[T-Satt]

I hope you are wrong too.

I haven’t seen anything on the Concierge, it was discussed at eBay Open last year, we were put into it, and it has been great.

The last time I called, it was on a damaged item by the delivery service on GSP. They immediately refunded the buyer out of their own pocket, and closed the issue with no impact to us (financial or on any metrics). Took 5 minutes.

We did have an issue in March were the buyer claimed INAD (kind of rudely), and I called eBay since it was beyond our 30 days. They closed it immediately in our favor and we were not dinged at all.

[T-Satt]

karlacreekbank: It may not have been long enough for those items to sell. I did a separate analysis about a year ago, and our items averaged 120 days being listed before they sold. So in those cases, it will have relisted 3 times before it sold.

You may need to get an idea of the average STR for your items before you worry.

[T-Satt]

Not quite. Our listings show Free Returns in the list view, as well as the guaranteed delivery date. Free Shipping would also show there if the seller does that.

[T-Satt]

True, the auto relisting acts for us “like” a GTC. But what I wanted to see was the distribution of sales across our 30 day listings. In any given 30 days, an item would have the chance to sell on that day 3.33% of the time (1/30).

But our distribution doesn’t show that. Our distribution shows that items have a spike in sales on the last and on the first day listed. So we sell way more than the average on those days.

On a GTC listing, you only get Day 1 once. You “might” get a spike on day 30 (with ebay promoting Ending Soon), but I have seen some videos that dispute that.

What I would love is some data from a GTC seller with a sizeable volume (200+ sales per month) that shows the distribution of sales day by day. That might show some comparison.

[T-Satt]

Jay, I would try calling again. This sounds nothing like the service I received when I called about similar issues. It has been to long for me to remember the details, but this just doesn’t feel right. It might be worth another call.

[T-Satt]

karlacreekbank: This was what we saw when we went to GTC as well, and why we switched back. Jay has a point though, that depending on what you are selling, this could be a slowdown season and it could be a seasonality in your items, not that you went to GTC.

And as I said earlier, it really only matters on items that have many competing listings, like clothes, iphones, etc. Rare, unique, one of a kind items that have a smaller audience will probably not benefit from 30 days. Plus, if you want to use Pintrest or other social media to market your items, GTC is best. If you link to a 30 day listing, it expires. The GTC items will still be out there and the link will still work.

[T-Satt]

Mark: Thanks again for the heads up on the change in SmartPost pricing. We have only shipped one item through FedEx since the rate change. We are shipping 3 to FedEx today, and we are using SixBit to change many of our items back to FedEx.

Thanks!

[T-Satt]

On the podcast, I have to say Jay and Ryanne, I love your thinking on Free Returns. At the worst, it is an experiment that you can move away from if it doesn’t work. But you also did some math and looked at what a “bad” month would be in $100 in paying for return shipping and realized that it is not a big deal and you can absorb this as part of your business in your Handling Charge. Whether as a Handling Charge, or part of your overall business, you are taking some of that potential cost and spreading it out across all your sales. It is something I’m glad to see more sellers doing: looking at the bigger picture, rather than just sale by sale.

Regarding SixBit, some information that I can tell you. Yes, the ability to have every listing backed up and relist/tweak/copy is nice. Like I discussed earlier, we had a return from Russia that was about 5-6 months old get returned to us. I just relisted. No new photographs, redoing a listing, nothing. Sometimes we get something that we know that we sold months ago that we can just tweak an old listing since it is in SixBit.

Also, yes, you can list directly through eBay and SixBit will import that listing. That is how we do things now. I list through SixBit, but Veronica lists through eBay and the listings are imported after that. She has a couple of final items to add to the database like cost and presets (the SixBit version of Business Policies), but not an issue.

Remote access I think would not work though. Since it is a database that will reside on your “server” (ours is my desktop), the employee has to be able to work in that capacity. But if you have them list through eBay now, these will still pull into SixBit. So they can work on your listings, just directly through eBay like you do now, and eventually these will pull into SixBit.

Shoot me an email if you have any direct questions. I can also give you some direct emails to some folks at SixBit that can answer direct questions. They are good folks.

I’m sure Mike will have the same information on WonderLister.

[T-Satt]

Week of 4/29-5/5
Total Items in Store: 2,095 (Up 41% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 124
Number of Items Sold: 80 (Up 7% YOY)
(Includes 3 Etsy, 0 Bonanza, 1 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 16% (Down 5% YOY)

Total Product Sales: $2,142 (Up 19% YOY)
Cost of Items Sold: $519
Highest Item Sold: $120 – Vintage Lot of 500 Star Wars Paper Dixie Cups
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Troy leads the year at 10-8. (She is crushing right now!)

eBay Clothing
# Listed: 1,299
# Sold: 54
STR: 18%
ASP: $22.61

eBay Shoes
# Listed: 185
# Sold: 13
STR: 30%
ASP: $38.04

eBay Hard Goods
# Listed: 611
# Sold: 10
STR: 7%
ASP: $32.83

Etsy Hard Goods
# Listed: 152
# Sold: 3
STR: 8%
ASP: $29.84

April 2018
Number of Items Listed: 477 – New Record
Number of Items Sold: 333 (Forecast: 349)

Monthly STR: 18% (Forecast: 18%)
Monthly ASP: $24.19 (Forecast: $25.89)
Total Sales: $8,054 (Forecast: $9,025) – Increase of 6% YOY

Loving the change in our business with a photographer. Veronica and I were talking how as of now, we don’t want to go back to doing it all ourselves, and feel we should have done this sooner (though we had to absorb the initial cost of the labor…and we still are a little). I didn’t list for two days this week as I had my contract accounting job, and we still listed 124 items. This is big too, as my contract job is asking for me to help with a special project a day or two each week for the next month or so. But with the assistance (and amazing photos he is doing), we can keep our listing volume up.

[T-Satt]

I think so. You might want to check on the SixBit site to verify, because right now I am the only one that uses SixBit. However, I know that I have set up my own username to use six bed. And I have administrator access.

[T-Satt]

Yep, SixBit is similar. After the item ends on eBay, if the item (database record) still has inventory, and the Allocation says “Relist”, then it will resend the listing to eBay in about 20 minutes. You can list all inventory, list just 1 item (with 3 still in inventory, and when it sells, it will list 1 more, or you can allocate the inventory across platforms (2 on eBay, 1 on Etsy).

[T-Satt]

Utahbill: We also let our auto-relisted items end about once every 3-4 months. Then we use SixBit to make any tweaks, then resubmit with the “Submit as New” button checked. I tell you, every time we do that, old stuff starts popping…

[T-Satt]

Jay: Yep. Just end the listing, make your tweaks, and resend as a 30 Day Listing.

[T-Satt]

Yep, looks like the rates are lower. Below is a comparison of the 10 types of shipments that I tested in March using SmartPost compared to the rate that I am getting today for the same shipement:

Package of 12x12x10, 4 lbs:
to 74137: March – $17.03, May – $11.24
to 60411: March – $18.29, May – $11.25
to 13053: March – $24.43, May – $14.30
to 16830: March – $25.02, May – $14.88
to 94597: March – $18.29, May – $11.25

For a box 12x12x8, 4 lbs:
to 74137: March – $11.84, May – $10.97
to 60411: March – $12.50, May – $10.62
to 13053: March – $15.57, May – $13.97
to 16830: March – $16.16, May – $14.55
to 94597: March – $12.50, May – $10.62

[T-Satt]

PS – This is only on Ebay. I checked the SmartPost rates on our FedEx account, and SmartPost is $18.77 on our FedEx account.

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