14

[Simon]

Congrats on the good week. Looks like you’re running a very successful business. That average selling price is amazing for such a high volume.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast R&J

Here are my numbers for this week:

Items Sold: 53
Total Sales: $1033.01
Cost of Items Sold: $140
Average Price Sold: $19.49
Average Cost of Item: $2.65
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 ICOM/NAVICOM IC-A22 VHF AIRCRAFT BAND RADIO TRANSCEIVER/RECEIVER/HT
Number of items listed this week: 65 worth approx. $1492
YTD Sales: $8797
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +22%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 446
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 320
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 186
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.46%
Months till retirement from full-time job : 4

Another strong week for me and the year is going well (relative to this time last year). I’ve been able to collect a lot of low-priced inventory recently and just need to find the time to get it all listed and put away.

The background-removing tool arrived on my Android app this week. (I’m in the beta-testing program so not everyone may have it). Up till this point it’s only been seen on the iPhone app.

Nothing interesting to report this week.

Hope everyone sells lots of trash this week.

[Simon]

Starting April 1, 2020, we will no longer close returns early at the request of a seller when the buyer has not shipped the item back.

I wonder if this means that all returns have to stay open for 30 days.

[Simon]

Hi Everyone,

Congrats on the good week R&J.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3624
Items Sold: 56
Total Sales: $1265.41
Cost of Items Sold: $171
Average Price Sold: $22.6
Average Cost of Item: $3.07
Highest Price Item Sold: $109.95 Vinntage Garmin GPS 12
Number of items listed this week: 88 worth approx. $2336
YTD Sales: $7764
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +25%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 444
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 255
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 93
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.55%
Hats sold this week: 39 (69% of sales) worth $654.59 (51% of sales $)

I had a really good week which was surprising as I took a business trip and had long handling times for most of the week.

New things on eBay: I shipped 5 international sales through the new eBay SEND / Standard Delivery program this week. Instead of shipping to Kentucky, I was shipping to Southern California. Recently my international sales seemed to slow right down so it was good to see them pick up a bit. I hope it continues.

[Simon]

Regarding Dymo labels, I just buy generic ones from Amazon. They have been fine. Dymo tells you to use their labels but you don’t have to.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast. Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3541
Items Sold: 49
Total Sales: $854.84
Cost of Items Sold: $108
Average Price Sold: $17.45
Average Cost of Item: $2.21
Highest Price Item Sold: $30.99 Harley-Davidson vintage USA-made leather hat
Number of items listed this week: 67 worth approx. $1189
YTD Sales: $5796
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +27%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 447
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 303
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 238
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.38%

Nothing very special happened on my ebay account this week. Lots of sales but nothing of high value.

I got the message about the new international shipping program but haven’t switched it on yet. I’ll be interested to hear more experiences on that. My international sales have really slowed down recently. (Conspiracy theory : Did eBay raise regular international shipping prices so that they could make their new program more attractive?) : https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/shipping/ebay-international-standard-delivery.html

For money that you’ve forgotten about that ended up at the states, the two big sites to check are missingmoney.com and unclaimed.org. I don’t recall the difference but I know I’ve checked both in the past.

My scavenge of the week were 3 boxes full of books/advertising/documents from tech companies from the 1970s. I got them from the estate of a couple of “calculator engineers” for a grand total of $20. I also grabbed documents related to patents for calculators. I don’t imagine those have any value since patents are publicly available but I thought it might be interesting to flip through them.

Hope everyone has a great week!

[Simon]

Ebay changed Fedex labels about 6 months ago so that they now print in the same size/format as USPS. I print them straight to my Dymo XL. International labels still require the extra download / snapshot in Acrobat steps.

[Simon]

I don’t see anything wrong or unusual with my promoted listings campaigns. That’s for letting us know however.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast. I’m a numbers guy so I never get sick of hearing the details and the approaches that other people have towards tracking their business.

Even though I have some pretty detailed numbers, having this information hasn’t really changed the way I do business. I’m constrained by time and I already source and list as much as I can from the most profitable places I can find. I’m not interested in hiring a helper so there’s no much more I will change until I leave my full-time job later this year.

Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 3523
Items Sold: 51
Total Sales: $1140.37
Cost of Items Sold: $181
Average Price Sold: $22.36
Average Cost of Item: $3.56
Highest Price Item Sold: $69.95 Konica Pearl II Film Camera
Number of items listed this week: 66 worth approx. $1303
YTD Sales: $4941
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +23%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 459
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 296
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 223
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.45%
Hats sold this week: 32 (62% of sales) worth $531.81 (46% of sales $)

I had a very good week. I usually only hit 50 sales in a week a few times per year so it was great to have that happen this week. I hope this same volume of sales continues. I’m currently tracking well-ahead of my sales from last year.

I hope everyone has a good week.

[Simon]

Absolutely true, but its the only test we can do 🙂 If we trust out gut, Free Shipping didnt feel like it moved the needle at all….and was actually painful to eat the shipping cost.

Agreed. I definitely think people should be experimenting. I just find it frustrating to figure out what kind of difference these kinds of changes make to my sales. Retail sales are far more volatile that I ever would have expected before I started on eBay. I would definitely find it painful to do free shipping on large items. That’s not an experiment I want to try myself.

[Simon]

Thanks for the show Ryanne & Jay.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3508
Items Sold: 37
Total Sales: $1159.49
Cost of Items Sold: $151
Average Price Sold: $31.34
Average Cost of Item: $4.11
Highest Price Item Sold: $240 Vintage 1970s Fox Yoko Motorcross Pants
Number of items listed this week: 53 worth approx. $1392
YTD Sales: $3752
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +15%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 451
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 221
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 113.5
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.05%
Hats sold this week: 25 (67% of sales) worth $461.99 (39% of sales $)

I had a very good week for this time of year. My highest priced sale came from clothes again (that I rarely sell due to lack of interest on my part). I probably only paid a few dollars for them. (I bought a pile of stuff cheaply at a warehouse/estate sale). I also sold several football souvenirs from past Superbowls that I picked up from an online auction. I got got them just in time to cash in on the current interest in the Superbowl.

Regarding your free-shipping experiment…. Unfortunately we, as smaller sellers, have no way to run those experiments scientifically (eg: a true A/B test) so we have no way to know what the impact was. If you hadn’t offered free-shipping, maybe your sales would have been 20% lower. Maybe they would have been the same. We can never really know for sure.

Thumbs-up to Ryanne’s suggestion for a search function in purchase history. I had the same frustration the other day doing the exact same thing.

Thanks for highlighting the Sales Tax issue. I imagine that huge numbers of people (non S.L listeners) will accidentally end up paying income tax on their sales tax revenue because they dont hear about this.

Hope everyone has a great week!

[Simon]

Welcome Nick! I’m also in the SF Bay Area. (I’m in Marin / North Bay). There’s also at least one person that I know of that is based somewhere around Richmond. Hope you’re able to post your updates on the weekly podcast thread from time to time so that I can see what you’re finding over there.

[Simon]

Yes. Long-term, our plan is to move somewhere less expensive. That’s not likely to happen while my aging mother-in-law is still in this area. My wife wouldn’t agree to move just yet.

[Simon]

( grrr, I meant “quit” not “quite” )

I’ve had a plan to give up the 9-5 office life for at least 3 years. (I actually have a countdown clock on my work laptop that tells me every day how many working days are left). I hope to leave my 9-5 job the day before my 55th birthday.

Once I retire I plan to continue doing ebay at least as much as I do today. It will probably expand to fill my available free time. I’d also like to do a lot more travelling, both in the U.S and overseas. (I’ve been researching travel-trailers and RV options.) I also plan to do some kind of community service as I’d like to give some of my time back to the community. I’m not sure what form that will take.

I’m excited that retirement is now coming up fast.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast. That was an interesting interview with Dan. Hearing about another scavengers lifestyle was certainly interesting and Dan was very articulate.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 3492
Items Sold: 44
Total Sales: $932.29
Cost of Items Sold: $103
Average Price Sold: $21.19
Average Cost of Item: $2.36
Highest Price Item Sold: $94.95 Converse Weapon High Top Gold Purple Size 11
Number of items listed this week: 70 worth approx. $2012
YTD Sales: $2593
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +7%
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 444
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 337
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 92
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.26%
Hats sold this week: 33 (75% of sales) worth $547.96 (58% of sales $)

Months till I quite my 9-5 job: 5

I had a pretty good week. According to the sames, it’s on par with this time last year. I’m not a shoe guy at all but I grabbed a couple of vintage pairs of sneakers at a warehouse estate sale and they turned out to have some value which was good for my sales total for this week.

[Author]

Posts