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Yes, your comment disappeared for some reason. I just copied it over from our notification.
We pay for $2 for 1″ thickness. Usually they are 2-3″ thick.
I dont like fees either, but I’ll eat that small fee if it makes me a $50 sale that otherwise wouldnt happen.
09/22/2020 at 1:57 pm in reply to: How many negatives can someone take without getting kicked off of ebay? #81806Yikes. That’s rough. Hopefully eBay will remove any of the thats for late shipping. If its any consolation, we’ve had more neutrals and negatives in the last three months than we’ve had for the past year.
Maybe Im thinking of another scavenger. That doesnt sound like rural land prices. $50k an acre for raw land is like middle of the city, right?
It’s good to try experiments like buying all those boxes. But also don’t be afraid to ask to look through what they have for sale. Thats a lot of work if its mostly junk. All lessons are expensive.
Our local newspaper sells end rolls for $2 an inch of usable paper. Its basically like butcher paper. We pack many things with just the paper, but we’ve learned to use peanuts if we are shipping heavy delicate items. Heavy items tend to crush the paper flat.
Lauren wrote:
Items in Store 343
Items Sold 10 lots, 4 on Ebay, 6 on FB Marketplace
Total Sales $307
COGS $45.50
Total Profit 261.5
Average profit 26.15
Average sales price 30.70
New Listings 43
Slow week, but still made money. This week I focused on raising prices in my store, so for about half of the week I didn’t have a sale running because it was being priced and I’m assuming that’s what has led to my sales dropping. Large COGS cost this week compared to most, but here’s why- I bought 10 cardtables from a woman for $15 a few months ago, kept one for myself, and sold the other 9 between two orders for $85 this week. Also sold about $10 boxes of glassware that I’m valuing a COGS of $25 for $50. This was the bottom of the barrel random junk no name glass candle holders and other stuff left over from the woman I bought 45ish boxes of her estate a couple months ago. I still have about 15 non-glassware boxes to go. I sold it to a lady that makes glass and ceramic flowers and lawn ornaments. Still made money, but basically recouping losses from what I couldn’t sell.
Talking about the estate sale, I learned a valuable lesson this week. I am too young, and frankly too new, to really know what I’m doing, but that’s okay. A few months ago, I bought 45ish boxes sight-unseen of an 85 year old’s estate for $5 a box. ($225) plus renting a uhaul that almost killed the whole thing ($90), so I was in about $315 for all of it. There was a lot of stuff, and frankly none of it was anything to write home about. I was making about $20ish-$30ish in listable items (this is before I repriced, so probably more like $30-$40 now) per box, but there was a lot of junk. I was putting off going through it and have been working at it slowly, but I had a buyer for all the extra glassware that I couldn’t sell coming by on Wednesday, so I made it a goal to finish at least looking through the boxes by then. Kept pulling stuff, including some ugly beer stein that I put on the shelf to be processed. I think to date I’ve sold about $150 worth of stuff from this lot, and still have about 15 boxes of usuable listable stuff to go through (some of these will be cheap lots for the entire box. I think there are like 50 picture frames for example to lot up). Anyways, I made it to the beer stein and looked it up on Terapeak. Turns out its some super collectible stein from a big brewery’s smaller tasting room, and comps in the last year have gone for $150-$225. Mine has some condition issues, but I listed it high with a low BO decline and already have 4 watchers on it. Mine is the only one currently for sale, and I’m hoping it goes sometime this or next month. With that, It’ll put me over in the black with plenty of more stuff to list. The “I don’t know what I’m doing” lesson comes into this because I really just thought it was a tacky souvenir beer stein that I was gonna list for like $25. Terapeak has become my best friend, all the comps sold more than 3 months ago so without it I wouldn’t have known that this stein was such a win.
After our repricing conversation, the value of all the items in my store went from 8k to 11k, while running a 15% off sale when it was 8k and now a 20% when it was 11k.
The Hats that I found at the yard sale this week are looking like they’ll do well. After doing more research, I realized they weren’t all the 1980’s vintage patch trucker hats, but I do have 3 up for over $100 with low BO decline numbers. List price total for the 30 something that I have listed are at $1200, if I get a third of that I’ll be happy, since I paid a quarter each for them.
Always growing, always learning. Thanks for the podcast this week! I did want to ask about using newspaper end rolls for packing. Currently, instead of using biodegradable packing peanuts I use butcher paper to crumple up and use as outer filling for double boxes. I pay $26ish bucks for 400 feet, and I feel like it’s thick enough that my stuff hasn’t broken since I started really packing it in. How much do you get on an end roll of newspaper, and do you think it’s thick enough to keep the umph of a package wiggling around inside? I think our newspaper company sells them for $5 an end roll, so not as cheap as $2, but I’d love to cut my shipping cost down if possible. Also, naive question but how wide is an end roll? My dispenser is 24″.
Thanks for all you do!
Lauren
SoCal prices are like a different planet, but you also have a great quality of life with all the conveniences of modern society 🙂 Property is cheap all over rural America. But then you have to develop your own culture.
Our early eBay years were the same. Slow times scared the hell out of us. This is why we make sure our expenses match our lowest expected weeks. Then when we have great selling weeks, its all gravy.
Nice sale on the lens. We stopped selling camera lenses after issues with fungus inside.
Yeah, if you need a bank loan on land in the US, terms are much tougher. Not like buying a primary residence.
How much is a piece of land? Can you save up the cash to buy it outright? Usually a raw piece of land in a rural area will be affordable.
Welcome. Have you both been selling full-time since 2004? Or has it been a side business?
Can you give an example? What did the buyer pay and what was the extra international charge?
Ha. I guess you found that podcast since that seems to be a weekly thing we’re now talking about 🙂
Huh, wonder is this is new for international sales. 1.65% isnt great, but its not a deal breaker for us.
I also see there’s a Dispute Fee. Never seen this before.
Dispute fee
If you are found responsible for a disputed amount as per eBay policies (e.g., chargeback), we charge a $20.00 dispute fee, excluding sales tax, for each dispute.Just another reason to pull back from FedEx. As we said in the podcast, Fedex SmartPost has been too unreliable and slow even if it can be cheaper.
I’d have to learn more to have an opinion. Where is this new few documented or explained?
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