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eBay Jan 21-27
Total sales. $134.41
Items in store. 951
# of items sold. 17
Avg. sale. $7.91
COGS. $4.52
Returns. 0
# of new items listed. 18
Best sale-3 quilting books for $28.99Sold lots of little stuff last week and some older items I was glad to get out the door. Making headway on the death piles. Glad yesterday was the 31st because for the first time since I upgraded my store over a year ago, I hit 1000 listings. Feel like that was a milestone of some sort! Haven’t gotten as much accomplished this week because I feel like I’m fighting off the flu or some evil virus. There’s so many people sick around here that getting it seems inevitable! Found out today there is an estate sale on Saturday within driving distance so I’m determined to be better by then!
Dec. 17-30
Total sales. $386.50 (one Bonanza)
Items in store. 936
# of items sold. 32
Avg Sale. $12.08
COGS. $20.17
Returns. 0
$ spent on new. 0
# new listed. 15
Highest sale- vintage carved samari cufflinks & tie bar $125I combined the last two weeks of December because it was so slow. Surprisingly, things started picking up on Christmas Eve. It’s been fairly steady since then. Hoping to have a good strong start in 2018. Didn’t list much due to the holidays and family visiting. As much as I’m hating this deep freeze (and I don’t know how those of you in the northern states do this for months at a time) I am hoping people get bored being house bound and shop on eBay!
I am having a crappy Monday. Your podcast is the light in the darkness today. My sales have been soooo slow the last 3 weeks I have been scratching my head and driving myself crazy trying to figure out what the heck is going on with my store. It was good to be reminded that there are just going to be slow times and it is the nature of the beast. I went three days last week with no sales which hasn’t happened to me in over a year. I just got off the phone with Ebay going round and round about my late shipping rate. Somehow I manage to upload tracking info at a 99.45% positive rate, but still manage to have a 4.76% late delivery rate. Their answer to getting that late delivery rate down is to sell more stuff. SMH. I know, I should switch to UPS as opposed to using USPS, but I don’t hear good things about them either. Saturday I had 5 things to ship and I scheduled a pick up. The carrier took three of the five. See what I’m dealing with? Oh well. Thanks for letting me vent. Here are my numbers from last week, which are (sadly) an improvement over the last two.
Ebay week of Nov. 26-Dec. 2
Total Sales $159.40
Items in Store 924
# of items sold 16
Average sale $9.96
COGS $16.04
Returns 0 Unpaid 1
$ spent on new $6.00
# of new items listed 25
Highest sale $29.99 Vintage oval framed needlepoint of roses (cost $2)My former boss taught me the ways of extreme scavenging. She would see something on the way to work and come in and grab me to go get it. Furniture, fencing and weird stuff in general. With the influx of stuff from my parents I haven’t had to work too hard to find items to sell. I’ve been doing this long enough now that I’m starting to figure out my parameters and limits. My space and my time will accommodate about 1,000 items. More than that and it just becomes unworkable. I do still do estate sales and garage sales and Goodwill because to me, that is the fun part. I have become much pickier in my purchases however. I also try to keep up with trends. 12-18 months ago Vera Bradley was the hottest thing around. Now EBay is flooded with the stuff and you are lucky to get more than what you paid.
Last week was the best week i’ve Had in ages, but I did lose a sale because I couldn’t find something. I spent two days reorganizing my inventory. I got rid of some really old cheap stuff I started with and took a serious look at my death piles. I would like to think the great week I had was because I have become more discriminating in my purchases and listings. Since I am limiting myself to 1,000 items, out with crappy stuff as I find better items.
eBay week of Oct. 29-Nov. 4
Total sales. $504.46
Items in store. 897
# of items sold. 13
Average sale. $38.80
COGS. $17.48
Returns/cancelled. 1 by me, 1 unpaid, 1 by customer
$ spent on new inventory $5.97
# of new items listed. 15
Highest sale: $250 Toshkane seahorse cufflinks & tie clip. 2nd place, $110 Armani Women’s suitHey gang! I’ve just been lurking lately because my dad and husband have both had health issues lately. The podcast this week emphasized for me why list and forget works so well for me. On good weeks with nobody having issues I list like crazy and on bad weeks when I don’t get to list as much I still sell things. I never quite get caught up with my death piles, but they aren’t going anywhere. Just in the past couple months I’ve been getting notes from eBay on my older listings saying it’s been 16 months and I should consider revising the listing. Since my space is limited, I have been using those as a way to re-evaluate my older inventory. I either end it and relist with sell similar or end it all together. It’s usually just a few listings per week and i’ve Learned a lot in 16 months so I usually can spice up the listings a bit.
Here’s my numbers for last week, October 15-21
Total sales. $224.66
Items in store. 896
# of items sold. 16
Avg. sale. $14.04
COGS. $12.83
Returns/cancelled. 0
$ spent on new inv. $15.00
# of new items listed. 16
Highest sale- Cop R Chef sauce pan, $59.99 (cost $1)Store Week of Sept. 3-9
Total Sales $101.45
Items in store 857
# of items sold 10
Avg. Sales $10.14
COGS $8.12
Returns 0
$ spent on new $33.68
# of new listings 30
Highest sale–Bound set of Fine Cooking Magazines, sold $19.99 cost 50 centsDefinitely a slow week and this one isn’t starting out much better. Pretty sure I’m feeling the effects of the hurricanes. I sell a lot of items to people in Texas and Florida. This week it’s been mostly going to California. Wondering if in the next few months we all see big Texas/Florida sales as people start replacing things lost in the Hurricanes? Hoping things pick up, I’m running out of room for everything! Still packed to the rafters with my dad’s stuff.
Last week I had two Make Offer sales that seemed strange. Both times the person made me an offer which I countered. Both times they turned down the counter offer and then bought the item for full price?!? Not going to argue with some one wanting to pay full price, but it seemed strange that it happened twice in two days.
Ended up buying a Dymo Labelwriter 4XL and have been wondering why I didn’t break down and do it sooner! Hoping J&R have a great vacation and all of us have big sales this week!
The printer is an HP Officejet Pro L7700. We’ve had it for years and it’s always been a great printer. My husband thinks it’s 6-7 years old, but I think it’s much closer to 10 years old. I’m using a MacBook that’s about2 years old and he’s using a Dell laptop. When I run a printer network report it’s shows it’s connected to the network wirelessly. I’ve worked through the HP troubleshooting page and nothing worked. I even entered the IP address of the printer through Chrome on my mac and got to the printer. Safari and the print function of the mac seems to think the printer is offline or doesn’t exist. The printer worked great with my mac right up until this week, so I’m really stumped.
Finally winding down from the dad move/estate sale/house clean out. I have a whole new respect for people who put on an Estate Sale. Dad’s sale made around $1500, but I still had a boat load of stuff to deal with when it was over. If they are all like that, then they truly earn the 40% they charge! I am slowly getting the nicer things that didn’t sell during the estate sale listed on eBay. Some of them have sold right away and some are so weird they will probably take some time to find the right person. I have a Paul Jacoulet print of the Jade Lady I still haven’t decided what the best route is for selling. I’ve seen them listed for anywhere from $300 to over $1,000. Right now it’s hanging on my bedroom wall until I figure it out, lol!
Mac users, I need some help. My laptop has suddenly stopped recognizing my printer. The problem isn’t with the printer as my husband is merrily printing away on his laptop. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled until I am blue in the face. Outside of resorting to an old fashioned cable that connects the printer to the laptop I am out of ideas. Any suggestions? This is forcing me to consider getting a label printer slightly earlier than I had planned. Not really in my budget right now to get one, but after only one day hand writing labels and dragging packages to the post office is already getting old. Plus I miss my shipping discount! Any and all advice is appreciated.
I will get back to posting my numbers soon. Sales have been pretty slow, but with everything going on, that’s been okay.
Oops, posted the estate Sale pics on last weeks forum topic. Happy to answer any questions anyone has about any of the stuff.
Pictures from the estate sale in case any of you are interested. Happy to answer any questions anyone might have.
Gang, I am up to my neck in stuff. It gives me a whole new perspective on estate sales. At some point it gets totally overwhelming. Pretty sure I threw stuff away today that I normally would look at and think, Is this EBay material? Instead I just thought ewwwwww, trash! The 35-40% estate company fee is looking pretty attractive right now!
That being said, the sale is this weekend come hell or high water. I’m not advertising this in the ads, but Saturday is 1/2 price day. Thursday & Friday 9:30-4, Saturday 9:30-3. Lots of furniture, TVs, computers (old), kitchen items. Crystal & glassware, 12 place setting of Noritake Toko-Ri china. Collectibles from 1950s Japan, Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Thailand. Men’s clothing, linens, garage stuff. Like to think my pricing is reasonable. 1090 Greenfield Dr., Troy, Oh.
Just in case you missed it, Ebay is addressing the removed listings.
The sale will be in Troy, Ohio. I will post complete times and address closer to the sale. Like I said, I’m aiming for Father’s Day weekend, but at the rate it’s going, it may get pushed back a week.
Mink stole
Somehow your weekly topics seem to be dead on with my situation at any given time! I’m currently using Ebay as an income supplement to my retirement, so while I’d have to give up a few things if I couldn’t do this, I could still survive.
Just a thought on the estate sale conversation (since I’m up to my eyeballs in stuff planning one!) I wish I had the luxury of taking all dad’s stuff and selling it on Ebay at my leisure. However, because this was a move into assisted living as opposed to a death, I don’t have the luxury of time. We have blown through dad’s savings getting him moved into his new apartment between deposits, moving expenses, replacing things that either didn’t fit into an apartment or didn’t work- it’s expensive! Assisted living itself is expensive. We need to get the house on the market ASAP which means getting all of the stuff out of his house ASAP. I’m trying my darnedest to get top dollar for his things, but I just don’t have the luxury of list it and forget it. I consulted with a company whose sales I frequent and they suggested I do the sale myself and put the really nice stuff aside to list as I have time. I wish you all were close enough to come to the sale, because there will be really nice things at really fair prices. I’m aiming for father’s day weekend. anyone interested in a mink neckpiece complete with heads and feet made in Japan?
Jay and Ryanne, make friends with your new mail carrier. Like I said the last time I posted, having a bunch of subs that didn’t know how to scan packages cost me my top seller rating. I will post a picture of the stole.
