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Hum, my happy face emoji got exploded. I could fix that. Or, maybe just leave as is 🙂
ChristineR: (And I think that is it)
Total Items in Store: 1082
Items Sold: 16
Gross Sales: $634.87 (including eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Net Sales: $358.63 (minus eBay fees, shipping, and taxes)
Cost of Items Sold: $65 + one item ours
Highest Price Sold: $111.65 (One Midcentury art tile, paid $1.99)
Average Price Sold: $39.68
Returns: 1 ($109 ouch)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $11 rummage sale + $20ish flea market
Number of items listed this week: 44Looks like last week was actually ok for me, a little disappointing for this time of year. This week is horrible for sales and I haven’t been listing either. Some life chaos going on. Hopefully next week will be better on Ebay and off.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my Ebay business this week and watched a few videos. Sourcing is not a problem. Listing is generally ok. The Auction Professor had a suggestion to limit research time by seeing the range for a certain subtype of item, and charging I think the average price or lower and letting a couple that would have gone for higher go for the sake of saving listing time. I sell many one off items so I’m not sure that would really work well for me. Besides that new point, I think my listing is pretty efficient. I was thinking maybe I could start filling out fewer item specifics. I had heard it helped you in search to fill out more of the recommended, but I’m not so sure it’s worth the extra time. It also makes for a mess of info the buyer sees, rather than just the important details. I get a lot of measurement questions from people on mobile who don’t see or open the specifics. I notice other sellers skipping a lot of them. I could also maybe try listing on my phone without the desktop for more items but I use Terapeak to price, so that isn’t really too appealing an option.
So I think room for improvement is in the pricing and really the sell through rate. My sell through rate is not great. My current strategy is to price at the highest 2 year sold and then take offers and aggressively make offers on everything I can at about 15-20% off.  I take a cursory look at the actives and their prices, but a video I watched by Justin Resells made me think perhaps I should be looking harder at how slowly particular things sell and the number of items available vs solds. Maybe my auto decline and my prices should be adjusted for that if it’s not a totally rare or desirable item. If I had a better sell through rate I could move more of my garage inventory out and still keep sourcing a bit each week, which is fun.
Running sales doesn’t really seem to be going great lately. I also tried raising my promotion rate to the suggested capped at 9% on my 20 clothing items last week. Sold none of that.
My final thought was I’m getting sort of out of the mood of picking larger hard to pack items. I passed on a couple of French pottery with lids just because I’m losing my appetite for packing that kind of stuff as my store gets bigger. I also bought and sold a pair of sneakers for $80 profit, they sold quickly and were easy to clean and ship. I thought I don’t really want to get into clothes and shoes but I was grateful for that nice sale last week.
Long post. I have some reorganzing to do and need to do a box assessment. Pretty much no buyers are picking priority shipping these days and I think I can turn in some of those boxes to the Post Office to be used by someone else. Perhaps this is because I’m coastal.
Glad to see others are having good sales! Happy Halloween to those who enjoy it. Hope you are having fun R&J.
Lucas:
Thanks, Craig! This was a rare week that I had my numbers done early in the week.
Week Ending 10/21/23
Gross Sales(w/o shipping $ tax): $2,028.48Â (eBay $359 / Etsy $1670)
Net Sales: $1,811.55Â (eBay $283 / Etsy $1528)
Total Items Sold: 15Â (eBay 12 / Etsy 3)
Total Items in eBay Store: 1210 / Etsy: 529
Cost of Items Sold: $567.83
Highest Price Sold: $1,600.00 (Antique bronze bust of a baby)
Average Price Sold: $135.23
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: $778.71
Sold via promoted listings: 9Average Days Listed: 306
Longest Listed: 2283
New items listed: 12
New Listings Value $649.40This was my best week of sales since Christmas season of 2020 and best week of sales ever for Etsy. When the sale is a big dollar item, I really appreciate Etsy’s lower commission cost. My total cost was only 8.5% on Etsy, whereas eBay charged 21%.
I hit two online auctions and an estate sale during the week and racked up almost $800. Some more books, pre-war trains, a lot of collectibles for the U.S.S. Constellation, some CDs, a lot of vintage playing cards, an art deco lamp, and some vintage pocket knives. This is what keeps the “job” interesting for me. Having such a variety of items to research keeps me from getting bored with this gig. I’m having to exercise some restraint to keep from digging into the batches, though, as I’m trying to focus on listing xmas ornaments in the lead up to the holidays.
I have a rare for me return coming back this week on an item I sold for $12.95 with free shipping. Buyer sent a long note of apology because he didn’t measure correctly.
Here is Retro:
Items in Store: 2786
Items Sold: 44
Total Sales: $3,655.00
COGS: $340.00
Total Profit: $3,315.00
Average profit: $75.34
Average sales price: $83.07
New Listings: 40
Items scavenged: 40
2023 weekly new listings Avg: 45The local goodwill had great shoes on Saturday and I bought 24 pair – filled an entire cart. It’s been a while since I’ve done that at goodwill. I’m on track to beat 2020 in total sales. I don’t know how long I can keep this $3k+ week thing going but I’m enjoying the ride while it is happening.
Last week I “ended and sell similar” a bunch of hard goods. This did result in some sales once I adjusted the pricing to the going sold values. I’m going to do the rest this week and then start on stale clothing/shoes listings. Also when clearing up space in inventory I found 3 LARGE hard goods that were no longer listed. When I come across these I always check my emails to see if it was because of a failed relist after a canceled sale or non-payment. Nothing on all 3. They just weren’t listed anymore. So frustrating!!!
I didn’t do any new listings this weekend as October is LOADED with family events. We love to do all the events this month while the weather is decent. By the time the month is over our kids will be sick & tired of trick or treating – sometimes literally sick from too much candy. When I was a kid there was just the usual neighborhood trick or treat. Now there are umpteen million trunk or treats, location based trick or treat events, etc. We’re also making a haunted house this year in our front yard. Needless to say this week will likely be light as well on the listing front. Fortunately it will be high dollar items I’m listing.
Premium collection update:
Another SOLID week where consistently listing the shoes has paid off. I sold 15 items for $2688. 9 of the items were shoes for $2305. I listed the last pair of Gucci Horsebit Croc loafers and the same guy bought them that has bought all the rest – 4 pair in different colors. My IDEAL customer – I wish he would buy all of the shoes! I had to do more organizing and efficientizing in my inventory storage to make room for more listed shoes. I cleared an entire shelf and already filled it. Now I have to do another one! The selling of the stale hard goods has already cleared enough space for another shoe shelf…that will also be immediately filled.
Premium cumulative numbers
Total COGS: $12441
Total Sales (minus fees): $14410.04
Items Sold: 154
ASP: $107.86
PROFIT!: $1969.04
That’s hilarious! Well, I happened to have that window open, and I can recover most of the posts. Here is mine:
Last week was just OK, but I haven’t sold anything since Oct 21. That is very strange.
My highest sale last week is already a return. Interestingly, she selected INAD and said that she immediately broke out in hives from the fur coat (but in addition it didn’t fit). Not sure why someone who is so allergic to fur would buy a fur coatÂ
 . I’m thinking the fit problem was a bit more of an issue. She hasn’t shipped it yet, but my buyers always ship back returns.I’ve also got to stop scavenging until I list (and sell) some death piles.
Week of Oct 15 – 21
Total Items in Store: 1736 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 10 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $7 + $43 Commission
Total Sales: $205.59 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $55 for Vintage Womens Fur Jacket
Average price: $20.56
Returns: 1
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $65
Number of items listed this week: 8I should be focused on getting my death piles listed, but scavenging is too much fun. I wanted to buy something for myself on GoodwillFinds, so I went through their clearance to see if I found something I wanted to resell. I did find two things. Their price was not bad, but the shipping was very high. Seems like many of the Goodwill’s that post there are on the West Coast, and I’m on the other side. I decided to go for it anyway. The shipping will just go to COGS.
This “German labeling system” is actually for drafting. I enjoy vintage engineering tools. I should get at least $150 for it.
These old ’60s hubcaps are just cool looking. I believe that I can get $40 – $50 each. I think this is the main expense in the high shipping cost.
I listed 8 this week.
I doubt I’d have time to list on Mercari, even if just cross-posting. I did list there a few years ago just to try it out.
I hope everyone has a great week! Sales for me have been just OK.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a “renting” situation with dresses I’ve sold. I’ve always been concerned when one sold, but I’ve never had a problem. Maybe I just don’t sell many.
My Time Away setting through Monday evening seemed to affect my sales past that time. I had no sales all the way through Wednesday. My $175 men’s perfume sale on Thursday seemed to jump start things, and now it seems more normal going into this week.
Week of Oct 8 – 14
Total Items in Store: 1737 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 8 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $0 + $86 Commission
Total Sales: $257.13 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $175 for Vintage Mens Giorgio Armani Set EDT
Average price: $32
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $21.50
Number of items listed this week: 14I listed 14.
@julie-b – So glad that the surgery was successful and you are feeling better!I did more scavenging than usual since the auction is over; however, I still have tons to list. I really didn’t need to buy anything.
I went to our town library sale. There wasn’t much, but I did buy 6 CDs/DVDs for $5, and four of them are sealed. I figured those would be very easy to list. They were, but I forget how little they go for. Not worth it.
Then, I went to a town-wide yard sale in a town near me. I didn’t buy much, but my favorite is a set of 8 glasses from Culver for $4. They are a vintage brand that people seem to like and/or collect, so the value is always there. There are no tall glasses for sale on eBay right now, but a set of 2 (see photo below) sold for $40 two years ago. A set of 7 also sold for $45 in June. So, I just need to figure out how I want to sell and for how much.
I also bought a Winnie the Pooh VHS set for $3. Looks like I can get between $20 and $80. I need to clean it up, but the tapes are still sealed, so I might go for $50 or so?
@christiner – I definitely do take low offers, but only when the item is older, even if I refreshed it with a sell similar. I hold out on newer items.
I do need to do a bulk Sell Similar on the oldest items. I haven’t done that for a while.
One thing that annoys me is that I can’t remove a newly listed item from my Send Offers – Eligible list. If I see a new item there, I give the lowest 5% off just to get it out of there. Occasionally, someone will bite.
If I remember correctly, the place in Harrisonburg was more like a food truck, and I recall that you sold that truck. Makes sense that you are now building a store there. I look forward to seeing the photos.
I hate to say it, but I feel better hearing that other resellers are also having slow weeks when my sales have sunk to new lows. I put my store on Time Away from Thursday to Monday since I went away for a long weekend. Thing is I haven’t sold anything since Thursday. Nada.
Last week wasn’t much better.
Week of Oct 1 – 7
Total Items in Store: 1731 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 5 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $4 + $34 Commission
Total Sales: $92.33 eBay, $0 Etsy; includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $34 for Sajen Sterling Heart Pendant
Average price: $18.50
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 27I read a bit through the page @junque-redux linked to. It said that if you don’t want your personal information to be displayed on your listings, you should exclude the UK from places you will ship to. Unless I decide to open a PO Box, that might be an option for me. On the other hand, I was going to get a box at one time and maybe I should just bite the bullet.
