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AtomicStar,
I was heavy into clothing. I was at about 33% in April. Jay told me I was too far in with clothes. I took his advice and stopped buying clothes. Sales have picked up, but few clothes are selling.
I don’t know exactly what is happening, but clothes on ebay seem to be a tough sale right now. Don’t know if it the competition from places like Poshmark, Etsy, etc, but clothes are just not selling for me either.
So, I jumped ship on clothes. I will still buy the cream of the crop when I see those clothes, but they are few and far between. I would say to start diversifying.
Mark
Antique Frog,
That is a good point to remember. Sometimes we think things and before we know it, it comes out our mouths. If we have a problem with blurting things out or just have had a bad day, then maybe we just have to “train” or “tell” ourselves to be nice before we go into social situations like an estate sale.
Mark
2019-07-21 – 2019-07-27
Total Items In Store: 3124
Items Sold: 17
Cost of Items Sold: $60
Total Sales: $614.00
Highest Price Sold: $90 (Wrestling Singlet)
Average Price Sold: $36.12
Money Spent on New Inventory: $184
Number of items listed: 73Gut Sales Report for the week: Another good week of sales for my store for this time of year. I think I set a record for the number of items I listed in one week.
I think processing items for ebay is like exercising a muscle to get it in shape. It takes a while to get the muscles in shape. But once that muscle is in shape, you can really process a lot.Challenge of the week: Still trying to get my shipping room in order. I cleared out a lot of stuff. It is a trade off – do I want to spend my time listing a ton of items or get the room fixed up? Well, listing won this week. I am right behind Retro Treasures in my “Clean Up” of my ebay space.
Scavenge of the week: Got a couple of nice baseball gloves for about $3 each and will sell for about $100 each. One was a Wilson A2000 that I got for $3 at a garage sale. The other was a nice Wilson Catcher’s glove that I picked up at the thrift store – they literally laid it down right next to me and I picked it right up. Now that is being in the right place at the right time.
Mark S
Vintage Treasures,
That is a great story about how being nice pays! Also, you can hold your head high knowing that you are a nice person who knows how to treat people right.
We don’t have to like everyone, but we can still be respectful and courteous. It is good business and good for being the right kind of person.
Mark
Daisy,
Call ebay.
Mark
Troy,
It sounds great, but the devil is in the details.
I suspect that those of us with long tail items will not be able to use this because of storage fees that will eventually be coming. Even if the storage costs are free to begin with, after you get your items into someone else’s storage facility, you are at their mercy.
I believe it could work for sellers who sell certain items quickly. Probably very similar to FBA.
So, while it is enticing, I really believe it won’t help me in the end.
Mark
Simon,
Looking at your numbers, you are averaging nearly 4K gross per month this year. That is really good. I am trying to get to 4K gross per month, but I have not been listing\selling as many items as you.
I am just now ramping up my listing and it is starting to work. In general, I sell less quantity of items than you, but my average selling price is much higher. I like this strategy because I can grow my store without getting overwhelmed with all the shipping that must be done. The flip side of this is that I have to keep listing to generate the volume with the higher price. Just a different strategy.
Mark
Simon,
I have run across this error also – assuming you are talking about changing a shipping business policy.
I think it is an ebay bug, they just tell me I have to make the changes correctly. The issue seems to be that ebay creates copies (Like “… copy 1” of your shipping business policies on its own (maybe I am causing this, but what I am doing is not clear). Then, I try to change the shipping business policy and I get an error.
The solution? You have to move all of the items from the shipping business policy copy back to the original shipping business policy. Then delete the shipping business policy copy.
To complicate the matter, ebay’s bulk editor to change the shipping business policy is not working for me. So, then I had to change each listing one by one to the original shipping business policy.
I hope that helps.
Mark
Simon,
This offer was sent via a message from ebay directly to me.
So, I would think this is a special offer to certain stores only, but I don’t know for sure.
I would say to call ebay and see if you can get the same offer.
Mark
Mr. Vintage,
Yes, instead of doubling down on “bad”, I made the best decision to move forward. That was to just get rid of it. That is clearing space and getting rid of bad inventory. Most of it was from several years ago. Some was some really cheap deals I recently got that I thought I could get to work, but have now decided not to.
As a wise man once said, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em. Know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away, And know when to run”. In this case, hold ’em was not in the cards, lol!
Mark
2019-07-14 – 2019-07-20
Total Items In Store: 3068
Items Sold: 20 (19 Ebay, 1 Bonanza)
Cost of Items Sold: $65
Total Sales: $670.00
Highest Price Sold: $60 (Golf Club)
Average Price Sold: $37.58
# Items Listed: 57
Money Spent on New Inventory: $160Gut Sales Report for the week: Another good week of sales for my store for this time of year. This time I earned it by listing much more than I usually do.
Challenge of the week: Well, I took the plunge this past week and upgraded to an anchor store! I didn’t wait till the end of August. Why? Ebay sent me an offer to upgrade for 2 months for free (Anchor for the price of Premium) from Premium to Anchor. By the time two months is up, I should have the 3400 listings and just stay on anchor. I have already reaped the rewards of getting $150 of shipping supplies instead of $50 for the premium. I am not sure how that worked retroactively, because I just accepted the offer on 7/19/19.
Scavenge of the week: Got a really nice Vintage Sony Wood Case Stereo Receiver for $27 at the thrift store. I think I can get close to $300 for it. Also, after church on Sunday I saw a sub sale and went for it. One house was just trying to get rid of a bunch of clothes and shoes. They said $1 each. I took 8 great pairs of shoes – one of them was worth nearly $60.
Other News: I am trying to clean up my ebay “shipping” room. It has also turned into a place to store bad buys. So, I donated a ton of bad buy clothes to the thrift store. Some of them could have worked, but they were very low dollar. Also, I am trying to get out of clothes right now. Jay was right by telling me in April that my store was into clothes too much. Clothes really haven’t been doing all that well for me this year. I will still buy some very select quality clothes, but I am very picky about them and don’t buy much anymore.
Mark S
Julie,
We couldn’t get to the building by car.
It appears that you can just walk up to it. Is that true? We just didn’t have time that night.
Mark
Right on Mike!
Jay – just keep rocking on as you always do. You have created a special place here where everyone is accepted and valued. No one is more accepted and valued as you are Jay!
Mark
Mike,
Do check out the show. Season 3 was just released on July 4th.
Michigan does get some movies here once in a while. My wife and I were extras for a George Clooney movie. You are not allowed to talk to the director or actors unless they talk to you. George Clooney struck up a conversation with us so of course we engaged with him. That rarely happens though.
Mark
One other thing I did while on vacation was to drive thru Atlanta on the way back. Since my whole family are fans of the Netflix show “Stranger Things” we decided to stop at a place they used. We decided to go to “Hawkins Lab”. It is actually the closed down “Georgia Institute of Mental Health”.
Mike and other in Atlanta – if you are a fan of “Stranger Things”, you can go to the mall (Star Court in the show) or to Steve’s house or downtown Hawkins.
If you are not a fan, check out the show. It is really well done. I couldn’t stop watching season 1 after I got started!
Mark
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