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My background is in Anti-money laundering regulations so I have done a lot of consulting at all types of payments-industry related businesses over the years.
Buyers won’t know that Adyen is the payment processor in the background, they will only see that they can pay for their ebay purchases using any number of methods of payment that Adyen will support for that buyer’s country. Right now buyers are limited to credit card (if a seller has its own merchant account and thus accept credit cards) or paypal. With Adyen a payer in the US will be able to pay using paypal, credit card, probably Google Pay, Venmo. In China the customer will probably have to option to use AliPay (very popular payment method there)). Australians will be able to use POLi (popular in Australia), Konbini in Japan, etc. Obviously all methods won’t be presented to every buyer in every jurisdiction. It will be so much more convenient to buyers everywhere. And as sellers we won’t have to worry about having accounts with Paypal, POLi, HyperWallet, etc. Our payments will get aggregated and paid out to us in a yet to be identified means. So likely not instantaneously like Paypal.
This is very good news! The payments industry is very dynamic with a lot of innovation in the last few years. Paypal is a dinosaur in that space. Adyen has the ability to process 250 different types of payment methods (although we don’t know how many of those will be available to ebay buyers). US consumers are actually quite slow to adopt new payment methods. For example, many Asian countries have been using their phones at checkout for over a decade while US consumers are now just starting to do that. There are so many faster, safer and more convenient methods to buy online than using Paypal. Ebay is overdue in overhauling this area. Adyen will make if much easier for buyers around the world to buy on eBay. It will be a seamless checkout experience for buyers, they won’t know that adyen is the payment processing company in the background, just like we don’t know who Amazon’s payment processing merchant is in the background when we buy off of Amazon – (hint- it isn’t Amazon) . Some of Adyen’s other clients: Etsy, Uber, Neflix, Airbnb, Spotify. Adyen knows what it’s doing.
There is a surprising amount of drama in the online reseller podcast/youtube world. It’s reminiscent of 7th grade mean girls shenanigans and the 1980s-90s east coast/west coast hip-hop feuds. I stick with Jay & Ryanne almost exclusively but recently there is a semi-famous comic Kristina Wong who has ventured into reselling and has posted a few haul videos on youtube which are kind of hilarious. She fully admits that she doesn’t know what she’s doing and she is falling into a hoarding trap. Her language is rough and she does refer to thrifted items as garbage so don’t watch if that bothers you. No reselling tips, but I’ve been entertained. She’s on Youtube under her name Kristina Wong.
Accounting semi-illiterate here – I’m a small part time ebay seller. I’ve always maintained my sales & expenses in excel but it’s not an accurate method. I use formulas in my spreadsheets and I know that some of my selling fees as a percentage of sold price are more/less than others when they qualify for top rated seller discounts, etc. I also forget to adjust when I receive returns. MDC Galleries answer above is great but also confirms that he is 100X more accounting savvy than I and thus it is easier for him to understand most any kind of accounting software than I ever could. What works for him, probably isn’t going to work for me. So my question – I want the easiest small business system available to replace my spreadsheets. I see no need for me ever having to generate a P&L, chart of accounts, or create invoices (Ebay/Pay already invoice customers for me). Go Daddy pulls from ebay automatically. I don’t see that Quicken does that, so does that mean with quicken there is more manual input required on my end? Is it truly beneficial to have GoDaddy pull from ebay versus Quicken which I think will only pull from paypal? I have used reputable local CPAs in past years ago but honestly they didn’t do anything that justified their cost. I had to answer about 20 pages(!) of questions which seemed to just largely be transferred directly into a TurboTax-type software anyways. I could do that.
Thanks, Julie
In the Atlanta area there is a very large prop company that claims to have over a million items for TV and film productions to rent. They occasionally will have a large warehouse sale open to the public. They announce their sales on their Facebook page GA. Prop Source. They also have a website Gapropsource[dot]com. I haven’t been to any of their sales (2 hour drive one way) but I’ve seen plenty of pictures. Most items are down right boring (boxes and boxes of generic picture frames) but sometimes there will be something cool like a vinyl couch. They advertised a bunch of props from off of The Vampire Diaries set once. They seem to definitely know what their stuff is worth so I don’t know if there are any real scavenger bargains to be had or not. Would be great to hear from someone who has actually been to one of their sales. Someday I’ll have to make the drive down there to check it out.
I was an extra in one episode of Halt and Catch Fire season 2. I was pretty much over doing that type of work but since my husband loved the show, I worked on it one time. For period pieces extras have to go in for a wardrobe fitting a few days before. The office for the fitting was decorated in all kinds of furniture and props from the 80s that were used in prior episodes. I wanted to take it all to flip on ebay. It was incredible, especially the old gaming consoles and t.v. Day of the shoot was incredibly long. Almost every extra in the Atlanta area was there. It was for a large crowd scene that was supposed to be a shareholders conference. It took 10 to 12 hours just to get everyone through hair and makeup. I was one of the very first to get styled. My hair was done up very bouffant as the scene was not only taking place in the 80s, but in 1980s Texas! A 1/2 can of of aerosol hairspray later and my head was quite flammable. The makeup artist got very carried away trying to recreate Brooke Shields era eyebrows. I already have pretty bold eyebrows to start with. I was a walking bouffant hair piece with eyebrows that could be seen from a mile away. Other extras were literally stopping in their tracks when they saw me. The hair and makeup people dialed back a little bit after I was styled. Finally everyone was ready, we packed into a hotel conference center for the shoot. They took a bunch of shots of the crowd as we all pretended to be up in arms about some kind of software malfunctioning during what was supposed to be a live demo at this shareholders conference. From start to finish, extras were onsite probably 18 to 20 hours. At the end, I tried to de-bouffant my hair and scrub off the brows before heading back out into the real world to drive home. But it was a futile effort. And after all of that they only used about 1 second of the footage and I think if I pause the show at just the right millisecond I can see part of myself. Bummer.
There must be something about a clean white backdrop that dark haired cats are just drawn to. I see Midge is no different from my cat in that regard. I take a lot photographs on a white towel. That is until my long haired black and white cat finds out. She’s always gotta lie right in the center of it. I’ve even tried putting down decoy towels but she’s not fooled.
Had a recent buyer return NWT apron and matching tea towels because the pattern of the fabric on the apron’s pocket did not match up precisely with the pattern where the pocket was sewn onto the rest of the apron. Only the highest quality brands like Gucci, Burberry etc, pay enough attention to their products to match up fabric patterns across all seams. I just rolled my eyes, accepted the return and blocked the buyer. Even though I highly doubt most buyers are ever return buyers, something about blocking her made me feel a whole lot better. Kind of like slamming an old phone receiver down after the other person already hung up.
Ryanne – I think this is good news! The numbers are probably your “private key”. In many cases, it is MUCH safer to have the private key written down on a piece of paper in your safe than it is to have your bitcoins “stored” in a hosted “wallet”. Your virtual coins are accessible on the blockchain using your private key! Check Bitcoin.com. I think they have a step by step process.
Good luck!Julie
For Christmas my husband organized an area in the basement and bought me 3 really nice new storage shelving units for my ebay inventory. It’s so nice to be married to someone who “gets” me. 🙂
If I have to put punctuation in my titles I try to place it as close to the end of the title as possible. So for example: NWT Ralph Lauren Green V Neck Sweater Medium Men’s. That way, if the punctuation theory is true, then google search won’t cut off the title until the very end.
My last two posts have taught me that at 41 years of age, I can’t correctly spell “punctuation” on my own. I miss the first “t” every time. Thanks Spell Check!
My numbers 12/10 – 12/16
This is my least profitable December in 3 years, even though I have 3 times as much inventory as Dec 2015 and twice as much inventory as Dec 2016. I think this is because I am not listing regularly due to outside work as well as lower profit margins from retail arbitrage inventory (the only type of inventory I have time to acquire right now). But nevertheless, I persist.
Total Items In Store: 955
Items Sold: 29
Cost of Items Sold: $195
Total Sales: $791 (but this includes free shipping)
Highest Price Sold: $104 (J Crew Leather Pants, which buyer is returning due to fit. I will relist for higher price)
Average Price Sold: $27.28I’ve had some of my oldest inventory sell over the last few weeks. Not sure if its because I updated all of my titles to delete punctuation or for unknown reasons. Jason T Smith of Thrifty Business said that if a title has punctuation google search engine will cut off searching the title at that point.
Example: NWT Chico’s Leather Jacket. According to Jason Google would cut off at the “‘” in Chico’s.
Another example: 23 Bon Appetit Magazine Back Issues June 2016, July 2016, April 2017. The title will get cut off at the first comma.
Last example: NWT Chicos Leather Jacket 3/4 Length Sleeves Size 2. Google will cut off searching title after the “/”.
I don’t know how to verify if this is true but I did update most of my titles over the 3 weeks, just in case.Linda,
Look into Bitcoin Cash, now also available on Coinbase. Bitcoin Cash was spawned when the Bitcoin blockchain software was updated over the summer (called a “fork”). Anyone with bitcoin at the time of the “fork” got an equal number of “coins” in Bitcoin Cash. For example, if you had 2 bitcoins at the time of the fork, then you received 2 bitcoin cash “coins” after the fork. Anyway, Bitcoin Cash is now available on coinbase. I think we’ll see a drop in bitcoin prices for a bit, while people buy into Bitcoin Cash instead. It’s a cheaper price point right now too.
