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Last week was just all around slow. Slow sales, low listings (because I had run out of free ones and was too cheap to spend $$) compounded by not one, but TWO returns.
Couple of things that stood out from this week’s podcast-I never turned on free returns because I usually don’t have many and it seemed hinky to me. Instead, every day for the past 10 days or so, I get a message every time I get on to ship about updating my return policy for 3-6 items. Back before the USPS screwed up my top rated status, I had complied with the one day handling and 30 day return policy. I bulk edited my items so they would all have 30 day returns. Somehow, these listings they are asking me to update have all switched back to a 14 day return period. I haven’t called eBay, but it is getting annoying. Anyone else having this problem? Maybe it’s because I didn’t turn on free returns?
I hadn’t really paid too much attention to the new sale policy, but I can see where it could be a pain. I usually only run sales about once a month for 5-6 days. In June, since I was doing the big clean out of low priced listings to make room for bigger and better items, I created a sale that was good for a month on some old items that were borderline. The longer period doesn’t seem to have made them move any faster, bearing in mind that it is the slow season.
Breyer horse people-I sold several of mine when we moved. Be aware that Breyer Horse buyers are very nit picky! They quibbled with me over every scratch or perceived problem once they received the item. List every little flaw you can find!
Oh and Ryanne, my husband doesn’t listen to what I’m saying either. I use this to my advantage to subliminally implant ideas into his head that I want and then let him think it’s his idea!
eBay June 24-30
Total sales. $79.45
Items in store. 1,037
# sold. 9
Returns. 2
COGS. $6.25
$ spent on new. $18.50
# listed. 4
Highest sale. $25 vintage metal Rolodex fileBetter late than never, right? It was a really slow week, which is frustrating, but I guess everyone is as broke as I am by the end of the month. I feel like I have been hemorrhaging money this month-all the regular bills plus quarterly taxes and the wedding. Which, in case you are curious, went splendidly. I spent time listing and am back up to where I was before I did the big purge of old low dollar items. Since I am not planning on upgrading from my current store size (1,000 monthly fee buy it now listings) I’m sure there are more purges in the future as I upgrade the items I have listed. Just getting rid of some of listings from when I started this in earnest. You know, the ones that make you say to yourself “What were you thinking?” Enough blather, here’s my sad numbers….
eBay June 17-23
Total sales. $95.93
Items in store. 1,043
# sold. 8
Avg. sale. $11.99
COGS. $7.39
$ spent on new. $25.14
Highest sale: $24.99 Westmoreland milk glass dish & candleholdersPS I have owned a small brick and mortar business it’s hard. eBay is so much better!
Better late than never, right? It was a really slow week, which is frustrating, but I guess everyone is as broke as I am by the end of the month. I feel like I have been hemorrhaging money this month-all the regular bills plus quarterly taxes and the wedding. Which, in case you are curious, went splendidly. I spent time listing and am back up to where I was before I did the big purge of old low dollar items. Since I am not planning on upgrading from my current store size (1,000 monthly fee buy it now listings) I’m sure there are more purges in the future as I upgrade the items I have listed. Just getting rid of some of listings from when I started this in earnest. You know, the ones that make you say to yourself “What were you thinking?” Enough blather, here’s my sad numbers….
eBay June 17-23
Total sales. $95.93
Items in store. 1,043
# sold. 8
Avg. sale. $11.99
COGS. $7.39
$ spent on new. $25.14
Highest sale: $24.99 Westmoreland milk glass dish & candleholdersPost apocalyptic books do cast a whole new light on scavenging!
In keeping with the prepped thread here are two novels with an end of the world as we know it theme:
One Second After by William Forstchen a fairly realistic portrayal of life after an emp bomb renders technology useless.
Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling more of a fantasy premise, but same scenario. Strange events change the laws of physics render technology and firearms unusable.
Isn’t it handy having a retired librarian as part of the forum?
Thanks Jay! I will smile when I sit at the reception and look at all the scavenged books I got her for the decorations!
The zombies better stay away until I get my daughter married on Saturday! Not a horrible eBay week for June. Since it’s sale season, I have been spending more on inventory and creating new death piles, but garage/estate sales usually slow down a bit around the 4th of July, so I will have time to catch up. Selling a nice combo of both older items and newly listed stuff. Interesting comments about worrying too much, the bride and groom are two of the biggest worry warts I know-i might make them listen to that part!
eBay June 3-9
Total Sales. $159.95. (One bonanza sale)
Items in store. 1044
# sold. 13
Avg sale. $12.30
Ret/unpd/canc. 1 cancelled
COGS. $11.48
$ spent on new. $23.95
# listed. 17
Highest sale-$40 oriental dragon finished needlepoint (cost $3.25)Crazy busy week, my youngest is getting married in 9 days. Keeping up with eBay as best I can, but needless to say, it’s not my highest priority right now. I am going to take the day off tomorrow and go to garage sales. Two fairly affluent neighborhoods are having sales and it’s too good to pass up. I am making death piles for myself, but I won’t have anything to do after the wedding right? Missed posting my numbers last week, so here they are for the past two weeks.
eBay May 20-26
Total Sales. $135.91 (1 Bonanza)
Items in store. 1,033
# sold. 13
Avg. sale. &10.45
Ret/unpack/canc. 1 canc
COGS. $19.46
$ spent on new. $32.05
# listed. 36
Highest sale. $20 vtg short silk robe kimonoeBay May 27-June2
Total Sales. $163.29
Items in store. 1,040
# sold. 12
Avg. sale. $13.60
Ret/unpd/canc 0
COGS. $5.35
$ spent on new. 0
# listed. 21
Highest sale- $65 Fitz & Floyd Egret Bookend (commission item)eBay isn’t replacing my retirement income, but it continues to be a nice supplement to the existing income-and that’s perfectly okay with me! I don’t want another full time job!
It’s been a totally crazy week and I’m just now (Saturday) getting around to listening to the podcast. I am definitely seeing the spring slow down. I went three days in a row with no sales! Whaaaaat? I had a better week than I anticipated given the 3 day drought, but nothing to get overly excited about. Of course this slowdown coincides with the best two garage sale weekends of the year. Combining the two weekends I spent around $170. Hope the new stuff starts selling!
eBay April 29-May 5
Total Sales. $94.18
Items in store. 1,000
Number of items sold. 14
Avg. sale. $6.73
COGS. $7.18
Ret/unpd/canc. 0/0/0
$ spent on new. $92.05
# listed. 51
Highest Sale. $12.00-Red Fostoria coin candlesticksJust wanted to chime in before the next podcast on this week’s topic. I have had a brick and mortar store and now have my eBay store. I’ll take the eBay store hands down. I did a knitting shop for 4 years while I was still working full time. It was my dream shop, but it about put me in the ground! You have to sell A LOT of yarn to pay the expenses like rent, salaries (remember I was working) ultilies, taxes, etc. Broke my heart to let it go (at the time) but it wasn’t profiting and my parents and my spouses health started declining, so I just didn’t have the time or energy to do it anymore. Online shopping was just starting to take off, and that would probably have saved the day if I had known how to set it up at the time. Honestly, I was so burnt out by the end that I have barely touched a pair of knitting needles since (8 years).
I love the freedom I get with my eBay business! Income without all the stress and burnout factors. Now that I have close to a thousand items in my store, it’s easy to ignore it (except for shipping) if i’m Feeling a little burn out coming on….then get back to it when I am feeling more enthusiastic. I support and applaud people with the energy to run a brick and mortar store, but eBay is the way for me!eBay week of March 25-31
Total Sales. $120.94 ($106.94)
Items in store. 966
# items sold. 15
Avg. sale. $8.06
COGS. $9.54
Ret/unpd/canc. 1/1/1
$ spent on new. $14.48
# new listed. 7
Highest sale. $@6.50 Calloway Pebble Beach golf pullover (original cost 50 cents)Couple of points about my numbers-average sale is low because I have pretty much my entire store on sale. Also my return was actually for damage done in delivery. I’m really trying to clean out my inventory to make room for new items and had a higher than expected tax bill for reasons my husband has explained to me and I still don’t understand, so I really need to raise some $$ quickly.
Jay mentioned reaching a ‘healthy level of seling’ and I think I have figured out mine. I have the mid-level store, 1000 BIN and 500 auctions per month. I’m not in a position to upgrade both for space and time reasons. I regularly hit my free listing limits on BIN, so I have been doing a few more auctions (particularly closer to the end of the month). Sometimes I hit the jackpot, but mostly I either sell the item for slightly less than I would as a buy it now, or at the beginning of the month I transition it to a BIN listing. I think Jay had the best analogy-to sell items at auction, you have to have a bit of gambler in your soul. The things I’m most likely to list as an auction are things where the similar items sold prices are all over the map. Also, items where I can’t find any similar items. My best auction ever was a broken Seamaster watch that had belonged to my dad. Complete watches were selling for thousands of dollars. I just couldn’t come up with a BIN price, so I listed it as an auction for $50. It sold for over $500. I would never have priced it for that much!
I agree that buy it now is the way to go for the majority of sales, but occasionally it does pay off to gamble on an auction. Congrats on 10 years and thank you again for hosting your podcast and a forum for us to feel like a community.I missed last week so here are my sales for the last two weeks
March 11-17
Total Sales $169.25
Items in Store 992
# sold 9
Avg. Sale $18.81
COGS $12.32
Returns 0
$ spent on new $9.08
# listed 3
Highest Sale-$85 Eddie Bauer leather bomber jacketMarch 18-24
Total Sales $151.14
Items in Store 977
#sold 20
Avg. Sale $7.56
COGS $9.68
Returns 0
$spent on new 0
# listed 6
Highest sale- $39.99 Vtg Hakata Washable Doll figurine from JapanNormally I would just skip posting the week I missed, but I thought it was interesting that the weeks were so different. The first week I didn’t sell much, but the items were higher priced. The second week I had put pretty much my whole store on sale and I sold 20 things, but they were all lower priced items. Only around $17 dollars difference in grand totals for the two weeks. I guess it’s a good argument for having a range of prices in your store. On slow weeks the big items can bump your sales up. I think the sale really helped this past week. I’m bursting at the seams in my Ebay office (and my husband resents my inventory creeping it’s way into the rest of the house) so I am pretty much taking any non ridiculous offer on items. Usually when I have a sale I don’t see that much of a boost, but it really worked for me this time. I want to get some of this older inventory out of my way for the new garage sale season. I didn’t get much listed because to be honest, I just couldn’t get myself worked up to do it. The things I did get listed were some of the more complicated items from my parents stuff.
So that was all process, but I have been thinking a lot about the why and the podcast this week helped gel some of those thoughts. I’m retired and it became obvious to me early on that if I wanted to continue with certain little luxuries in my lifestyle that I was going to have to do something to earn more money. I hadn’t really planned to retire at 54, but my dad and my husband’s health combined with the approaching changes in the state retirement system made it a good time to get grandfathered in on benefits. I’m frugal, but nowhere near the level of some of you, lol! I love the thrill of the hunt in searching for items. It just makes sense for me to sell on Ebay right now. I make enough to supplement my income, I get to go thrifting and garage saling with a purpose and I get to keep enjoying things I like in life. Last week was a combo of being busy with the guys and no motivation to list. Now that I have almost 1000 items listed, I can be a slacker when the mood strikes because of the pipeline. After having been at this seriously for just over a year, I have a much better understanding of what works and what doesn’t work for me. I have become much more discerning in what I purchase to resell. I have a better understanding of what works for me and my store. The nice thing is the flexibility. It’s my life story Part 2 and it lets me go where I want and sometimes leads me to things I might not have found otherwise.
Listening to the podcast as I post. I have been battling a sinus infection for two weeks, so I haven’t been as active with eBay as I should have been. Two weeks ago sales sucked, but I felt so bad I didn’t really care. Last week was much better. Got my best scavenge of the year so far from an online auction. Three IKEA Henriksdal chairs with covers for $1. Like new-two of the covers are still in the packages. I actually got them to use, but they are just too big for the space (and my husband HATED them). I have them listed on Facebook right now, but I’m probably going to have to do CL or eBay to get them out of my house. Feeling better this week and hoping to get back into the eBay groove and tackle the death piles. I did hit a new milestone last week with 1,000 listings!
eBay week of 4-10
Total sales. $201.64
Items in store. 996
#of items sold. 14
Avg. sale. $14.40
COGS. $7.21
Returns. 0
$ spent on new. $36.57
#new listings. 25
Highest sale. $51 vtg Toshikane peacock earrings (auction)Here is a picture of the boots. I think they are pretty cool.
Yes Jay, I remember laughter. I’m not glad to hear you are getting lowball offers, but it made me feel better to hear it because I was beginning to think it was just me. I actually got a 99 cent offer while listening to this weeks podcast. I had a decent week, but I also had almost a two day period without a cha-ching. Also glad to hear that i’m Not the only one who freaks out about that a little bit. My scavenge of the week happened last Friday when I went to pick up some things I had purchased through an online auction. I had purchased two pair of rubber boots, intending to keep one and sell the other. One of the girls that work there asked me about them and I ended up selling her one of the pairs for cash before I ever got it out the door. Paid for all my items and my gas for the trip!
My numbers February 11-17
Total sales. $177.87
Items in store. 986
#of items sold. 17
Average sale. $10.46
COGS. $11.43
Returns. 0
$ spent on new. $10.46
# of new items listed. 23
Highest sale-Philadelphia Eagles Starter jacket $49.99 (paid $1)
