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A bit sad to wake up Monday with the knowledge no new show is coming. Fortunately, I never went all the way back to the beginning to listen since my podcast app didn’t go back that far. I’m going to start listening on YouTube so I can listen while I work. If I space it out I figure I’ve got a few more years to listen. 🙂
Had a busy and fun week listing. Posted a lot of high dollar items, so took extra time for researching. I cherry picked some old german beer steins from a local estate sale that had a lot. I got lucky and the estate sale pricer had simply priced them all the same even though there were drastic differences in quality. It was an online estate sale with fixed prices. This was my first time buying online where it wasn’t an auction. At pick up they had everything that hadn’t sold available for offers and I picked up a few more. All but one were from the 19th century.
Had two high dollar sales this week, a vintage Aladdin Blue Flame Heater that I purchased for $7 and sold for $200 and a Case hunting knife that I paid $5 and sold for $150. Those two really saved my week.
Sales Report for: 9/4/21
Total Items in Store: 1142
Items Sold: 8
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $466.21
Net Sales (After fees): $393.09
Cost of Items Sold: $54.60
COGS Percent 13.89%
Net Profit Margin: 72.60%
Highest Price Sold: $199.95 Vintage Aladdin Blue Flame Heater
Average Price Sold: $58.28
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 4
Promoted Percentage: 50.00%
Average Days Listed: 300
Longest Listed: 884
New items listed: 33@retro-treasures-wv – Hang in there. Great to see you back here on the board. You’ve been in our thoughts. We’re pulling for you!
@Lauren – Congratulations on hitting your milestone. Hard work pays off.
Jay and Ryanne,
Sad to hear you’re ending the podcast. Like so many others here, you are a big part of the reason I sell on eBay full time. When I “retired” from the corporate world in 2016 I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to keep busy and make money. My wife introduced me to your podcast and you inspired me to give it a try. I can’t imagine what I’d be doing without it.
Even though the topics veered far from eBay at times, it was inspiring to hear about your risk taking and successes. The positive vibe and your focus on self-reliance was a shot in the arm so many times, and your philosophy of frugality a welcome reminder to spend money mindfully.
I hope you will update us from time to time, or perhaps start a new podcast that can encompass the whole of what you are doing. You are indeed influencers, just not in the shallow way it is often shown in social media.
You will be missed. Wishing you much continued success.
-Mike
@Retro – Very sorry to hear that you are and wife aren’t doing well. Sending you both strength and hoping for a swift recovery.
Interesting topic this week. It’s hard to imagine that anyone doing what we do would feel trapped, as it is such a freeing lifestyle for me after being in the corporate world for so long. That said, as Simon mentioned, if I was relying on this for my total income and didn’t have savings in the bank it might be a different story.
I’m trying to kick things into gear and raise my numbers back up. Had a productive week posting the most items in a single week in about 2 years (49). Have taken it pretty easy over the summer with trying to keep the kids entertained and vacation travels, but we’re around the bend now and Christmas is coming. I need to keep up a good pace as I’ve fallen behind a bit this year. I averaged listing about 19 items per week in 2020, but this year I’m down to only 13 on average.
Another slow week of sales.
Sales Report for: 8/21/21
Total Items in Store: 1118
Items Sold: 13
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $266.85
Net Sales (After fees): $213.22
Cost of Items Sold: $21.00
COGS Percent 9.85%
Net Profit Margin: 72.03%
Highest Price Sold: $60.00 Antique Cut Glass Crystal Compote
Average Price Sold: $20.53
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0.00
Sold via promoted listings: 9
Promoted Percentage: 69.23%
Average Days Listed: 340
Longest Listed: 1115
New items listed: 49I switched over to Chrome and I don’t seem to be having the issue on Chrome. Still happening on Edge browser.
@toniwill – I called and reported it. They acknowledged it was a thing, and added it to the log. I also posted on the community forum where there are other complaining about the same issue.
@Timo – I use Pirate Ship for all my international sales under 4 lbs and smaller than 1 cubic foot. In those situations it is always cheaper than any eBay offered option. I stopped using GSP due to the added cost for the buyer, and eBay send has too many quirks which to me make it undesireable. I noticed a small bump in sales once I began passing on my discount to my buyers, especially to Canada.
I’ve created 3 shipping policies in eBay to handle them. One for under 8 ounces, one for greater than 8 ounces up to 1 lb, and a third for packages greater than 1 lb. and less than 4 lbs. Here is a link to their pricing structure. Simple Export Rate | Pirate Ship
I have the two policies under 1 lb set to charge a flat rate for international shipments into which I’ve built in the cost of adding insurance to shipments ($10.49 + $1.00). I use shipsaver for most of my insurance purchases, but Pirate Ship offers insurance as well (slightly more expensive than shipsaver).
After you have registered, you must contact them and ask to have the Simple Export Rate applied to your account or you won’t get the best prices.
Not sure what is going on for you regarding Puerto Rico and USVI. They should ship as if domestic.
Hope that helps.
@craig-rex Thanks! Shipping to China was $78. I used USPS Priority International direct to China. I don’t use GPS on my items as it is usually much more expensive for the buyer and like you most items don’t warrant. I did splurge for insurance just in case, but I’ve shipped a fair amount overseas without problem.
Thanks for the show!
Finally had a good week after so many low dollar weeks. This was my best week since January thanks to one large dollar sale. I sold a mid-century Menorah for $1000 that I picked up at an auction for $7. I didn’t realize what I had purchased, just thought it was cool looking. Turned out to be by a famous Jewish sculptor, David Palumbo. He made a lot of brutalist art and welded iron menorahs, in particular. Sold to a buyer in Hong Kong and shipping to China. I’ve had good luck selling mid-century Judaica. The area I live in has a lot of it and it usually ships overseas, often back to Israel where it was originally made.
Regarding fear of training others to do what we do, I think your attitude it right on. There is abundance all around us if you look hard enough and plenty to go around. One of my favorite quotes from back in my days in sales was from Zig Ziglar: “You can have anything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.” Anytime anyone has asked me to give them some help getting started I’ve been completely open and helpful. I feel like what goes around comes around.
Scavenge of the week was a box of old postcards that I purchased at an auction. Lots of cool old cards and playing cards from the early 20th century. Previous owner was a French person who immigrated to the US after WWII so they are all from Europe and many prior to WWI. I haven’t sold many postcards but I’m looking forward to digging into these.
Lastly, just passed another milestone this week: 1500 feedback.
Sales Report for: 8/14/21
Total Items in Store: 1080
Items Sold: 7
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $1,404.90
Net Sales (After fees): $1,219.43
Cost of Items Sold: $45.59
COGS Percent 3.74%
Net Profit Margin: 83.55%
Highest Price Sold: $1,000.00 Vintage Menorah
Average Price Sold: $200.70
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $277.00
Sold via promoted listings: 2
Promoted Percentage: 28.57%
Average Days Listed: 386
Longest Listed: 1253
New items listed: 1@retro-treasures-wv – Big congratulations on the new baby! Such a bummer that you have Covid at the same time and can’t fully enjoy the experience. Hopefully you’ve got a bit of help to take up the slack. Take care of yourselves!
Haven’t posted for several weeks due to vacation. Last week was my first full week with listings back to normal handling time.
I tried to use Time Away while I was gone, but it only allows for 2 weeks with your store open to sales, there is also an option to leave listings up but halt sales that allows for 30 days. I ended up using a combination of changed shipping time in my policies for the first 2 weeks, then turned on Time Away for the last two weeks and tried to change all my listings back. Unfortunately, eBay implemented new required fields in the middle of my vacation, so about 1/3 of my listings wouldn’t update.
Sales were extremely slow while I was away, averaging about $250/week. Still not bad while away on vacation.
My scavenge of the week was a vintage Case hunting knife that I picked up at an estate sale. They asked $5 for it and I have it listed for $199.95. They were asking way too much for most everything else they were selling, but still managed to find a few other good items.
Sales Report for: 8/7/21
Total Items in Store: 1087
Items Sold: 10
Gross Sales (Not including shipping and tax): $564.71
Net Sales (After fees): $466.18
Cost of Items Sold: $35.40
COGS Percent 7.59%
Net Profit Margin: 76.28%
Highest Price Sold: $155.00 Vintage Lenci Stuff Lion
Average Price Sold: $56.47
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $172.00
Sold via promoted listings: 6
Promoted Percentage: 60.00%
Average Days Listed: 297
Longest Listed: 871
New items listed: 13Just back from vacation and catching up on listening. Your comments regarding being flooded with new required fields when you updated your policies struck home with us as well. When I changed all my policies to allow for longer shipping times I had no problems, but when I tried to update them during my trip to lower the handling times I had hundreds of listings fail to update due to new required fields. My percentage was much higher than yours, probably about 20% of our 1100 listings total.
It was very time consuming. After I went through and updated all listings identified by the required updates query, there were still about 100 listings that wouldn’t allow their policies to update. Turned out that they also had required updates, but just weren’t flagged by the query. The only way I was able to make sure I got them all was to go direct to the policies with the failed listings and view active listings from the policies.
Most of my updates were related to Christmas ornaments. A new “Type” field required ornament to be selected, even though they were all in the ornaments category and had ornament in the title.
