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You Killed it Steve!
Mark S
Thanks Brian, Troy, and ebaymom.
This has been a journey getting to 100k. I hope to get the next 100k in a little over 2 years. We will see how that goes.
Mark S
9/23 – 9/29
Total items: 2469
Items sold: 18
Total Sales: $908.27
Cogs: $85
Highest price sold: $170 (shealing jacket)
Avg sell price $50.46
Items Listed: 12
New Inventory: $30I hit a major milestone this past week. I’m sure many of you have long hit this one, but this is a big deal for me. My store hit $100,000 in Lifetime sales! Whoa who!
The week started very slow, but starting on Wed it felt like the busy season. High dollar items were selling fast. This was such a contast to the rest of Sept. I made over 40% of my sales for Sept in the last 5 days of the month.
I took a friend out scavenging with me this weekend. He is a real estate agent (very good one) and owns 4 Bnb’s. He used to flip houses. He is interested in ebay now. Lots of fun showing him how do do it.
Mark
Oh, I forgot my new format since I haven’t posted my numbers in a few weeks.
Gut Sales Report for the week: Sept. has been a really slow month for me.
My process improvement(s) for the week:
1. Add the custom label to all my listings so that determining COGS is much easier.
2. Cleared my ebay room of a lot of the clutter of misc items (not quite a death pile, but it would become one)
3. More planning of the new basement space to open space for about 1250 new items. (this has been in the works for a while, but everything takes a lot longer when you are a part timer)
4. To get more focused, I have created a spreadsheet that has my work for the day broken down into an estimate of how long it will take (so that I don’t plan too much for the day). This has been great because I am strategic about what tasks should be done it what order. I am trying to fix the issues of the past and yet list items at the same time, so this is challenging.
5. I had 30 listed items in my ebay room. These were from cancelled item, unpaid items, returned items, questions about items, requests for measurements for items. I have been lazy in getting these back to inventory, so I took care of this. This is part of “Challenge of the week” below.
To Do: Order new photography equipment this week.
Scavenge of the week: Bought a new in the box Nike golf cover from a guy who won it at a golf outing. He said he couldn’t use it, so that was my cue to offer a low ball offer that was accepted.
Challenge of the week: Get messes from the past cleaned up as much as possible and put processes in place to prevent them from happening again. This is hard for me as a part timer because some of this is very time consuming. That is why I don’t want to have these things happen again.
Pulse of my business
Things are really starting to click for my business. I am getting my old messes cleaned up and starting to get a lot of items listed. Getting messes cleaned up is very important to me right now. It is hard to feel organized when there is unfinished business that is causing issues. I really feel like my business is about to take off. It will be exciting to see what happens.Mark S
2018-09-16 – 2018-09-22
Site: US / Feedback 1174 (Red)
Neutral Feedback 2.00
Positive Feedback 438.00
Total Items In Store: 2474.00
Items Sold: 13.00
Cost of Items Sold: 40.00
Total Sales: 449.90
Total Fees 72.04
Net Sales After Fees: 377.86
Highest Price Sold: 59.99 (Vintage Pre-Recorded Cassette Tapes)
Average Price Sold: 34.61
Buyer Shipping $ 105.84
My Shipping $ 0.00
# Days so far 6.96
Avg. Daily $ 64.64
Proj. Week $ 452.49
# Items Listed 47.00
$ Listed 1801.53
ASP $ Listed 38.33
ebay Final Value Fees 36.70
ebay Fees Allocated 16.12
Paypal Fees 19.22
Fee % of Gross 16.01
# items being watched 1100.00
# items watch count >= 10 15.00
Avg. Item Hit Count 515.00
Best Offer # 3.00
Best Offer $ 54.99
Best Offer ASP $ 18.33
Money Spent on New Inventor: 60.00Like I told Doubly, Sept has not been good to me. Sales are nearly the same as last year. My STR is way down, but ASP is way up which evens things out, but still down a lot from last year. However, I have 20% more items this year and most everything is on a promoted listing. I have listed more items this month than I usually do, so that isn’t the problem. I guess it is just the ebb and flow of ebay and my store. I just hope this trend doesn’t continue. I plan to start listing a lot more, so that should help.
I found a “new source” of finding items where my return is in the 30x – 35x range. Item quality is all over the place – some really great items, some just ok. The average sell price is $32. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but it is. It is fairly stressful because of how fast you have to pick the items (it is like a rummage sale atmospehere), but I have learned how to cope with it. I hope this source continues to be available because I can get a lot of items quickly. This is needed because I have decided to up my listing game.
Mark S
Doubly,
Sept has not been good to me either. Sales are nearly the same as last year. However, I have 20% more items this year and most everything is on a promoted listing. My STR is way down, but ASP is way up which evens things out, but still down a lot from last year.
Mark S
09/18/2018 at 7:51 pm in reply to: Ford Cars which look somewhat like Promo cars, but are not #48908The car bodies are made of plastic.
Oh, that second “Art Piece 1” should read “Art Piece 2”.
Mark S
Mike,
Thanks for the explanation. I like what you end up with. However, the “cost” that it takes to get there is more than I can handle at this point. In my mind, it is more important to be independent of ebay, not the savings of the fees. Yes, the savings of the fees would be great, but complete independence would be better – provided that you could make a similar profit each month.
However, since the “cost” is too high for me now, I will have to wait. But one day when I have the time, this would be a great adventure. Please update us on how your adventure with Shopify is going in the coming months.
Mark
09/02/18 – 09/08/18
Total Items In Store: 2,428
Items Sold: 14
Cost of Items Sold: $50 (around)
Total Sales: $ 568.33
Highest Price Sold: $ 150 (Promo Car)
Average Price Sold: $ 40.60
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 73
Number of Items listed this week: 12It was a decent week. Busy with back to school stuff.
Found a nice set of golf clubs and bag for $25. I am going to piece it out for a better return. Hoping to get $240 for it that way.
I am gearing up for the busy season. I made sure shipping supplies are stocked. I am preparing a new space in the basement to store an additional 1300+ items. Just need to find time to list now. My lister has been busy most of the summer, so I have been filling in.
Mark S
08/30/2018 at 10:24 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Sun Tachometer, Deneuve perfume, Eveready flashlight, Leather duffle, Polar Care, Lone Scout books #48211Doubly,
I sold one of those How to Host a Murder new in the box. I sold it for $22.5 and it took 2 years to sell.
Mark
Mike,
Yes, I just began seeing this on the item specfic section in ebay.
I just ignored it for now.
Mark
Mike,
“But also almost any good, thorough, well thought out SKU, storage and organized system will accomplish all 7 of your goals.” – Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that I had found the ultimate system, I just meant that I was getting organized. These 7 things were probably more for myself to remind me of WHY I was doing all this. It is painful, but I have to remind myself of what I will get in the end – work with the end in mind.
Yes, I didn’t even know what “Flow kaizen” was but yet I think that is what I am talking about. I looked it up at wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen) to read more about it. But of course it doesn’t have specifics for ebay sellers on how to get there. I think this was my question to T-Satt on how he does it because I know he is very intentional on his efficient processes.
Mark
T-Satt,
I am trying to look at all aspects of my process to see where I can make improvements. The problem is that I can make these going forward, but it is painfull to go back and adjust what I have already done, but I guess that is the nature of this beast.
Anyway, I will keep making improvements. I think I can greatly improve the way I process items from the time they come in the door from buying them to the time they are placed in their “final” storage location. What is your process for this? I think Mike enters his items directly into WL. I don’t think that would work for me. I like to let items collect a little so that I can group like things together – such as 20 pairs of shoes to list at once.
My idea is to write a Windows program that has a Master\Detail which asks for a buy lot #, date purchased, and address at the top Master section. Then, in the detail section, have a list where you enter each item and the price paid. Then, have the program associate the master part to each detail and put it into the database like that. Then, have the ability to go back and put these items into a Listing Lot by clicking on a check box. I still have to handle the items more than once, but given that I am trying to group like items over a period of a few weeks, I don’t see a way around this.
Mark
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