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Correct – I do not realize COGS until the item sells. You do still have to keep track of your COGS. It is up to you how you do it. There really isn’t a right or wrong way. You could keep a running track count of items and total spend and just average out your COGS per item. You could get really complicated and keep a detailed spreadsheet of every item on a separate line.
Bottom line is you need to have a system.
My system is I do a transaction report and add a column for COGS and where I bought it from. If I ever get audited I have my receipts to which I can match up line items to receipts. Is my system the best? Nope. Is it good enough in my opinion and I feel like I could competently defend it? Yes.
At the end of the day my COGS are so low that it is a minor issue. $4 COGS average vs average sales price of $36. I don’t think that’s gonna raise many red flags with the IRS considering many businesses run a 10% or less profit margin.
What I typically do with my 1099 from ebay.
Open pdf document.
Read numbers
Say “that’s nice”
Toss aside document and continue on with my known good numbers.
Ugh…you cannot do two promotions on the same item at the same time. It’s one or the other. So frustrating.
I adjusted the shipping costs to a flat rate of $3.99 25 cents per each additional marker. That’s about as good as it gets I think.
So here is the listing for the markers:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265575557719
This is the first variations listing I’ve done. Plain and simple – a real pain in the butt. Before I even started I had to organize all the markers and create a spreadsheet with all the data, UPC’s etc. I did everything line by line in the listing tool because I just couldn’t bring myself to figure out the export tool. I needed to know how the actual variant listing thing worked first. How does it work? NOT TOO GOOD PAL!
I had to reformat my spreadsheet to match how the listing tool would allow me to put in the information. You CANNOT have individual item specifics per variant. That is total crap! In my case, each model number has SPECIFIC item specifics, such as color name, UPC, tip type. I cannot add any more item specifics so I had to add the information to the variant type. Adding multiple variants to capture that data wouldn’t have worked, as you can only add photos to a single variant level.
Anyways, anyone who has messed with variant listings feel free to take a look and critique. I jump right in the deep end when I learn to do something the first time. Lol!
The other issue I had was my free shipping on 4+ promotion I tried to set up. I didn’t want to have any purchases of a single pen with free shipping. You can set up multi purchase discounts in the actual listing, but you cannot create a shipping discount upon multiple purchases. I have a shipping promotion created that should give free shipping to an purchase of 4+ pens but I cannot see any indication that it is active on my end. Can someone check this for me and see if from your end you can see that you’ll get free shipping if you buy 4?
Items in Store 1684
Items Sold 33
Total Sales $1,182.00
COGS $147.00
Total Profit $1,035.00
Average profit $31.36
Average sales price $35.82
New Listings 63
Items scavenged 466!!! WHAT??!?
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 49
Sourcing Allotment 2Again my sales lagged on the weekend after a great set of 5 weekdays. I guess this means people really are back in the office shopping on ebay while at work instead of actually working. Lol!
So about that scavenging number: I scored 9 items at a local goodwill that were high dollar vintage toys. That was all the scavenging I planned on doing this week. On Friday my wife had me stop by a store to pick up something for a project she was doing. The store was having a blowout clearance sale in one section. I couldn’t help but price check a few things. It started with an item here, an item there – just a couple easy barcode listings to offset my costs for the trip that would make me $5-10 per item. Then I went to the next aisle to see what was available…then the next. Then that pivotal moment happens when you have to decide “Am I walking away or am I going all in?”. Well, I bought 456 items for $1067.08. The large majority of the purchase were these high end art markers that will sell for $7 each that I paid $1.50 each for. All told I’ll net over $2k once everything sells. I think my turnover will be about a year. It’s all multi quantity listings and everything fits in a single bin. It was a no-brainer pipeline to set up.
I was actually pretty picky too. There was a bunch more I could have gotten, but I stuck to the higher STR items.
Listing every day let me hit a higher amount of listings this week. I finished listing a big pile of stuff in my office, so I spent Sunday completely reogranzizing my garage office to better utilize the space. Keep listing, keep condensing, keep organizing and I’ll get to where I want to be.
I just checked and I still have 11 pair of Allen Edmonds listed. One of them is shell cordovan.
i’ve sold 3 pair since Covid hit, and those were at blowout pricing just to clear something out.
hopefully they start selling again like yours.
Allen Edmonds used to be a quick & easy $50+. Covid killed those sales. Hopefully dress shoes bounce back. I don’t buy many any more.
If you’re struggling to list consistently, or have large death piles, I think there’s enough evidence in this thread and other posts that developing a system where you list every day is an important step. Even if it’s just 2 or 3 listings a day for a few weeks or a month. I’m going to stick with it for now and curious how it will affect my numbers next month or three months down the line.
And a bit different than sports cards, when selling things of varying size/weight style it pays to have a system to deal with the new listings and getting them into inventory. I have a bin setup in my listing area.
I keep a bin of unlisted items next to my desk. I list them and move them to 2 large bins for “awaiting photos”. After I photograph I have 3 large bins for listed by uninventoried items. Then I list 5 or so items a day from the photographed items. On the weekend I deal with the listed but inventoried items. The large things go on my large item shelving and all the smaller “binnable” items get placed in numbers bins that go on my normal shelves.
Having this process flow system is IMPORTANT to be able to list consistently rather than in a big dump. I can jump in at any station and do work and it stays neat and organized and I have enough room in the uninventoried new listings so I can just deal with that once a week – usually sunday and it doesn’t impede my listing and/or photographing.
So I have listed daily for two weeks. My sales are up, but strangely, my impressions and overall views metrics are down. I am no longer getting spikes in PL impressions, and the impressions I am getting are lower.
I still get FAR more impressions from promoted listings than I do organic impressions. So I decided to add all the recommended items (174 total), to my Promoted listings campaigns.
Hopefully adding these items to PL gives me a boost in sales going into the weekend. I’d LOVE to crack $1500 in sales this week. This morning I’m at $900 and 23 items sold.
Items in Store 1654
Items Sold 36
Total Sales $1,274.00
COGS $86.00
Total Profit $1,188.00
Average profit $33.00
Average sales price $35.39
New Listings 51
Items scavenged 5
Listing 2022 weekly Avg 46
Sourcing Allotment 23I was having a phenomenal week and sales just died on the weekend. Sunday was super slow – I barely even had any offers to send to watchers. I did list every day this week.
I did my inventory consolidation this weekend and cleared up 13 empty bins. It is such a satisfying process to get all the remaining bins full and to see all those empty bins ready to be refilled with new inventory. It is a super motivating process. I found one pair of shoes that were no longer listed. I assume it was an unpaid item – of which ebay no longer auto relists for. Boo!
I’m making good progress on clearing out the ebay garage office death piles. On my current pace I will list 1450 more items through the end of the summer. By rough estimation I think I have about 1200 items left in my garage to list. Just keep listing and here in a couple months my garage will be neat, organized, with LISTED inventory in the designated shelving and carts in their proper places. I’ll keep pushing listed inventory to my main inventory shed until it is as full as it can get.
I have a lifetime unit on a sirius boombox at my ebay listing desk. I originally planned on just testing it for a month or two and then selling it. It became a permanent part of my desk. I’ve been waiting for several years to find another one. It’s up on my top 5 grail list with Coogi sweaters, big E levis, G1 transformers, and CiB NES games
Regarding the buyer having to message the seller before they can leave negative feedback – this is a GREAT improvement.
I just had this scenario happen last night. A buyer wrote me very upset because the item broke on the first use. They were clearly writing me because they were forced to and they weren’t even looking for a resolution.
I apologized, and gave a full refund immediately. This was their response:
I’m amazed with your quick honorable response. Originally in my mind I thought you were a dishonest seller but you proved me wrong. Thank you so much for making this right. You are obviously a 5 star seller. My feedback is positive!
Thank you, Thank you
They left me a great positive feedback as promised.
So thank you to ebay for making a common sense improvement that sellers have asked for for years. And to the sellers who crushed this guys trust in the system before he bought from me – go pound sand and don’t sell on ebay.
Anything I buy during the week gets listed the same week. So for instance this week I only bought 8 things and I listed them already. The other 49 things are death pile items.
Yeah I’m trying to do 5 a day during the week each day. Last week it didn’t seem to help much at all.
I also can’t be a top rated seller but that doesn’t seem to hurt too bad.
My advice for patch selling is to either go all in or not at all because of the variables I mentioned above and the average sale price is usually quite low.
At what point with these Item not received cases do you tip into that below average seller arena where ebay charges a huge penalty on your final value fees? Is that a concern?
