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05/15/2018 at 10:17 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39963
Congrats Doubly!
05/15/2018 at 10:07 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39959JemiJuniper: Thanks for the info. I wondered how much time you have to spend sharing on Poshmark, as I have heard that is one of the keys to getting sales. Spending a little time at the end (or beginning) of the day is not tough to do (or to outsource).
Are you doing men’s or women’s clothing? Or both?
05/15/2018 at 9:57 am in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39958Yep, that would sum up how we run our business. We like to be as efficient as possible. If a small change will result in a higher STR or higher ASP, we take it. A small change here, and little tweak there, and small changes lead to big returns.
For us, these small items are not stressful at all, because we look for a process to handle them. Yes, if you feel that you are juggling a lot of tasks, then it can be hectic. But when we feel that way, we create a process and a schedule to handle the small tasks so there is no stress. 30 day listings give us a boost vs GTC, so we have software that handles that for us. Cross-posting to Etsy is showing to be profitable, so we have software to do that for us. Shippo lets us pay for our shipping cost on our PayPal card, so we get 1% back on shipping. So we ship through Shippo. Using templates saves me time on listing, so I use them to be more efficient. I used to manually enter our transactions into Quicken, then I found software that gets my weekly accounting done in 10 minutes.
For me, that is something I like to do. Set up a process to be as profitable as possible with the least amount of stress.
jadowa: Thanks for the info. Sounds very familiar. We have been through that ourselves as we have grown (but to a much lower level). But I have seen this in some other small businesses that I have done accounting work for. Growth is good…but it can kill you too if you let it.
Have you done wholesale in your business in the past?
05/14/2018 at 7:21 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39919Very interesting… 🙂
05/14/2018 at 7:19 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39917JemiJuniper: Thanks for the information. You’ve given me a good thought as to if I decide to go into Poshmark maybe I’ll just start with my higher end items to keep it under control.
05/14/2018 at 7:15 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39915Thanks Mike. SB is the same. Our issue is that since we have SixBit auto relist, if we don’t put the order in to SixBit when it sells on bonanza or TrueGether, the item will automatically re-list.
Part of my Poshmark issue…
05/14/2018 at 2:45 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39886Mike: No idea on if cloud storage is an option. Since the database has to run on a server anyway, I don’t care too much. You will have to give JC a call.
Funny, I talk with Steve the most. I’ll say hi to JC for you at eBay Open if he is there again this year. Steve and I are already set for some beers…
Jadowa: Amazing information. I love hearing about your journey.
When looking at your numbers, you were at a 13% net margin in 2014, but that dropped to 7% last year. Was that due to an increase in costs to maintain the higher sales, or was that sales price erosion due to the market price declining for those items? Or was it something else?
Were those numbers for just eBay, or for all your business platforms combined?
I’m totally the numbers geek, so I love the analysis! 🙂
05/14/2018 at 2:29 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39883Interesting on that point Mike. When I did the installation of SB for us, I can choose to have the photos inside the database or kept outside with a link to the folder on our computer. My database size is kept small because of this. I think that they fixed this issue with this toggle.
So for us, our photos are in a folder on our computer. The listing links to that photo but is not in the database.
My understanding was that the database size was a Microsoft SQL issue with size. The free version that comes on PCs can only handle a certain size, and above that you have to purchase the larger version. We are over 5,000+ listings stored in SixBit (between Active and Sold), and have plenty of space to spare.
When I have done submissions to SB, the upload is a couple of minutes. Backing up the database does take quite a bit of time, as I’m sure it is backing up the photos as well.
05/14/2018 at 2:15 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39881Mike: Amen brother. I know you know the techie side of all of this way more than I do. I can see the data that leads to the conclusion…you can tell me why… 🙂
I’m interested in how your Shopify site goes for you, especially the cost to list vs. sales you receive. We know what the cost to list vs sales are on eBay, so even if you get less sales on Shopify (less traffic), if the cost of listing vs. final sales is in your favor, you are on the plus side. Your process to cross-list from eBay to Shopify on WonderLister makes that efficient. And if you can get enough branding to get people to check your store regularly, you are much more in control.
Very interested in your Shopify work Mike. Keep us informed…
05/14/2018 at 1:03 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39873Well said Mike.
Question for the WL side: Do you sell on Bonanza? If so, how does WL handle the Bonanza sale? Does it record that sale (same as an eBay sale)? Or do you have to manually enter that Bonanza sale into WL to remove it from your inventory?
05/14/2018 at 12:57 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39871totommyto: Completely understand. It comes down to the numbers at that point. We are at a different place at $10k+ Revenue per month, so the $100/mo isn’t an issue for us. We started at the $70/mo level to get some of the reporting and relisting features that we wanted, so the Etsy add-on was only $30/mo, and that is paying off. And agree on the Etsy customers being very nice. Never had an issue over there.
Though we have neglected Etsy a bit lately, and we are seeing our sales taper off. Veronica and I are looking at what and how to start having a regular cross-list time for Etsy. It is easy, but we have neglected it lately as we stay in listing mode with our photographer. He is off for a while at the end of this week, so we may take that time to get some cross-listing done.
05/14/2018 at 12:07 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39865Totommyto: Yes, they are similar. For us, the difference was that SixBit can do Etsy, and I also liked the look and feel of SixBit more. I liked being able to set up my listing screens the way I work so that the flow was as efficient as possible.
Mike can talk a lot about WonderLister and what it can do. I think either are good platforms (like Coke vs Pepsi), but for us SixBit was a better fit for us.
We are on the Enterprise level to get Etsy at $100 per month. Not for everyone, but it worked for our goals and we are net positive on the Etsy side and don’t plan to make a change as of yet.
05/14/2018 at 12:02 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 360: Is Diversification a Myth or Reality? #39863Jay: You are clear about your motivation. You only really want to do something different if it is a “gamechanger”. It sounds like you would only make a move if it was to move completely from eBay to another platform.
I know that from our standpoint, we don’t have to have something be a gamechanger to implement a strategy. Small moves can add up. We list 30-Day vs GTC because it is a slight bump in sales. We trim our processes so that we can get a few more listings done per hour. We run a periodic sale as we see that it gives a little juice to our sales. We use SixBit because we can get a bit more sales/get information/change listings efficiently, saving our time to do other things.
Yes, for the most part, making more money takes more time. But if you can use talent to make it efficient, you can make more money in the same time.
And stress…that is all internal. We aren’t saving lives here on eBay. As my old boss would say when the crap hit the fan during a quarter-end close and the VPs are unhappy… “Nothing is on fire. Nobody is bleeding. We don’t have a patient on the operating table. We are accountants having fun with numbers.”
We do focus on the money we are making, so when sales are soft, yeah, we get a little stressed. That is the life of making your own living. But after that, we put that to good use and so something productive…like list.
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