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Jay, dunno exactly, it just feels like different skill sets: Photos on one hand and Data entry on the other. Just an initial thought, but I’m not married to anything just yet. I do appreciate this forum where there is an opportunity to flesh out these questions. 🙂 Marjean28
Another successful update. I have 3 templates working well now, children’s picture books, bras, and women’s tops. I am figuring out more about what happens when you make your listing template first and then take the photos of the items in a different order than what you listed them in. Then, what happens if you don’t have your photos all in perfect order? Problems solved. I even had one of the uploads get accepted with no glitches on the first try. So, I’m feeling very hopeful.
I am looking into a local photographer. And yes, for cheap. Here’s why: I want them to only take photos of the clothing type items: belts, purses, scarves, clothing. And I only want 4 photos for each item. Front, Side, Back or flaws, and tag. That’s it. And I ultimately want the VA to be able to make the listing from that. There is not going to be any research that they will do. It will only be plugging data into a spreadsheet. So, for tops, it’s about 6 data points of item specifics: brand, size type, size, color, material, pit to pit. That’s it. They don’t even have to write the title because the formulas do that.
Will they be listing my Netsukes? No way!
Later folks,
Marjean28The difference is the money. I can hire someone for 1/3 the money remotely. Teenagers won’t work around around here for less than $11/hour. Babysitters make $15/hour. In fact, it may just be that all I end up doing is making a faster process for myself. I can’t stand using the mouse or phone to enter the information. I much prefer a matrixed environment of a spreadsheet. Who knows? It’ll probably just be me in the end anyway! LOL!
T-Satt – regarding mistakes, agreed! That’s why I will QA and handle the file exchange upload myself. I plan on making a checker type function within Excel too. My background is in compliance, QA testing, business operations, process flows, procedure writing, etc. So, that’s likely why I’m heading this way.
My procedure and process will need to be extremely controlled and robust. I don’t plan on doing a lot of teaching. I plan on the actual procedure and spreadsheet being self explanatory. With a cell locked, drop down only, spreadsheet, and step by step procedures, it should be manageable. Time will tell. If nothing else, it will be easy for me to follow! And this assumes that someone can read the tag, or book title, etc. from the photo. I haven’t tested that yet.
I really want to get a photographer here too. And I would have to pay decent money for a US Based employee for sure. Again, I would gravitate toward a scaled commission structure.
My next step is learning what I can of inkfrog right now so that I can get the 30 day listings to automatically re-list. And today, I’m rolling out a new catagory id spreadsheet (on to bras now) and will see how that goes.
Looking ahead, I can see wanting an access data base over the spreadsheets, but I’m holding off on that. Correction, I’m forcing myself to hold off on that.
quick and dirty hack…pool noodles in the legs of the jeans maybe? Just slide them in. dunno, might try it….
T-SATT: What happened with your VA? Did they just operate too slowly, or with too many mistakes? Were they out of the country? I love the idea of the photographer. How much do you pay your photographer? Brilliant idea of you to have them come to you for the pick up and drop off. And they do the prep too! WOW! Did you supply their photography equipment? Was the volume efficiency an issue because they had to flip flop between category id’s?
My goal is to have the VA & Photographer work in tandem on bread and butter items. And then all I would do is quality check the spreadsheet and handle the upload. I would reserve items needing special research to me. I don’t encounter too much just yet that needs much research though. Assuming my time were freed up, I would have more time to do more deliberate sourcing.
Hey Jay, you are correct. It’s not much at all. Not saying this is the definitive example, but I figure something like this: Assuming that the VA is being paid $4/hour as a base, and they are able to put up 200 listings/day, in a 6 hour day, then they would be earning $34/day instead of $24/day, or earning $4.67/hour. I’d much prefer a model like 20 cents per listing, with a base of $2/hour. That example would be $52/day for those 6 hours. It’s moot now, since I’m not ready to get the VA going yet.
An update on having a wordpress site for hosting photos, its totally unnecessary. First of all, dreamhost is wayyyyyy too klunky. I shouldn’t have this much trouble loading photos. And, inkfrog includes photo hosting. So, now I’ll just upload the photos into inkfrog, grab the URLs from inkfrog, do the .csv file exchange into eBay and manage through inkfrog from there for things like automatic 30 day sell similar, etc.
My next step for tomorrow is to build my title from the attributes automatically by using concatenate functions. My idea is to use a speech to text function within MS Word to note listing details.
Assume these are the item specifics for a women’s top:
brand: Banana Republic
Type of Top: Button Down
Color: Brown
Material: 100% Cotton
Size: M
Country of Manufacture: China
Features: Buttons
Neckline: Classic
Fit (optional added custom detail): Form Fit
(etc.)I would use those specifics to build the title, using a text-delimiter in word, pull that into excel, run a text to columns and concatenate formulas to make the title for the .csv spreadsheet. The word doc would read like this:
Banana Republic,Button Down,M,Brown,100% Cotton,Classic,Form Fit
The title would auto populate into the title field of the CSV File Exchange spreadsheet:
The title format would be = Women (boiler plate for every women’s listing)+ Brand + Type of Top + Size + Color + Material + Neckline + Fit + Preowned (boiler plate filler statement for titles which end prior to 80 characters + Made in USA (again, more boiler plate filler)
The final 80 character title would be=
Women Banana Republic Button Down M Brown 100% Cotton Classic Neckline Form FitI’d use the LEFT formula to ensure only 80 characters populate and the LEN formula to validate the final title is at or below 80 characters.
I’ll do something similar to auto populate the description area. It will include the tile on the first row, followed by a reiteration of some of the item specifics.
I just want to be able to grab a stack of something (books, belts, purses, etc.) rattle off the specifics into the word doc and pull everything into excel. take the photos, pull them into excel and make the whole thing self populate the entire listing. I can always add one-off notes to higher end or unique items as a revision after the listing is created.
I feel I will be able to get there pretty soon.
T-SATT- I plan on paying a very low wage per hour, and implementing a commission structure 90 days in. For example, I will try to get someone for $3-4/hour with the idea that they can list 100 items/day once they are up to speed (e.g. likely by 90 days). Then I will give them some kind of scaled per listing bump to their pay. For example, 50-100 listings/day is 5 cents per listing bonus. 101-150/day is 10 cents per listing bonus, something like that. I haven’t drilled down on it yet. I’ll keep you posted.however, commission will feature large in my pay. I prefer folks to make at least 50% or 75% of their income by commission. I come from a commission background and I know how much of a motivator it is. plus, I’m on commission right now! 100% 🙂
Hi, I have just a moment to give an update. I plan on hiring my own VA from the Philippines. More to come on that later. I am having trouble with my photo uploads to the dreamhost server. The problem is being worked on, but that is eating the majority of my time. Essentially, here’s where we are at on day 3:
1. 30 minutes to take 4 photos each of 47 books, so conceivably 100 books an hour photography is manageable.
2. 1 hour to log those 47 books into my spreadsheet, but I plan on speeding that up with voice to text solftware, maybe…
3. 1 hour for the photo upload to dreamhost because of the technical problems I’m experiencing
4. 30 minutes to review and finalize my csv file for file exchange upload
My goal is to get to 100/day photographed and uploaded. I think I can get there as every day seems to be getting better and more bugs being worked out.I sent an email to inkfrog to see if their photo hosting will allow me to access the .jpg URL for the photos for use in my csv file exchange upload. They replied with a fix. I will try that next. If I can easily do that, then I will not deal with dreamhost anymore for my file uploads and that will speed things up.
my plan for a VA is to simply create a procedure that outlines the process, and for the interview give them 10 files to do. If they can do that, they can go on to the next round of interview. That is how I will weed out anyone without the capacity to follow simple instructions. I won’t be handing them complex items. My goal is just to get bread and butter their way, like commodity items, or basic collectables, not something that requires a ton of research. They should be able to glean the info they need right from the photos.
Bottom line for today 47 listings done and its not even noon. 🙂
Day 2 went even better. Listed 20, the first day, 27 the second day, plus fixed photo problem from first day, plus did spreadsheet for another 48 done, just need to do the photos for those 48 and then get those urls populated on the spreadsheet. This time I’m going to try inkfrog’s photo hosting instead of my wordpress site. The dream host.com hosted site doesn’t successfully load all my images on the first go around. I get failed uploads and have to go back through one or two more times to reload photos individually until they all get uploaded. I’ll see if the inkfrog solution for photo hosting is a viable solution.
My goal is to have bread and butter items that I can easily source, get a VA to ultimately handle and leave the one off and home runs for me to handle.
Hey JemiJuniper,
How do you like selling on Instagram? Is it worth your effort? Or is it a community for discussions only? Thanks!
Marjean28
I did my numbers in the post above. Now for my responses to the podcast. First, I love the podcast, any and all of them. We are pondering the thought of the possibility of the demise of eBay, but worse yet, what if Jay & Ryanne stopped doing the podcast!!!! GASP!!! It would be like if This American Life Went off the air…..don’t even think it 🙂
My take away from the podcast regarding diversification is not that the intent is to duplicate sales volumes on other platforms, but to enhance the opportunity for additional sales through those platforms. While it may not be a game changer, it certainly may be a game enhancer. This is only plausible if it can be achieved without compromising the listing efforts on the main platform (e.g. eBay, etc.).
As for listing applications, while it’s true that WL and 6Bit are desktop applications, both File Exchange and InkFrog are cloud based. File Exchange relies upon you hosting your photos to a specific URL which ends in .jpg. Since most of us don’t have our own servers (don’t you J&R?) that means getting cloud space somewhere for that. I chose dreamhost, which may not be the absolute best, but it’s cheap at $5/month. And InkFrog, which I also just signed up for because they allow for unlimited number of VA’s. I did try the InkFrog .csv file upload, but it was way to barebones for my liking. I love the idea of having a spreadsheet where everything that is boiler plate is pre-populated in the cells, and I can write formulas for things like the photo URLs. I was pretty please with myself by getting the formulas to take my list of photo names, concatenate and index them to follow a pattern based on the number of photos I take for the listings. Anyway, the whole spreadsheet doesn’t take that long to fill in. The key here is that the same items go together on one spreadsheet. It can be arranged to have more than one category ID on the spreadsheet, but I think that would be better handled through a SQL or Access database. The first day I did 20 and had issues with the photos being out of order. I solved that and I was able to fix that problem and get 27 more done today and it’s not even the end of the day. So, I’m feeling some confidence about being able to do 100/day. Once I get my process bugs out, I’ll look at hiring a VA that can do this for me. If there is anyone else who wants to talk shop about eBay File Exchange or InkFrog, please reach out! Jay has my contact info too if you want to email.
I have one more thing that has been dinging around in my mind. When we post the weekly numbers, we put in COGS, but really, all we have been indicating is the cost of the item itself and that isn’t really COGS. COGS should also include all the other costs which go into selling the item, which would include, among other things, the eBay and PayPal fees. Just a thought to consider.
Thanks everyone for your input on this forum. It’s invaluable.
Marjean28
Hi, I’m also going to quick get my numbers in here and haven’t yet had a chance to listen to the podcast. First, Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there in trash elf land! Here’s the numbers:
ebay big store (TJ Digs)
number of items in store: 1209
number of items sold: 41
total gross sales, not including shipping: $608.89
COGS: $57.81
eBay & PP fees: $139.77
number of unpaid items from auction: 2
cost of unpaid items: $11.49
number of returns: 1
cost of returns, including shipping: $5.59
net income (less COG, eBay & PP fees, unpaid items, & returns): $394.23
average sales price: $14.85
sell through rate: 3.39%
highest priced item sold: $129.99 VTG Crown Trifari Necklace/Earrings Set @ auction, original COG $18
items listed 0ebay small store (Diggers)
number of items in store: 231
number of items sold: 0
items listed: 7poshmark @Marjean28
number of items in store: 82
number of items sold: 1
total gross sales, not including shipping: $29.00
COG: $0
posh fees: $5.80
net income: $23.19
average sales price: $29.00
sell through rate: 1.22%
highest priced item sold, vince camuto new women’s shoes: $29.00
items listed: 12Etsy (reclaimeddame)
number of items in store: 54
number of items sold: 0
items listed: 4I think there is something to the theory that the algorithm is giving credit for sold items. I ran a bunch of auctions and as they were coming to a close, or had just closed, I got 4 sales for full price on some buy it now items. It was as if the auction sales were driving buyers to my other listings.
I’ll be the first to post….ZERO! As you know from my last post on the original thread, My daughter ended up in the ER last Sunday. Well, that turned out to be a virus, a stomach flu…ughhhhh. She has been sick for the last 6 days. Needless to say, my attention was diverted. Thanks to all those who wished me well. Hopefully I will have better news to report next week. thanks! Marjean28
