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@Retro – Thanks for sharing this article… I think. From reading this article it looks like there was a short window where writing off COGS in the year you incurred the cost was OK, but the recent 2021 guidance looks like that is no longer the case. One litmus test he uses is whether or not you keep an inventory and assign value to the item in inventory. I definitely do that, so looks like I need to have a conversation with my accountant.
a reminder that no good deed goes unpunished….
I hear that. I admire the fortitude of people that can do that on a regular basis.
I understand that either way is correct, but I am curious why you would want to track COGS on sales instead of on purchases. Seems much easier to simply count that I spent $2000 on new inventory in 20 purchases this year than tracking COGS item by item and totaling COGS on 300 sales. Considering it could take a year or more for an item to sell, seems like leaving money on the table. But, perhaps I’m missing something. I’m just doing it the way my tax advisor recommended, I never looked into pros and cons of one way over the other.
Hi Retro,
I checked it out. All looks good except for the shipping discount. I added 4 to the cart and it says free shipping discount applied, but the amount deducted is less than the shipping amount. Perhaps the deduction is the multi item discount and not the shipping?
Glad to hear the cafe is doing well. Miss hearing about the ins and outs of your business explorations.
Sales not too bad this past week. Total of 18 sales for gross of $780. A bit below my historical average, but better than recent averages. Even though I only have a small portion of my store duplicated to Etsy, it is starting to make a significant contribution. eBay is the more mature solution and running my numbers is more difficult on Etsy, but I’ve sold several long tail eBay items for full price in a short time.
Set a new record for us for the longest held item to sell this week: 1940 days. A vintage Cornell University Athletics T-Shirt. Every once and a while I consider purging my old inventory and then something sells like this. List it and forget it!
Best sale of the week was a Le Creuset lasagna pan for $112. It came with a lot of kitchen items I bought at auction. Funny thing was it wasn’t shown or mentioned in the listing, so free!
Most satisfying sale was a Solid State Drive I scavenged from my son’s computer. Ran out of space and had to upgrade the drive. (yes, I thoroughly wiped the drive first) Sold for about the same price as a new one, probably because they are in such short supply right now.
Dug into my death pile this week and listing a bunch of luggage I’ve been putting off. Several pieces of high end luggage (Tumi, Briggs & Riley…) that I’ve been avoiding because they are so big
Week Ending 2/26/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1066
Items Sold eBay: 15
Gross Sales eBay (Less shipping and tax): $596.60
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $502.90Total Items in Etsy Store: 135
Items Sold Etsy: 3
Gross Sales Etsy (Less shipping and tax): $184.90
Net Sales (After fees) Etsy: $140.44Cost of Items Sold: $36.04
COGS Percent 5.60%
Highest Price Sold: $112.00 Le Creuset Lasagna Pan
Average Price Sold: $43.42
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 412
Longest Listed: 1940
New items listed: 18@Kati – Welcome to the numbers. It’s a small thing, but taking stock of your numbers weekly provides a lot of insight into the business over time.
Total sales of $635 this week. Week started out strong but ended with a whimper. Usually, most of my sales take place on Friday and Saturday nights, but this week was front loaded with 5 items selling on Valentines Day, 4 on Tuesday, and only 1 sale on the weekend.
My big sale was a nice surprise and one where past experience really paid off. I sold an antique, 1898, fishing lure that I paid $2 for for $200. The lure was extremely rare, but I had purchased one a few years ago so knew it immediately when I saw it in the middle of a pile of lures up for auction. I had placed a max bid of $50, but thankfully, no one else saw any value and I got the whole lot for $2. It took two years to sell.
Got a bit of a shock when running my number for Etsy for the week. I apparently sold two items via external ads that Etsy places and had to pay an extra 15% commission on each. I recall reading about them when I signed up but pay a lot of attention. This is where it is nice that Etsy doesn’t take offers as I would normally take an offer of 15% every time, but I wouldn’t want this on eBay unless they highlighted the extra charge on the page when the offer comes in.
Week Ending 2/19/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1070
Items Sold eBay: 9
Total Items in Etsy Store: 129
Items Sold Etsy: 3Gross Sales eBay (Less shipping and tax): $484.90
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $406.28
Gross Sales Etsy (Less shipping and tax): 149.85
Net Sales (After fees) Etsy: 102.51Cost of Items Sold: $55.44
COGS Percent 10.90%
Net Profit Margin: 71.42%
Highest Price Sold: $200.00 Antique Lure
Average Price Sold: $52.90
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 191.5
Longest Listed: 808
New items listed: 9Clearing the clutter, and having a dedicated space to deal with new purchases / to-be-listed stuff, is such an important part of keeping inventory organized and new listings in the pipeline.
I agree. I put up some shelves near my photography area just for this purpose. It was very helpful for prioritizing to be able to see everything at a glance. Over time those shelves have filled up with many of my listed items and my death pile really is a pile sitting in front of the shelves. I spent the morning reorganizing and hope to dig though it this week in hopes to getting back to its original purpose.
Week Ending 2/12/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1066
Items Sold eBay: 13
Gross Sales eBay (Not including shipping and tax): $398.56
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $330.04Total Items in Etsy Store: 124
Items Sold Etsy: 1
Gross Sales Etsy (Not including shipping and tax): $149.95
Net Sales (After fees) Etsy: $136.50Cost of Items Sold: $54.83
COGS Percent 11.75%
Highest Price Sold: $149.95
Average Price Sold: $39.18
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00Average Days Listed: 269
Longest Listed: 1580
New items listed: 7I am two months into my foray into Etsy and starting to see some regular sales. It definitely doesn’t get the traffic that eBay does. I’m amazed at how few views listings get after posting them. I’ve posted a good cross-section of my eBay store to Etsy and what is selling is primarily kitchen and home decor. It has been nice to see a few long tail items from eBay sell for full price on Etsy.
Focusing on my death piles at the moment. I need to free up space before I can scavenge for more. Need to either post items or take them to the local thrift. Taking a hard look at effort to profit ratio and separating out some lower $ items and items I’m just not excited about posting. I think I’ve let the pile demotivate me.
Found one item this past week as I was pulling items to pack that had fallen off eBay. I was curious that it hadn’t sold yet. Had to retake pictures for it and relisted. Sold wihin 2 days of relisting. Really wonder what causes items to fall out like that. Second one I’ve found recently. It would be hard to justify the time but makes me feel like I need to reconcile my whole store to see what else has delisted.
@ChristineR – congrats on that painting sale. That will definitely get some excitement brewing again.
@Retro – Great buy on that XM Radio. I picked on up last year for $20 and it sold within 2 months for $250. Didn’t know it was a thing until I turned it on and it was playing. I waited for over a month before listing just to make sure it was still working.
I also got a new in box Sirius Internet radio at the same sale. Didn’t find out until after I listed it that Sirius no longer supported it and it was a brick. :-\
From what I understood, returns and discounts are not deducted from the income total.
I’m glad you mentioned this. Not sure I’ve been accounting for returns in the past. I’ll have to double check this.
Thanks for the info.
Wow! What a find. Looks like enough to keep you busy for years just in the posting. Good luck. Interested to hear about any big sales that come from this.
You’d think that eBay would waive the fee when people choose to pass on the discount. My understanding is that the fee is there because people were jacking up shipping prices to game the final value fee. If you’re not taking profit on shipping should there be a few. I guess there would still be those who would try to manipulate it though: Just increase weight or package size.
I pass the discount along. I figure I come out cheaper on shipping than my competition and get more sales that way. I feel like adding on a handling fee would discourage some buyers. No reason to give them pause to look elsewhere. I think the discount matters most on more plentiful items that the buyer can compare price on and in those cases lowest overall price wins.
Had an average week of sales this week. Two of my biggest sales I had just purchased two weeks at an estate sale, so if I wasn’t listing things would be worse. I was tempted to keep my biggest sale just for its cool factor, an 18″ tall Tasmanian Devil statue from Warner Bros. I paid $45 and sold it for $175. I was asking on the high side of the sales range so was surprised it sold after only 4 days.
Another of my sales was interesting as I had it posted on Etsy and eBay for $175 and got a note from a buyer on Etsy asking if I’d take $130. Etsy does not have a Best Offer option, so my only way to deal with it was to lower the price, which I communicated to the buyer. Then crickets. After 2 days I went to eBay and sent the same offer to the 6 people watching the listing. It sold via offer within an hour or so… to the same person who made me the offer on Etsy. The piece was an interesting patinated brass pitcher made in Israel in the 40’s or 50’s by Pal-Bel and its going back to Israel.
Week Ending 1/29/22
Total Items in eBay Store: 1082
Total Items in Etsy Store: 105
Items Sold eBay: 14
Items Sold Etsy: 0
Gross Sales eBay (Not including shipping and tax): $716.60
Net Sales (After fees) eBay: $603.41
Cost of Items Sold: $95.33
COGS Percent 15.80%
Highest Price Sold: $174.95 Large Tasmanian Devil
Average Price Sold: $51.19
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Average Days Listed: 333
Longest Listed: 1482
New items listed: 17@annaesthetic23 – Thanks for sharing the info from your program. Interesting stuff, especially about the algorithm. I almost always do the bulk of my listing on Thursdays and Fridays, will have to reconsider that.
Regarding cross-posting to Etsy, I’ve been on a project to duplicate my vintage items over using Sixbit. It has a bit of a learning curve to get it set up right, but once you have it figured out it is fairly simple. For the average seller, the cost of $120/month is a bit steep, but for a store the size of yours it might pay off. For my types of items, mainly collectables, I’m not sure Etsy is the right fit as I get many more views of newly posted items on eBay. Cross posting existing inventory is time consuming as the only information that is automatically copied over to the Etsy listing is the price, title, package dimensions and pictures. Description and other listing details all have to be manually input again. For new listings it is a small incremental addition, but for existing you’re redoing a lot of information that can take 5 – 10 minutes per listing (once you get the hang of it).
