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Welcome Mark. Good to hear from you and your experiences in Singapore.
Date: April 8-14
Numbers:
Total Items in Store: 939
Cost of Items Sold: $105
Amount of Items Sold: 28
Total Sales: $828
Highest Price Sold: $89.95
Average Price Sold: $29.57
Returns: 2 $65 total
Money Spent on New Inventory: $0
Number of items listed this week: 38 on eBay, 1 on EtsyWe met with the accountant on Friday. I’ve kept records, but could be more detailed and careful about being sure that everything gets recorded. So I spent time going back and making sure that all my mileage, bridge tolls, and cash receipts were recorded and up to date.
Had to send a check and file an extension nonetheless.
She stressed doing inventory at the end of the year to come up with cost of goods sold. I just multiply the amount of listed inventory by $5 which is my average cost of goods. I suppose I could be more exact, but I don’t want to! Blah.Working on listing this week. Started listing some vintage stuff on Etsy. (2 active listings right now).
Good for you!!
Many sellers don’t implement an inventory system until they’ve got hundreds of items. It takes time, but it is very worth it. I recently went through all my clothing tubs, bagged and labeled the items. It makes finding the right item a breeze! AND hopefully, it will make a hired helper have an easy time of finding an item for me too!
I have five shelves on each shelving unit. The units are alphabetical So one unit (that holds 10 tubs) is unit G, then the top row has G1A and G1B. I continue all the way down like that. Then inside each tub are the items in numerical order. So when I sell something it tells me G5A11. I know to go to tub G5A and look for item 11. Use these numbers in your SKU area and you’ll be able to see which items are in each tub from your computer. Oh and when using the item numbers put a zero in front of items 1-9 so they are in proper order on your computer.
It has taken lots of time, but I’m very happy with it now that it’s done.
Good luck Daniel!I’ve also started using huge bubble mailers for large items that don’t need to be boxed. Although they aren’t free, they do save time.
These are the ones that I’ve bought.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/25-7-Quality-Poly-14-25×20-Bubble-Mailers-Envelopes/290358323664?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649Oh yes, I can relate to this question. I save most of the boxes that come into my home.
I keep the large broken down ones in an out of the way area behind a shelf in my basement. They take up about 3′ square. The smaller ones are above my freezer also broken down and in a large box.
I do send them out to the recyclables sometimes. I’ll try to post a photo or two.
https://imgur.com/gallery/YO42GI don’t use my home address for eBay. You never know with the weirdos out there. I rent a PO box for my ebay transactions. Although if someone wanted to find me in this day and age, it wouldn’t be too hard to do.
So I heard from eBay for business regarding the seller having to pay initial shipping in the case of a return for fit.
She told me that this is the policy. I asked her where I can find the policy written.
She told me that she is unable to find the written policy.
I said that it wasn’t fair that I’m being charged for a policy that I did not know existed.
She agreed and is giving me a free month extension on my store subscription and is having a help page written up to explain the policy.
It feels good to be right.
And Jay, I spent more time researching my international sales history to answer your questions than I did fighting the shipping charge. LOL. It’s all good though. The numbers speak the truth.I can go back to the beginning of 2016 (I was part time until June of 2016).
I’ve shipped 109 international packages since then.
As for customer issues, I had one customer from Indonesia open an item not received in October of 2015. I refunded him and filed a claim through ShipSaver. They reimbursed me. My customer later told me that the item had arrived. I told him to keep it and not worry about it.
In August of 2017 a buyer from Columbia filed an item not recieved. I didn’t have insurance on this item (cheaper) and had to refund him item cost plus shipping.
That’s it. Until now when this customer is returning his item (unless I can close it at my first opportunity) and I have to pay initial shipping. Which I am fighting btw.
So, I don’t really consider international shipping to be a hardship or challenge. I choose which countries I want to ship to, and I do have quite a few exceptions at the moment. I re-evaluate which countries I’m willing to ship to based on Ship Saver exclusions and USPS international delivery confirmation.This is something I’m looking into too. I would love to travel while still selling on eBay. Right now, my inventory is too big to travel with, so I have to leave it at home and have someone ship it for me. But I have watched a youtuber named Dorky Thrifter who sells mostly prescription glasses and some other smaller items from her RV on eBay.
I’d love to hear of your adventures of traveling and selling on eBay though.:)I had a one-on-one phone meeting with a representative of eBay’s GSP in August of 2017. At that time I decided to opt in to GSP but just for the exclusions that I didn’t want to direct ship to. During that time, I shipped directly to Canada and the UK, but also chose to ship to other countries on my own based on whether there was USPS Delivery Confirmation or not.
So I was in GSP for eight months (from August 2017 to March 2018). In all that time, I sold one item through GSP. So maybe a better way of putting it would be that GSP didn’t really increase my sales. I’d have to go exclusive GSP and compare it to months with the similar amount of sales to really do a fair test of whether my international sales increased or decreased.
Date: April 1-7th
Total Items in Store: 940
Cost of Items Sold: $156
Amount of Items Sold: 31
Total Sales: $1168
Highest Price Sold: $175.00
Average Price Sold: $$38
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory: 0
Number of items listed this week: 27 (working on inventory)We have a meeting with our tax accountant on Friday afternoon.
I think we will be fine because we paid in our quarterly last year.
As our inventory has taken over our basement, we should have a bigger write-off for that.I’m interested in getting business liability insurance now. Although I don’t know what I could get sued for, I am running a sole-proprietorship and wouldn’t want my personal assets to be at risk.
He works for a small company that builds inflatable plugs for pipelines. He is an on-site support technician and is on call while we are in Florida.
We are hoping to continue spending our time in both locations. We bought a house down there that we are renting out annually with the thought that we may be able to use it as our winter home, but we aren’t sure that will work out financially for us. For now we rent my brother’s house that is vacant until he retires (sometime in the next few years).I’ve heard that eBay will only keep drafts for thirty days. I think if I go to “finish the draft” and then “save for later” it may keep the draft longer because it has had activity. So maybe if you do that next time, it will save your photos longer.
I’ve never seen the “create copy” button. If that works, I’d love it! Thanks CTEbay.
