Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
03/18/2018 at 10:50 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 352: Scavenging is The Alternative Early Retirement #35508
I do monthly numbers for my own tracking, so here is what an average week looked like for me in Febrary. It felt really slow and there were a lot of returns, but a few high dollar items helped save the day to make $900 profit for the month (not including taxes). My current goal is to consistently make at least $1000 profit each month, but higher than that on average.
Total Items in Store: 370
Items Sold: 7
Cost of Items Sold: $33
Total Sales: $382
Highest Price Sold: $200 Scalamandre fabric
Average Price Sold: $54
Returns: 4
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $90 for 15 items
Number of items listed this week: 20Did a lot of listing in Feb due to many days in a row with no sales. March is turning out to be great so far, already more than $1000 profit (before taxes) and there are still almost 2 weeks to go!
Thanks for turning me on to fabric, J&R!
Huh – that’s interesting, Mike.
I’ve been making use of ebay’s “mark question as answered” feature when I get messages from buyers that are just “thanks” or “ok” and don’t require an answer from me, so I used that feature for this encounter as well. I’ve been assuming that since ebay has that feature, they wouldn’t punish me for using it. Of course we all know the risks of assuming… πI searched around, and found that “Respond to buyers’ questions promptly” is definitely part of ebay’s selling practices policy.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy?id=4346
But there doesn’t seem to be any punishment for not doing this – not as far as I can find, anyway.
Here’s a partial screenshot
that’s weird. I am seeing the “Ship by” dates right now when I am on the “Orders” page. It’s in the first column. You don’t have that?
03/18/2018 at 3:08 pm in reply to: Selling To Do's on eBay Hub – Reply to Buyer's Messages on Sold item?? #35490weird. I don’t see anything called “Selling To-dos” on my seller hub. I just have a “Tasks” box in the upper left that shows how many orders I have to ship and how many messages are not yet answered. Do you have these messages counted the “Tasks” box as well?
almost never use auctions
When you have long tail items like we do, what are the chances that that one special buyer is going to come along in exactly that one week you have the auction up?Here’s some more. Hope this is the kind of thing you’re looking for
– we have to learn how to recognize fakes of various things
– we ship huge things sometimes – so why did they get rid of the big boxes we like?
– have to develop ability to pack any combination of size, shape, and weight – so need a lot more different types of packing materials around. And since packing is often different every time, it takes longer than if you’re always packing/shipping the same type of item. I’m still recovering from 2 large vases I packed last week. If I were selling these vases over and over vs. just once, I would have had a particular set of boxes and padding around to make it super easy.
– Ever try to figure out the size of a shoe that’s not labeled?!?!? LOL – best practice for me and many others is to not buy shoes without size labeled, but we’ve all been through it as beginners πThanks for doing this, mycottage. Here are some ideas off the top of my head – pick and choose as you see fit.
– scavenger-type sellers do a LOT more research outside of ebay to just figure out what their item is, much less how to price it.
– We have to develop some sort of innate sense of what is cool or desirable b/c of the frequent absence of any comps. We can’t always just “look it up.”
– we take a lot more photos, b/c we have far fewer multiple listings.
– harder for us to fight INAD cases b/c it’s often impossible to specify every single possible minute flaw in used items.
– on the upside, we can often price high even when others aren’t, b/c there are very few or often no other similar items for sale
– we look at sold listings a lot, often under time pressure at auctions/rummage sales/etc – so important to get the mobile workflow for this search as easy as possible. As it stands, I have this issue where whenever I do a search on my iphone for something, I typically ask to sort “highest to lowest price”. Then I add “sold” as a criteria, and the sorting goes back to “most recent first.” Argh. So I have to go back in and change this. Not a huge deal, but when you’re doing tons of such searches when you’re out scavenging, it can really slow things down. Especially when you are trying to hide from the one cranky thrift shop lady who doesn’t like resellers, or when you are doing it at yard sales. If you are selling new iphone cases, you’re not doing this type of thing.
– we spend a lot of time driving around looking for stuff
– we have to learn details about a huge variety of topics/items.
– we clean and sometimes fix itemsOh, I am definitely mad (british definition), but not angry π
Jay,
Look, you guys like to do it differently than I do – that’s cool. But what I do works for me. I don’t lose any watchers, I get sales, and I don’t have to be bothered sending messages to buyers. Sending those messages is cool for you, but unnecessary as far as I’m concerned – as you say, they see the handling time when they buy the item. I actually think having vacation mode ON reduces confusion. So let’s just agree to disagree and allow others to weigh the pros and cons of both approaches and decide what works best for them.MDC,
Thanks for the heads up re: possible problems with my approach. I haven’t seen any issues so far, but I will keep an eye out. Just in case you missed it, I don’t just put in vacation mode ONLY. I also extend the handling time.03/15/2018 at 5:12 pm in reply to: Upgraded Store, 7 Day Listings, 100% Promoted, 24 hour sales, and Best Offer. #35303Glad to hear you guys are getting your promoted listings credit – thanks for responding. I got a small un-labeled credit a month or two ago, but it didn’t seem large enough to cover what was spent, but I didn’t follow up b/c it was just a couple of bucks. I will check this next invoice to make sure I’m getting the correct amount. Glad to hear that previous glitches were fixed.
03/15/2018 at 3:38 pm in reply to: Upgraded Store, 7 Day Listings, 100% Promoted, 24 hour sales, and Best Offer. #35280Retro WV,
Have you been getting the promised refunds for the promoted listings fees according to what level store you have?“Are there box sizes that you use heavily that USPS and eBay donβt offer?”
Ebay used to offer 12x10x8 and I ended up using those a lot.
Guess I’ll check Staples for it if this size and the larger sizes don’t magically reappear on ebay on April 1.I put the store on vacation AND change the handling time. That way there is a message that the customer sees on the top of the page when they are considering buying the item. Then there is no need to message them about longer handling time after they make the purchse.
TRS+ is something you get on a PER-ITEM basis, not in general. So you could have TRS+ on just one item if you want. In other words, that discount applies on a per-item basis.
-
AuthorPosts