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ebaymom,
I read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight last summer.
Awesome book. I loved it. Who would have thought that a huge company like Nike would have had such a rocky beginning!
This book inspired to find those great vintage shoes that are out there.
Mark
Glenn Frye is from the Detroit area. He went to Dondero HS in Royal Oak and graduated in 1966.
In 2016 they unveiled a Glenn Frey Drive sign in Royal Oak in his honor.
Just some trivia from a Michiganian.
Mark
MyCottage,
I really can’t disagree with your logic. More IS can only be better. I guess this is a case of “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”.
I list a lot of shoes. I can’t really see someone really looking for “Lace up” versus something else. I suppose someone might be looking for “velcro”, but then again I can’t mention that!
But, I will pay closer attention on those newer more commodity type items. I think those would give me the most bang for my “buck”.
I guess for some reason, I just can’t get excited over IS. Maybe all this talk will inspire me to new heights.
Mark
Troy,
I just read the “Item Specifics 101: How to customize specifics for unique items?” thread.
So, I guess another divide among the scavengers. I think I side with J & R on this one. I don’t like entering those Item Specifics and I keep it as brief as possible, usually barely more than the min of required fields.
Mark
Troy,
I enter the items in a spreadsheet right after I buy them. I enter them with the final title, price, and imperfections. Then later I group them into a listing lot (usually a 30 gallon container with 15-20 items or an 18 gallon container with 9-12 items) using a Listing Lot spreadsheet. I use the Listing Lot spreadsheet as a copy and paste into the ebay listing. I only enter the data once, but some copy and pasting going on.
So, what I am trying to do here is use the Listing Lot spreadsheet as the input to my program to automatically enter the listings into ebay. I may have to do some manual reviews and tweaking, but I think it will save a lot of time and get me excited to list. I have some of the program written and it is getting exciting. The photos and the item specifics will be the challenge. But for shoes, for example, I will only enter Brand, Style, Size, and Width for the item specifics – which is basically another copy and paste.
Mark
Troy,
My item specifics would be specfic to the listing template. So only the item specifics of those that apply to that listing template. Doing all of one type of thing would make it much easier, such as shoes.I can do a listing manuslly in 3-5 min if I have photos and my spreadsheet of item info. It is just cut and paste from there. But I am tired after doing about 6 or more. The idea here is to save that time and getting tired. I would have to review the listing at first, but if I got this down, it could be like clock work.
Mark
Shortcut and Troy,
Thanks for the feedback. I thought that format looked familar.
I am trying to get things as automated and process driven as I can. I want daily, weekly, and monthly reports to be automatic and just sitting in an excel spreadsheet for me.
Right now I am working on automating the listing of items from an Excel spreadsheet using only about 5 fields and item specifics. This would be a game changer for me. I already put this basic info except item specifics in a spreadsheet for listin (title, custom label, price, condition, weight, pc location of pics). I plan to combine this to use listing templates. The goal is to have a lot of 20 or so items in a spreadshhet each specifying which template to use. Kick off a script and they all get listed! If I get a photographer, I could go at blazing speed!
Mark
07/22/18 – 07/28/18
Total Items In Store: 2,427
Items Sold: 13
Cost of Items Sold: $ (around)
Total Sales: $ 561.66
Highest Price Sold: $ 212 (Vintage Full Length Mink Coat – yes, Mink still sells, but long tail)
Average Price Sold: $ 43.20
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 43
Number of Items listed this week: 31Sales Report for the week: Much better sales this week than last week. Great sale on the Mink Coat.
My process improvement for the week: I entered in a spreadsheet the location of each of my standard boxes. You would have thought I would already have this, but I didn’t. They are all in the same general area, but it was getting hard to tell exactly where everything was, so i entered it in a spreadsheet as it would appear as you looked at them.
To Do: Put my Pick List Script in a Task Scheduler job automatically everyday and have it go to a spreadsheet. Going to work on a flash report to give me a snapshot automatically everyday of where my business is at. Things like this weeks sales and projected sales for the week. MTD Sales $ \ # Items with YOY. Projected current month sales.
Scavenge of the week: I picked up a Vintage Bingo Game in Wood Case for $2.50. It had the metal container that you put the bingo balls in and spin it around. I have never seen one of these before. May list for about $60. I thought of J&R when I saw that. I think they would like that one.
I went to a garage sale this week and they were giving away about 1\3 of the items at the sale just to get rid of it all. I got a 21″ PC monitor that they said worked (haven’t tested it yet). I think I will keep the monitor as a backup for myself. Also, I picked up a huge box of Mint Sheet Binders for Stamps. The binders will only go for about $12 each. But if I list a quantity of 25 (just guessing the quantity, didn’t count them yet) then I have a potential profit of $300!
Challenge of the week: I am going to challenge my lister to list 1000 items by the end of the year. I will pay a $2000 bonus if they can meet the goal. It is a tier’d goal so that they will still get a bonus if they don’t list the 1000 items, but it will be much less than $2000. The amount of sales that 1000 listings would generate for the business would be well worth the $2000 bonus.
Dude\King of the week: T-Satt\Troy. He did a great job getting all of that great info for us at ebay Open 2018!
Mark
Blackcat,
I think buytikiselltiki has some good advice. List out the skills you are using doing ebay and Amazon. Most people don’t know what those skills are. Also, put a slant on it, depending on what position you are applying for. I don’t mean lie, I mean focus on the skills that are important for that particular job. If it is a customer service position, focus on that. If it is an accounting position, focus on that. If the position has nothing do to with with the skills you do on ebay and Amazon, show how the skills you have are transferable to that position.
Also, be prepared for those questions you know are going to come at you. Like, what is your weakness. The best way to answer that is to pick a weekness that you have worked on and show what you did to overcome it and then it can actually become a strength. For example, I am bad at remembering the tasks I have to do. So, to improve myself, I started making a list and adding to it every time I had a task to do. Now I rarely forget anything (that is one of mine). Now it is a strength!
I took a 2 day intensive seminar on how to look for a job and answer those tough questions and I have also interview hundreds of people. You want to rehearse this till you can do it in your sleep. You also need an “elevator speech”. That means you have to say what you are good at and why in 30 seconds or less so that you could tell it to someone on an elevator ride and eventually in an interview when they ask you about your background (another very common question).
Mark
Mike,
For me, it depends on the particular estate sale and who is running it.
I know several of the estate sale companies have really good prices. For those, I go as close to the start of the sale as possible so that I get the good stuff for $1 – $3 each on average.
Then there are the estate sales where some of the prices are reasonable and others are not. In that case, I go to the sale when I can. The first time in, I buy the reasonable items. I make not of what I wanted, but wasn’t willing to buy at their price. Then I wait to see if they have a sale or go back on the last day and barter.
Then, there are the estate sale companies that have prices so high, even their 50% off will not work for me. I just avoid these estate sale companies all together – they are just a waste of time. Sure, you may find a few things, but that has an opportunity cost – it takes away time from other great sales just around the corner that I could go to. Hey, with 58 different sales around me in a weekend, I can afford to be picky.
Mark
I found a good article about e-commerce free returns. They think it is a ticking time bomb.
Mark
lol Jay!
That is funny Jay, but there is a nugget of truth here.
Ebay needs people working for them that have an ebay store and know what is important for sellers. As the article I read said Ebay just moves around bits, Amazon actually moves physical inventory. I think the selling experience becomes very abstract for ebay. I think that is why they can say to us, “oh, just load the missing photos and you are good”. They don’t even understand what that really means to a seller who just lost thousands of photos which they may or may not have to upload.
They do need someone like T-Satt in a leadership role who knows the business and can do process improvement.
I think ebay should read these two books: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. Then, make it mandatory for everyone in the company to read them and the execs to implement the content. A Company I worked for in the past did that, and it was great experience. It really brings the company together for a common goal.These are classic business books and they would really help ebay to absorb the material and make it part of the culture.
Mark
I read an article by the New York Times titled, “Why Amazon should buy ebay”. You can google it for a good read.
I think Amazon could fix the issues ebay is having, but That may be a tougher pill to shallow. They would probably make ebay just like Amazon, but only with used items. Maybe worse. So, maybe we should count our blessings with ebay and overlook the small stuff.
Mark
I was on the phone with ebay last night about the issue. I had opened an SR case and was calling for an update. The ebay rep was clueless and asked me questions totally unrelated. It soundedlike I was talking to a teenager who didn’t have a clue and didnt care. 35 min later (trying to explain the issue most of that time), they said there was no resolution. They put in a request to waive my subsscription fee for this month.
They really need to train the support people better. It feels like ebay is falling apart before my eyes. My vote is for ebay to hire T-Satt for 1-2 months for $50k to help get a better process in place for support and status.com. I think that would do it!
Mark
