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I haven’t added any items to promoted listings in many months now, but I did leave all of my previous promoted listings active.
At one point all of my listings (1000 approximately) were promoted. Now I maintain just under 1100 items and 603 of them are promoted. I am consistently selling 20-25 promoted listings items a month, for $40-60 in promoted fees. How many would have sold anyways…I don’t know. What I do know is that in September I sold 100 items and 20 sold through the promoted link. In October I’ve sold 90 items and 25 were promoted.
So I just changed all of my promoted listings to 1% like you have. My theory is that people are clicking on the promoted link in a typical search and would have bought it anyways if only the standard link showed in search. Yes I understand the ad can pop up on the sidebar of ebay in ads…but come one – who REALLY buys things by clicking on those! And how does that sliding scale percentage affect things? I don’t believe ebay explains this at all – someone correct me if I’m wrong.
If my theory is correct then I will likely maintain the approximately the same 20 item trend this month even with 1% because that will keep the extra length in the search list.
10/31/2018 at 1:23 pm in reply to: Sellers Aren't the Only Ones Getting Fed Up With Goodwill Pricing! ;) #51010A lot of Goodwills have pretty high turnover. A lot of times the issue with barren stores is not lack of inventory, but lack of staff to process and price inventory.
One of goodwill’s dirty secrets is the employ the “unemployable”. Folks with medical issues or felonies. In many of these cases they are legally allowed to pay them below minimum wage. Once upon a time they employed these folks for the good of the employees. Now Goodwill is ran like a for profit business, even though it is technically still a non-profit. These employees improve the bottom line.
Our local goodwill even gives the employees sales quotas to fill. One of the women there used to hate resellers and I would have wonderful conversations with her poking holes in her reasoning’s behind it. Then one day she realized that people like me were helping her fill her quota because I was buying so much. She’s MUCH friendlier now. Lol!
Anyways, since Goodwill is a registered non profit all of their financial records are public. I encourage you to read the financial reports of your local goodwill franchise region. It is quite an interesting read. I have read the ones for both of the Goodwill organizations that operate in my area.
Here is the financials for the “Gucci” goodwill group near me.
They do a lot of good, but there is definitely some fringe benefit hidden among the expenses in section IX of their tax form. Knowing who some of those unpaid directors on their board are, I’m sure a good portion of those expenses are paid to the board member’s businesses.
Ah yes, the ol’ phony salary system. We pay you for 40 hours but we expect you to be here minimum 55 hours and then we’ll give you 3 peoples jobs so you have to be here 70-80 hours. Then if you ever need to take 2 hours off to go to a doctors appointment we’ll make you use vacation time and make you feel like crap for even taking time off.
And then there was what I dealt with here at my current job for a couple years- I finish my work in 2-3 hours and twiddle my thumbs the rest of the day to punch the clock to get my 40 hours in.
WTF??
How it should work: if you pay me for 40 hours and I’m skilled/efficient enough to get my work done in 30 hours, then I can come and go as I please. OCCASIONALLY the job will require more than 40 hours. It should be give and take and balance out. The B.S. line given at my previous employer was that the yearly bonus made up for it. LOL! First off, the bonus varied from 1-2 weeks pay. Most years they would cook the books to screw us out of a bonus.
I drew a line in the sand when I switched bosses at my old employer after I worked 4th of July all weekend one year. Just flat out told him I was taking my time back the next week once things were settled down. He didn’t argue – he was new to management.
At my current employer, I set my standard from day one since I had ebay in my back pocket. I’m here for 40 hours a week. If there is something that absolutely needs to get done today or there is an emergency, I’ll be there. I will take back that time though as comp time.
How long does it take you to research/list each item? I’m not incredibly huge on ephemera – it seems like each piece would take a lot to research to get the right keywords. In my mind, listing 10k ephemera items is a HUGE time investment. Is there a method to it, or is it just slogging through each listing?
There used to be a person here – think his name was spinacheater or something like that – that had a large inventory of post cards. Is your process like his?
Another reason I haven’t done ephemera is that I really haven’t seen much of it available around my area. I’m probably not looking in the right place.
Did you get any raise or anything to stay on?
It does definitely suck to start researching your haul and realize it wasn’t as spectacular as my thrift goggles made it seem. The beautiful thing though is that usually even our worst mistakes still result in ample profit, or at worst break even.
I try to focus on those occasions where I get something thinking it is “good” and finding out it is GREAT.
I believe I remember you saying you also sold on amazon and that most of your listings are books, right?
Do you minds sharing info about your amazon sales too? I would expect far more sales a week on that many items.
To be honest, seeing someone with a 10k item store getting less than $1k in sales in a week gives me anxiety. $725 in sales a week does not justify the store cost of having 10k listings. Am I missing something here?
Items in Store 1080
Items Sold 20
Total Sales $476.00
COGS $50.00
Total Profit $426.00
Average profit $21.30
Average sales price $23.80
New Listings 13I added a line to my numbers to report new listings. With the new weekly summary spreadsheet I am maintaining now, I realized I had the data to easily output my new listings as a formula. Keeping the total number of new listings in front of me will hopefully spur more listing activity.
I did finish creating listings for a rack of coats/jackets. I have photographed and listed 10 so far. I had wanted to finish the whole rack – about 35 items – this week but real life got in the way. I was pretty motivated this weekend and got a lot done though, so I’m starting this week strong.
I had to throw out 5 jackets due to moth holes in wool. Boo!!! I try to be very thorough when I shop wool, but sometimes those darn thrift goggles blind me when I find multiple Austin Reed blazers that appear to be excellent condition. I was very tempted to go ahead and list them, but decided against it. I also had two blazers that needed mending. One with a popped seam and another that had the buttons in the incorrect location from the factory. My wife mended them up in mere minutes – she is very skilled in many crafting techniques such a sewing, crocheting, etc.
Lots of small dollar item sales this week. Half of my sales were $20 or less. I know we had conversation about small dollar items last week – this is why I’m a fan.
This coming week I’m going to keep on with listing coats/jackets. I want them all done! And now that I’m reporting new listings I’ll feel obligated to try and show progress. Lol!
Have a great week everyone
Yeah they pulled this Bullcrap on me once. Told me to issue a refund and then appeal. I refunded while on the phone and they transferred me to appeals. The appeals dept denied my claim because I “voluntarily” refunded the buyer. They wouldn’t budge. About a month later I was pissed thinking about it so I called back and fought with a supervisor until I got resolution and my money back.
For the future in cases of high value returns, you can also send your own label to the buyer. You could purchase a label with the addresses reversed and purchase insurance on the label. That way you are fully covered.
I got a package back marked as refused several months after it was shipped. Weird…
Never heard a word from the buyer. It was so old that I had to refer to my email records to figure out when I sold it since it was over 90 days old.I’ve just let it sit a couple weeks and I plan on relisting it this week. I’m on team “ball in buyers court”. I’m not going out of my way to hold the buyers hand. I have things to do.
I’m proud of you for sharing your #metoo moment. A little wrong to try and capitalize off of it monetarily though, don’t you think? 😉
Here they individually tag every item with a large non-removable barcode tag. On dishes, they place the tag directly over the identifying markings on the bottom every. Single. Time. Ughhh! So annoying!
Somebody back there in the back must have OCD and feels obligated to place the sticker in the center even though it is covering up the most important information.I’ve even asked them to stop doing that, but they keep doing it. If I find something I’m interested in you’re dang tootin’ that I’m gonna peel that label back. Half the dishes there have the tags partially peeled back.
10/25/2018 at 7:55 am in reply to: Thrift stores refusing to sell you items because they know they're good finds #50690Our local Gucci Goodwill started selling “new” pallet items a few years ago. I found a Bugaboo stroller with a dual stroller attachment. The attachment thing was still NIB, but the stroller was obviously and old, sun faded model where someone pulled the ol’ switcheroo on a return. I fought with the manager over it because this was CLEARLY not a new item and they had it priced as a new item. I believe the price was $150 for the set. They would not separate the items.
I very begrudgingly handed over the $150 but made it clear I was pissed about it. Then I went home, listed the attachment, and soon sold it for $400. Later I sold the used and very sunfaded bugaboo stroller locally for I think $50.
It the most ticked off and unsatisfied I’ve ever been flipping a $300 profit. Lol!
yes, ebay does not do a good job explaining to buyers or sellers what to do in ANY situation.
Fixed that for you.
I love the things I sell for $10-20. They add up. Every year I’d estimate I sell 100-150 of these low dollar items. That’s anywhere from $1000-$3000 in my pocket every year that wouldn’t have been if I didn’t list these items. Definitely not chump change if you keep it in the proper perspective.
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