Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
Hi all, J&R, thanks for taking time to answer me! OK, no more questions about long tail pricing… for some reason it interests me but I’m probably weird.
This was a really glacial week for sales. Virtually no action. All I sold was 3 (three) pairs of socks, and 1 (one) broken faucet, for a total of $80. BUT I listed like $2700 worth of stuff. Not going to do a detailed breakdown because it’s too depressing but my cashflow is like -$120, which I guess is OK for a busy listing week. Lots of cheap scavenging but I didn’t find many high dollar things.
Did find a big lot of used outdoor fibre optic terminals for $10. I think I ought to be able to pull $1000 out of them, which would be pretty cool. Or they will sit forever.
Haven’t scavenged any really huge whalefish items in a while. But I know they’re out there.
08/05/2018 at 11:07 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 371: T-Satt (Troy) Reports on eBay Open #46841Some questions I don’t know how to answer but seem like they could be important:
-What proportion of ebay sellers sell mostly used stuff
-What proportion of ebay’s operating costs are to do with resolving customer complaints/returns etc
-How does the return rate on used stuff compared to that on new stuff
-Rephrased: how much of a pain in the ass are we relative to the final value fees we generate?I thought I’d be able to answer the first question, but it’s harder than you think. It’s easy for ITEMS, but for sellers, harder.
07/30/2018 at 9:02 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 371: T-Satt (Troy) Reports on eBay Open #46402Cool, look forward to hearing the podcast!
It was a decent week, but my only sales were on Monday & Tuesday so it felt super slow.
Sales: CAD$903, 2 items, COGS: $83 –> item profit: $682
Expenditures: $117 –> After-tax cashflow: $471
Notable sales: Ford diagnostic tester $83 –> $650
Listed: $1100, 4 items (total 413 items in store)
Not a lot of scavenging this week… some OK auction stuff. We’ll see if it sells.Re Rosetta Stone – interesting! This was one of my rare amazon sales, not eBay – unsure whether that makes a difference. It was also new and sealed.
Looking forward to the podcast!
I had a super slow week…but I had flu/mild pneumonia so can’t say as I minded all that much not having to pack. Hopefully things will pick up this week.
Sales: CAD$459, 4 items, COGS: $95 –> Item profit: $282
Expenditures: $214, –> After-tax cashflow: $90
Notable sales: rosetta stone cd set $0–>$300.
Haven’t scavenged very much. Did get one super fancy faucet, $150, expecting $600-800.I’d love a good auction haul about now. I haven’t found anything amazing in a while.
Fairly quiet week, but I finally sold some stuff from an auction that I had been waiting for for a long time. Basically no scavenging this week due to a nasty flu.
Sales: CAD$564, COGS: $154, item profit: $321
Expenditures: $24 –> After-tax cashflow: $368
Listed: $730, 3 items
Notable sales: circuit breaker lockouts, 2 sales for $232 and $150.Curious to hear about your new property! Going to listen now.
07/09/2018 at 10:57 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 368: Is Our Business an eBay Hack? #44976Weird. Yeah, far as anybody knows shippo is now the name of the game here. Though there’s one guy on the forum here told me he saves by going through paypal. Got to try that.
I don’t know anything about Shiprush, intersting… might check it out, although I’m not finding Shippo to be broken at the moment.
Unfortunately we did lose discounted postage a month or two back. Not sure what, if anything, that has to do with Shippo but it was around the same time.
07/09/2018 at 10:45 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 368: Is Our Business an eBay Hack? #44860Quick correction: eBay used to allow us to print Canada Post labels directly. A few months ago, they switched to shippo, so now eBay sales sync to shippo automatically with destination pre-filled. There were some growing pains but it works pretty well for me now.
07/09/2018 at 10:11 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 368: Is Our Business an eBay Hack? #44847Sales: CAD$1729, 5 items, COGS: $146 –> Item profit: $1318
Expenditures: $316 –> After-tax cashflow: $806
Hours: 8.5, $95/hr
Listed: $460, 5 items, total 412 ebay listings
STR (week basis): 0.4%
Notable sales: Controller for radiant heating, $85 –> $1200.
Also notable was a sale to a person in Russia. They paid full price on my listing, including shipping by Canada Post which cost $370 (for a 7 lb package). I went to DYK post (they ship via USPS and other carriers + a small markup to save canadians money on overseas shipping). Their charge for the same standard was $75. So, slight difference.
Notable scavenges: via government surplus, I am now the proud owner of 78 hernia braces for $170. Must’ve been dozing when I bid on these.
We have been trying to sell one of our rental properties for 4 or 5 months now. It finally sold on Friday, thank God. Took a pretty good bath on it but I’m glad to be quit of the thing.Nice work on the bandanas! That’s a find I never would have even looked twice at.
I think a spreader or retractor is the right term (thank you, M*A*S*H).
Matches well with this search.
The nobody/anybody thing isn’t a question of grammar, but it is poor style. It would sound better if they agreed.
I never noticed their slogan before either. I think my brain knows to process that kind of stuff as just white noise. Now that I’ve actually paid attention to it… it’s very bland and muzacky. Probably been A/B tested to death.
I like this guy in spite of myself. His entire store is just him auctioning off wood bark carvings for like $20, every day forever. *17,000* feedback. And yeah, he pre-lists them before he’s even finished carving I guess? Not sure where the efficiency in that is, but then I don’t have 17 thousand feedback.
I think items can vary greatly in their “spread” of how much somebody might be willing to pay for them. Let’s say you have a set of mid-century flatware, and it’s super cool. But if there’s comparable stuff available for $200, you’re probably not gonna sell for $1000, even to a buyer with more money than sense. So if you have them listed for $1000…. well, somebody can always make an offer, but speaking from my experience, when a seller starts *that* high I usually figure it’s not worth the bother. In this case, a price drop would help.
Then there’s the totally unique item, which might be a painting, or an extremely rare curio. Sui generis. In theory, if you get the right buyer, the sky’s the limit – look at all the crummy art on ebay that sells for thousands. All the same, a price drop does increase the audience but there is always the possibility of a miracle buyer paying huge money.
There’s another factor, which I think of as like the “pocket money” factor. People who pay for vintagey/antiquey stuff on ebay are pretty rich. They’re not sweating whether they’re going to be able to put diesel in the tank tomorrow. So if they’re treating themselves to a cool unique item, they’re not going to overanalyze a purchase that feels like pocket money to them – maybe $50-100 – even if that item is objectively overpriced. So, no sense slashing prices on a unique long tail item down below that threshold. But if you start getting up to a level where the expenditure actually hurts a little even for an affluent person… different story.
Really the trouble with pricing long-tail stuff is you never really get any clear cut information about whether your price is too high. If it doesn’t sell for a year it could be the right buyer just never came along.
I think it’s worth repricing stuff if it has competition, but if it’s unique or somewhat unique and the price is not legible, might as well aim as high as seems reasonable.
So I would advocate a markdown sale for old items, and I do do this, but also to be very selective about what to include.
Hey T-Satt, yeah, sorry, I should’ve given some context. I was still very new to ebay in 2017. January 2017: 160 items, June 2017: 282 items, June 2018: 1373 items
(Items not listings – I’ve been buying a lot of multiples this year.)
I found a dumb spreadsheet error on the STR graph above though – lately it’s actually been about 2.4% not sub 1%. But the trend is definitely precipitously down.
Ran my STR numbers and sure enough…

-
AuthorPosts