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Week of Mar 27 – Apr 2
Total Items in Store: 1484 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 12 eBay, 0 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $24 + $50 Commission
Total Sales: $346.03 eBay; Includes fees but no shipping + $185.82 Swap.com
Highest Price Sold: eBay $65 Towle Sterling Serving Fork (on commission), $54 set 8 Hanukah Lenox dessert plates
Average price: $28.84
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $120
Number of items listed this week: 9Coffee expo! That sounds wonderful, and Ryanne can visit with her sister, right? I’m jealous of your trips to NYC. We live an hour away and hardly ever get a chance to go into the city.
I was having a decent week, but then I haven’t sold anything since Friday evening. I haven’t been listing as much either, but not selling anything on a weekend? Doesn’t seem right.
I spent $120 on an online auction last week. I mostly spent that much because several lots had pottery, and my parents use mismatched hand thrown pottery for their everyday dishes. I get gifts for them and buy for my eBay store all in one!
Of interest, I am helping a friend sell a set of antique Ukrainian paintings for charity. This is the first charity listing I’ve ever done. She’s going to do some publicity for it, so this could be an interesting experience. I’ve also warned her about situations where the buyer may not pay. Hopefully, it will go smoothly. Take a look!
For March, I was able to test and list electronics that I recently obtained, but the stuff that’s been sitting around for a while is still there. So, partial win I guess.
My #9 is to complete my eBay store banner & description. Should be pretty easy.
If I have some time, I want to order bulb sockets and cords so that I can fix some lamps sitting around for years.
Looking forward to having you back Amatino!
Sales last week were very quiet. Here are just two bread and butter type listings.
Just a set of four white salad plates. Hardly anything to write home about, but someone probably wanted to match what they had. Sold for $19.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185327962625
Just a pretty perfume bottle that one of my parents’ friends gave me to sell. Sold for $27.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185070627752
I can already tell you that next week’s post will be more interesting.
Mine match. I have 1480 items. If I go to my storefront page, it says “Search all 1480 items”.
Although, here is something else I hadn’t noticed before:
103 Followers
100% Positive feedback
4.7K Items soldI’ve sold 4,700 items? Wow!
I assume I have 103 followers because of my posting in Steve’s video post each week.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed that USPS parcel has been pretty competitive lately against FedEx and UPS for items that aren’t all that heavy, like up to 8 pounds or so. I assume this will upset the scale, at least for boxes that exceed 22″.
My shipping policies for USPS always have FedEx as a backup, and it would be nice if eBay listed the cheapest price as the first choice. They said that they were going to do that once, but I don’t think that was ever implemented correctly.
I did have one package stop movement for 2-3 weeks. It finally did find its way back on track and delivered to the buyer. Another seller here posted about a similar issue last week.
During the pandemic, when USPS was having all these problems, most of my delayed packages went through a hub in Kentucky.
This time, my buyer was in Lexington, Kentucky. I’m thinking that whoever/whatever created the problem before is up to it again.
Just my guess.
Week of Mar 20 – 26
Total Items in Store: 1484 eBay, 36 Etsy
Items Sold: 8 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $11 + $12.50 Commission
Total Sales: $120.29 eBay, $14 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $27 perfume bottle
Average price: $14.70
Returns: 0 (one partial refund)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
Number of items listed this week: 16I had a piss-poor week, but I also had another item pulled down. Perhaps all my pulled listings are causing the algorithm to slow down my store; perhaps it is just the normal March/April slowdown. It was a bunch of tubes and accessories for someone who needs oxygen. I didn’t think the tubes required an Rx or anything, but apparently they do. I found out that a local synagogue was collecting stuff for Ukraine including medical supplies, so I brought it over and put it in one of the bins.
I went to my first live auction in at least a year yesterday. It was an on-site auction at an auto shop where the owner retired. He didn’t keep the place very clean, so there was dust everywhere. The items my husband were interested in sold at pretty steep prices, so we didn’t get what we came for. I did get some items for resale. The one big thing is a bunch of vintage car shop manuals and similar. The only issue is now I have to wipe them down before I can even bring them in the house.
The guy that did this auction has live ones occasionally, so I follow him and can go to his events.
The others have gone online, and I’m sure that they like the format much better. One guy has a small farm where he previously held the auctions, but he and his family also lives there. I’m sure he is happy to only have pickup there now. He also runs a live auction at a farm coop place every other week. He used to run them on Monday evenings, but changed it to Friday evenings. My family always eats dinner together, but Friday nights are particularly important. So, unless he changes the day, I won’t be going.
I listed 16. Some of them were electronics, so I did make some progress towards the challenge.
I have a friend who offered to teach me Quickbooks, but I declined because who wants to pay for such an extensive software package when my profit (at least for tax purposes) comes to less than $10k a year?
I do know the issues with GoDaddy, and I want to find something different, but I’ve been lazy in looking into alternatives. I guess this will give me the push I need.
Seems like it’s just you and me again, Steve. I can wake them up, but then they go back to sleep. 🤣
Actually, I don’t have much. Sales are very slow. I continue to sell my neighbor’s stuff, which helps because his items are mostly new with tags. I give him 50% after eBay fees are taken out.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185290000035
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185286609053
I paid probably a quarter or two for this set of Jazz CDs years ago. I bought it an auction lot that went for about $3 total. Sold for $20
I had this exact experience just last week. I gave the buyer my PayPal account email and asked him to repay me if the item showed up. It did, and he paid me right away.
You can go back to the original order and give him the amount he owes you.
Alternatively, you can ask for his PayPal account email, and then set up an invoice in PayPal.
I have some tubes that I listed untested. A tube tester is really required if you want to ensure that they are working. Maybe something like that can be rented?
I’ll be here! And, I’ll be posting on Steve’s video each week and occasionally yelling at others to “wake up and post!!”.
Week of Mar 13 – 19
Total Items in Store: 1471 eBay, 37 Etsy
Items Sold: 7 eBay, 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $20 + $45 Commission
Total Sales: $176.32 eBay, $24.65 Etsy; Includes fees but no shipping
Highest Price Sold: eBay $40 new in box sandals
Average price: $25.12
Returns: 1 – 1 = 0 (see story below)
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 38A few things to mention:
Earlier in the week, I refunded a buyer for a package that got stuck in a USPS black hole since the end of February. I gave the buyer my PayPal email with the refund. His package suddenly reappeared at the end of the week and was delivered. The buyer promptly re-paid me! This is why I have “Returns: 1 – 1 = 0” in my numbers above.
I had a few listings taken down by eBay in the past week. First was an empty bottle for Russian vodka. It was taken down because there is now an embargo against the country. Funny since no money will leave the US. I took down another empty Russia vodka bottle as a precaution. In a few other listings, I took out the word Russia, but left in Soviet.
Then I listed a bunch of perfumes. I have a special shipping policy set up for Parcel only within the continental US. However, there were two bottles of shower gel that I figured were OK for international. I got a VERO because they can’t be imported into the UK without the “right’s owner” permission. I will set them back up for US only, but they can go Priority.
I checked out the process to run a charity auction, and it’s very easy. A friend asked me to list an item for charity, and I won’t take a commission. (In fact, I might just be paying the fee out of my own pocket). I’ll report on that when it happens.
I’m also planning on attending a live auction next Sunday. The last time I went to one was February LAST year. All my other live auctions have moved online since the pandemic, and I’m not sure that they will ever go back. They get a much bigger audience that way.
