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I found out I have the free/basic subscription, so I am charged $1.49 per paid transaction.
In these 3 weeks my sales doubled (which is not a big deal since I have a 800 items store, $1k-2k per month).I only had one problem selling a broken iPhone to Russia, the buyer complained the iPhone was broken hehehehehe, that was the best ever (listed as broken, for parts only)/
So far very happy selling to China, Taiwan, Russia, India, Australia (several), Nordic countries, UK (several), Portugal and Canada.
I do not sell to Brazil (sold 2 times upon an in depth due diligence, by default I do not even respond), for Hispanic countries depending on the due diligence.For reference, this is the service advertised to me:
So far – and I assume since the App does not detail much – I suppose I am in a trial period, so I am not paying anything else.
The main difference is that I have visibility on those sites instead of people having to come to US eBay looking for my products.
I am still on the guard to see how far it goes, if it is worthy, and what is the catchListing on other eBay sites.
Folks, soon after I enabled multiple currencies in my PayPal account, coincidence or not I received an offer to have all my eBay listings active on eBay for other countries. I could even choose the countries (I chose Japan, Germany, UK, Netherlands, Spain, China, total of 9).
What happens is that this add on translated and created my listings in each eBay site in the local language.
Since I enabled it 3 weeks ago, majority of my sales are international through the sister eBay sites in local currencies. The worse case scenario so far was a case in the UK where I had a back and forth to adjust shipping since calculator was too off.Updating Business Policies (changing handling time for example).
In my case, every time I have to make any changes and any error occur to one or more listing, what it does is to create a policy_name_copy with those listings that did not change.
So if the specific policy had 1000 listings and when I change whatever and the process finds error in the shipping weight or other, 500 listings get changed and the 500 in error are placed in the newly automatically created copy policy.Anyone noticed this App (syncommerce) was removed from the official “Apps for Etsy” page?
To think of the benefits, I would look at both sides of the spectrum, meaning, a store with ~8500 items and a store with ~850 items.
For your case the only benefit would be to streamline and “automatize” the scavenging process, considering you guys have other on going and “on growing” businesses. So it would pay for your time.For my case, I use a recent example: I was very low on inventory and new listings, mostly because my local Auction House shut down, which killed me (the trip to retrieve the items was also the trip for 3-4 Good Will’s and others.
I found out an on line Auction out of the blue selling all things I like to sell. Without exaggerating, it seemed to be customized to me. I went on a buying spree. Result: about $440 in merchandise and $580 in shipping. Then the surprise: I was not betting for items, I was betting for entire sets or collections (Lenox Birds for example). The amount I paid for the unity was actually a whole box. So ~$100 retail I thought I was paying $40-$60, I ended up paying pennies (first 2 weeks after receiving items already paid off all costs).
So one box from Amazon would give me a boost to offsite my lesser experience on scavenging and looking for correct spots to buy.
And you are right, if you look the videos, the standard are open boxes and/or little wear. Exception are the sealed/brand new.
What I have not done is to compare the “bill of materials” of one of those boxes with the actual cost paid to see what the cost per item would be. This would be an important detail.
Amazon Returned Items Auctions, anyone?
I learned Amazon has periodic auctions and/or sales of 5 x 5 pallets of items. There are topics like toys, electronics, home and garden, clothing, miscellaneous, potentially more.
Folks like us in this community pay around $1300 up to $2000 for these gigantic boxes full of new but returned things.
There are several unboxing videos available. Good stuff, I replenished my store in a similar situation in terms of size of the lot (one day I will tell the best haul I will never have the chance again).
Anyone already tried?
Thoughts?
Can we use store size to compare similar ones (more or less like EBTIDA)?
The comparison with a non-GAAP metric is because, like Ryanne mentioned a couple of times during this week’s cast, among ourselves, even though we all sell on eBay, we have different approaches to our businesses.
However, when Ryanne mentioned they have ~8500 items, it came to my mind they average $1400 to $2300 per week give or take.
I have now ~850 items in my store, I have very similar approach of items being sold (except clothes) and I am making between $140 and $230 per week.
Is it correct make a comparison like this? So if I want to reach Ryanne/Jay’s sales level selling the things I sell today I would need to have ~8500 items in my store?
Makes me think where I can go, which limitations I have
Presenting my final Investment and Diversification Strategy
First, @T-Satt Troy, it is so great to hear your voice again, hope you have even more opportunities to share your passion, your knowledge and your experience. Rock’n’Roll!!!!!!
I have frozen for the first time in many many years my strategy that encompasses many of the scope of the conversation with Troy plus other things we’ve been talking about during the last 3-4 months. The main topic across all buckets is that I MUST have fun. So everything I do is to have fun.
My strategy has different modules or buckets or components:
(1) Long Term, Safe Retirement Driven Investment:
Here I have:
(a) A very large managed brokerage account that is untouchable, only grows, never drops, and also works as emergence cushion.
(b) Relatively large IRA 401K with constant contributions
(c) Wife’s moderate IRA 401K with eventual contributions
(d) Decent Non Managed Brokerage, here is where I have fun in the stock market. I don’t gamble, I don’t bet, etc. here is where I go when I have the cravings.(2) Children:
Since we passed halfway through, I will only summarize: I pre-paid in full 4 year College plans for all of them, all included. My daughter is long graduated, the older boys on top of the pre paid college plan got massive scholarships so they had money for their car, savings, etc. Love them, super proud.(3) Wealth Building and Protection with Silver and Gold
I set my clock to periodically buy Silver and or Gold. Mostly 1 t Oz government issued coins.
And here is my mindset:
(a) there is 9 times more silver than gold physically available today
(b) gold is worth 94 times more than gold
(c) gold production still growth fast
(d) Silver production has diminished and new mines are rare to uncover.
(e) Silver investors plan to exchange silver for gold when it reaches 50:1
(f) here I have many positive outcome scenarios. I am even selling all sterling silverware in exchange for 1 Oz coins to add to my cushion(4) Investing to sell and then to buy:
Here is the last category I took many years to grasp:
(a) On line alternative/crowd investments like The Lending Club. This is a mid term strategy where I add a couple of thousand every couple of years. These moneys are lent to people who cannot achieve bank level investment. After a couple of years or when the notes are fulfilled, I transfer to my account and buy Silver or Gold.
(b) Investing Apps, for example Acorn. This is my dream come through, once a day it swaps all accounts I linked and round up all fractions to $1. This difference is added to an investment in a portfolio of 3-5 Vanguard funds. Instead of living there, every six months I sell the equivalent of 1/2 t Oz of Gold or 36 tOz of Silver. This depends on the very transaction day.(5) Angel Investor and Hedge Funds investing:
Similar to the above, I use two platforms for certified investors. One is named Seedinvest.com for Certified Angel Investors. With $1000 you can start investing in what you believe. The site/company is run by its founders, all Ivy League finance experts that communicate on a 1 to 1 basis with all members. Here I use my Consulting company as the Investor Agent/Holding.
The other one is named WeFunder.com. This is an investment crowdfunding, most likely for those companies that don’t get the multi million Round A and B like the ones on Seedinvest. Here with $100 you can invest on the pre money phase which is great. After a period you can either get your cash back with high interest (much above market) or convert your investment in stocks of the company, which is my interest. Here I use both my Holding (mostly for tech and bio tech which is what i like) and the company that owns the eBay store (for anything related to technology dedicated to health and fitness)Some constraints, assumptions, corollaries, rules:
i – I have many, like 10 savings accounts in different banks for all my family members. First I always open a new savings when I have a promotion like open and get $50-$100 on spot, no brainer. Second, they work as transitional for the movements. They help me isolate the daily cash flow of the checking accounts and don’t get mixed or fall under temptation.ii – I hoard coins. Every Christmas I have $100 in coins, I usually add to my Consulting LLC account.
iii – I left completely real estate in any format. My last 2 properties were sold last year.
iv – Both my companies are self sustainable. They pay themselves and distribute profit to to owners (Me :-)). I do it accordingly to avoid making confusions between business with personal.
That’s all folks … hmmmm, probably not. I will update if I left something out
Is scrapping a subset of scavenging, or is it diversification? Scrapping Dimes and Pennies.
Meine Freunde,
I’d mentioned before my passion on recycling. That takes me to scrapping. That takes me to digital scrapping. That takes me to cyber-scrapping.
Since my teen years I am sort of addicted to piggybacks. Don’t remember one year in my life without grabbing whatever change is available from friends, family, streets (I find coins weekly). Today without effort I get to the end of the year with about $100 in coins that go directly to a investment.
However, it always bugged me the cents in the accounts. Possibly because of my OCD and TOC, it hurts to see fractions. never had the time to dedicate to see what I could do. I found an App that does just that. In a nutshell you don’t need to pay anything, and they round up (you can configure this) every and each transaction, besides the perks. Everyday you have a few bucks moving automatically to any of your checking, saving, debit, credit accounts with transaction. From 0.01 to 0.99 they will get 0.99 to 0.01 invested.
You have 5 profiles to choose as investor. Then every $5 they will by you shares of the funds you chose above (like Aggressive Portfolio, Moderate, Conservative, etc). The great is, imagine the share of a Vanguard International fund is $100 per share, they get you a fraction of that share since on the other side they invest bulks or lumpsums.
In a months I have $162 just because of this, I chose to add $5/months, and there are many perks, from Uber to supermarkets. Everytime you use Uber they add $5 in your account. I once got $50 directly from one of their partners that was just starting. Again, little over a month.
Scrapper dream coming through.
To finish, I am collecting silver and gold from Thrifts and other places. A lot of 80-99% metal is left aside just for lack of knowledge apparently (donation goes in a bulk of costume jewelry).
For gold I am melting ounce per ounce on slabs/ingots/bars and for silver I have not decided yet since the cost to do it does not pay off because of variables like purity.
For Mark the Shark: Microsoft MapPoint was not discontinued
Well, sort of. Not sure how much we interacted so far. I worked over 20 years for Microsoft, half the time on Consulting Services, Half the time on Engineering.
Said that, MapQuest, later MapPoint was absorbed by Bing Maps, so you can do everything there. Also, Google Maps enables you with same feature set.So for example if you are in Le Claire, IA. You find Thrifts, Goodwills etc etc. Assuming you are logged on either your Microsoft account to use Bing Maps or Google account to use Google Maps on your phone, you can GPS pinpoint the place and add almost as much comments you want.
You can edit later.
Also, you can create “My Locales” with whatever naming you want (Le-Claire for example). You will access that Map database from anywhere as long as you log in.
You can share. You can have them private, public or shared with specific people.
Please let me know if this helps. You can even export/import to different formats the data information.
Been meaning to bring this back since (I think) many different people than last time I mentioned about the way I calculate.
First, good news, I am back at $2000 sales per month since a long time with about 750 items listed and a great pile to list. I am happy since I solved my sourcing problem and found even more items when donating things out of my (ex)hoard (thnx to you guys and eBay I beat my hoarding disorder).
Second, always remembering I built my store to fund my mobile technology business, as a means to make it self sustainable before the main App was ready or a contract was signed.My main tools are COGS (I use academic definition rather than the ones used freely here) and what I call the “Lot Cost” (in a nutshell, if I go to an auction or to Goodwill, the bill total is my “Lot Cost”).
So, considering that:
“last year” COGS = Beginning Inventory + Purchases during the period – Ending Inventory
and lot by lot cost, I have spreadsheets like the one paste at the end (it represents one auction I participated and the total is everything I paid and you can see I have individual prices on a per unity basis).Then my “pricing strategy” says that I want to have a minimum 3-5 times total cost on a per item basis (with exceptions for jewelry or design).
So, for items purchased this year, the rule is done.
For items purchased last year and before, I have an entry in my “pricing strategy” that looks into my last years COGS.
If product Gross Sales Revenue for last year (do not consider the Shipping revenue here) > COGS
I go to Lot price for a specific item I have a bid or I think is too long with no movement, or whatever I find out about the price. Let’s say it is the only price from that lot that’s been sitting there for 2 years and all other had sold.Given those conditions I consider both last year’s inventory and specific lot paid, so I have room to reduce the price of a single item without “loosing” if I look on the item by item basis.
Please note this does not work if I worked with commodities or large lines of items (something made by me for example with 4-5 variations).
Lot # Title Premium Hammer Lot Cost Unity
w/Ship Cost
219 (13) ASSORTED LENOX BIRD FIGURINES $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $11.33
218 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $12.50 $50.00 $62.50 $100.83 $10.08
217 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $11.33
216 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $12.50 $50.00 $62.50 $100.83 $10.08
215 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $11.33
214 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $12.50 $50.00 $62.50 $100.83 $10.08
213 (10) LENOX GARDEN BIRD COLLECTION BIRDS $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $11.33
207 EMANUEL SCHARY LITHOGRAPH – HIGH HOLIDAYS $5.00 $20.00 $25.00 $63.33 $63.33
202 (6) HUMMEL FIGURES AND (2) PLAQUES $17.50 $70.00 $87.50 $125.83 $20.97
201 (8) HUMMEL FIGURES $17.50 $70.00 $87.50 $125.83 $15.73
190 (2) STAND UP WATCH BAND ADVERT COUNTER CARDS $7.50 $30.00 $37.50 $75.83 $37.91
184 PETER MAX SIGNED OFFSET POSTER, 2001 $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $113.33
182 (15) HO SCALE GENTLY OR UNUSED TRAINS & ACC $10.00 $40.00 $50.00 $88.33 $5.89
181 (4) MID-CENTURY VINTAGE CAST IRON FIGURAL BANKS $12.50 $50.00 $62.50 $100.83 $25.21
179 NISSAN ENGEL OFFSET PRINT – DON QUIXOTE $5.00 $20.00 $25.00 $63.33 $63.33
177 (5) COLLECTIBLE PORCELAIN FIGURINES $31.25 $125.00 $156.25 $194.58 $38.92
176 (4) PIECE TIFFANY & WATERFORD CRYSTAL GROUP $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $28.33
168 (2) MICHAEL ARAM STAINLESS STEEL KIDDUSH CUPS $7.50 $30.00 $37.50 $75.83 $37.91
164 WATERFORD CAPITOL PAPERWEIGHT $5.00 $20.00 $25.00 $63.33 $63.33
161 LLADRO DAISY FIGURINE $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $11.33
123 (3) ROYAL DOULTON FIGURINES $7.50 $30.00 $37.50 $75.83 $25.28
122 (3) ROYAL DOULTON FIGURINES $15.00 $60.00 $75.00 $113.33 $37.78
121 (3) ROYAL DOULTON FIGURINES $12.50 $50.00 $62.50 $100.83 $33.61
81 (4) TIFFANY & CO. STERLING JEWELRIES $37.50 $150.00 $187.50 $225.83 $56.46
$333.75 $1,335.00 $1,668.75 $2,588.57Thank you!!!!!!! Early in College, my dream was working with recycling. By 2nd year I heard of a newly graduated fellow Engineer (he was Civil though) who was a version of Ryanne/Jay of the time (1982) combined with Schultz. One day I will summarize his case.
Recently I have been researching “alternatives” (so I do not get bored, remember, ADHD). Always loved the idea of extracting precious metals from electronics. Then it came to my mind to melt homer Silver to make bars and keep or sell. The gold recycling yields more per raw material than mining (comparing loads of circuit boards and chips X dirt for example). The silver part will possibly take off, the electronics is cool but it is A HUGE TIME CONSUMING LABOR.
Diversifying, staying motivated, meeting your passion and making “passive” money
from
https://grow.acorns.com/side-gig-advice-from-etsy-seller-who-made–30-000-in-two-years/?utm_source=August22&utm_medium=newsletter/Loved this article, a lot to do with latest podcasts
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Transcription for those who prefer:
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This story is Arianna O’Dell’s, a 28-year-old founder of a PR and marketing agency in New York City, as told to Marianne Hayes.I’ve always been a fan of quirky, one-of-a-kind gifts. But when I started making and selling them online on Etsy two years ago as a creative outlet, I never imagined my hobby would blossom into a reliable stream of passive income. And yet, so far, I’ve earned about $30,000 on top of my 9-to-5 income. I’m still learning as I go, but here are a few valuable pearls of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way.
1. Follow your passion projects.
I love a good pun and have learned that products with silly word play paired with cute illustrations make for crowd-pleasing gifts. (Think: a coffee mug that reads Livin’ la vida mocha.) Years ago, I started ordering custom items for family and friends, and, by the end of 2016, had a few extra lying around—so I figured I’d try selling them. I listed a mug on Etsy for $15, and was surprised to see it sell quickly. I didn’t net much, but something told me I’d stumbled upon a worthwhile side hustle.
The key, I’ve learned over the last two years, is that I’m working on something I think is fun. When you’re motivated by more than the bottom line, you’ll be more likely to go the extra mile without burning out.
2. Outsource tasks you can’t do (or hate).
Soon after opening my Etsy store, I started researching cost-effective ways to produce other punny items I couldn’t easily make by hand. That’s how I discovered print-on-demand companies that ship on your behalf. It’s an order-as-you-go option that takes a cut of each sale, but using them means my apartment doesn’t have to double as an inventory warehouse.
From there, I found graphic designers (through marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork) who could help bring my ideas to life for $10 to $30 per design. With partners in place, I hit the ground running, creating everything from funny doormats to wine labels.
Whether it’s administrative work, accounting duties or something else, I’ve learned that it’s worth investing in help when it makes sense. This way, you’re free to focus on other areas you like or are better at—and supercharge your business.
3. Understand your costs (really, really well).
Perhaps my most valuable side gig advice was born out of a big mistake: I ended up losing hundreds of dollars my first quarter in business because I forgot to take taxes and Etsy’s seller fees into account—something I wouldn’t have missed had I done a simple break-even analysis from the outset.
I also wish I’d had a better handle on my pricing. At first, I sold mugs for $16.99, netting me as little as 50 cents when all was said and done. Now that I better understand margins, I’ve upped my prices to $33.50—a 100-percent markup—and people are still buying.
4. Be intentional with your time.
Surprisingly, I haven’t sacrificed much time to grow my business. After some initial research about how to optimize my Etsy page so it’d appear in people’s Google searches (a slow, but very effective game), I now just work when I have free time—usually about 30 minutes a day.
The key is that I’m careful to spend that time as productively as possible. I typically work on my side business first thing in the morning, before I’m distracted or tired from other work, and complete at least one task, like fulfilling an order or implementing a new marketing tactic.
Related: I Got a 25 Percent Pay Bump After Dumping This Bad Habit
5. Look for ways to optimize or improve your process.
It’s been a slow, but mostly steady ride. (One exception: Holidays are always a boon. My second year in business, I sold more than 300 products and brought in $9,000 in three months alone.) Generally, I’m selling one or two items a day now, earning anywhere from $7 to $30 for each. I’ve also started selling on Amazon and my own site; diversifying where you can discover and purchase my products has earned me an extra $3,000 in sales to date.
Next on my list is learning more about securing licensing deals to get my products into bigger retailers. I’m also slowing down on creating new designs and repurposing old ones instead. If one was really popular on a mug, why not try it on a beach towel? This will help keep my costs low as I look toward the future: My five-year goal is to firm up a long-term pipeline of passive income.
August 1, 2018
