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11/16/2018 at 3:05 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 380: What Do Lifetime Sales Really Mean? #51815
Resurrecting this thread to clarify something. I just double checked by listening to the first bit of the podcast and your supposed lifetime total of $700k was arrived at via “Seller dashboard” –> “Your seller level” –> “Your totals to date”.
Bring it up because I happened to stumble upon mine there as well. The number sounded low so I checked it against my spreadsheet. It was not even close to correct. (Said my “total to date” was USD$32k=CAD$42k; my real lifetime gross sales are about CAD$79k).
I can’t come up with an interpretation for this number that makes any sense. Even if I subtract fees, it’s not even in the ballpark. And my numbers are already not including shipping income, of course.
I don’t know how much you guys have made in your ebay career but I am now convinced this is a garbage number. If it’s anything like the one in my seller hub page, probably way low.
Here’s my dashboard report since I started keeping track. I’d be curious if TSatt has something similar and what it looks like.
Extremely sad that entrepreneurial drive gets channelled into MLM, where people burn relationships to generate cash.
October went really well for me, one of my best. Almost equalling the 9-to-5.
Gross: CAD$6782, cashflow after tax $3525, listed ~$9000.
Troy, glad to hear she is doing better now! Must’ve been terrifying.
My two cents on insurance: companies would not sell shipping insurance if they didn’t make more on it than they dole out in claims. Therefore, it’s a money loser in the long run.
Insurance is for risks that the insured is incapable of bearing (e.g, house burning down, entire year’s crops being wiped out by hail). We are into our items for pennies on the dollar.
I don’t even insure items worth hundreds. It’ll suck if one gets lost but ultimately it’d just be a disappointment, not a serious financial crisis.
Having kids, a day job, and ebay. “How do they do it?” You guys crack me up. The secret is Stockholm Syndrome. Actually that’s the secret to a good marriage too, I reckon.
Pretty quiet this week.
Sales: CAD$406, 4 items, COGS: $153 (still paying off auction lots) –> Item profit: $184
Expenditures: $80 –> After tax cashflow: $209
Listed: $1840, 34 items
Hours: 8, $27/hr
Notable sales: 3 security camera mounts from my big auction haul for $255, lightbulbs $130 (paid $2 for a couple boxes of these, ages ago).
Scavenging: got a box of expired toners for $10, turns out they are pretty high end. I haven’t sold them yet but I got $700 worth of offers the day I listed them so I’m pretty sure this will turn out well. Also, bought a gas leak detector for $40, should be worth $300-500, this was a local buy.Yes, I think the point of that para is just that *if you have free shipping*, you always eat the original shipping cost. Kinda makes sense as otherwise you’d have to give ebay proof of your original postage cost… can of worms etc.
Ebay sales have the exact same structure as gambling payouts from say a slot machine – random positive reinforcement. It’s easy to let them hack you to the point where the lack of them seriously affects your mood, even when things are going well over a larger timescale.
I don’t really have a solution. Maybe look at your numbers for the trailing year. If they’re good, don’t worry – if not, you may have a real sales problem and not an ephemeral one.
You can go crazy seeing patterns in sales. I say just list and hope that your items are pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.
Another story from this week. My wife got a new iphone and I decided to sell her old one on ebay. It was damaged, with a volume bug and a cracked screen – both disclosed of course. I sold it for parts, got CAD$200.
Well, sure enough, the buyer contacted me to let me know the home button didn’t work, hence INAD. (It worked when I sent it.) I smelt a rat, so I told him “Sorry for the trouble, please return.”
Replies: “Oh, I can get the home button fixed for $50 – just refund me that much.”
“No thanks, please just return for refund.”Well, that was on Tuesday and I haven’t heard a peep yet.
I will always be professional with buyers but I’m not paying the Danegeld either.
11/05/2018 at 10:18 am in reply to: Ed Welch Journal of Antiques Article – Selling Higher Priced Items #51198You guys are all about long tail. Long tail gives you the edge in high-dollar items.
For example, at all the auctions I frequent, tools sell for lots of money. Anything Milwaukee, forget it. That’s because dealers know they can move them fast.
It’s not that hard to find a $100–>$1000 item. It just has to be obscure and long tail enough that other dealers don’t want to sit on that cost for a long time (or they don’t even know it’s valuable).
You guys buy real estate. You can sit on some serious costs without breaking a sweat.
Posting problems… bear with me…
Sales: CAD$997, 11 items, COGS: $250 (still paying off big lots) –> Item profit: $596
Expenditures: $586 –> After-tax cashflow: $105
Hours: 10, $11/hr
Listed: $2350, 5 listings
Notable sales: nothing huge – electrical cabinet for $150, blank cassette tapes for $120, POS display readouts for $160.Funny you guys mentioning magazines: a long time ago, I made a great sale on some obscure magazines and started thinking that was a great niche. So I got a huge free lot of model train and other magazines, which WILL NOT MOVE… until yesterday, I sold a big box of woodworking mags for $40. Lesson learned, I probably won’t buy them again, or at least not without very high solds.
So I spent a lot of money this week, on one auction lot. $580 for a lot of electrical supplies, mostly because of 3 NIB switches that MAY be worth $2500 each. The trouble with this item is it’s hard to price, no ebay solds. I hope I’m right about them because otherwise it was a bad buy. Right or wrong, I doubt they’ll sell fast.
This lot came with tons of other stuff, including some fire protection mats that may be worth $1500, but a lot of the rest of it is connectors for teck cable and conduit hangers, stuff like that. As an ebay item, these things are marginal. They don’t really sell on ebay, they aren’t worth that much, and they’re a logistical nightmare because of a million little boxes and part numbers. When I had stacked them all around the couch downstairs, I decided I’d rather pull out my own fingernails than go through them and add them to inventory. So I listed them as a big lot on kijiji for $100 (maybe 1/4 of the eventual ebay price). A local electrician immediately grabbed them all for $100. We both couldn’t be happier. I’m also glad to see some cash from that lot reduce my effective cost a little bit. Sometimes a quarter in the hand is worth a dollar in the bush.
I still have one more carload of stuff to get today from that lot. Another manufacturing bankruptcy auction.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by
simplicio.
11/03/2018 at 1:16 pm in reply to: Ed Welch Journal of Antiques Article – Selling Higher Priced Items #51150There are other reasons for gatekeepers, e.g., on r/flipping one guy realized he couldn’t move these super high end industrial fuses worth thousands, because if they were faulty, the cost in downtime for the facility using them would dwarf the material savings. So these buyers only buy from a couple approved dealers and they pay full price, ebay being a false economy.
Still, again, I think these considerations are much weaker in other categories than art.
11/03/2018 at 1:10 pm in reply to: Ed Welch Journal of Antiques Article – Selling Higher Priced Items #51149I believe this is primarily true of art, much less true of other categories.
First, provenance is critical in art. That means gatekeepers right off the bat. You want your folk art to be folky, not semi-mass-produced by some hustler on facebook.
Second – I’ll put this bluntly then maybe walk it back a little – art collectors are basically engaged in signalling their sophistication by their buying choices. Art collecting is a means to social climbing & oneupmanship. The buyer spoken of was making sure he had a “genuine” piece of folk art, i.e., acknowledged as such by the kind of people he was trying to impress.
A big ticket item in my wheelhouse might be a big CNC lathe or something. Not sure if I’ll ever sell one due to COG and storage and transport issues. But if I ever did, I am confident I can get a buyer if I show the buyer it works.
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