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01/06/2020 at 9:02 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72540
Odds are buyers can still access your items directly through a google search.
01/06/2020 at 9:00 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 444: Is Cross Posting The New Reality? #72539Facebook ABSOLUTELY has listing standards. I have had numerous listings pulled down due to bogus “prohibited item” violations.
Last week they tried to pull down my listing for an old Nintendo system because it was soliciting “adult services”. What?!? On the bright side it was the first appeal that has went in my favor.There are two ways to offer free shipping:
1. Create your specific calculated shipping profile as usual and just click the “free shipping” button.
This shows the buyer exactly what service they will be receiving and their expected delivery date.2. Change the shipping type from “calculated” to “flat”. Once you have chosen flat shipping cost from the dropdown menu, you get access to generic shipping methods of “economy”, “standard”, and “expeditied”. The shipping time ranges on each of these are broad and will affect the anticipated delivery date shown to the buyer. This will allow you the greatest leeway to chose the shipping method of your choice.
I do both as needed. If the item is obviously a first class item, I just leave it on first class. If I know it will ship in a padded flat rate mailer, I leave it on priority. If it could fall into dimensional weight I will chose flat cost “standard” delivery and ship either parcel, priority, or Fed Ex – whichever is cheaper for me depending on the buyers address. If the prices are within a few cents, I’ll always upgrade to priority over parcel. It’s worth it for the insurance and makes for a happier customer.
Yeah I’ve had two paid cancellations in the last few days too.
Yeah I’m not too keen on immediate payment now that paypal no longer refunds the 2.9% fee.
On the list of things I want ebay to fix, this is WAAAAYYYYYY down the list.Yep,
Just something you have to deal with.
Zone based shipping options would be most excellent but will likely never happen.A couple things I do:
1. All things normal sized and 2lbs are under are listed as priority.
2. Use padded flat rate envelopes as much as possible.
3. Anything normal sized and 3lbs I list as parcel select but ship as priority. This helps the west coast folks.
4. Anything 4lbs and up or in dimensional weight I list with Fedex ground and priority mail.
5. For certain items I will list as free shipping if I know I can keep west coast shipping under control through cubic rate, a flat rate box, or some other trick. Almost always these items sell to a west coast buyer. This is a competitive advantage for me.Items in Store 1395
Items Sold 33
Total Sales $1,066.00
COGS $150.00
Total Profit $916.00
Average profit $27.76
Average sales price $32.30
New Listings 29I closed out the year very strong!
So back at the beginning of September I set a goal to gross $941 a week through the end of the year. Unfortunately we had the massive ebay glitch that messed up everything for a while.
I ended up averaging $811 over that time frame. I set a lofty goal, and still did really well! I averaged $1162 in sales a week in December, which is amazing! I’ve never had 4 weeks in a row of $1000+ in sales. I hope that trend keeps on a rolling.In other news, I did a TON of work to my garage/ebay space this weekend. I hired a person to install a side entry door in my garage as it didn’t have one. Worst…contractor…Ever! I really struggled deciding to hire it out or do it myself. There were enough questions that I couldn’t commit to DIY. After watching this alleged professional, I should have done it myself. He was unprepared, I had to let him use MY tools to do the job right, he kept trying to take shortcuts that were not kosher. Alas, it is done and I have moved on. I paid $400 labor for very crappy work – took him 4 hours. I may rip it all out and redo it myself so it is right. On the bright side, I spent that 4 hours doing what I am good (and confident) at and listed $1600 in inventory.
After the door was done, I created an indoor/outdoor pin area for the dogs and then trained them to go through the new doggie door.
Then I ran some new electrical to add some outlets in the garage and relocate the outlet that used to be where the new door is. Finally, I installed a light over top of my relocated listing table. Phew, that was a productive weekend!
In the process of reorganizing the garage/ebay space for the new door, I decided I am going on a scavenging moratorium until sometime in February. I need to maximize cashflow for our vacation…and I’m out of space.
Today I plan to sign up for a business credit card. I want to go ahead and commit to getting away from using paypal in prep for managed payments. It will make my bookkeeping next year simpler to just start the year off with the new system. I’m comfortable now with pirateship, so I’ll just go to using them full time for USPS orders.
Happy New Year everyone!
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This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by
Retro Treasures WV.
12/26/2019 at 11:18 am in reply to: Has anyone had his happen? Lost Chargeback Claim – Paypal #72125Yep,
I’ve done everything right as well and they still screwed me.
It is very rare. I had already spent a ton of time and energy on it. It wasn’t worth my time to call back and try to fight it again.Items in Store 1399
Items Sold 35
Total Sales $1,079.00
COGS $117.00
Total Profit $962.00
Average profit $27.49
Average sales price $30.83
New Listings 78I started listing that huge video game lot last week and it has been selling quite well already. I’ve already sold 10 things for $175, so I’ve made back half my money already. I haven’t even listed the GOOD stuff yet – this was the junky low dollar items that I put my nose down and grinded through listing/photographing. It’s a pipeline – just a steady stream of $5-10 sales. I’ll take it!
In other news, if you live within a couple hour drive of Columbus Ohio I HIGHLY recommend you make a trip to the Columbus Zoo for their Christmas lights. This year they are over 3 MILLION lights. The power company sponsors it all – it is truly a site to behold. The entire zoo is covered in awesome lights.
I’ve done a few large lots. The key is to get organized as quickly as possible so you can really see what you have. If you have multiples, then you should get it sorted asap. This is a great task to farm out to children.
Once sorted, you can start spot researching just to get an idea for what they are worth, and how to best list them.
When it comes to listing, it really comes down to how much work you want to put in, and how long you want to sit on the inventory. Selling individuals even with quantity still means you will ship every individual thing.
My recommendation would be to sell in variety lots. Let’s say you have 10 designs – sell a lot that has one of each. Then each sale will be worth your time to pack/ship.
12/17/2019 at 2:16 pm in reply to: Have Sneakers to sell worth $100 or more? Now FREE to sell on ebay … #71806And just like that, all my $99.99 shoes became a flat $100. Lol!
12/17/2019 at 11:16 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 441: How Do I Go From Rookie to Veteran Scavenger? #71794It is still fun and I love learning. There is no fast way to acquire this knowledge, just takes lots of time and effort.
This times 1000!
I’ve poured many, many, MANY hours into research and learning even into items I never even bought. It all has culminated into a very well rounded scavenger education that allows me to go into “terminator scan mode” when scavenging. I don’t look at anything in particular – just let my eyes wander until all that dormant knowledge in my mind keys on something.
I can still remember going into thrift stores before I had all this knowledge – it was like 90% of the store was invisible to me.
12/17/2019 at 8:29 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 441: How Do I Go From Rookie to Veteran Scavenger? #71778Items in Store 1356
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $1,261.00
COGS $78.00
Total Profit $1,183.00
Average profit $42.25
Average sales price $45.04
New Listings 54Another great December week! I could definitely get used to these sales numbers.
In other cool news, I am now less than 250lbs at 247 yesterday. Woo hoo!This weekend I bought out a former ebay sellers remaining Video game inventory. A bunch of games, systems, and accessories as well as some new in box toys. I tackled it hard this weekend to get it organized, tested, and starting to list it all. Most of the games are crap, but there are a TON of them. They are easy to list and will bring a couple bucks each after shipping and fees.
It’s interesting how perspectives can be so different. These people saw this large lot as a burden and as junk they no longer wanted to deal with. I saw it as treasure and spent several hours this weekend going through it all and I’ll make around $1k off that work.
My last negative buyer experience turned quite positive thanks to ebay’s policies.
I bought a waterproof camera that had terrible photos. The camera was shipped LOOSE in a padded flat rate mailer (they could have shipped in a box via 1st class cheaper…). The bottom door of the camera had a crack in it.
I brought this to the attention of the seller. They saw nothing wrong with shipping the camera loose in a padded mailer, and tried to claim that crack was never there before and couldn’t have been caused by shipping! The photos were grainy and never showed the bottom of the camera.So since I tried to throw the seller a bone and they refused, I opened an INAD claim. The seller commented on the INAD case basically the same comments as above and did nothing else. So a couple days later I got all my money back and didn’t have to ship the camera back. I never heard another word from the seller.
THIS is why ebay protects their buyers from terrible amateur sellers.
I was thinking about this situation last night, and the more I think about it I totally don’t believe any of it. I get the feeling He’s doing someone a favor by pretending to “buy” the inventory. Then he conveniently already has an auction set up to happen within 2 weeks before he’s even seen everything.
Best case, the auction gets a ton of free viral advertising, Curiosity Inc gets a ton of page views. Win/Win. This is an independently produced “reality” TV show, after all, and we know how “real” most of them are.
I saw a video of this guy over a year ago and the sleaze just oozed off of him. I changed my mind after this video and the first few potters house video…but then the sleaze started creeping back in.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by
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