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T-Satt,
Yes, seems like it. I am back to being able to make some good money using Smartpost. I just noticed it working yesterday. I think I had given up on Smartpost, but I was checking every so often.
Mark
Hey, has anyone checked using Smartpost lately? I was able to get 2 packages cheaper yesterday and 1 today. This has not been possible since the rate changes except for really small packages.
Give Smartpost another try, you might be surprized now.
Mark
JFH,
Well, there is good news for 2018. “If your business is a pass-through entity (sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC or S-corporation), then you can now deduct 20% of your Qualified Business Income. Qualified Business Income represents the bottom line profits from your business; i.e. all of your business revenues less all business expenses.”
See this article: https://www.score.org/blog/2-important-tax-changes-small-businesses-2018
That should make a big difference for 2018.
Also, don’t give up on used clothes and shoes. There are other places to buy them than at the thrift store. Estates sales are a great place to get these items. They know the probability of getting just the right buying is close to nil. I have picked up a lot of great shoes at estate sales for very cheap.
Mark
04/22/18 – 04/28/18
Total Items In Store: 2,386
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $50 (around)
Total Sales: $569
Highest Price Sold: $150 (1960’s \ 70’s Mens Suit)
Average Price Sold: $35.56
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 132
Number of Items listed this week: 38Decent week this week.
Kicked off the Michigan Rummage Sale season in great style. Got a lot of great items on the cheap. Also went to a “mini Outdoor Flea market” and scored some great golf clubs.
This week I went to a Car Parts shop that wanted to down size on some old stuff that was laying around – got some good deals there. I have done some work with automotive related items, but not a whole lot. This was a good opportunity for me to learn some new tricks. I was able to get some 1971-73 Mercury Cougar set of hub caps for $15. Got a Good Humor very large lighted sign for $5 (Wow, worth $125)
The great thing is that this guy told me he is going to continue the sale for several weeks. He is adding stuff all the time and he tells me he just wants it gone. Bam, I’m in. He offered me the cooler to the Good Humor sign for free, but it was way too big and not sure it worked. He also proved my theory, I never mentioned ebay, but he told me he knew he could get more for some on the stuff on ebay, but he didn’t want to bother.Mark
I think it also depends on what you are selling. J & R did this experiment and it didn’t make much of a difference for them. Maybe they didn’t do it long enough. I think that if you sell a lot of 1-of-a-kind type of items that a 30 day listing would not help that much.
However, T-Satt has shown hard data for his store. The 30 day listing does appear to help. Also, I remember a person who used to be on the blog, Byran, did this also and had some crazy great sales volume. The thing I see in common here is that both of them were focused mostly on clothes.
So, my theory is that yes, if you sell mostly clothes, then the 30 day relist method appears to help.
Sounds like a lot of work to me. If someone could explain how to do it in WonderLister I may try it.
Mark
Sharyn,
That makes sense. I guess I will have to play their little silly game.
Mark
Sharyn,
So am I allowed to put the actual Brand in ebay’s item specifics “Brand Name”?
Mark
Mike,
I understand what you are saying. I just think the whole thing is very unclear. This is what ebay has:
https://www.auctionnudge.com/guides/understanding-ebays-vero-program/
These are the types of things that I would consider a Vero. But I can’t find anything in there that speaks to my issue: a company just doesn’t want you to sell their authenticate items.
How am I suppose to know that? Is there a list of companies that ebay has compiled that states do not sell these brands? I feel that if I own the item, and I follow those basic rules from the link above, I should be able to sell whatever brand I want. They lost their rights to that particular item when they sold it – my opinion. Just like art work that we have discussed here on the blog.
Mike, I am not disagreeing with you at all, I just think that what these companies are doing by trying to prevent me from selling a legitimate item is violating my rights.
Mark
That may be true, but I think it is ridiculous.
Now I have to take down all of my Columbia listings? Why didn’t they tell me this when I put these listings up? And, how many other companies are there like this (I have heard John Deere mentioned here) that don’t want you to sell their product? If this keeps up, we may have very little to sell on ebay.
Mark
I was just looking at my Bonanza mail. I got this nasty note saying that I was infringing on Columbia’s trademark right because I was selling a Columbia Jacket, what?
They listed 1 jacket that they took down. I have a lot of Columbia jackets listed and have had them for quite some time without any issues.
Why is this an issue all of a sudden? Does anyone know anything about this?
Mark S
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
04/08/18 – 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
Katie,
“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
