Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Followup: This old pressure cooker sold this morning for $60 + shipping. I pulled it out of my attic when clearing some old things stored there, I think it came from my late wife’s stepfather’s estate about 10-12 years ago. I listed it back in October. http://www.ebay.com/itm/293278675577
I sold this on my personal account which I’ve had for 20 years, I’ve sold a few things over the years but mainly it is for buying.
That could be it, thanks.
01/16/2020 at 10:37 am in reply to: What Sells On eBay: 3 tier starburst server, 1000 slides, Headphone volume contr #72991I really do love the pets at the end of the video, they always improve my day. Your Collie is beautiful and majestic standing on the picnic table.
Good job! Another intangible benefit of a big first score is that your spouse or life partner is more apt to be onboard with you time spent than if you went weeks to make only a few bucks.
I have a large 6-drawer (2 wide by 3 high) bureau that I bought used for personal use many years ago and moved to my shipping area when I bought new bedroom furniture. Depending on the size of the mailer I put them in open-top boxes in one of the drawers, or for larger ones I just stack them. What won’t fit in the drawers for each size is stored in another room and replenished as needed. The top of the dresser is a convenient height to store other commonly used shipping supplies. It’s not pretty but it’s free.
I don’t think “Kitchen Themes” are as popular as they used to be but I have seen Rooster Themes with curtains, canisters, wall hangings, mugs, etc. That would be typical of that type of theme I think.
You can also add multiple items using bulk editor.
Here is a little tip that I use when a shipment is running late and the customer is asking about it. On the USPS tracking page, I request updates to be sent to me and then if there is any movement I inform the customer right away. It makes them feel like we are doing everything we can and helps prevent negative feedback I believe. It doesn’t take any significant amount of time and is good customer service.
I have also switched to using Gixen. I don’t do a lot of auction bidding on eBay any more and the free version has been adequate.
My Shopify store is not profitable. I don’t have transaction fees but do have a monthly fee and most months I come out with less than selling the same thing on eBay or Amazon. I have spent money on Google ads with no noticeable effect. The biggest issue is that I sell auto parts and do not have a parts fitment lookup function. There is a round-about way to sort of do that within Shopify, but I don’t want to spend the time to do that work. I keep telling myself this year I will do something with it, but haven’t.
My last bill from ecomdash was $90. That’s quite a bit of money to me personally, I’m sure it is to most, but when I consider the time savings compared to manually adjusting inventory in 2-3 places, and the reduced hassles of overselling due to an inventory error (I hate that), along with the time savings of not having to do a physical inventory audit, it’s worth the cost for me. The time saved is better used for things that make me money, like creating new listings and sourcing products.
Jay, I’m not sure if that question about individual items was for me.
I currently have 3017 active listings on eBay and Shopify store, 2805 also listed on Amazon, many have multiple quantities (~30,000 total). Having multi-quantity increases the work of keeping inventory in sync manually, although the pain of errors might not show up as soon.
I ship an average of 60-70 orders per week with an average order size of $25-$30. My COG is under 10% but I report on a cash basis I don’t have a weekly or monthly breakdown. My overhead costs are very low and I currently have no employees. I can easily see how much I sold each day/week/month from a spreadsheet I use, that is enough sales information for me but not meaningful to anyone else I think.
I found ecomdash worked the best for me to manage inventory, I started using them 5 years ago when my inventory was 1/3rd of what it is now. I upload new products to them by csv, generated from the same master spreadsheet used for cross-listing. They get sales information or other quantity changes from the various marketplaces and push the new quantity out to the other sites. I like that their sync interval is every 10 minutes, other services do that once an hour or even less frequently.
I use a daily order pick list I generate from ecomdash to pull orders, that list also shows the remaining quantity allowing me to do an instant inventory audit on multi quantity items when quantity is getting low. I find and correct 1-2 discrepancies per month. I used to spend (waste) time trying to figure out why, but now I generally just update. When I have dug into inventory discrepancies in the past, it was almost always errors on my end such as sending a replacement or putting a return back in stock without adjusting, inputting the wrong initial quantity, etc. I get an error report if an inventory change fails on a specific site, which has happened a few times on eBay due to site issues.
Overall I have been very satisfied with ecomdash. Last year I did a trial with a competitive service, it did not come close to measuring up. The monthly cost is sales quantity based but very economical in my opinion. They also have a function for listing new items and pushing them to multiple marketplaces, but I already have a good system for that. Also, an order shipping function that I might start using once I find time to dig into the details compared to ShippingEasy.
I have posted items to multiple marketplaces for 8-10 years now. As this has evolved I learned to start out a new listing by focusing on what is common across all sites so I don’t have the problem of converting an existing listing to force it to work on another site. For instance, all my photos are square and 1000 x 1000.
As far as tools, I recommend you check out ecomdash/ I have used it for years to manage my cross channel inventory but they also have the capability of pushing out listings to multiple sites. They actually describe themselves now as a Multichannel Selling Platform‎ instead of an inventory management system. Cost is tiered bases on monthly sales. The headaches it eliminates and time savings are well worth it for me.
Don’t forget to factor in the extra work you will have in maintaining inventory if you are listing the same product on multiple marketplaces and have limited quantity, and also the potential issue of overselling before you can adjust. At some point, it becomes impractical unless you are willing to pay for an automated inventory management system. I’m basing this suggestion on my own experience, I eventually started using ecomdash to manage my inventory and the reduced headaches is worth their monthly fee.
You can select Economy Shipping without specifying a carrier, or Expedited Shipping, etc. To me, that’s better than showing a specific carrier and then shipping by a different one (although I used to do that and never had any blowback from it).
-
AuthorPosts