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Thanks for the tip, Onthemark. That is actually something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now. For many years prior to doing this kind of selling, I did regularly by professional music equipment on ebay which I would resell for profit, or use for a while then resell for profit, so I definitely know this is something that can be done.
The main thing stopping me was the fact that you then have to wait for the items to be shipped and arrive before you can list/sell them, and when talking about stuff like musical equipment it has to be tested and may need to be sent back. All that can result in money being tied up a long time.
But there’s plenty of other stuff I can look for deals on which wouldn’t have those problems. Great suggestion. I’ll spend some time on that today.
Another insight which may help in understanding call center dynamics: They will give customer service reps training that is adapted from sales training. Ie, the kinds of manipulative techniques used by sales agents to get callers to buy stuff, but it is adapted to customer service in order to emotionally control the caller as much as possible. This is designed so that you can control the caller while avoiding actually giving them what they want.
And another thought which may help: Picture any typical office job you’ve had where the management doesn’t really know anything about the actual work being done, but instead their job is just to manage the employees rather than actually help/empower them, and think about the kind of general confusion this creates in regard to nobody knowing what they are doing on any level. Its the same at call centers. Just a bunch of people that don’t know what they are doing trying to make it through a workday.
I understand that 2-3k isn’t a lot relative to the mega-sellers on ebay, but to me that’s quite a lot of clothes (if that’s mostly clothing). I imagine that the more clothing you have for sell, the less you might notice these issues because you have enough padding to still get regular sells every week.
But when you only have a few hundred clothing items for sale at any time, like myself, then I really notice when these items fall off in sales. I know bad weeks happen, but its been steadily declining for a few months at least, and prior to this all these same kinds of clothing would sell every week for good prices…
Yeah Jay, yours is a pretty common experience among sellers I’d say. There are a lot of sellers getting into these kinds of electronics because its good money to be made, and they are somewhat commonly available, but probably at least 50% of the electronics I buy at Goodwill have to be returned because they are broken and not worth fixing. Some things like turntables are an easy fix if they just need a new belt, and some things will still fetch a good price even when broken, but VCRs and DVD Recorders aren’t really worth the hassle of repair unless that’s already your specialty.
And I don’t mean this as an insult to any sellers trying their hand at electronics, but the influx of people who don’t know what they are doing seems to be damaging the electronics market because they are flooding ebay with low priced stuff that is probably messed up.
Last month, I bought a DVD recorder on ebay because I happened to need one for a video project. It was super cheap, $40 including shipping (the model is worth about $100), so I went for it. The seller sent it to me in a cheap retail box for boots – extremely thin cardboard and one layer of bubble wrap. Of course it arrived damaged. There are tons of similar listings from sellers on ebay that don’t know what they are doing, and this makes knowledgeable buyers very nervous about buying any of this stuff on ebay. So the more you can assure the buyer that you understand what you are selling, the higher the likelihood of making the sale – but you need to actually know for real, or you’re asking for a return.
I search “selling clothes on ebay”:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=selling+clothes+on+ebay
There are thousands of videos about how to do it, and the sellers brag about making crazy money. It’s where most people start.I think these youtube videos have a fairly big impact on the ebay market. It may just be all in my head, but I swear I’ve seen the market prices drop in items when they are specifically mentioned on certain youtube channels as great sellers…. DVD recorders is one example of an item that went from an easy $100 to much lower on average, unless willing to wait an extended time.
I hear you on not being too caught up in complaining. I’m not intending to be one of “those people”
It just gets to feel pretty bad when you spend so much time scavenging, and not coming out with much, on top of having weeks where sales are pitiful.
I’ll take your suggestions into consideration. I could just keep typing out more and more reasons why things are hard, but like you say, not much point in doing so.
How much inventory do you have, AtomicStar?
As a primary clothing seller with a huge inventory, I still think what I said above may apply as to not really noticing much.
But a smaller seller who just relies on clothing as a consistent bump, with a smaller inventory of clothing items may be much more subject to fluctuations in the market…
I’m totally with you on that point regarding not being dependent on single niches. I buy anything I can- lamps, candle holders, electronics, mugs, pots, blankets, clothes, higher valued books, etc…
My big problem lately is just not being able to find stuff though. There are weeks when I will hit all thrift stores in town every day, and barely find anything.
I don’t know if things are that much different in different areas or what… I feel like I have a natural eye for stuff which I have also worked on developing a lot in the last couple years. I intentionally stopped paying for phone service both to cut down bills, and force myself to not look anything up at the stores. Instead I had to learn how to identify valuable things on my own, which has been incredibly valuable. Always chuckling to myself at all the people standing at shelves staring down at their phones.
Jay- I’m not exactly sure how long I’ve been noticing the slow down for clothes. Its been steadily increasing for a while and now it seems very bad in the last month. Personally, I didn’t have a great holiday period for sales like everyone else (compared to my normal sales), so holidays weren’t a big factor for me in regards to it being a big difference.
Reading jumbleandclutter’s post above, I feel this is a pretty on point post about the clothing market on ebay. All offers received are very low, and its hard to sell much unless its a stupid low price… things still sell at higher prices, but not anywhere near as often as they used to.
I have to wonder if maybe you (J & R) are not noticing the clothing issues because you simply have such a large store with so much inventory which allows you to still see a few good clothing sales every week. I know you guys refer to yourself as small sellers, but 8000 items is quite a lot of inventory among small sellers.
I have had plenty of good experiences talking to ebay customer service regarding bad returns, and having either the return closed in my favor or fees refunded. As long as I had a legitimate case against what the buyer was saying, it was never a problem.
Its only become a problem for me since they started auto approving returns.
The reason I believe they are trying to roll out site-wide free returns is that I think they are probably allowing these buyers to return for free despite the fact they are abusing the system, and they will refund me afterward because they don’t want to anger the buyer by closing the return like they used to do. In other words, they are satisfying both the buyer, and me as the seller, without taking a side… and eventually, it will probably just be the buyer who they satisfy and the seller will have to eat it, like at Amazon.
I called in several months back with the same suggestion about lowering the price on an item with an offer to get immediate payments, except what I said is I put the item on a 24 hour sale instead of lowering the price. IMO, putting it on sale makes it even more urgent for the buyer to follow through because then its also only a limited time sale price, but same concept about creating urgency because the offer is open to everyone
Since that time, I haven’t done this as much and I’m undecided as to what I feel is the best way to go about offers.
Aside from not receiving payments, my big annoyance with offers is that when people don’t buy, I then have to relist it and I often lose all the watchers I had built over the months of having it listed and they often never come back to the item. Not that watchers are buyers, but still…
Inglewood – I’ve only sold niche, vintage or high end brand clothing for a while now.. basically since I started selling with a few exceptions. That’s why I’m confused… stuff that has been consistent in performance isn’t moving now unless I drop the price to like $10 or less. Other great, niche clothing items will get like 15 watchers and they will sit on it forever, not even buying when I put them on sale. Just seems like something has changed.
But you have to enable it on all items to qualify for the top rated plus benefit, right? Or is that also on a per item basis?
I agree with both of ya. Mugs are fun, and definitely takes the right eye. Its a good example of the part of reselling you can’t really explain with details.
Most of the time it does take a while for my mugs to sell, but that Xanax one sold in the first 24 hours…
Another good seller was a “Coffee Hound” mug which I believe you guys also sold one a while back.
For some reason though, I haven’t been finding any good mugs for months now
Maybe I’ll check those out.
I just really hope that ebay is not moving towards required free returns on all sellers, like it seems like they are.
Ebay isn’t Amazon… Amazon listings don’t include item specifics, actual photos, etc. It makes some sense for returns to be easier on Amazon because you’re buying blindly a lot of the time, if its a used item. Free returns on Ebay though just seems ridiculous to me, as a small dude trying to make a living.
