll go silent.
Sale price of the item definitely plays a role in how much time I’d spend with this, though. If things are getting hairy, I’d dump the $15 on them right away and move on. This is why I typically avoid pre-owned/used items under $20 – less guess-work for new items.
I occasionally go on streaks of sending 4 to 5 offers at a time for an item that I commonly source from eBay. I’m sure I’ve occasionally ended up sending multiple offers to the same seller if they have more than one of that item listed.
I’m not aware of any scams that come about from situations like this, though. Something to consider is that perhaps this buyer just found a bunch of things they wanted from your store and wants to save a bit on shipping. I’m assuming they’re all different items?
Net/gross/COGS/Avg. sale/etc are calculated in my inventory system automatically and I mainly look at that for what I’m bringing in each week. However, monthly numbers are the most valuable/realistic IMO since my budgeting software (YNAB for personal & spreadsheet for business) both work on monthly figures, so I know exactly where inflow is going to be allotted. I use the “budget to zero/give every dollar a job” method and can’t recommend it enough. That said, I might be critically low one week and way, way up the next. All that matters is that the budget zeros out at the end of the month and that I see numbers trending upwards in some regard to ensure that I’m growing the business and not just cruising.
How does it work on iphone? On Android you just select the photos you want to upload and it’s done.
Last winter was when they rolled back an update to the listing process that they claimed was causing sellers to be charged extra fees. You’re right – it was horrible and had way too much extra work involved, like cropping each picture you uploaded, etc. Their official response was that store owners should just use the desktop version and casual users should stick to the app.
Now that it seems to have updated again I’m going to start using it for drafts and pictures. We’ll see.
