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The last time I looked PayPal charged 5% for international.
07/23/2020 at 7:41 pm in reply to: Re-assess your fixed costs (mortgage, insurance,etc). It is WORTH IT! #79913Don’t forget cable/satellite TV bills, and cell phone service. Often worth switching or threatening to switch to get a reduction, even if only for 1 year. Easy way to save $5oo per year or so with just a little time on the phone.
Any subscription fees should be reexamined too.
Amazon sellers have 24 hours to respond to any customer message, which includes weekends and holidays, with no exceptions, and the misses are tracked.
I have the messages set to alert me on the Amazon seller mobile app. Sometimes I just thank them and promise to research the question/issue/problem/return and get back to them on Monday. Returns are auto authorized so that eliminates that area. We can’t refuse a return anyhow, I just deal with any problems when they arrive back.
Last week was the worst week I’ve had all year at 44 orders. The brighter news is I’ve already had that many orders so far this week.
Personally, I think looking at daily totals is not so meaningful, looking at weeks is less apt to be skewed by normal deviations.
I’m surprised eBay hasn’t caved in and started blocking those.
Don’t forget business use of you vehicle, trips to post office UPS, etc as well as going to auctions and so on. It adds up. Keep a simple log. Date, start mileage, end mileage, miles driven, reason. Office supplies can add up over a year’s time, too.
A CPA friend of mine, who specializes in business taxes, gave me this advice: If a deduction is a gray area, and you have a logical reason for deducting it, go ahead but keep a note for yourself on why. If you get audited they might disallow the deduction, but you most likely will not be penalized unless you were obviously trying to commit tax fraud. You will just owe tax on the amount, same as if you hadn’t deducted it.
Those USPS LLV trucks are getting ancient and there have been issues with them catching fire. The USPS has been “planning” on a new vehicle to replace those, but that project seems to be on hold right now. In the meantime, Amazon has announce plans to buy 100,000 new electric delivery vans.
https://www.trucks.com/2019/10/21/post-office-fiddles-mail-trucks-burn/
The “mail left behind” will probably cause the most issues. Multiple times recently the mail coming into our post office is delayed, causing the carrier (a friend) to be late making deliveries. I don’t see where carrying it over to the next day is going to halp that much, it all still has to be delivered and the delay just moves down the chain as each link can’t get their daily work completed on normal hours.
I just received the email for the migration of my primary store by Aug 31. My small account (no store) is already signed up but no transactions yet, but then I only get about 1 a week there so it might be awhile. I’ll wait until I see how that works before enrolling my main store.
Have you considered setting up another ID for those resticted items?
I would likely make a counteroffer of $850 in the situation you describe, maybe with a note saying I don’t want to go that low but I will for you. If they come back at $750 I would take that and feel good about the extra $250.
Are the comps actual sold prices, or asking price?
“Second question is I have had a few buyers that appear to be shippers to foreign countries buy a lot of my hats”
There are freight forwarders who consolidate orders for a particular International geographic area to save the buyer on shipping costs. For South American these companies are usually in Doral or Miami Florida, for Europe either New York or New Jersey. A few of them might request you write the eBay item ID on the outside of the package, some want no packing slip or anything with the price. I think the different user IDs used might be some kind of sorting system they use, such as the destination country, but I’ve not paid that much attention to even notice the same address.
I have never had a problem but some sellers report they have problems with freight forwarders, such as claiming the item was not received, was damaged, etc. I haven’t seen that at all so I feel like that it must be the minority. Anything valuable I would include signature confirmation, to close the door on INR. The level on that value is whatever you feel comfortable with, but since you have such a low per-item cost you can probably afford a little shrinkage. Think of it like shoplifting if you had a retail store, it sucks but not something to fret over if you can’t control it.
If I were in your situation I would just keep listing the hats singly. If you can group similar style hats prior to listing it might help your efficiency a bit on the description, or maybe even enable your daughter to help with that if you point out the few differences that will need to be made to the description and check here work before posting. You can check with a tax preparer or accountant to find out what the limit is on pay for minors, but I doubt she will reach that while still keeping up her schoolwork and normal childhood activities. It can be a wonderful experience for both of you (patience required).
One thing to think about on new listings is to at least list as many new items each week as what you sold, plus a few if you can. This will keep the task a priority for you instead of slowly becoming inactive, and will keep you whittling down your backlog without seeming like a chore. If you get to the place where you’re sure you want to continue doing this long term, and you see another great deal, buy it if you have the storage space.
One last thing, do not let this take away from family time. If you are married or in a relationship make sure your partner is on board so it doesn’t create and conflict, and the children are not resentful of any lack of attention. Just friendly advice from an old guy who has seen a lot and done some relationship things wrong a few times.
Good luck.
Last week was OK but yesterday only 5 sales and today 3, I average 12 a day. 1 day is an aberration, 2 days slow makes me perk up and start watching. I’m seeing a lower average selling price too.
Yes, I should have said the insertion fees would have been $148.
With the newly announced free insertion fees this becomes even more practical.
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