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Simon,
They probably do this because of the vast amount of data they have. My work around for this is using WonderLister. I get to keep it all forever if I want to.
WonderLister is only $5\month if you have less than 1000 items in your store. $10\month if you have less than 2500 items in your store (full pricing at http://www.wonderlister.com/pricing).
I could not live without WonderLister now.
Mark
04/15/18 – 04/21/18
Total Items In Store: 2,365
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $65 (around)
Total Sales: $680
Highest Price Sold: $200 (Stetson Hat)
Average Price Sold: $42.50
Returns: 1 (Got 2 returns closed by calling after 5 days – saved a lot of money doing that)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 88
Number of Items listed this week: 40Good week this week. Started out real slow but picked up toward the end of the week with the Stetson Hat to top it all off (pun intended).
I was starting to think I had a store like Simon. By Friday morning, I had sold 11 items and 5 of them were hats.
This week was my week to get more knowledgeable. I did a deep dive into Levi’s Jeans and Baseball hats. I bought a 1980’s Detroit Tigers baseball hat. That triggered a research project into some other Tiger’s hats I bought and couldn’t figure out what they were. I found some good sites and figured out what they all were. I found out that 2 of my Detroit Tigers hats are from the 1950’s. The one looks unworn so I am going to list it for $200. So when they ask me at a garage sale,”What are you looking for?” I am going to say old jeans and old baseball hats.
Mark
04/15/2018 at 9:31 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Maria & Ryan from Passport Vintage Austin, TX #3771504/08/18 – 04/14/18
Total Items In Store: 2,337
Items Sold: 19
Cost of Items Sold: $80 (around)
Total Sales: $838
Highest Price Sold: $100 (White Castle Hat \ Promo Car)
Average Price Sold: $44.11
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 354 (Final found some great sales this week)
Number of Items listed this week: 67Great week this week. I wish they could all be similar to this week.
First, I had a great laugh when the White Castle Hat sold for $100. My wife thought I was crazy for listing it for so much, but then it sold.
Found some great sales on Saturday. The first one was an ephemera picker’s dream. I got a play script from 1881 and two Victorian Valentine cards for $5 total. The Victorian Valentine cards were nearly pristine and had great detail. My daughter asked if she could keep them, so of course I said yes to her. I think at least one of them would fetch well over $100. Also got several books from the 1880’s.
The second sale practically gave me a bunch of great clothes for $37.50, probably worth about $600.
The third sale was actually closed, but they let me pick through what was left. I figured it would be cheap, so I picked anything with value. I ended up getting about $445 worth of items for $4. I literally picked a vest out of the trash. I think I can get close to $40 for that.
Mark
04/10/2018 at 6:44 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #37506Katie,
“and to have some security in knowing if one store got shut down then I’d still have the other 2.”
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that is not the way it works. If they shut down one store, then they shut down all of your stores. The only way for that not to happen would be that the other stores are in completely different names and you use a different computer with a different IP address so that there is no way for ebay to tie the stores together. I doubt that is the case, because that is a lot of work to do.
If ebay kicks you off, you and your whole household are banned from ebay for life. That is the way I understand it.
Mark
Mike,
Thanks for the info. That is kinda what I was thinking. Not an easy way to drive traffic to your Shopify site. I am not a SEO guy, so I think I should pass. I don’t think it would be worth my time (but maybe interesting). Right now I would rather pay ebay their fees and keep going.
But it may make sense in the future. I have some ideas for some things to patent and manufacture. Shopify may be a good place to sell them. But then again, I could also sell them on ebay.
Mark
Thanks Mike!
That is some good information. Hope they get Etsy by October so I can cash in for the end of the year sales.
What do you expect to do with Shopify? How are you going to market it? I was under the impression that Shopify would not work well for the type of items most of us are doing on ebay. What is your take on this and should I be going to Shopify? What would be the best type of items to cross list on Shopify? Just any insights that you have on Shopify.
Mark
Mike,
I have been wanting to get my vintage items on Etsy for a long time. Any idea on how long that may take Wonder Lister? When is Shopify going live?
Mark
Jay,
I think we had the same idea at the same time, see my post at the end.
Mark
I think this would work best for sellers selling new items that they manufacture. Then they could send them 10 different shirts (or whatever) and then send more when those sell out.
But for sellers who are list it and forget it, I think storage fees would creep in and erode the profits at some point.
Mark
Mike,
I think in theory it is a great idea. You get your items to ebay and then they can ship them for you and maybe do a “Ebay Prime Free shipping” thing. But as we have seen at Amazon, things don’t quite go that well for sellers. They start charging crazy storage fees if things don’t sell fast, then they want to send the items back or dispose of them.
I would be all for it if I could drive to the ebay warehouse, drop off my containers and have assurances of set rates and practices for several years out. But I don’t think that is going to happen.
Mark
04/08/2018 at 10:18 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 355: We Catch Up w/ Mark Tew, Not Your Dad’s CPA #3733304/01/18 – 04/07/18
Total Items In Store: 2,284
Items Sold: 11
Cost of Items Sold: $40 (around)
Total Sales: $348
Highest Price Sold: $70 (Sears Craftsman Screw Drivers)
Average Price Sold: $31.64
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 0 (Not very many good sales out there this week)
Number of Items listed this week: 68Sales this week SUnday – Thursday were not slow or soft, they were down right non-existant! I thought something was wrong. I only had $104 in sales for the week when I went to bed Thursday night. Sales have picked up, but that was really bad for a bit. I think my lack of listing caught up with me and the after Easter slow down. I just started listing and got up 68 items and 2 sold right away.
Since I was not selling much and I didn’t buy anything, I spent time reclaiming (combining containers that don’t have much in them) containers. I was able to get back 7 small (18 gallon) containers and 1 large 930 gallon). That is a savings of about $45 ($5 each for the smalls and $9 for the Large). But, the real savings is the space in my basement. I can’t add any space and this gets me some space back. I in the process of clearing out another 100 Sq. Ft. to use in the basement. That equates to about 1500 items by my estimation – 15 items per square foot.
Mark
Sharyn,
Yes, I don’t know why they are getting rid of the 18x14x12 boxes, those are great. I have only 9 left. I was thinking that they would expand the selection of items you can buy from the ebay shipping supplies. But from what I can see, the selection keeps getting smaller! What is going on with that?!! I would say it looks like they want to get rid of it instead of growing it. Why else would you reduce the selection unless some of it is just not profitable. But I can’t imagine that.
I will admit that I had a ton of 15 X 12 X 12 from the Post Office. I still have 16 left. I will miss those when they are gone. I guess the morale of the story is: if you like a box size, stock up on it because it may be discontinued.
Mark
04/06/2018 at 11:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 354: The Long Game – 10 Years On eBay #37209calljac86,
You are doing quite a bit of volume. What are your typical COGS for a week?
It appears that you have a lot of NWT. Are you doing Retail Arbitrage, or are you finding these items in the wild?
Mark
Seems like a lot of people have a difference of opinion about what is too big.
I think we each have to set our own limits and stick to them. That is the key. If you can handle storing and shipping the big stuff, do it. But, stuff that is too big for you to easily store and ship. You will ignore it and it will take up a lot of room you do not have.
Know your limits and stick to it!
Mark
04/02/2018 at 7:25 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 354: The Long Game – 10 Years On eBay #36944I have the formula in a spreadsheet for each month of 2018. I will have to see how close I am each month.
Mark
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