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Small success to report. I successfully ran the process for one listing (273207528355). The biggest pain was getting the boiler plate information entered correctly. The photos filled in without any error or hiccup. That is fantastic news for me. In fact, the more I think about it, I could conceivably ensure that the VA wouldn’t even access my word press site. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to my library of photos, which could be conceivable if someone has access to that catalog of photos. So, I think I’ll have them access the photos on Google Photos, where I currently upload all my photos to as I take them on my phone. The photos are named by Google photos and are imported with those sequentially numbered titles. those titles carry though to the word press site, so that may be a seamless part of the process. Now, I’m off to run a large number of the same type of items to further refine this process.
It looks like InkFrog is relatively inexpensive and may be a really great option. But it doesn’t appear to interface with Etsy.
Here’s my numbers:
sales count 21
net $331.58
average price $18.96
STR 1.72%
#items in store 1222
returns 2
cost of returns $50.49My returns were for a lot of craft books and a pair of glasses. In one instance the books didn’t include the cds that were originally with the book. I missed that and didn’t include that information in my listing. My fault completely, I issued an immediate and full refund and fell all over myself apologizing. The buyer actually left me positive feedback. The other return, the pair of vintage glasses, occurred because the buyer said they found a lower price from another seller. I had sold the 1970s Gant aviator glasses for 39.99 plus shipping. The other seller was only charging $17 for the same pair. My was returned, but I realized an $8 restocking fee. So, at least there was some offset. Sales were lighter than prior weeks, with no real boost realized from either promoted listings (which are glitchy on many levels) or sales (which I went as deep as 40% off with little bump in sales). I did run a number of auctions, approximately 122, but they all ended in this week’s numbers on Sunday & Monday. I’ll be able to share those positive results after next week’s podcast.
Oh, and I listed approximately 50 items.
Talk soon all. Marjean28
I haven’t listened to the whole podcast yet and am not ready to do my numbers, but I wanted to let you know Ryanne, there are a couple of possible answers I wanted to share with you. 1. you can get a list of your whole store through file exchange for free. just download the active (or whatever type) of listings you wish and it will be available in minutes for download, but the photos won’t be there. 2. I am working on a file exchange solution for enabling remote workers to be able to load listings into a spreadsheet and it would include photos, for free. I’m close to having that work. I’ll put my results in the thread that’s going about WL and 6bit in the random thoughts section. hope that helps some.
Hi Folks,
I had a bit of a hectic week which cumulated with my daughter in the ER last night. So, I’ll be brief today. I listed 6 things in my small store and about 50 in my big store. I’ll check back in with better details next time around. Thanks.I have not yet had a chance to listen to the podcast, but I’m on a roll getting my numbers out straight away on a Monday, so here we go:
sales total $538.68
avg sale $15.84
# sold 34
promoted listings fees $20.75
net total $517.93
# listed 53
inventory 1242
new $ spent 0
STR 4.27
I have been super nervous about the lack of sales, so I ended up raising my promoted listings rate and running a 30% off sale. This resulted in more sales but a vastly reduced sales price. Whatever gets me to the bottom line is fine with me. I would have been happier with a few hundred more though. There’s still work to do in order to figure it all out.
Happy sales this week! Marjean28I had to call for mine and they had to do some kind of search and supervisor thing to get one for each of my stores.
More issues with promoted listings. I found some of my promoted listings actually appear below the original listing. This is counter to the idea of promoting. I talked to ebay about it. They said they would bring the matter to their technical team. Who knows, it may have just gone into a black hole.
I’ve been checking too and had some frightening results where I don’t show up in listings at all, even when I filter to all my item specifics. The thing to make sure of when you search is that you are searching in the category your listing is assigned to or you’re searching under all categories. Hope that helps.
Mike @ MDC. these are excellent points. I don’t want to pay the enterprise level because its very pricey for sure. I’ll dig a little and post back. Perhaps I’ll move this topic to another area of the forum however so it doesn’t get tied to this particular week’s podcast. More to come from me.
ok. so if all listings count, I’ll change my numbers to reflect what I did. I listed 105 things last week, of which 19 were death piles. I guess I thought only DP listings counted. Sorry!
Shoutout to Katie Scott….I’d love to connect via email. If you feel the same way, please get my contact info from Jay 🙂 I’m going to email Jay and ask him if it’s ok to get yours. Thanks! Marjean28
I’m excited to be posting my numbers right away on a Monday morning! I listened to the podcast, but I kept falling asleep, darn it!
sales gross $771.74
COG $47.48
Promoted listings fees $23.48
net $700.78
sales count 38
average sales price $18.44
highest item sold $118.00 8 wedgewood teacups & saucers
total items in store 1200
STR 3.17%
returns: 1Fantastic week for me. I’m happy with my upwardly trending numbers as they represent the fact that consistent listing efforts pay off.
A follow up on my INAD / return case. It turned out in the end that I did accept the return at my expense for shipping. However, the buyer never returned the sheets in the end. I bet she got nervous when i mentioned that color is a remorse reason. I did get a return from a buyer for a small camera, because he didn’t have his address correct. I gave him his money back, less shipping. English was a second language and I felt bad for the kid. I forgot to back those numbers out of my totals, but it wasn’t much. My big takeawy here is that if the buyer misuses the INAD reason, it really can only be fought with the appeals department, not with your buyer.
My philosophy on eBay’s business decisions on things like why they choose to favor sellers who are most lenient on buyers is this: It doesn’t matter why they make the decisions that they do, they do it because they can. All I can control is how I react to it. If I want to make the business decision, I’d have to have my own website.
I decided to hire a VA to do my drafts and upload photos. To that end, I signed up for wonderlister. And I posted an add for a VA on OnlineJobs.ph. I found out about this site by listening to a youtuber who does do drop shipping because they seemed very genuine and had worked out some best practices. It’s not that I want to do drop shipping, but anyone who has good content gets a listen from me. They are the Hustle Husbands (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmeU2DYiVy80wMBGZzEWnbw). I plan on making some basic clothing templates for current clothing items which don’t require special searches. The VA will create a listing title based on the photographs, which will include the tag for specific details. Then the VA can simply grab the photos from google photos, select the correct template, create the title by formula (brand, gender, type of clothing article, color, attributes), add the photos, leave it in wonder lister for me to review and make live. My plan is to pay per hour and add commission once they are past a probationary period. This way, I will be left to sort and take photos. Ultimately, I want a photographer too. Ideally, I could just drop off items to be photographed to the photographer’s house and pick up when done weekly. That would leave me to source and review the listings prior to publication. I can still do the end to end process for high end items. I’m just talking bread and butter for outsourcing: current clothing, certain books & magazines, modern electronics (curling irons, curlers, alarm clocks, etc.)
I connected with another ebayer via craigslist this week because he had an add stating he has extra bubble wrap from a source he wants to share. I hope to have coffee with him in the coming weeks. He seems to be about the same kind of scavenging approach and I’m anxious to have someone to talk business to in person. Though, thanks to Amantino, I have a connection to another trash elf through the Deathpile Listing Challenge which has been invaluable to my motivation! Thanks to the fellow deathpile listers all!
happy hunting fellow trash elves!
Marjean28
Hi Everyone. sorry to have ghosted last week! I just was busy busy busy trying to get up listings and expanding my ebay storage space. I listed 77 items during the week of 4/8-4/14, but I don’t expect those numbers to count because I didn’t turn them in. Plus most of that was not death pile stuff. So, on for this week. For the time period of 4/15-4/21, here are my death pile listing counts:
total death pile ONLY counts – 19
I did manage to set up a new photo booth area. Its much bigger and now I have 3 mannequins: a medium size female torso, a plus size female torso, a large size male torso. Then I figured out how to put my syrofoam head on a plant stand from the garden, so I guess I have another mannequin of sorts.
04/08/18 – 04/14/18
Total Items In Store: 1100 (apx)
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: 12.45
Total Sales: 438.36
Net: 425.91
Highest Price Sold: $105 My 50 Years in Rodeo Living With Cowboys Horses & Danger Fog Horn Clancy Vintage HC Book (found at the Goodwill bins)
Average Price Sold: $21.92
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: 102
Number of Items listed this week: 77I had a threatened return this week. The customer started and INAD claim because the duvet cover and pillow sham set were too faded in her opinion. To me, that is an issue of color saturation, which is essentially color. I responded to her claim stating that I would gladly accept the return but that she would have to pay for the shipping. I waived 20% restocking fee. She declined the offer with no further explanation. I called eBay, they advised me to wait until the last day I could respond to her denial and that the claim would be closed in my favor on that day. That didn’t happen. I was advised by a supervisor on that day to agree to pay for return shipping because the buyer indicated INAD and they are not able to change that except upon appeal. I finally capitulated and in the end, she didn’t even return it in the end. The whole system is flawed. The fact that a consumer has the ability to select INAD as a reason when it is for color, a covered remorse reason, and that the customer service reps can’t correct that. It can only be corrected by the appeals team. What a lot of monkeying around. It would probably be cheaper to just get rid of the appeals department and give both parties their way. The cost of having all those he said/she said situations investigated, can’t hardly be worth the cost.
On another note, I went out in a blizzard to source! https://imgur.com/o15V2BW This is the scene of what it looked like when i finally emerged from the goodwill outlet! ABS…Always Be Scavenging!
Marjean28
