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More seriously, I’ve come to the conclusion that the “not wanting to sell to resellers” thing is due to two issues:
a) part of the purpose of some independent thrift stores (and church rummage sales) is to provide a place for the needy to purchase clothing and other things at a low price. And, while there is never any shortage of clothing/shoes overall, I can understand why they might not be thrilled to have someone who is not anywhere close to destitute swoop in at opening time to grab all the high quality stuff (I always go straight for the LL Bean boots myself), and leaving needy folks with all the crap. Although I sympathize with this point of view, I now have two answers that I give myself: (1) If this were really a problem, the truly needy would be lining up at the rummage sales early right there with me. (2) If we’re talking about altruism here, how about thinking about resellers as people who are working very hard to make a living, and what’s wrong with supporting that?
b) I think there is a misconception that resellers, by getting a 10x or higher return on some items, are making humongous profits with very little effort – almost cheating in a way. The problem is that this view not only doesn’t take into account the overall amount of work it takes to sell online (photographs, shipping, etc), but the amount of sourcing time it takes to find those “unicorn” high return items, and the tons of lower-return items we end up selling (and even mistakes we sell at a loss) that the high return items have to make up for.
“they don’t ask people “you’re not going to hoard all these are you?””
LOL! Reminds me of some neighbors I’ve mine that I see at my local rummage sales. One time one of them purchased 3 large old (but sorta nice) lamp shades, saying “I have no idea what I’m going to do with these”. It took all my strength to keep my mouth shut (“so why the *#$*% are you buying them?”
Are you looking to add Priority International for destinations that the GSP doesn’t cover? Or are you looking to give customers the choice between GSP and Priority for GSP destinations? I don’t think the latter is possible – I tried to do it once, and it seemed like I had to choose one at listing time (for any particular destination), couldn’t have both.
As far as filling in the customs forms go – those are easy, as long as you print your labels out via ebay (that’s the only way I’ve ever done it). In fact, ebay basically pre-fills the info for you – it’s just a few extra clicks in the label process. I have shipped direct to Canada, Japan, Australia – but those were all first class. I imagine priority is similar, just more expensive.
Since I’m often quick to complain and worry about slow periods, I thought I would take a moment to say “Yay!” about the huge number of sales I’ve had in the past 7 days. With a store of only about 240 items, and not having a listed a lot in the last couple of weeks, I still sold 19 items, which is a sell through rate of about 8% – I think that’s my highest ever. Hurray! I try to keep my store at 250 items, but I haven’t been able to keep up with listing b/c I’ve been doing so much packing 🙂
total revenue $674
asp $35I hope that typing out this post will help me remember good times like these during the inevitable slow periods.
I use gmail. Must be some gmail setting got tweaked somehow, since it works fine for you, and I just checked and it works fine on email on my phone. thanks.
ebaymom,
Just curious (b/c I just scored some perfume today) – why didn’t you send it to Hawaii via Parcel Select (which is advertised as a ground service)? I read elsewhere on the Internet that some mail does go to Hawaii by boat, and got the impression that that’s what happens for Parcel Select.
It’s useful to know that others have done just fine sending perfume via first class (and glad it worked out for you), but since I’m just starting out with perfume, I think I’ll start out by sticking to the “ground only” USPS rules for perfume, at least for now.
Glad to have found this thread today.
I would answer their questions, but that’s just me. I think their questions are reasonable (tho not well written). I would say something like:
The shirt is definitely black, not blue – it’s hard to take good photos of black clothing. I don’t notice any sheen to the fabric, and to me it seems like a medium weight fabric, but both of these things are subjective – could easily seem different to different people. I can’t go any lower on the price at this time. Best regards, SellerID.
But I have a small store and only 1.5 years experience at this – maybe the pros have a different opinion?
ChristineR – great sales! I love those 70s glass canisters, too! I’ve only ever found one (short with yellow lid) that I purchased for myself before I started on this ebay thing. I might be able to convince myself to part with it for $30 –
we’ll see. I didn’t know the lids were interchangeable… that’s cool.“At $900+ in inventory, it will take me 1.5 years to sell at a total cost $1080. Still 20% over its original cost, but I will have 3.5 years’ head start of using my $ for other alternative investments (Read compounding).”
ec411,
You make it sound like getting this 3.5-year head start is ALWAYS better. But it’s not. It’s possible that the profit Jay makes at the end of 5 years is HIGHER than what you make in the same 5 years, b/c his long tail items sell for huge profits. If you believe that that is NOT the case, then perhaps you could educate us on how better to avoid items that take a really long time to sell for not a lot of money. In other words, nobody sets out to purchase items that take a long time to sell for not a lot of money. 🙂
To calibrate things a bit, perhaps you could comment on whether you think a $1-into-$30 item that takes 5 years to sell (100% annual rate of return on investment) is a poor investment. How about the $150 lamps that recently sold for $600 after 4 years. Do you think those were a bad investment – ie, too low of a return on their money? To me, both of these examples are great returns.
“I think the disconnect here is that the compounding interest philosophy mainly requires commodity items that can be analyzed statistically. ”
Sorry, I gotta disagree. Whether you sell commodity or special one-of items, you have some sense of whether it will take a few months or a few years to sell, if you’ve been at it long enough. And what your annual rate of return turns out to be at the end of every year can be calculated (although not super easily in your head).
“I still don’t get the compounding interest analogy. It’s comparing apples to oranges.”
How is that? Money spent on inventory is an investment, just like an investment in a stock. You hope to be able to sell it at some point for a higher price. And there is a standard way of calculating returns that takes into account how much time has passed since you made the investment. It’s not a special “method” that anybody is using – it’s just the way the math works for any investment whether you want to think about it that way or not.
Maybe it will help if I explicitly state that I am personally NOT saying that you, Jay, are doing anything wrong in the way you sell. I strive to be more like you guys, not less (except for the massive storage, which is not practical for me). When you buy an item for $1 and sell it 5 years later for $30, that translates to an annual return rate of 98%!! That’s an amazingly good investment. Of course typically your things sell much more quickly, so the return rate on your investment is even higher. Don’t you prefer $1-into-$30 items that sell in one year vs. those that sell in 5 years? If your answer here is “no”, then I would be very curious as to the reason.
As far as sharing what returns folks actually get and how, that’s really interesting too, and it’s great when people share their numbers. I myself am making no claims about doing anything better than anybody else or getting a higher return, so I’m not sure what sharing my numbers would accomplish. I have shared them in the past (just too lazy recently), and they have been mediocre at best. But I keep trying to do better, and keeping in mind that time-to-sell is an important factor can only help me. If I turn out to be so bad at reselling that putting my money in an index fund or CD will yield a higher return (annual percentage yield), I’ll put my money there instead, and only resell items that I have an emotional attachment to saving/salvaging.
I just re-read ec411’s first post on this thread, and I want to clarify that the point of my posts is only to argue the point about time-to-sell being an important factor into the return equation due to compounding, and NOT that “selling more” is better than “listing more” or that long-tail items are bad in general.
OK, I will stop blathering on now. Back to work.
Perhaps a better way to communicate what ec411 is trying to get across is to treat each investment in an item to sell the same as putting money in a savings account with a interest rate.
Let’s compare the following:
1) $150 spend on 2 green midcentury lamps that sell after four years for $600 – this is roughtly equivalent to a savings account with 35% yearly interest rate. Fantastic investment!!
2) $150 spent on an item that sells for $225 in one year – this is equivalent to 50% yearly interest rate. Much less profit, but much higher interest/return rate on investment!
(I did this using an online compound interest calculator using monthly compounding. It only works on entire years, not months, so I couldn’t incorporate the $10 item sells for $20 in a month example).
ec411 seems to be saying that investments like #2 above are better than #1. By buying an item like #2 once a year for 4 years, he can turn original $150 into $760 – much better than $600. You can’t argue with that – it’s just a mathematical fact.
However, what is missing from ec411’s argument is the accounting (and paying) for amount of time spent buying, photographing, researching, listing, packing, shipping, storing, etc. In the examples above, since I had to do them in whole years, this cost is negligible compared to the profit. But if you were instead to compare
a) an item that sells in one day for a $1 profit that translates to a 100% annual return rate
b) an item that sells in one month for a $10 profit that translates to 50% annual return rate
c) item that sells in 6 months for $50 profit which translates to 25% annual return rate,
I would always choose (c) b/c my work time is very limited. Others, depending how much they value their time and how much they enjoy various components of the process (as well as how much they are willing/able to store), will fall elsewhere on the spectrum.The only other point I have in response to ec411’s argument is that although it seems like others on here aren’t speaking in the terminology of compounding, most are most likely taking it into account as part of their internal process of selecting inventory to buy. It’s just really hard to do a reverse compound interest calculation in your head, so our calculations are probably a bit off. But faced with having to make a choice of spending $10 on an item that sells for $20 in one month vs. one that sells for $25 in two years – of course we’ll choose the former.
ec411, I wonder if there are any rule-of-thumb examples/shortcuts to make it easier to take compounding into account at the time of purchase? Something like “50% profit in a month has an equivalent yearly return rate to X% profit in 6 months and Y% profit in 12 months.”? I could probably try and figure this out myself but I don’t feel like it at the moment 🙂
ChristineR – Thanks for the tip. I’ll check out what I’m getting charged for listings over 250.
I think that $20 profit (after COGS and ebay/ppal fees) should be my minimum. That’s about what I strive for when out sourcing, of course always looking for much higher profit items.
So why do I have so many items listed for $9.99 and under? Certainly not because I pick up items I think are going to sell for just $10.
The problem is that at sourcing time, I have imperfect information about the worth of an item. Once I’ve already purchased an item (including things of my own I decide to get rid of), I do more pricing research at various times in the process, with the most comprehensive research right as I’m listing. So what’s the minimum profit below which I will get rid of (donate) the item when I find out it isn’t worth as much as I thought it was
– before I’ve photographed it
– after photographing, but haven’t listed
– after being listed for a long time, and I’ve been reducing the priceI *think* the minimums for each of the above should be something like $15, $10, $8, though part of me wants them to be higher. But I have a really hard time keeping even keeping to these low minimums. Sigh. An ongoing struggle. Today I delisted a bunch of low-price items and it felt great.
Note: I have limited inventory space, so I keep my store to about 250 items. So any low price item that stays in the store is in some sense taking a spot that I could potentially fill with a higher profit item. If your storage space is basically infinite and your store is so big that listing fees are miniscule, the equation will be different.
