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The sheer volume is what is getting in my head and making me hesitate. Yard sale season is also getting ready to start. I’m at the point in my storage that I have to consider quitting sourcing completely for a time…or expand my storage which I am hesitant to do.
Even if I spend $1k, I know I’ll make it back in relatively short time. The issue is I’d rather have the money in the bank though since we have another child being born next month. We’re at that point where the nesting instinct is kicking in, get our house in order, clean, etc. If we weren’t due for the baby I don’t think I’d be having this mental struggle I’d just make it work and then cherry pick list 10-20% of the new inventory to recoup my investment.
Just a few years ago my store was mainly toys and electronics. I could get them super cheap at yard sales and thrift stores. That entire market dried up quite quickly. That is why my store is mainly clothes/shoes now.
In regards to clothes, prices at thrifts continue to go up and sale prices on ebay continue to go down. As an example, just 2 years ago Ralph Lauren plaid button down shirts were $35+ shirts. Now they are pretty much worthless. Buckle Jeans went from $50+ quick sales to not even worth buying to resell in most cases.
Also within the last 3 years of doing this, sourcing on facebook yardsale and craigslist have pretty much dried up. Prices on FB yardsale have went through the roof.
So that is the context in which my wife sees “good and cheap” merchandise being harder to come by.
Items in Store 1027
Items Sold 14
Total Sales $352.50
COGS $35.00
Total Profit $317.50
Average profit $22.68
Average sales price $25.18
New Listings 11Things have definitely slowed down since I haven’t been consistently listing. I actually am “listing” things, but I’m bottlenecking at photography so they don’t get posted to ebay. I’m creating drafts at work, which is everything but the photos. I just don’t have any time right now to do anything other than basic shipping at home. I have 50 completed drafts at the moment.
Usually I photograph early in the morning before I leave for work and on weekends before everyone wakes up.
Mornings became complicated. For a while I was oversleeping and struggling to get up to go to work, so there was no time to photograph. Now I have that under control and I have plenty of time but we got another doggie so I spend that extra time with her doing her scheduled things to get her house broken.
On the weekends my wife is no longer sleeping well due to getting close to the end of the pregnancy, so she is waking up early when I do. Even without an alarm I am usually awake by 6:30 on the weekend. Usually wife/kids don’t wake up until 9.
The only other time I could do work is late at night… but I value my sleep too much right now. Not happening.
So this brings me again to hiring a photographer to get past this hump. My daughter is possibly ready to take on this role, but she needs to finish out her homeschool year first. Once that is done I’ll see if she has what it takes to meet my requirements. That would be a TREMENDOUS help. I can crank out 50 drafts a week just on breaks and lunch at work if I stick to bread/butter shoes & clothes. Lord knows I have plenty of those that I need to get listed.
I’m not top rated due to late shipping and I pay $7.55. Good to know I’m not missing out on much.
03/25/2019 at 10:31 am in reply to: Winchester38's Journal – A Journey To Full-time Reselling #591918 weeks is very generous. I’m likely jaded from my own work experience, but there is no way I could do 8 weeks notice. And not really because I want to screw my employer – more like I know that 8 weeks would feel like an eternity and it would drive me nuts.
When I’m buying, I pay it zero attention.
When I’m listing and searching for a sell similar listing, I avoid them. If I feel lazy at that moment, I’ll occasionally go ahead and use the caps title.
Yep, it is part of the process to rotate most of my side shot photos. This has been an issue with iphones for many years now in various apps.
03/19/2019 at 12:02 pm in reply to: Promoted Listings Trending Rates – 16.4% for Collectibles!? #58940So here was my bounce back numbers back in November:
November 16-30 total impressions: 311650
November 16-30 clicks: 3378
November 16-30 PL Sales: 29
10 of the 29 sales were Buy It Now.And here is the first half of March:
March 1-15
Total Impressions: 714507
Clicks: 3008
PL Sales: 20
Total Sales: 49
9 of the 20 sales were Buy it now.I had an average of 1080 items in November in my store. I haven’t really listed much this March – about 20 items so my sales are actually down a bit.
Looking back at my numbers, I was listing a lot in the second half of January so let’s look at those PL numbers.
January 16-31
Total Impressions: 536950
Clicks: 3735
PL Sales: 31
Total Sales: 57
13 of the 31 sales were Buy it now.I’ve been floating between 1050 and 1100 items in my store since October. I add items to PL after they’ve been listed about 30 days.
All of this data is available right on the main Promoted listings page. You can change the date range to whatever you want. If you click on the sales tab you can view the sales report.
To get my total sales I just downloaded a report.03/19/2019 at 11:31 am in reply to: Promoted Listings Trending Rates – 16.4% for Collectibles!? #58939I’ve considered messaging buyers who purchase my items through PL and use Buy it now, but at the same time I wouldn’t want to be bothered as a buyer so why should I bother my buyers.
Really I shouldn’t have to do this. Ebay already knows where the buyers are coming in from and they should supply us with this data.
In Columbus last week we walked past a food container sitting on a window ledge that my kids noticed had cupcakes in it. They were 100% GAME for food scavenging…but me and the wife put the kibosh on that! Definitely not there yet.
03/19/2019 at 7:43 am in reply to: Promoted Listings Trending Rates – 16.4% for Collectibles!? #58926Here is a link back to the experiment I did:
Promoted listings experiment RESULTS: Reducing all promoted listings to 1% rate
Ebay gives you plenty of data right in promoted listings to gage how much your items are being put in front of buyers, and how often buyers click through.
03/18/2019 at 2:11 pm in reply to: Picking Up Hitchhikers by the Side of the Road for Fun & Profit #58893The junk yard I frequented as a young man told you where the car was that had the part and recommended you bring your own tools. Whatever parts you pulled they made up a price once you got back to the office.
The last time I bought a part from a junk yard was a little more sophisticated. I bought a jump seat for a pickup truck I had for $85. I never used it and sold it for $185 locally. I had it on ebay for $250. I considered going back and buying all of them they had, but it was bulky.
You oughta try it! Looks like you have a handful of courses in your area:
https://www.pdga.com/course-directory?title=&field_course_location_country=US&field_course_location_locality=luray+virginia&field_course_location_postal_code=&=ApplyVery scavenger friendly – it is FREE! The basic disc kit I got on amazon was $40.
03/18/2019 at 8:46 am in reply to: Hi from West Virginia. Along the Banks of the Beautiful Ohio River. #58837Welcome! I’m down here in the Charlestom/Huntington area.
Items in Store 1030
Items Sold 18
Total Sales $470.00
COGS $37.00
Total Profit $433.00
Average profit $24.06
Average sales price $26.11
New Listings 3Busy week – not a lot of ebay happening. My day job normally is low effort, but this past week I was really working hard. I even had fun some days doing “real” engineering work – lol! I won’t bore you with the details.
Had some beautiful weather this week – so excited for spring! There is a really good disc golf course that was recently installed at our local park that we checked out while walking in the nice weather. Disc golf looks like a lot of fun so I ordered a basic kit on Amazon so we can start playing this spring. I talked to one of the disc golfers and he showed me the disc golf app that uses GPS so you can map your entire round. Technology is amazing! Any disc golfers here?
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