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Listening now, totally understand about the need for connection. I’m having a hard time with this and covid together- my circle has shrunk to about 2 in person people total and about 10 friends/family I chat with digitally. Like Jay, I’ve been listening to podcasts, reading, plus affirmations but I feel a little full of information and stuck with what to do. In the last two weeks I’ve listed like 150 items by myself, and although I’m loving the progress, I feel very much in the grind right now. This is definitely the crunch time in where I am for my business, and I am FEELING IT.
Numbers for this week:
Items in Store 501
Items Sold: 13 items sold, Ebay: 8 on Ebay, 5 on Facebook
Total Sales: $441
COGS $10
Total Profit $431 minus fees
Average profit $33
Average sales price $33
Highest Priced Item: $209.99, Beer Stein
New Listings: 69
Started off this week with my strongest sale of the year, so that was exciting. Update to the 85 year old, she had a few more boxes for me for cheap. Before I decided to commit, I totalled out how much money I’ve made vs how much inventory I have left of hers. I originally spent $200ish on inventory and $130ish on a truck (this is how I messed up, not renting again for a while) and in the couple months I’ve had her stuff I’ve sold $400 and have another $800ish in inventory thats available or needs to be lotted up for facebook. So, counting the truck I’m at like 27% COGS, and chocking up the truck as a learned lesson, I was at 16% COGS. I try to stick below 10%, but decided to call her back anyways and see what she had. She only had 8 boxes, which I could put in my minivan, and I haven’t scanned books at a particular thrift shop in her area (about 45 minutes away from me) so I decided to go for it and do books and make the drive worth it. Stuff from her is in quarantine at the moment, so I’ll check it out at the end of the week, but on books we found 1 $65, 2 $45s, Several $20’s, and about 45 books total. Books I take a higher Profit/Cogs ratio because I have better data on how soon something will sell, and pulled somewhere around $350 of books for about 4 hours work counting pulling and listing. Ive been seeing some more sales on Amazon already but not necessarily on Ebay, so we’re just waiting for the holiday season.
Love all these!
@OldDad I give mine about a week before it’s settled in to the appropriate amount of messy, LOL
Can you give an example? There’s a few methods that I can think of:
1) The 1 penny book. You see these on amazon a lot, a penny for a book with 3.99 shipping. They are making their money on shipping and shipping literally thousands of books, their money is in bulk.
2)Clearing out stock. Some people would rather offer their products at a lower price thinking that it will clear faster, which may or may not work. In this route, they are making less money than they could be.
3) Oversees subsidies. This is popular with Chinese sellers. Shipping is subsidized from China to the US and results in super low prices, but long wait times. See: Wish. They can sell low grade products for pennies because of unfair working conditions and subsidized shipping, making it much cheaper to run all their operations out of China than moving it to the US.
Let me know if any of these are what you’re thinking, I’m sure others will chime in.
Also, RE: Sell similar, basically the dropdown lists stay the same, but photos and type in information (minus the title, that stays) are empty and able to be listed. I used to sell similar a lot when I didn’t know how to describe things, but I am writing more and more of my own listings as I’m getting better at Ebay. To my knowledge, there isn’t a way to transfer sell similar locations from AU to UK to US. What a great idea for “what ebay can improve”
Items in Store 432
Items Sold 10 total, 6 FBM 4 Ebay
Total Sales $260
COGS $10
Total Profit $250
Average profit $25
Average sales price $26
Highest Priced Item: Old Shelves, $65
New Listings 88
Been listing pretty hardcore this week, looking to get to 500 by the end of October 1st. Although it doesn’t count toward this week’s numbers, I sold that beer stein today from my post last week for $209, making it the second highest price of it’s kind that’s sold in a year. Since upping my prices, I am seeing a decline in sales on ebay, but I’m making more money per item than I was anticipating, so it’s sort of equalling out. Looking forward to the holiday season. Boosted my handling time from 3 days to 1 day as an experiment this week. Also, small win for this week is that I found a shipping insurance check that I misplaced a few weeks ago, so I’m back up $50 on a $1 purchase, even though it broke in transit.
In other news, I picked up another job, but much more on my terms. My mom has MS and just got approved for state funded caregiving, and I’ll be caregiving for her. Its stuff I’m already doing, but now I’ll net an extra $1000 a month. Plus, my girlfriend is taking some hours as well and will get about $400 extra a month by doing all the cooking, so our entire household is going to be a bit less tight.
I’ve been thinking about the philosophy of growing wealth a lot this week. Caregiving is going to cover almost all of my personal bills, and this is the first month since I got the office that the business is fully funding itself. Stretch goals are to be at 1000 listings by the end of the year, I’m hoping to grow in numbers enough that my holiday sales at smaller sized stores equal my regular sales at a larger store. Been reading a lot of other people’s numbers recently and it’s great to be know that I’m on the track to being a lot more fiscally secure than I have been previously.
Love the podcast, always interesting to hear about the coffee shop developments.
Ooh good cal, So Cal Joe! I’ll order some next week for the new quarter. Thanks!
To be completely honest, I think he’s telling the truth. At least, I can see his side. My girlfriend and I have 3 chargers between the 2 of us that are all ASUS laptops with different adapters ends and trying to keep them separated is a nightmare. Plus he gave you a good review! Sounds like an honest mistake.
Happy selling!
Thanks all!
Got my scotty stuffers in the mail today- I’m a little underwhelmed. They’ll be great for other things I sell, but I think they are just a smidge too small for trucker hats. Mainly just because the height and strength of the box isn’t there. I feel like I’ll love these for my food processor parts though! I have some other boxes on order on Ebay so I’ll see if some of those work, otherwise I have a variety of thrifted boxes that I feel like I can use.
Thanks Simon for the tip about K Products- About a quarter of mine ended up being K Products, so it’s all listed in there. Wish I would have known I could sell crumbly ones- I had two that I tossed off the bat because they were crumbly and getting everywhere. C’est la vie, the trash is gone now. We won’t think about lost income, lol.
They are super fast to list! I can get through 10 of them an hour, which is great. And they fit perfectly on this weird shelf that I have on my shelving units, so thats a double win.
Thanks all!
I ordered 12 x 6 x 6 boxes, which I go through like nobody’s business. They are great for the inner box of a double box if you’re shipping things like vases and breakables. I’m planning on using my next coupon on the shoeboxes to try them out and something else and the 4x4x6 boxes
A while ago I had bought the “Thank you for supporting my small business” stickers and really like those too. I feel like it adds a good touch to orders, though obviously it’s not a necessity.
I think I’m hearing you wrong. Do you mean an inch as in an inch of paper on the roll, like radius wise? I was thinking a literal inch of paper. LOL.
Building off of this.
Facebook is…interesting. It definitely boosts my sales during slow times. Here’s what I learned:
There’s 2 types of customers. Silent, similar to Ebay, and people who want to tell you their life story.
Some orders come in without getting any messages from the customer at all. It’s beautiful, just like Ebay. I’m a big fan of not talking to people if I don’t have to, so this works out well.
The other half want to have long drawn out conversations. On Ebay, I’d throw up a red flag, but after selling locally on Facebook for a while, I know that’s just the platform. I think the most excessive was someone buying a swung vase. She was very concerned about it getting broken in transit, etc, and had been burned before on returns. We went back and forth after explaining how I packed things, she bought it (normally I wouldn’t put this much effort into a sale, but it was $50 and a slow day). The day after it was delivered I woke up to SEVEN messages from her. Shit. It broke. Just kidding, I opened up messages to find puppy dog pictures, songs of praise, and overall joy about her vase getting to her. It was nice, but 7 messages seems excessive.
Another suggestion on FB is to not list for shipping anything more than a cubic foot. You can either ship with their labels, which only go up to 10 lbs and 1 cubic foot, or a site like pirateship. I like having control of my listings so I use pirateship, but after a cubic foot their rates jump up like 20 bucks depending on where it’s going.
I have yet to really deal with a return or anything on FB, and am limiting items to a $75 price point or under. Thats pretty much what I’m willing to lose, anything higher than that just stays on Ebay.
I have noticed that since I started shipping, I get almost no one asking for local pickup. I hate local pickup, and my sales haven’t dropped, so I’m cool with this.
Facebook overestimates how long it’ll take to deposit money. When I sold something on the 1st, it estimated I would get my payment by the 20th. I actually received it by the 10th. Not as fast as Ebay or Paypal. They mark it as 5 days after delivery of item, but as long as I know the money is coming, I don’t mind as much.
I’m with Jay on this one. Does a <2% fee suck? Yeah. But thats $43 still made, minus COGS, that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I feel like the added value of being able to list with GSP outweighs the cost.
Me too! I love a good mystery number. My guess is that they are product numbers for the company that made them. I know brands like McCoy do something similar, maybe it’s a pottery thing? I don’t deal in much pottery.
Good luck!
Lauren
$2 an inch? Wouldn’t that make 400 feet like $128 bucks? Or am I doing math wrong.
Did my comment disappear? I’m on my girlfriend’s laptop-mine bit the dust this week. Not sure if I need to adjust my settings or something to post on the group.
Re: Estate: It’s definitely not no money. I think in like 6 months I’ll be happy with it, but they are long tail items so it’ll take a while. Office real estate is the biggest hassle right now.
