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12/26/2018 at 8:02 am in reply to: Sad story I heard this week. Makes me thankful to sell online! #53996
Amen! I’ve been approached about being a manager a couple times in my career. I don’t want that. Nope! Never. Not a chance. Uh uh.
Avoiding being a people manager is one of the main reasons I never got my PE license. At both of my previous employers, getting your PE (Professional Engineer Certification) was a fast track to being a people manager, money manager, and in most cases both.
Items in Store 1039
Items Sold 27
Total Sales $742.50
COGS $83.00
Total Profit $659.50
Average profit $24.43
Average sales price $27.50
New Listings 14I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas here!
Man I hate being back at work today, but at least hardly anyone is here and I don’t have much to do. My hardest task today will be to avoid falling asleep at my desk. Lol! Days like these are a double edged sword of having an office day job. On one hand, the pay is good. On the other, I am wasting precious hours of my life sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen when I could be doing things I love to do.
As for ebay, This December has been great! I’m very thankful for my sales numbers considering I have not been listing much at all. This month my ebay funds allowed me to buy inventory, pay car payments, house payment, and buy all the Christmas presents. Wow! That is a pleasant feeling.
I know a lot of work goes into my ebay store, but I enjoy all of the “work” associated with ebay so much that the money always feels like free money.
12/21/2018 at 2:30 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 390: Building a Business to Build a Life #53853Unfortunately, these restrictions are in place for a reason.
Postal worker bribery and corruption is a very real and very serious thing. Once you pay off a pipeline of postal workers with what starts as small gifts or amounts of cash, you can ship anything in the mail.
12/21/2018 at 12:49 pm in reply to: Ebay not counting Dec 5th as Postal Holiday in Late Tracking Uploaded Metric #53847We’re talking specifically about the items that were late because of the December 5 day of mourning.
I have 3 of those.It’s not out of place – that’s how a pareto works. The bars are in order of total value. I had more in total $ and in quantity of sales in $20-50 column.
The pareto chart automatically arranges the bars by total percentage.
I also (sometimes to my detriment) apply the 80/20 principle to most of my daily tasks.
Take for instance, cleaning a room. You can get the room 80% clean in 20% of the time. The majority of the time cleaning will be detail work. But a quick pickup and wipe down will pass the eye test all day when company comes over.
Most of us probably apply the 80/20 rule when listing too. I typically apply 20% of the effort or less that would go into a professional listing, and I’ll still get 80% or more of the sales price a pro listing would get.
I ran a pareto chart of my 2018 sales. It tells a different story than yours for sure.

My bread n butter items $20-50 make up the bulk of my sales and work. The big ticket items are the outliers.
Jay, this is a standard pareto chart. The histogram is a count (use left vertical numbers for values) and the line charts the cumulative percentage (use the right vertical percentage values).
In a typical pareto chart, you would draw a vertical line wherever the 80% intersection is of the line and the bulk of your data would fall to the left. Depending on what you are tracking that could be good or bad.
What the gold standard would be for use would be if the $200 and up, and the $100-200 bars would be on the left and be very, very tall in reference to the others. Also, the 80% intersection of the percentage line would cut off between the $100-200 bar and the $50-100 bar. That would mean 80% of total sales were $100+ items.
In my work as an engineer, I use Pareto charts to identify bad actors. I could be looking for the equipment that is costing us the most money in maintenance and repairs. I also use a pareto chart to identify which department is costing me the most money in production (inefficiency study).
I then focus my attention on the “big bars” that are eating my lunch and the “small bars out past the 80% line are a waste of time to deal with.
Hope this helps!
12/21/2018 at 10:29 am in reply to: Has anyone found shelving units that will fit 3, 30 Gallon containers/shelf? #53833I use 2×3’s and they are perfectly strong enough for this purpose. That extra space adds up.
Just make sure you don’t show the key# in your listing photos.
12/21/2018 at 10:24 am in reply to: Ebay not counting Dec 5th as Postal Holiday in Late Tracking Uploaded Metric #53831I have 3 items. The thought of calling ebay right now makes me nauseuous…and I’m not a person that fears calling people. That’s saying something!
I think I have had a buyer attempt this before on some model train kits. He sent a message along the lines that he was gonna “buy multiple items and would shop through my store over a day or two”. I stuck to my base price on each item. He ended up just buying one item and let the other offers expire.
Kudos to this guy for cleverly raising the bar on sleaziness. That’s just dirty.
12/20/2018 at 11:09 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 390: Building a Business to Build a Life #53757I have an absurd “security pile”. I don’t regret it. It’s cheap insurance against an unepected job loss. You never know what you will find any given day when out sourcing. Sometimes there is nothing, and some days you find 2 carts full of items worth thousands of dollars.
I try to always list 1-2 things from every haul that will pay for the whole purchase.
If the day comes where I am let go from where I work (or the day comes when I am flat out just sick of it), I know I can come home and throw myself into listing and not spend a single dime on supplies, equipment, or inventory for at least 6 months.
That is what I call security, not death.
….but yeah it frustrates me sometimes because I’d rather it all be listed.
Absolutely! There is no appeal, there is no opportunity to correct a potential issue.
ebay sent me a link to fill out a survey on how they are doing. This is one of the MANY issues I highlighted.
It is unfair to sellers to just blanket delete listings, when a simple warning with say a 24 hour window to correct any unintentional issues would be the logical process. Then no one is angry, listings meet the requirements, and everyone leaves with more knowledge so there will be less VERO’s overall.
12/20/2018 at 7:43 am in reply to: Simplified Returns INAD – Obtaining Customer "Admissions" in Messages #53741That’s good to hear. I have an as-is for parts or repair INAD return right now. I didn’t call ebay because I’m out of patience for ebay Customer service for the month. I did tell the buyer that I am happy to accept a return, but I will not refund original shipping or return shipping if he ships it back. He has until tomorrow to ship it and hasn’t yet.
12/19/2018 at 7:47 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 390: Building a Business to Build a Life #53670Yeah that’s a crazy high average for mens dress shirts.
I’ve pretty much changed all my shirts to $24.99 with free shipping and they still don’t sell.
I have not sold a mens button down shirt since October! -
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