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[Mark S]

I had a buyer request a refund for doesn’t fit on Jan 23rd. The return was accepted. As of this morning, then still had not sent the item back. Call ebay and have them close the case, right?

Well, that wasn’t so easy. I called ebay and the rep told me to contact the buyer. I hang up after repeated requests for her to close the case. Called back again and the rep sent me to another department. That guy gave me the run around. So I had the documentation ready and told him the ebay rules that the buyer has 5 days to send the item back. He said he would have to check. He checked and then closed the case. I thought this was a slam dunk. Not so easy. I don’t think the reps know their rules very well.

So, if you have this issue, you may have to read the rules to them. I found the place in the rules where they have 5 days to return it, but couldn’t find it stated explicitly that you can have the case closed. Anyone know where that is stated?

Mark

[Mark S]

Brian,

Can you give some more info on PoshMark? I know they charge 20%, but what else can you tell me? Do things sell faster there than on Bonanza, ebay? Can you upload listings or do you have to start from scratch or the info you have and just enter it?

Mark

[Mark S]

01/21/18 – 01/27/18

Total Items In Store: 2,177
Items Sold: 16
Cost of Items Sold: $60 (around)
Total Sales: $836
Highest Price Sold: $350 Dry Suit
Average Price Sold: $ 52.25
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 216
Number of Items listed this week: 57

Slow week of sales. The dry Suit saved the week.

Mark

[Mark S]

I just tried Shippo for a 2 day priority 2 pound package. Ebay was cheaper. Ebay was $7.03 and Shippo was $7.25

Mark S

[Mark S]

Training and strreamline process for Support

1. Train your customer support. All of them should be like the support people the anchor stores receive.

2. All employees should have a consistent message.

I shouldn’t call 3 times and get 3 totally different answers to the same question.

3. Every major detail of a call should be logged and accessible to all support people.

Communication

4. Communicate all major changes well in advance in as many ways as possible.

5. Come up with 1 rule book. It seems like I have to hunt for the “little details.”

Process and Identity

6. Don’t change the rules and then make me do a ton of work do comply.

Like, removing watermarks from pictures. Adding UPC codes after the fact.

7. Don’t try to be like Amazon, be yourself and be proud of it!

8. Make it mandatory that every employee read 2 books: 1. Good to Great by Jim Collins
and 2. Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

Then have company discussions to see what should change.

Listen to your sellers

9. Have the CEO or Griff actually meet with real sellers and find out what they are saying.

10. Take ideas from the sellers and implement 1 idea per month.

My favorite is J&R’s set a date for when you will be back from vacation and then
make it an automatic count down timer till the day you start shipping.

Technology

11. You are basically a software company. It is time to rewrite all of your systems into one cohiesive site. The site looks and behaves like a mom and pop shop that don’t have any money to fix all of their technical debt so they just live with it.

12. Don’t make me pay for things I should already get for free.

For example, data older than 3 months.

[Mark S]

01/07/18 – 01/13/18

Total Items In Store: 2,117
Items Sold: 29
Cost of Items Sold: $100 (around)
Total Sales: $1191.44
Highest Price Sold: $117 – Motorcycle Boots
Average Price Sold: $ 41.08
Returns: 2
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 13
Number of Items listed this week: 71

Another great week of sales with Promoted Listings leading the way.

I am on a new listing campaign for my store. I am planning on investing about $7000 into my store between now and the end of April. I had about 1000 items all ready to list, but just sitting in containers. I estimated that I was losing at least $1500\month in revenue from this. So,
I have challenged my lister to list 250 items a month and pay a premium when they hit a certian point for the month. Also, I have hired a photographer which will get even more items listed. My goal is 3000 items by May.

This week was round 2 at the common estate sale at a lower end house. After researching common items from the 1920’s – 1970’s, I had a better idea of what had value and what didn’t. So I went back on the 50% off sale (full price was already a great deal). I ended up getting 4 full boxes for $13! I have only gone through the first 2 of the 4 boxes and have found $825 worth of items. Of course, they are mostly going to be long tail unique vintage items. But isn’t that the kind we all love? I know I do.

Last week was my top 10 keys for success. This week is my top 10 things for ebay to do now (well, I had to put 12 in). See my post below.

Mark

[Mark S]

I love promoted listings too. Since my post at the very top about my ebay top 10.

However, I have a feeling that promoted listings may have a short life if too many sellers jump in. Not sure how to define “short”, but I guess that depends on how many sellers jump in.

My reasoning for this is that if most everything is a promoted listing, then really nothing is a promoted listing.

But hey, I’m going for it well the getting is good. After it is over saturated, I may have to jump out, but it is great for now.

Mark

[Mark S]

Top 10 list for ebay Success

Ebay has their own generic list for this which is good, but more for people who are just getting started. ebay says: http://www.ebay.com/gds/10-KEYS-TO-SUCCESS-ON-EBAY-/10000000002691984/g.html

I think right now there are external factors that are helping us:

1. The US economy is doing well right now, especially with the new tax cuts.
2. Right now is the ebay high season.

But I have listed 10 keys that will be true in any economic condition.

1. Have the highest ebay rating possible.

Think about it. This is in the ebay cassini algorithm. Why would ebay want you to sell an item if
you have issues? If you are shipping late and have a lot of bad feedback, ebay is going to put
someone else higher in the rankings.

For example, if you have a high return rate, why do they want to waste time with you? Or, if you
don’t ship on time, you make them look bad?

ebay’s goal is to sell as much stuff with as few problems as possible. Having the highest ebay
rating possible achieves this.

Also, customers will look at your feedback. They will avoid sellers with issues.

See this articule for more on cassini: https://www.thebalance.com/make-ebay-s-cassini-search-work-
for-you-1140402

2. List more than you sell each week.

I think ebay would like to give sales to stores that are growing, not those that are dying.
I have been having success right now and this seems to be one of the key factors for me.

3. Listing Advice.

A. List quality items that are priced at a average minimum of X ($40 for me, figure it out for
you). The listing must be high quality in every way – pics, price, etc.

I think this one goes without saying, but I am saying it. You are going to sell what you list.

If your average listed price is $10, well then $10 will be close to your average sale price.

If your average listed price is $100, well then $100 will be close to your average sale price.

B. List a lot of higher priced items over $100 or more. The more the better, but shoot for at least
10% of your store in this price range. 20% or higher priced items should be the goal.

This goes back to the key above.

If 20% of your store has $100+ items in it, then your sales will have close to 20% of items
100+.

C. Don’t buy items under $X (for me $30, however sometimes I will go as low as $19.99 if I like the
item).

This will avoid creating your own sweat shop.

You are doing nearly the same amount of work for a $10 item as you do for a $100 item.

Use your time wisely.

D. Do you homework for reasearh before you begin the listing.

Don’t get into analysis paralisys on every item.

But when you come across an item you have never seen, take at least 10 min. to figure out what
it is and what its value is.

If you can’t determine that, ask for help or put it aside for another day of research.

You will be much more confident when you get a best offer.

4. Have a sale.

People love sales. I notice that my sales drop significantly when my sale ends.

5. Promote as many listings as ebay allows.

Brian has noted how well promoted listings help. I have noticed this as well.
I started new promoted listings 3 days ago and have had 3 sales for a total of $205 so far.

6. Use “Best Offer” on all items $X (for me about $30 and above, with some exceptions).

This could bring in a lot of sales you might not have had.

If the customer doesn’t like your price, they can name their own. If you don’t like their price,
jsut decline it or counter.

7. Respond quickly to questions from your customers and offer them a deal.

You can ignore those wierd questions about measurements.

But for the true customer who is asking good questions, respond promptly, nicely, and give them a
deal to close it.

8. Have a diversity of items.

This will even out your sales. If all of your store has 1 type of item, then you will have extreme
high periods and extreme low periods of sales.

For example, if you sell all winter coats, the winter season will be great. But the spring and
summer will be extremely low.

Having a diversity will even this out.

I like to have diverisity in all areas:

Price range
seasonal items fall\winter, spring\summer
mens \womens
Modern \ Vintage \ Antique
Categories
Color
Size
material
etc.

9. Build a pipeling of Multiple listings.

I love to have listings that keep selling for me. This has great savings in time and effort.

This is how Multiple listings help:

1. You only have to make 1 listing and it keeps selling and selling.

2. If it has a good STR, you know you will have steady sales from it.

3. This may promote repeat customers or friends of customers.

4. It makes shipping easier because you pack nearly the same way every time.

10. If you find that you have “dead” listings, end them, update them and relist them. Or just put a sale on them.

I have found that I have about 350 dead listings in my store. I need to fix these or just move
them out with a sale.

I call them dead because they have been listed for at least a year and have less than 250 hits on
them (my average is 389 hits per item).

[Mark S]

12/31/17 – 01/06/18

Total Items In Store: 2,086
Items Sold: 30
Cost of Items Sold: $100 (around)
Total Sales: $1079.75
Highest Price Sold: $100 – Promo Car
Average Price Sold: $ 35.99
Returns: 3
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 5
Number of Items listed this week: 56

Another great week for me. I have been averging $4000+ in sales for a rolling 31 days and that seems to keep going. This is best run I have had in my store.

I was thinking about why things are going well. I put together a top 10 list for this that I will post below. I think we have talked about all of these on the blog before, but I wanted to put it down in one place.

If you have any other things that have helped you, please voice these so that we can all learn from you.

Mark

[Mark S]

Mike,

No problem. I will have to get the Silver soon if things go as planned.

As a developer, I prefer to query the database directly. But that is good to know.

Mark

[Mark S]

Mike,

Thanks for the info.

But it did not work for me because it came back with a message that I need at least a Silver subscription to use this feature.

Mark

[Mark S]

Well, Big companies also use spreadsheets.

But as companies grow, then tend to rely on more industrial strength tools, like databases. The reason why is because you write it once, test it like crazy and then you have a proven tool you can use over and over again.

[Mark S]

Mike,

I suppose you could do what you are describing. Although I am not seeing any easy way to export as a .CSV file. Where is that functionality?

Actually, the database is much faster and is great at number analysis. This is what all the big companies use. The database can do stats on millions of records if needed. But, the main thing you get is speed and accuracy by using a stored procedure (that has been tested). My queries are virtually instant and they should be accurate every time. Also, I can get any data that I want, not just the data that is available in the GUI.

However, if you go the spreadsheet route, which is what most people know, this can be time consuming (but could be better in some ways) and you are always open to errors in a manual process like that. Also, you may not have the data that you need.

Mark

[Mark S]

Note: the “Listed for the period” is thrown off by the fact that I add the number of listed items with the number of solds. Since this is items with many multiples, that gives a “Listed for the period” more than the actual number of listings that I have. Maybe I can work on that issue.

[Mark S]

T-Satt,

My covergirl make up is the closet thing I have found to that unicorn with the exception of “Readily Available”. Here are my stats for the make up. It is small, easy to ship, easy to store, low cost, high profit, sells quickly:

Start Date 2017-06-21
End Date 2018-01-05
Expression covergirl
Listed for Period 129
Solds 57
STR 44.186
ASP 37.44
Oldest UnSold Jun 16 2017
Latest UnSold Jun 29 2017
AvgDaysToSell 132
AvgDaysInInvForUnsold 167

Also, I make about $5 on average for the shipping. I started with 633 pieces across 54 listings. I paid $150 for it and it has a potential of about $10,000 with the money I make on shipping.

For the slow moving inventory (what of my big issues), what type of report do you think would be best for a summary level, then for a detail level?

Mark

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