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So about that phenomenal Monday I had, yeah… that was a fluke. I haven’t had a sale in over 48 hours now. Last sale was 7am on Tuesday. I’m utterly disgusted…
I don’t really have time to list this week and will be out of town this weekend so I’m thinking about just putting my store on vacation mode until mid week next week and just clearing my mind of ebay all together until I can list.
I did do a 30% off and free shipping promo on my coats and winter heavy items that resulted in zero sales.
So in one day I’ve already exceeded my sales for the entirety of last week – 8 sales for $227. Nothing changed on my end, no new activity on my part. Ebay – you’re fickle. FICKLE I TELL YE!!!
Items in Store 2087
Items Sold 12
Total Sales $215.00
COGS $30.00
Total Profit $185.00
Average profit $15.42
Average sales price $17.92
New Listings 5
Items scavenged 4
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 42And there you have it folks, the worst week in the recorded history of my store. 2 days with no sales – One of those days I wasn’t even getting offers to send to buyers. That’s all I have to say about that. Dust off the boots and continue on.
I didn’t get to list like I wanted this week. I did spend several hours working on organizing my ebay space. It is something that must be done that will pay off in accelerated growth later on. I also had many family and home improvement commitments to get done with my very limited time & energy.
Items in Store 2094
Items Sold 23
Total Sales $943.00
COGS $86.00
Total Profit $857.00
Average profit $37.26
Average sales price $41.00
New Listings 16
Items scavenged 10
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 43Last week was rough as I got a rough cold (not covid) and the debilitating cough is still with me along with some laryngitis.
I was able to get myself back on the listing train this weekend. Yay! I got my ebay space cleaned up enough that I could function again. Speaking of listing, I am on the new tool. I actually like it. It is way faster than the old form. There are two quirks I need to figure out – shipping defaults to 1st class and my store category defaults to kids shoes. I want to change those – anyone know how?
Even with those two quirks everything loads so much faster.
I want some big listing numbers this week to reinvigorate my store. I’m shooting for 50+ new listings. As I’ve been organizing I’ve been setting aside the higher priced items to prioritize listing. So big listing numbers plus lots of $100+ items will hopefully lead to some great 4Q sales numbers to close out my year strong.
All goodwill chains financial data is public knowledge – the IRS form 990. Here is the data for one of the chains near me:
http://www.goodwillhunting.org/annual-reports-2018/
The Executive has a salarty of 100k, but there are several hundred thousand dollars of “other” salary, benefit, travel, and expenses for management. In reality I think the executive with bonuses and perks makes over $250k.
I looked at the data for this chain back around 2017/2018 and they massively increased their income from sales when they changed their pricing to be the “gucci” goodwill with the premium pricing around that time. Basically doubled their store sales income. Their store sales income has been fairly flat the last few years.
This local chain has been scanning books for a few years. They have a computer in the back in between two pallet boxes. They scan every book and their software gives them a “go/no go”. Anything with significant value gets sent out. They also have a “amazon hot list” shelf where they put any popular titles with a huge markup – sometimes as high as you can buy the book at the book store.
I sold books on amazon FBA for a while before they started scanning (and before Amazon started pushing out small time FBA sellers). Seeing their scanning setup and talking to an employee about it was the final nail in the coffin for my FBA business.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I checked the site out and now I’m really confused. The two goodwill chains near me both used to have lots of listings on that site. Now neither do.
….yet they still don’t put out the good stuff.</p>
so… where are they selling the good stuff? They tried and massively failed eBay years ago. The negative feedback pushed them off the platform.My listed inventory is in clear tubs.
I may switch though since it isn’t really necessary with a good numbering inventory system.besides, plastic bins have gotten insanely expensive and are rarely in stock.
Items in Store 2101
Items Sold 10
Total Sales $457.00
COGS $120.00
Total Profit $337.00
Average profit $33.70
Average sales price $45.70
New Listings 0
Items scavenged 25
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 43Oh my….
So guess what my sales did immediately starting after the update announcement? Yep. Tanked.
A major bug that came out of the update was that the condition item specific filter was deleted from the app. It got fixed today.
Now granted I haven’t been listing but only selling 10 items hasn’t happened in over 3 years for my store. I haven’t been listing all month and yet I still was selling over 20 items a week the last couple weeks. In August I average 27 items a week. At the beginning of the month even with an almost 2 week time away in place I sold more items!
I’m not a conspiracy kind of person, but they clearly bonked some settings on this update that have affected my store. I know about the condition filter. I wonder what other bone headed bugs have happened?
That’s my whiny 2 minutes. I’m entitled to that! Now I move on with positive momentum.
I’ve been contemplating all year a way to empty out my ebay workspace so I can be streamlined and focus on death piles. When my workspace is cluttered I don’t even want to be in there. I made a plan to list a massive amount of items this year to empty the space, yet still ended up with a cluttered area after I gave two areas of the garage to my wife for her hobbies.
I considered renting a storage space and putting a time limit of 6 months on getting everything I put in there listed. Then I considered buying an enclosed trailer to use a storage and then resell the trailer after 6 months for a profit. I couldn’t find any good deals on trailers and my wife hated the idea of spending money on a storage unit.
Then last week I went out into my non-ebay storage shed for something- it is a 10×10. I looked at how inefficient it was organized, assessed what I could just get rid of or sell that I no longer used. I determined that I could use the back 6′ for the death pile 6 month storage project and still use the front 4′ for normal shed stuff. I spent some time this weekend cleaning/organizing the shed. I got rid of some junk, sold the huge generator I haven’t needed for 8+ years, sold a mini fridge, and started to get the death pile stuff moved in.
I built back wall shelving in there during Covid lockdowns. I found the large boxes walmart that fit the shelved area perfectly for 100% storage efficiency. I LOVE it when a plan comes together.
I also found that the medium new walmart boxes fit my rolling storage carts perfectly so I can make them 100% efficient too! I linked both boxes below in case anyone wants to check them out. 100% storage efficency has been a dream of mine for a while. The only thing I had to do to the boxes was use my resizer to lower the height 2″ to fit in the shelves. I may end up abandoning plastic bins all together if this goes well.
A cold has taken me out of commission for the last couple days, but I plan to get most of my workspace emptied out and get back to listing HARD this month.
I’ll be listing the empty box of my wife’s childhood NES and SNES.
One time her step father being a packrat has paid off!
Where did you buy your label? If you used ebay labels or pirate ship then the overage charge should have been charged directly back to you rather than COD for the buyer.
Maybe media mail is excluded?
Either way, it is important to ensure you have an accurate scale and you are putting accurate measurements/weights in the label purchase page.
Now the other issue that could have happened is that the post office inspected the item and deemed it not media mail. In that case they will charge you for retail service.
Create a label on one of the items on ebay or pirateship. Ship the item with the actual measurements/weight.
On the ebay awaiting shipment page, click the drop down box on every other item you are shipping and “add tracking number”. That will mark them as shipped and they will track all together.Issue a partial refund to the buyer for the difference if you did not address the combined cost in offers or an invoice.
Most definitely a blend of both. It was pretty clear that some bidders in the video game auction just wanted to be part of the show. That’s not my scene. There were some people who were so outlandish with it that I started to suspect shill bidding was going on either to pump up bids or purely for entertainment and views. People buying games for $50 and telling the seller to “rerun it” or “unbox it on camera” for a sealed game. Basically making a sizeable donation to the seller in these instances. Some people really get into that being part of that celebrity thing though and like supporting their youtube entertainers. After all, Patreon is a BIG thing!
Whatnot is still a pretty wild west thing so shill bidding has got to be going on, similar to the old ebay days.
You can always sign up and just watch a random auction. Pick one with alot of giveaways you can enter. Randomized giveaways is a big part of the experience.
So Whatnot experience Part 2.
Last night I couldn’t sleep so I got on Whatnot to look through other auctions that caught my attention. I ended up on a vintage shirt auction. I stayed up WAY too late and ended up winning 18 shirts. With tax & Shipping I paid $10 per item average. While my COGS are high, the quality of the items was phenomenal. My average sales price will easily exceed $25/shirt.
Overall it was pretty darn fun. This seller did 15 second auctions starting at $5 with time added to bids under 10 seconds left. If the shirt had damage he started them at $1.
Shipping was $5 for the first T shirt and $2.50 per additional. Sweat shirts were $4.50 per shirt additional shipping.
The most I paid (Shipping and tax included) was$24.91 for an awesome sweatshirt with a wrap around graphic. I knew it was special and I was willing to bid up. Ebay solds sell immediately and the listings were under priced. I’ll be putting it up for $100 and will take offers over $60.
This auction had a TON of vintage “The Mountain” graphic t shirts.
You know ’em if you see ’em:
Awesome shirts, but there were two people in the auction who bid every one of them up. I didn’t get a single one, but I at least had the satisfaction of making them pay up. Lol!
All said and done, I really enjoyed this type of auction! It is tedious to look through t-shirts at local thrifts as the junk to treasure ratio is incredibly high and the prices are close to $5 each with tax for t-shirts. Being able to see an awesome vintage t-shirt every 30 seconds or so and be able to get them at a great price was perfect.
I assume this seller has people go to goodwill bins and just grab every shirt they find that is vintage and/or from a set list of brands/themes. It is a SUPER fast nickel (maybe penny more accurately) but they sell 100 t shirts a night for $5-25 each and make money on the shipping too. Just chugging through volume.
It’s a great plan for them and a great plan for me, the slow dime seller. Win/Win.
I’ll do this again, as the local thrifts have started sucking and I needed a breath of fresh air to reinvigorate my scavenger side.
Are you dragging the crop lines to
Only enclose the actual item? I found this very easily with google lens.
