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01/01/2019 at 10:06 am in reply to: How do you spend your quarterly eBay Subscription Coupon for Shipping Supplies? #54283
Not much to choose from anymore. There are like 17 items to choose from.
I mostly stick to boxes, Tissue paper, poly mailers, and tape. Not much left from there.
Mark S
Jay,
When I say great for Bonanza, I mean as compared to Truegether. For 2018: $579 on Bonanza vs. $338 on Truegether.
So, not great compared to ebay, but that’s $917 so I will take it when I basically did no extra work.
Yes, I think it is a bug that they refuse to fix. I guess re-importing your eBay store into Bonanza would only fix it for that moment, but then as things sell, it would get out of sync. But I think I am way off right now since Bonanza doesn’t end the items when they sell on ebay.
Mark
I am seeing the opposite with Bonanza and Truegether. Bonanza is doing great and not much at all with Truegether.
The only issue is that Bonanza is not syncing anymore as Jay says. Has anyone found a fix for that short of dropping and redoing your whole store?
Mark S
12/30/2018 at 10:34 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 392: No Alarm Clocks – We chat with Troy aka T-Satt about the eBay Lifestyle #541372018-12-23 – 2018-12-29
Total Items In Store: 2599
Items Sold: 11
Cost of Items Sold: $40
Total Sales: $420
Highest Price Sold: $93.50 (Allen Edmond Shoes)
Average Price Sold: $38.13
# Items Listed: 13
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0Gut Sales Report for the week: Slow sales, but still steady. Hope things pick up in January.
Challenge of the week: Trying to get those custom labels all done before the new year!
Scavenge of the week: Nothing
Mark S
12/30/2018 at 10:15 am in reply to: Has anyone found shelving units that will fit 3, 30 Gallon containers/shelf? #54134T-Satt & Mike,
I was looking at the SynCommerce tool that Mike was talking about. They say they can do the conversion from ebay to etsy automatically. I am not sure how that is possible since it has been pointed out that etsy has fields that ebay doesn’t. Unless you have to specify that before you start like “Use Item specifics for my tags”
I am going to call SynCommerce when I can get them during normal business hours because I have other questions for them too. SynCommerce would be worth it if they also did Mercari and Poshmark, but on the fense with just etsy. It would work cheaper than Six Bit till I got to 1000 items on etsy because they give 2 months for free when you do an annual subscription.
Mark
Jay,
Yes, that is the challenge. And of course there is a learning curve at the beginning.
I am not sure this would work as well with Mercari and Poshmark. Because if the STR drops to say 25%, I don’t think it is as attractive. Also because I have not found any multi-platform listing tool that says they can cross-list to Mercari and Poshmark. So, Mercari and Poshmark will probably take more like 5 minutes to list making it even less attactive.
The other night, I sat up till 2:30AM going through 21 multi-platform listing tools looking for one that said they worked with Mercari and Poshmark and not one of them did. Does anyone know of a tool that will do that?
Mark
Oh, and the last part that I forgot is the final $\Hour. This is measure wheather this is a good idea or not.
Ebay: $1520 gross for 333.33 hours or $4.56 \ hour per month on an on-going basis, assuming I keep replenishing items.
Etsy: $860 gross (after Sixbit expense) for 33.33 hours or $25.80 \ hour per month on an on-going basis, assuming I keep replenishing items.
So, I would be making about 5X more per hour for my time invested in cross-listing, than the time invested into the original listing.
Mark
12/29/2018 at 10:34 pm in reply to: Has anyone found shelving units that will fit 3, 30 Gallon containers/shelf? #54113I had a 48″ shelving unit that I got for Christmas. So, I set it up to see how it worked out. What I now realize is that you lose quite a bit of space with the shelving units. The bars on the sides eat up about 1.5″ for a total of 3″. So, a 60″ shelving unit is really only 57″ wide. Also, the horizontal bars on a shelving unit take up an extra 1.5″ – 2″. For 5 shelves, that is nearly 10″ in space lost going up verical.
I think I have come to the conclusion that if I want to conserve as much space as possible and also be able to fit into custom sized spaces, I am going to have to use pvc.
Mark
Jay has commented that cross-listing on other platforms takes away time from ebay (or whatever platform is your main platform) and just redirects money. However, I did the math on this and that doesn’t appear to be true. Check my math here:
Steps for me to list on ebay
I figure there are about 12 steps (some are optional for some items) to getting an item listed: 1. Sourcing the item 2. Research 3. Title 4. Pricing 5. Noting flaws 6. Tagging \ Bagging 7. Weigh in and dimensions 8. Cleaning \ Fixing 9. Container prep (what is going in the container) 10. Photographs 11. Listing 12. Register and move the Container into your Inventory. Steps will vary by item\person.Time Required for an ebay listing\etsy listing
These 12 steps for me take on average about 20 minutes per item. So, for me, to get an item on ebay is a 20 minute investment on average. Now, if I take T-Satt’s nummbers from above (using SixBit and paying a monthly fee) I can list that item on Etsy for a 1-2 minute investment or 10% of my investment to get it on to ebay because I only have to perform step 11 (listing) only for etsy. Now etsy as a whole is a little slower than ebay for most sellers. Let’s just say that etsy only sells 60% as fast of ebay. So, if I list 1000 items on ebay, than will take me 333.33 hours. Cross Listing them to etsy will take me 33.33 hours.Hypothetical Gross Sales on ebay\etsy
If my sell through rate is 4% on ebay, then my sell through rate is about 2.4% on etsy (2.4 is 60% of 4). And assume that my average selling price is $38 on ebay. This means that in a month on ebay, I should have gross sales of about $1520 (4% STR and $38 ASP based on 1000 items). The etsy gross sales would be about $960 (2.4% STR and $40 ASP based on 1000 items). I put $40 ASP because Mike from Atlanta says that things sell for a little more on etsy. Plus, you pay less fees and no promoted listing fees or sale discounts.Conclusion
For my 33.33 hours invested into listing onto etsy for 1000 items, I will gross about $860 ($100 is to pay for Six bit monthly subscription) a month on an on-going basis. So, this was my rationale to persuade myself that cross listing on etsy should be a no brainer. What do you think?Disclaimer
I realize that my numbers are made on assumptions that could be wrong. Also, the numbers will differ for each person and even each person will flucuate from month to month. Jay has said that etsy didn’t seem to work for them, so maybe for J&R, my numbers are way off and won’t work in their situation.Mark S
ChristineR,
Thanks Christine!
I think ebay stepped up to the plate on this one for me. That’s one for ebay! Good job ebay!
Mark
Retro,
I believe that was just their reason for the return. I went to the resolution center and there isn’t an INAD case. Anywhere else to look?
Mark
12/24/2018 at 12:48 pm in reply to: Sad story I heard this week. Makes me thankful to sell online! #53955T-Satt,
I hear you on trying to scale this business. That is one of my areas to think about this Holiday break. Like you, I am exploring other scavenging options to scale faster. I am not looking to replace regular scavenging venues, but to add more venues to get the product faster; like you have been looking into.
Mark
12/23/2018 at 10:23 pm in reply to: Sad story I heard this week. Makes me thankful to sell online! #53925Lol Mike! That was a good one!
However, he wasn’t into country (or not that I could tell). He was into Heavy Metal.
Mark
Great Sales The_SEAM_Store!
I posted that sad story I mentioned above. Here is the link to it:
Sad story I heard this week. Makes me thankful to sell online!
Mark
2018-12-16 – 2018-12-22
Total Items In Store: 2,594
Items Sold: 20
Cost of Items Sold: $80
Total Sales: $1030
Highest Price Sold: $165 (Vintage Cornet)
Average Price Sold: $51.50
# Items Listed: 24
Money Spent
on New Inventory: $108Merry Christmas everyone!
Gut Sales Report for the week: Good sales again.
Challenge of the week: I am going to take this Holiday break to “fix” things in my business that need fixed. Also, look for ways to improve all areas of the business. This will also be a time of reflection on how to push the business forward in 2019. I will do a little listing, but mostly fixing, planning, and strategy for the future. Getting my COGS in order will also be a priority.
Scavenge of the week: Two things:
1. This is an item(s) that sold this week for about $300. The funny thing is that a garage sale this summer just gave them to me! It was a huge box of Stamp binders. I had to think twice about taking them even for free because they took up so much room. But I took them and sold a bunch of them for about $300 this week. I still have 6 left.
2. Went to an estate sale and picked up 7 pair of work boots. The average selling price is only about $35. But when is the last time you found 7 pair of work boots all in one place? I never have.
I heard a very sad story at an estate sale this week. I will try to tell the story in the “Random Thoughts” section later in the week.
Mark S
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