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1. For your coupon, try going to Seller Hub \ Manage My Store \ Subscriber Discounts (in the box at the top left)
2. I know that you can drill into your sales graph and then change the dates, but it doesn’t appear that you can change the default graph on Seller Hub.
Amen buddy. Always look at the big dogs first, as they are the biggest savings.
No car payments either. Cash for cars. Never finance something that goes down in value…
Only 15 year mortgages on houses. Always start that process where 2/3 of your payment is to principle, rather than 2/3 is interest like a 30 year mortgage is.
For us, we use our PayPal Debit card. Still get the 1%, but don’t have a CC to pay off.
Check into Shippo for the SCAN form. That little piece of paper has been a savior for us, and Shippo made it easy to do.
Yes, same discount as eBay (it was better for a few months, but turned out to be a glitch and we lost that extra amount).
I like Shippo because:
1) We can get our eBay and Etsy orders into one place to ship from. I even add our Bonanza and TrueGether orders here, though I have to do that manually.
2) We can get a SCAN sheet for the USPS for all items. Since we are Guaranteed Delivery and we have Postal Pickup, this is huge. We ship 10+ items a day (and this weekend we are over 30+), so we need that SCAN sheet for them to be marked as accepted. If they don’t scan, then the first scan they would get is at the regional distribution center that night, which is sometimes after midnight, so they would be “late”. While eBay has a SCAN form, you have to print all labels at once. This was slower as we had to pack everything up, write the item and Zip Code on the package, print all the labels, then match them all up. With Shippo, we can print one at a time as we go, then when we are done, just print the SCAN form for all labels printed that day. Easy peasy.
3) It was easy to setup our PayPal credit card to Shippo so that we get 1% cash back each month. Nice bonus.
We do pretty good at Sprouts, as the quality has been better an the prices cheaper, but I like the concept.
I’m on a similar site now. Lots in our area!
Thanks for the tip…
Right now our goal is 400. After that we will see. We did pretty well so far and have not crossed 200 yet. We are in the black money and time wise already, so the rest is just an improvement. If we go for months in the summer with no sales, that would concern me, as then the Q3-Q4 sales have to cover that hole.
Our plan right now is to keep using Etsy as another outlet for sales to improve our STR and to diversify platforms. In terms of cash, it is only $30 extra per month to have Etsy on our SixBit platform. The listing fees are $0.20/item, but they run for 120 days, so call it $0.05/month. Pretty low. Time is low two, since the cross posting is only 2 minutes. And nothing new to do on the backend since SixBit handles the inventory management (pulling items from one platform when it sells on another), and Shippo is hooked up to our Etsy account, so we ship from there the same as if it was an eBay sale.
KatieScott: “doing the numbers is actually a good idea because what your perception of what happened might not be what really happened.”
Amen on that. And even better if you can track each week in a spreadsheet so you can look back over the years.
It helps us knowing sometimes when we had what felt like a soft sales week, that it was more than what we sold in an entire MONTH in 2015….
Jay, I did a little looking a our Etsy store, and we also have a good 15%-20% of Christmas and Holiday items on there. Out of season, so that will make our sales drop, but will be ready for Q4.
I think the seasonality of those items is a factor, just like on eBay. We see a spike in Q4 because that cool, vintage, unique item is great for a gift at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I see the trend in clothes, where I now rarely sell a sweater or coat, but my short sleeve shirts are moving. But I’m still listing sweaters and coats, and setting up for Q4.
We are still early on the Etsy side, but we did really well on there in Q4 last year (for what we listed), so stocking up will be our strategy (I would like to get to 400+), but I would like to see what sells well there in the summer, or something that is more of an evergreen product.
If we can keep our Jun-Aug Total Revenue at $8k or better this year (that is my forecast), then we should set up well for Q4. This should be our last growth year before we really start churning in 2019.
Marjean: I can second something that I see in terms of “momentum” sales. When I sell one sport coat, suddenly others will sell right behind. If I sell a certain brand, others seem to follow. When one type of shoe starts to move, others are close behind.
Not sure why, maybe buyers hunt in packs, but there is something there…
I may have to look into CSAs. I don’t mind paying up for good reasons and better quality.
Would you say the quality of the produce is better than the stores?
Retro: I remember those baseball days… We played travel tournament ball, so we were hard core from January (indoor facility to practice) through July. August was off for about 3 weeks, then Fall Ball from late August through October. Then practice on our own at the indoor facility until January. Repeat…
Interesting on the sales. We were getting a lower STR on some of our items, especially clothes, a few weeks ago. I would run some 10% off sales for 3 days, and sales picked back up. I went this week with no sales and they stayed pretty strong. I also note that Etsy sales seem to pick up when we run sales there as well. Whether it is buyer behavior or logarithms, who knows.
Buyers love deals. Buying on sale, making offer, free shipping… all similar…
We make zucchini bread (a non keto treat for cheat days…like yesterday) and freeze them. But Veronica also has an amazing Zucchini Soup recipe that she will make and can. Excellent to grab a jar, put in the pot, add some chicken, heat and top with cheese. Perfect one pot meal.
I am a little worried about the lack of sales on Etsy, but not to a large extent. We haven’t done any new listings on there in a while, and I think the lack of fresh new products is part of the issue. I also expect that the summer slowdown is another reason for it.
Now that we have SixBit loaded on Veronica’s computer so that she can list directly through SixBit, I think this will change. We got her set up with some templates for shoes to make that faster, and she is going to start a Hard Goods template as well. Now that she is listing through SixBit, the Etsy tab is right there (There is an eBay tab and and Etsy tab on each item) so that she can quickly make the Etsy listing from the start. Plus, she is going to train me a bit on the Etsy side so that I can take some of my vintage clothing and put it on Etsy.
Overall, I thing the STR is slower on Etsy, which is why I wouldn’t stop listing on eBay to list only on Etsy. The STR is better on eBay, and there are more eyeballs, so we will always list everything there. The items that would work on Etsy we take 2 minutes, create the Etsy listing, and list it there as well. Makes our overall STR better with little effort.
Week of 5/13-5/19
Total Items in Store: 2,138 (Up 44% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 129
Number of Items Sold: 74 (Up 30% YOY)
(Includes 0 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether, 0 Amazon)
Weekly STR: 15% (Down 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,147 (Up 97% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $343
Highest Item Sold: $200 (Twice) – Signed Kiyoshi Saito Japanese Woman Woodblock Prints
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and ties for the year 10-10. (I told you I wouldn’t keep the lead…)eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,332
# Sold: 49
STR: 16%
ASP: $21.52eBay Shoes
# Listed: 207
# Sold: 11
STR: 23%
ASP: $33.75eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 598
# Sold: 14
STR: 10%
ASP: $51.50Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 152
# Sold: 0
STR: 0%
ASP: $0Great sales by Veronica on the Japanese Woodblock prints. There is a third print that she sold for less because there were some flaws, but the buyer hasn’t paid either. If he doesn’t, I’m hoping we can reach out to the person who bought the other two to see if he would like it.
I have seen RalliRoots before. Good folks…
Interesting take on this issue. Always something I’m concerned about. Never happened to me, but I like to think about how to cover off different issues…
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