Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
No. That’s what it used to look like. My Active Listings page now looks like this:
Active ListingsThe Edit button no longer has a drop down. You have to select listings first before using that edit button so the most I can edit is 200 (the maximum listings that can be shown on that page).
Editing 200 at a time seems more reliable than 500 but it still takes a lot of time with a large store.
Hi R & J –
here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1922
Items Sold: 38
Total Sales: $952
Cost of Items Sold: $94.78
Average Price Sold: $25.06
Average Cost of Item: $2.49
Highest Price Item Sold: $139.95 Sony 400 CD Player (paid $10). Second highest – Denon Receiver $175 (paid 10)
Number of items listed this week: 60
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 256
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 97
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 33
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.98%
# of Hats Sold: 30 (78% of sales)My week started off quickly with those pieces of electronic equipment. I find those kind of things to be a pain to test, store and ship but they are fairly profitable. (I had to replace the belts on the CD player too which was a challenge). The rest of the week was a steady stream of orders. Looks like this week is going to be more of the same (with 8 sales today alone).
My favorite thing to do on the weekend is to do eBay. I don’t mind one bit spending all weekend sourcing and listing. I’m just sad at the end of the weekend when I have to consider going back to the weekday grind.
Hi Retro T – It sounds like you might be developing a similar routine to the one I have with my wife. My wife washes, creates drafts and photographs hats for our eBay store and I do everything else. It helps me a lot because she wasn’t involved in eBay at all for the first 18 months I had the store. She works on the listings all week and then I give them the final look-over and click the button to list them. I’m hoping the next step will be for me to be able to give her things other than hats but for now, she’d prefer to just keep doing the same thing.
Hi Christine – It sounds like you have a very different experience with those listing improvement suggestions to me. I only ever have about a half dozen at any one time (fromnearly 1900 listings) The ones I do have are generally not helpful for me.
T-Satt – I’ve been using TeamViewer for remote access to my mother-in-laws computer for several year so that I can do tech support for her. There’s a fully functional free version. It’s very slick. (You’d want to be using a computer at your end. Not sure if there’s an app). The remote computer needs to be switched on to get access and the software already has to be installed on the remote computer before you can access it.
Thanks, as always, for the podcast!
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1875
Items Sold: 36
Total Sales: $928
Cost of Items Sold: $72.46
Average Price Sold: $25.76
Average Cost of Item: $2.01
Highest Price Item Sold: $100 Starrett No 657 magnetic base with a no. 711F dial indicator. Second highest sales $90 for Nintendo 64 Zelda game.
Number of items listed this week: 60
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 253
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 123
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 60
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.92%
# of Hats Sold: 24 (66% of sales)My highest sale was for for a tool that I never figured out. I don’t know what it’s for. I just found it at an estate sale, thought it seemed cool and did some research on similars to figure out how to price it. I had a good week, buoyed by this sale and the game sale I mentioned above.
You were talking on the podcast about investing. I’ve never had the desire to be a landlord and I’ve never been very familiar with real estate in general so I’ve concentrated on investing in the stock market through index funds. It’s definitely not an exciting investment but over the decades, it’s worked out fine for me. I place to follow the 3-4% withdrawal rule when it comes time to retire perhaps supplemented with a little ebay. I feel confident that my strategy will work to give me a comfortable early retirement.
I echo what the others have said. Expecting someone to pay over $30 (with shipping) for that will be a stretch. I wouldn’t list it over $15 but I’d be more likely to toss it than sell it. The market is pretty saturated for major league teams and having a very dirty inside will be a major turnoff for most people.
(I have 1300+ hats on eBay currently)
Hi Guys
Thanks for the show. Sounds like you’ve got busy lives right now. Hope you’re happily busy. Do you think you’ll replace your helper in the near future or do you think you need to build your death piles up again first? (jk – nobody intentionally builds death piles do they?) It must feel kinda weird not having a big backlog of unlisted stuff. A good percentage of your sales must come from the new listings so it seems to make sense that you’ll want to keep listing with or without help.Here are my numbers. I had a pretty good week:
Total Items in Store: 1851
Items Sold: 39
Total Sales: $987
Cost of Items Sold: $84.45
Average Price Sold: $25.3
Average Cost of Item: $2.17
Highest Price Item Sold: $120 Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (2nd highest sale was a 90’s Mac laptop for $100)
Number of items listed this week: 53
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 251
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 158
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 86
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.11%
# of Hats Sold: 27 (69% of sales)Hi Guys
I haven’t posted for a while as I’ve had a few interruptions to my summer (a business trip then an personal trip). The summer has been pretty good to my. My numbers this week are OK but I’ve had a couple of bigger weeks so I’m happy to skate through.
I recently had a birthday and I’ve decided that 3 years from my birthday will be the day I start my semi-retirement from the full-time work world. Up until that point I’m going to be hyper careful to save as much money as I can. I think discussions of finances and the scavenger life go hand in hand. If you’re not careful with your money, I doubt you’d be interested in reselling “treasure” from thrift stores. In my own life, I know that the people that are most wasteful with their money would be the ones that would be least likely to be interested in starting on eBay.
Total Items in Store: 1837
Items Sold: 30
Total Sales: $669
Cost of Items Sold: $49.77
Average Price Sold: $22.3
Average Cost of Item: $1.66
Highest Price Item Sold: $125 — 1940s photo album of photos from Saudi Arabia (found in a box of photo albums that I bought for $5 at a yard sale. I sold another one for $150 recently).
Number of items listed this week: 84
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 249
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 154
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 78
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.63%
# of Hats Sold: 23 (76% of sales)Thanks for the interview Jay. I’ve said it before but I always enjoy these interviews. It’s interesting to hear how others can fit a side-biz into their lives.
Here are my numbers for this week:
Total Items in Store: 1766
Items Sold: 31
Total Sales: $833
Cost of Items Sold: $84
Average Price Sold: $26.85
Average Cost of Item: $2.71
Highest Price Item Sold: $124.95 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons lot
Number of items listed this week: 43
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 242
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 91
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 39
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.76%
# of Hats Sold: 20 (64% of sales)I had a pretty weird experience while sourcing this weekend. I went to a church rummage sale. There was a young guy there with tubs of video games and video game systems. It’s not a specialty for me but I know enough to sometimes do OK. I’d just recently sold a few Nintendo Gamecube games and knew they are somewhat in demand so I asked the guy about the price of some of those that he had. He said to me – “Listen, if you take the GameCube and all the games, you can have it for free. I just want to get rid of it”. My jaw hit the floor. I told him I’d give him $20 and took the system and about 10 games. He also had a Sega and NES with a couple of games. I got each of those systems for $10. I’ve already listed $400 worth on eBay and I sold about $100 today alone. I couldn’t grab my stuff and run away quick enough. I was shocked.
I had a business trip this week and didn’t post my numbers for the previous week but it was my biggest week ever in terms of the number of sales (48 sales). This week was also pretty good. I picked up a collection of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books for $10 last weekend and already sold $240 from that. Definitely a BOLO.
I took a look at your baseball hats since that’s a specialty for me. You have a lot of hats priced very high and your shipping is expensive. I rarely sell hats over $20 and 99% of my hats ship at $2.77 (under 8oz) though I charge $2.95 for shipping. Unless you have a good reason for pricing high, either put your hats on sale or cut the prices to just under $20.
That’s a great tip on the Levi’s hat. I’ve sold a few but only more-recent Levis hats that sell at the same rate and price of other baseball hats. I’ll keep my eye out for the old Levis hats. (There’s an ugly bucket levis hat that also sells for a high price).
Hi Guys
Here are my numbers for the week:Total Items in Store: 1753
Items Sold: 23
Total Sales: $509
Cost of Items Sold: $62.63
Average Price Sold: $22.12
Average Cost of Item: $2.72
Highest Price Item Sold: $85.95 Heathkit Mohican GC-1A Ham Shortwave Receiver
Number of items listed this week: 27
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 234
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 78
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 52
Sell-through rate (for the week): 1.31%
# of Hats Sold: 16 (69% of sales)I saw a bit of a slow down this week which I’ll blame on the holiday weekend.
My biggest sale was a purchase that I made blindly because I thought this old radio looked cool:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Heathkit-Mohican-GC-1A-HF-Ham-General-Cvrge-Shortwave-Receiver-Read-Description-/322524635431?hash=item4b17f76127:g:g8kAAOSwblZZIi-Z
When it sold, I may have overpacked it slightly and got hit with dimensional weight which ate up some of my profit.Hope everyone has a great (and profitable) week.
Hey Jay –
Just like spinachetr has his postcards, hats are definitely my area of expertise now. We sold 23 hats this week but, putting that in perspective, we have just over 1300 hats listed on eBay currently. If I didn’t have a large quantity of low cost hats available to me in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have developed the knowledge I needed to make it a viable business.That said, you and Ryanne are definitely my mentors. I still remember in the beginning when I read your manifesto. I would never have considered this scale if it wasn’t for you guys recommending getting to 500 listings quickly.
Hi R&J – Thanks for the podcast. Glad you guys are enjoying being home again.
Here are my numbers for the week:
Total Items in Store: 1749
Items Sold: 37
Total Sales: $1050
Cost of Items Sold: $98.24
Average Price Sold: $28.39
Average Cost of Item: $2.66
Highest Price Item Sold: $185 HP-55 scientific calculator
Number of items listed this week: 53
Average age of items in store (in days since listing): 231
Average number of days between listing and selling this week: 88
Median age of sales (in days, between listing and selling): 40
Sell-through rate (for the week): 2.12%
# of Hats Sold: 23 (62% of sales)I had a very good week. There were days with no cha-chings but then I had a few busy days and I got rid of some of my higher-priced items.
My biggest sale was the HP calculator that I bought at a yard sale for $1. I listed it for $250. I got a $100 offer and haggled him up to $185. That was a super-lucky find.
I also sold $200 worth of architectural magazines and computer manuals (several different sales) that I bought at a hoarders estate sale a month or two ago.
It’s Monday morning. I wish I was sitting at home listing junk on eBay instead of heading into work but it’s not to be. For now I’m stuck with a high-paying job that I don’t enjoy. There are worst problems to have. Just a few more years of this and I hope to be free of the 9-5 world….
