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Thank you for responding Inglewood. Fortunately INADs are about a once a year occurrence for me (let’s hope I didn’t just jinx it by saying that). I always accept a return, no matter what. And I’ve held the position that it’s not worth my time to challenge for a few bucks of shipping. But I wonder if the INAD is going to hurt me with eBay somehow – that is the only reason I would challenge it. Ebay policies seem unclear about it lately.
Hi Meagansmom – I’m in Georgia too. My advice is to start slow, don’t run out and buy all kinds of equipment (lighting kits, printers, cameras – these are things you can buy slowly over time), and don’t buy more to resell than what you can list. Listen to as many Scavenger Life podcasts as possible. Stay away from social media groups whose main focus is to bash ebay & other resellers. Reselling is a great way to supplement one’s income – I’m obsessed with it.
Welcome to the group.Julie
I’m in the pre-bag camp. I put in clear bags and store in marked bins. I started doing this to save time when I ship since I have to ship daily and my schedule doesn’t always have much room in it to do so. I also have 3 cats and a dog so leaving items hanging would make them susceptible to pet hair and smells around here. I do make some exceptions – if it is a gown, suit or large coat I hang those in a closet. I don’t have room to hang much else.
The problem I’ve always had with adding the “Free” shipping cost into the item’s price, is once I add enough to cover shipping to the furthest US region, I was making the item too expensive for buyers in regions closer to me (regions that actually have lower cost of living than say the west coast). I recently started changing some of my listings from free to calculated.
Today I sold some items via calculated shipping, which I had also sold previously under free shipping (they were multi-quantity items). Here are the results:
Anthropologie Plate – Listed $49.95. The ones that sold in 2018 were all Free Shipping. Because they sold to different regions, my profit on each unit varied widely! Below are dates along with profit after all fees, COGs and Shipping per unit.
3/20/18 $21.76 (shipped within region)
9/17/18 $14.39 (shipped to nearby region)
11/5/18 $3.81 (shipped to furthest US Region from me)
11/5/18 $3.81 (shipped to furthest US Region from me)
Today I sold one with calculated shipping for the same $49.95 price. After calculated shipping, my profit after all fees & cogs $34.48!Another example – For this one, I actually decreased the listing price once I changed to calculated shipping.
Marc Jacobs Wallet – Listed in 2017 & 2018 for $89.99
Profit after fees, cogs and free shipping
5/29/17 $28.75
7/17/17 $32.51
9/1/17 $32.51
10/30/18 $23.40
Last night I reduced the price to $77 but changed free shipping to calculated. It sold within 12 hours. Profit $34.22! My profit increased between $1.71 and $10.82 over prior sales even though I dropped the price $12.99.I’m switching everything to calculated shipping this week.
I had one two days ago that was over $9 to ship from GA to CA. Flat rate priority is cheaper! I’d already started listing new items as calculated instead of free shipping. After seeing the $9+ rate I’m now changing my shipping for all of my listings.
I was reading comments on Ebay for Business’s Facebook page last night. As usual there are some sellers flipping their lids over the changes. I’ve always been in the GTC camp so this means nothing to me. But I do wonder about those sellers who maybe list only a few items and then forget about their listing. Will it keep listing and charging the user until the end of time? If I drop dead tomorrow, will my listings relist in perpetuity until my paypal account runs out of money and the account goes into ebay collections status?
Steve,
The trader probably wants to trade you for a cashier’s check that he’ll be sending to you in the mail. It’s for much more than the price of the item, so if you could just cash it and send him back the difference in amazon gift cards, that you purchase in cash that would be great.
(Sarcasm in case it’s not obvious.)Haha! Towards the end of the video Steve tells his dog to go get the ball. My dog came running into my office excited and a bit confused, wondering who told him to get the ball. We can’t use that word or even spell it out loud without my dog going nuts. If we have to say it and we don’t want the dog to get excited we say, “spherical object” instead. 🙂
Been seeing articles online about the millions of dollars tax software companies spend lobbying the US government each year. Obviously it’s in their interest to keep US taxes complicated. Just Google some form of the phrase Tax Software Lobbying and you’ll find tons of articles. It’s enough to make me want to go back to completing my taxes using nothing but a pencil, calculator, a hardcopy of the IRS tax instruction booklet (that they used to mail to every home) and loads of scrap paper. I did that up until 5 years ago.
I’ll guess that it’s a liar. They sent an offer to you and in the meantime, found it cheaper elsewhere or changed their mind. Rather than be honest they told an outrageous lie. Not many invalid 97 years old are that ebay savvy. And if it is in fact a liar, I’m glad they now have to go through the hassle of contacting ebay if they want to use their account again. 🙂
You said you don’t think you’ll break $20,00 profit this year but then you say $200 is a quarter of what you made. Did you mean to say that you don’t think you’ll break $20K in sales? Gross sales are very different than profit. Be sure you are accounting for all of your expenses: car mileage, home office, all equipment and supplies used in your business, even your phone bill might be deductible.
Schedule C is the only schedule I complete for my businesses.
I’m afraid that since this is your full time income, the government expects you to be paying self employment taxes, which are generally higher because you don’t have an outside employer who is paying part of your taxes for you. It’s why most self employed persons pay their taxes quarterly, to take out some of the sting of having one large end of year tax bill. Unfortunately, a lot of new sellers learn this the hard way, when they file taxes for the first time following a year of self employment.
I believe there is at least one episode from the last year or so where Jay discussed taxes with a CPA experienced in online sales. Taxes have also been covered to some extent in the forums so do some searches here to help get you started.
My Goodwill just got rid of the display case where they used to display the nicer slightly higher priced items. I suspect that they have started listing those to the GW online auctions instead of selling in store. Bummer for me because it was always fun to see what unusual stuff might be in the display case. I’ve gotten a roomba (for myself) there, and taxidermied opossum and raccoon for my dad as gag gifts, which he ended up loving. Those were fun finds.
In reselling news – I’ve sold a lot of warm weather vacation destination type items over the last few weeks: swimsuits, shorts, Kate Spade passport holders. Spring break is just around the corner…
I’ve worked in Compliance for over a decade, albeit not in the shipment industry. In my experience there are a few reasons why a store/employee may be asking questions more than another place/person. It’s possible that your particular FedEx location may have recently gotten attention from their compliance dept, headquarters, an auditor, regulator or law enforcement. This could be because something went through their facility that was found to be related to a crime or just against fedex policy – thus there’s been a crack down on store staff about ensuring they are following all policies. Another reason could simply be that the store’s staff recently went through training and now everything they learned is fresh in their head. Or you just got a worker who is stickler to the rules and/or suspicious of everyone. I know cash is restricted from being shipped through most major carriers so when you said briefcase, it wouldn’t be unusual to follow up that question asking about cash since movies have always associated laundered money / drug proceeds with briefcases full of cash.
