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I settled on Gixen. I like Esnipe’s interface better but Gixen is so much cheaper (I did buy their mirror service). Thanks for the recs!
It is indeed annoying. I wish they wouldn’t do that.
However, I can also report that it’s fun to read your post in a 1990’s World Vision telethon voice
A for-parts listing can have an INAD opened against it. Literally, if the item is not as described – for example, if it was the wrong part, or broken in other ways the listing didn’t show, or whatever. Shouldn’t be hard to shut it down if their INAD claim is simply that it was not working.
Great interview! I love it when people do this kind of stuff without asking anybody’s permission, when they see an opportunity and take it.
Jay, you studied Russian literature? На русском языке или на английском? Я когда-то изучал русский язык и лингвистику. Правда много уже забыл, а Пушкина мне еще нравится иногда читать.
I had a good week on ebay, a bad week overall. My entire company is being laid off by the owners. We are all confused by this move, as we’ve been fully billable and indeed working overtime for 2 years. I and the people who work for me have jobs till Feb, then we’re out. We are the lucky ones, the rest have already been let go but we have contracts to fulfill. I am not too worried, in no small part thanks to ebay, which should provide a good cushion.
This weekend I did another major overhaul to my work area. Exhausting but worthwhile. I also bought a new photo tent, and some other necessities like more shelving and bins. Adds up.
Sales c/w shipping: CAD$4,487, 14 sales, COGS: $866, Fees: ~$617, Postage: $511 –> Gross profit: $2,493
Expenditures: $2,599 –> Cashflow: $1,270
I sold an endoscope for $700, bought for $150 (ebay). A torch head for $460, bought 2 for $500 (ebay). Lab laser for $350, I think I paid like $30. And an animal dissection apparatus for $600, paid about $20.Thanks! I’m buying a lot on ebay but most of these sales are stuff I’ve accumulated from local auctions, the ebay hasn’t paid off too much yet.
That was a local (kijiji) sale for the Herman Miller chairs. I had them listed on ebay too but I didn’t really get bites. What I should have done was sell just the shells on ebay, which are shippable – somebody here did advise me to do that, but I never got round to it.
Regarding the transaction fee on taxes. Initially I was confused by how US sales tax was working – the buyer pays YOU, then ebay immediately remits the sales tax to the relevant government out of your paypal account. Why not cut out the middleman? But actually, it’s simple: you’re the seller, you’re supposed to remit, ebay is just doing you a favour by taking care of it. Therefore the money must go through your hands. Given this, I find it hard to complain about the transaction fee.
As for paypal, again, assuming they have certain costs that are *per transaction*, and the sales tax is its own transaction… seems reasonable. For the same reason, I never thought it too bad that paypal charges its fee even for a cancelled purchase.
Had a good week. Finally hit 1000 listings.
Sales c/w shipping: CAD$2,972, 10 sales, COGS: $35, Fees: ~$181, Postage: $319 –> Gross profit: $2,438
Expenditures: $1,014 –> Cashflow: $1,778
Hours: 14
Listed: $3,990, 46 items
Half a year ago I bought a ton of Herman Miller shell chairs for $5 each, I finally sold the remaining 12 of these chairs (which had attached desks) for $1600.Got a lot listed, and have some auction pickups this week so I’ll have even more soon. Ebay buying continues apace.
Not being a clothing seller, I am fairly bearish on extensive cross-posting. Ebay works for most of my needs, amazon is handy for books/media, and kijiji for big stuff. Beyond that…
I think you want to spend your time in the place where it has highest value to your business. For me, and I suspect for most sellers, the lowest hanging fruit is almost always in sourcing – getting better at it, doing more of it, finding new places to go. I feel like extensive cross posting is going to hit diminishing returns real fast after you post to 1 or 2 sites. Not only is there the time spent listing in multiple places (maybe 10 minutes per site, which adds up), there is the additional logistical nightmare of ending items on the other sites when they sell, which not only takes time but, when it goes wrong, causes customer issues (which are themselves time consuming).
Anyway. I had a really good week on ebay. Buying spree continues but managed to maintain positive cashflow.
Sales c/w shipping income: CAD$3,516. COGS: $730, Fees: ~$481, Postage: $390 –> Gross profit: $1,915
Expenditures: $2,164 –> Cashflow: $871
Hours: 16
Listed: $2,700, 25 listings
Notable sales: 2 great sales this week: a huge lot of valves for $960 (had these for ages, got them at auction for $100 or so), and 2 PLC controllers for $900 (this is a recent ebay buy – I paid $300 for 12 or so similar units and sold 2 for $900 – so the lot is nicely paid off and still lots more to sell).If immediate payment were required for best offer, then how would you ever send a custom invoice after sale (say, because you and the buyer agreed on free shipping)? I kind of rely on being able to do this.
If a buyer has second thoughts, they will just cancel anyway, even after payment. I get that buyers flaking out is aggravating, but nothing is really broken. You just gotta dial in your expectations: the sale isn’t real till they pay. (And even then…)
Yep, the spending is crazy right now but I’m hoping to achieve escape velocity in a year if I spend all my profits.
Oh yes, they’re listed the same day, always. I buy so little that I’ve never really had death piles. Actually storage is nice, in its way. Because these things are shipped to me, there’s a built in penalty for size and weight, so it’s tended to be lighter smaller stuff so far.
I found out a while ago that my snowbird uncle, a nice old public school brit, likes to hit the Goodwill bins in Florida. I think he likes the human drama of it all, and he’s become popular in the community (I imagine Seinfeld’s Del Boca Vista) for the treasures he finds there.
Hi all.
Kind of a slow week for the holiday season.
Sales: CAD$1035, 9 sales, COGS: $305, Fees: ~$150, Postage: $94 –> Gross profit: $580
Expenditures: $2427, Cashflow: -$1542
Hours: 9
Listed: $1600, 10 listings
Notable sales: door reader things 2 units for $300, this was an ebay purchase, now paid off and I have 14 more units to sell, so that was a good buy.
Still going crazy buying buying buying on eBay. At this point I literally have to wait for sales before sourcing much more. It’s a novel problem for somebody who 2 months ago was racking his brain for places to find things to spend money on.I too dislike flaky entitled buyers, on the other hand we should bear in mind that expectations around returns affect buyers’ willingness to purchase in the first place. An “eBay flea market” might be fun, but who would willingly risk $10-20 shipping with less prospect of return for a serious defect? There’s a reason flea markets are great places to source, the prices are low precisely because everything is “as is, no returns”. Part of the reason you can charge a premium on eBay is because you’re adding warranty where none existed previously.
As sellers of used goods, too, I think we should bear in mind the amount of infrastructure it requires to arbitrate between us and buyers, regardless of who’s right. I would love to know what kind of costs we represent relative to the fees we generate – as compared to new, commodity sellers. An eBay of infinite, perfect justice to sellers of weird used items might be so costly as to not make sense as a business proposition.
Overall the platform is better than I would have expected a priori.
Hello hello!
Good week on ebay, spending like a drunken sailor though… also on eBay.
Sales c/w shipping income: CAD$3036, 15 sales, COGS: $164, Fees: ~$430, Shipping: $531 –> Gross profit: $2442
Expenditures: $4164 –> Cashflow: -$1558
Notable sales: key cutting machine $650, medical wall panels $300, faucet $250, oscilloscope $290.
Still going crazy buying inventory on ebay. I created a buyer account to avoid any unpleasantness. Some of it is starting to arrive and is listed, including my best haul which were some fire detectors I think should sell for a total north of $10k.I love the lifestyle though. The stuff just shows up at my house, and I list it! It’s amazing. But I am spending SO MUCH MONEY. Really need to cool it and raise the bar to like 5x-10x COGS items or else I’ll have zero working capital.
One funny thing, for the first time in my life, an out of town kijiji (craigslist) buyer put a $500 deposit on an item – my Herman Miller chairs with the desks. She just sent me a money transfer, and we’ll arrange pickup in the new year. It’s the damnedest thing. I would normally say no but people have been kicking the tires on those for months now, hopefully she will in fact follow through.
The thing about scavenging on ebay is, it’s an absolute firehose of stuff and it’s gushing all day every single day. Versus in person scavenging, where you kinda exhaust a particular source and have to let it lie fallow for a while. That’s what I find so attractive in principle. With that many gazillion items for sale, there’s bound to be tons of opportunities for arbitrage if you can find them.
The hard part about it is the overwhelming quantity of stuff, figuring out how to kinda filter it so you’re not looking up 3000 garbage items to find one gem. I think 2 years of selling bus/ind items has finally given me enough of an eye to spot expensive things/brands. The hard part was learning what to ignore.
