Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
So per that site, I should be using 3.4 tablespoons of coffee for 20 oz of water. My heaping teaspoons are close to a tablespoon volume wise each. Good to know that what I’m doing is close to what is ideal.
I don’t put a bit of water in first, I just dump it all in. I’ll have to try the bloom thing.
My favorite part of a french press is that by the time the coffee is brewed, it is cooled down a bit. Once I put my cream in I’m ready to take drinks of coffee. ACTUAL drinks. I’m not playing that sippy sip BS game.
I have a question for you. When you buy these commercial parts, do you do research to find a proven market for them or just go all in and hope for the best? I assume you’ve done this enough at this point that you trust the process based on experience.
I’m trying to think what I would do if I came upon a lot of 200+ HVAC controllers. Yeah they’re cheap, but are there actually 200+ people out there who need this specific controller that will come to ebay for it?
I have dabbled in buying small commercial stuff in volume with varying success. It is nice to make a single listing for alot of items. I tend to only go all-in if I can make a reasonable case that there is a market for the items and that I could sell all of them within a year or two.
Items in Store 1464
Items Sold 25
Total Sales $1,163.00
COGS $165.00
Total Profit $998.00
Average profit $39.92
Average sales price $46.52
New Listings 58
Items scavenged 25
Sourcing Allotment 17
So I went over my sourcing allotment of 19 items last week – sue me. I did make sure to list immediately every item over my allotment so they didn’t go to a death pile. One of them already sold for $45 so it paid off. That’s $45 that would not be in my pocket if I had held to my cap. The cap is performing it’s intended goal of getting me to pass on lower profit long tail items.
While I may be a failure at holding to a hard cap on scavenged items, it is forcing me to avoid buying long tail items. I passed on at least as many items as I bought.
I’m only buying $20-30 items if they are a sure thing quick sale, and mostly sticking to items that sell for $50+. My average sales price has been right at $35 for 3 years now. On top of raising my number of weekly sales, I’d also like to finally raise my ASP. I can only do that by selling more higher value items.
I listed at least 25 more items than I sold, which is my goal each week in order to reach 2000 active listings.
I was really concerned about this week on Friday as my sales were really bad! I even had a day with no sales and I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened – I don’t think it happened once in 2020. All was forgotten though as I had a monster weekend to save the week.
This week I’m going to try and list 100 items. I used to create listings on my breaks and lunch at work. This week I’m gonna do that again in order to gain a bit more listing time.
And here I was feeling like a glutton for polishing off my 5 “cup” french press in one sitting. I just looked and the mug I drink from is a 20oz mug.
Here’s a question for the rest of you: Does anyone actually use 2 tablespoons of coffee per brewed cup? That seems like MASSIVE overkill – even moreso if they are considering a cup as 5oz. I use 3 heaping teaspoons of coffee in my full french press and that seem like alot.
Fully justified. You gave them a chance to come clean or even lie and say it was an accident. They are unapologetic. They also need reported to ebay. Honestly you could even report them to the USPS because they are committing Federal mail fraud which can be a very serious offense.
Well the good thing is that ebay’s records are MUCH better now, and the data is for all year as well. Download a report for all of your transactions and you’ll see.
If you learn all the tip/tricks of box resizing then you no longer need a box mountain. I resize on length, width, height, and use an accordion box over box method to get all the weird sizes I need with minimal stock.
This is a great step to add to your process. I am VERY guilty of getting the critical work done and getting out in my ebay room. I end up with adhesive covers and label backings EVERYWHERE after shipping.
I also let new listings pile up in one corner of the room until the weekend when I take the time to get them properly stored in my storage building. If something sells without an inventory tag number I know it’s in my “new listings” pile in the garage. Lol.
Items in Store 1431
Items Sold 29
Total Sales $1,028.00
COGS $97.00
Total Profit $931.00
Average profit $32.10
Average sales price $35.45
New Listings 48
Items scavenged 10
Sourcing Allotment 19
So fate threw a wrench into my sourcing formula plans this weekend. In my original formula I allowed for 2 “white whale” items even if my formula drives my sourcing to zero. So…what happens when I find MULTIPLE $100+ items in one place?
Well you buy them of course!!! My wife REALLY enjoyed making fun of me when she came over to see me carrying multiple things. I believe her comment was “So, how’s that nerd formula working out for you?” LOL!!!
Here’s the best 2 items of the lot:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265008865973
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265009469810
It won’t be an issue now since my allotment this week is 19 items based on my formula.
2020 goals:
– I want to hit 2000 active listings as soon as possible this year. Because I’m a numbers nerd and engineer by trade, I OF COURSE created a spreadsheet to forecast how long it would take based on the difference of my average weekly sales count and the number of new listings. If I average 25 more new listings than my weekly sales, it will take me just under 23 weeks to hit 2000 listings. On the extreme end, I would need to average 143 more new listings than my sales count in order to hit 2000 within a month.
So based on those numbers, end of June is a realistic goal date for 2000 listings.
– I’d like to increase my average weekly sales count to 40 as well. 2019 was 21, 2020 was 33. Hitting 2000 active listings with steady listing should get me pretty close to an average of 40 sales a week.
– Reduce my backlog of unlisted inventory by controlling purchasing and incentivizing listing. I’ll accomplish this via a performance based formula that limits my scavenging. If I want to buy more, I have to list more and sell more.
I found an AMAZING 3 piece vintage cheerleader uniform a few weeks ago and jumped on it because I remembered your posts about uniforms.
It’s just a control factor to keep the final result reasonable. Let’s say I have a monster week of selling 50 things and I list 160 things. I don’t want my purchase limit to be 160. In that case it will just be 40.
I’ll adjust the forumla as needed. I may do away with the “+2” and just allow myself to buy $100+ items as they pop up with no limit. They’re rare enough to be statistically irrelevant.
Mine was wrong last month. I didn’t even bother opening this months before deleting it.
Lol, I had typed up a response to this and forgot to post it. I’ll retype it as best as I can remember:
1 was easy but new.
2 was pretty easy as a tag team. We work well together.
3 was like hitting 500 items in your ebay store: You better develop some systems and strategies or you are gonna crash n burn.
4+: Meh, just more of the same. Ebaymom is right – it really doesn’t get harder.
February marks 14 years straight that we’ve been changing diapers. It will be really weird one day to NOT have diapers in the house.
