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That is wild. Amazing that for the Nike Shoes, the number of results were different, and in both cases, best match was different.
Again, if you voluntarily quit your job, you will not collect unemployment.
PS – If you ever want to bounce ideas or numbers off of someone, let me know. The plunge is a big step, and I love talking numbers anyway (still wired as an accountant and forecaster!).
Mark, I agree 100% about making sure the numbers work first (and I mean a deep dive) before you take the plunge. And look at a lot of worse case scenarios, and plan for things to take a while. I did our numbers, and while the rates are holding to what I forecast, the overall timeframe is still longer than I expected. I know that is 100% based on not hitting our listing goals (for lots of reasons) each week, but it all starts there.
My advice is that if you are that tight for the first 9 months working 60+, I would get a good nest egg set up to cover that timeframe. (Unless you are motivated by the burning boat method and know that is going to make you do that much work and more. Some people love the Hard Routine).
Don’t touch the 401(k). Too much tax and interest. Roll that sucker into a Traditional IRA and keep working.
I would love to see your forecast sheet (or at least talk your specific expense forecasts) so see how it compares with mine.
No, you would not get unemployment unless you were fired. Unemployment is for people you are out of work through no fault of their own.
Week of 10/22-10/28
Total Items in Store: 1,667
Number of Items Listed: 76
Number of Items Sold: 53
Weekly STR: 14%
Total Product Sales: $1,176
Cost of Items Sold: $285
Gross Profit for Week: $797
Highest Item Sold: $75 – Rock Revival River Jeans
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Troy wins the week (two in a row!) and Veronica leads for the year 25-18.We had our first four platform day, with sales on eBay, Bonanza, TruGether, and Etsy. We have had 3 sales on Etsy in the past week. Hopefully that is picking up and it starts to pay off to have SixBit so we can be multichannel very efficiently. It was pretty cool that right before we went into church, we had a sale on Bonanza, a Sale on TruGether, and a sale on eBay within 5 minutes.
Starting to get back into the groove now that the hunt is over and my contract job is on hold until after Thanksgiving. Looking to get our store inventory numbers back up. Our week was slower, and it was interesting that since I haven’t listed many clothes for a few weeks, we didn’t sell very many last week. In the later part of the week, when I started listing clothes again, we started seeing sales on clothes again…
Actually talked to a fellow reseller in the stores this week. There is another couple that I have seen that only does men’s clothing around the thrift stores for a couple of years. We finally talked and it was interesting that they went hard on Amazon for the past two years, but they have pulled back significantly and are back into eBay. They used to do a TON of auctions, and were selling 2,000 items a month, but now this time around they are looking to go a little longer tail.
PS – I had to laugh. I was listening to the podcast during my morning tasks, and as Ryanne was talking about hearing of Circle K from Bill & Ted’s, I was sending an invoice out and it was to San Dimas, CA. What are the odds of that?!
No problem Mike, hit me up anytime. You have a ton more experience with these types of programs, but we can compare notes and see which one is the best fit for each of us.
Yep, we were hit with the sale bug a few times as well, with our prices plummeting when they are relisted at the sale price rather than the original price.
For the photos, SixBit has the option to keep your photos outside of the database. Based on what you were saying, I choose this option so that the database size does not grow quickly. This was available when we moved to SixBit in early July.
So send me a message whenever you want!
If you know that your store is being browsed, I would make sure that your store categories are set up to help the buyers find your items. Color, size, type, etc.
We have a general store, so we may have Men’s Clothing, Dress Shirts. But if I had 10,000 I may have to go further down by brand, specific neck size, color, etc.
Something to consider.
What did you think of the Jack Fruit? I haven’t had it, but saw a lot of people growing it in Hawaii. Always wanted to try it!
Such a wonderful aroma…
Growing up my dad was a carpet installer and I would help. Loved those summer jobs pulling out old dusty carpet from a house with 15 cats. Then the small would baste in the van in the hot New Mexico sun while we put in the new carpet.
Memories…
Sounds good.
Geoff (or anyone else) that wants to talk with me directly can reach me at tsatterf@yahoo.com
Sounds great to me as well! Would be better to show love to a post without making the posts longer by typing a reply that you like it!
Custom Label Field – For us, it is both a SKU and an Inventory Location. We keep a spreadsheet list of each item, so that we have a unique item number on each item, that satisfies the SKU designation. Then we use a dash and put the inventory location. This helps us when we pull inventory for shipping (since we ship through eBay) as it has both numbers. For Jeans, since we package everything in plastic sleeves and file away in file drawers, we put a sticker on the outside of the sleeve and put the SKU and location on the sticker. That way when you are looking for the right pair of jeans (and they are all blue in the drawer), you can look for the number on the outside.
PS – Even though we have the inventory in SixBit, the spreadsheet gives a secondary listing of our inventory, location, SKU, and cost, just in case something goes wrong with SixBit, it is our backup.
SixBit has two fields to handle this, a SKU and a Location. Right now we are not using the Location, but I’m going to populate that soon. This will provide the ability to do a cycle count of inventory. Rather than count all of your inventory at one time (taking days), we can select an inventory location each week and count one location each week, making sure to hit all locations within the year. Splits up the time and keeps things tidy.
Yes, SixBit handles cost. It has a cost field and we populate that when we create the listing in SixBit. This allows us to have a total inventory at any time (and ready for year end taxes) as well as using that field for your COGS in all reports (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever you need). In fact, it’s reporting is so nice this saves me Admin time. LOVE that part.
No negative on the snippets on mobile that I have seen, although right now, like you, I have pared down the info in the Item Description, so the only snippet I use is the Item Condition (so the buyer can see the description in both locations so they are aware of any flaws).
I hear (and have transitioned) to more information in the Item Specifics as well. That is the main reason that I use the templates, as I have a LOT of custom specifics based on categories that are pre-populated so I can efficiently produce a lot of relevant keywords.
Correct on the Business Policies. We don’t use them since we use SixBit for Shipping Presents and Payment Presets. They do the same thing.
If you want to talk QBE, let me know and we can. I use it daily. Part of my morning routine is ensuring that SixBit active listings is in sync with eBay/Etsy. When you have listings on both platforms, I QBE “ebay” in the Site column, and it returns only the eBay listings and I check the total with my active number on eBay directly. Ditto for Etsy using “etsy” in the QBE. We had some early issues with some auto relist items either not relisting or SixBit thought they were running but in fact they were not. Bugs were fixed, but I still do the quick check. Always checking the barn door…even if the cow is home…
QBE is also great for quickly finding listings. When something sells on Bonanza/TruGether, since I have to do a manual sales order, I can QBE on the title and find items quickly. Also helps if I want to find a listing to do a duplicate listing (a quick Sell Similar).
My daily tasks first thing in the morning:
1) Check active eBay listings for photos – We had a bug at one point where auto relisted items did not have the photos. Fixed now, but I still check. If you find one, just open the listing in SixBit (in Check Listings), check the box at the bottom left to resubmit photos, done.
2) Ensure SixBit & eBay/Etsy actives are in sync – just a side note, sometimes the auto relister takes about 20 minutes from the time it ends until it relists.
3) Send Invoices / Open Unpaid Item cases – I have a specific plan on when to resend invoices and when to open unpaid item cases and I just follow that plan each day.
4) Add items to Promoted Listings – We started doing this and sales have definitely improved. Since listings drop every 30 days, I update the Promoted Listings each day.
5) Download PayPal and enter into Quicken – Daily is best since this in manual, and I can remember what sales were eBay vs. Etsy vs. Bonanza vs TruGether (since I split out each to track).
6) Enter Mileage – I have a spreadsheet I use to track and it is best to do the following day.
7) Update Pinterest Pins – Been doing this for a while, so I add new Pins for new Listings.
8) Check Available to List view in SixBit – This view shows what you have in inventory but don’t have listed. Helps to make sure everything is listed and if something goes haywire, you can find it.
9) Check Submission Errors – Makes sure you don’t have anything that puked when submitting. sometimes you may get a duplicate, bad photos, or submit incorrectly (especially when learning). FYI – When submitting multiple listings, remember that you have to have the same type of listings selected (Auction, Auction w/ BIN, Fixed). I have made the mistake of mixing them up and if you don’t have an Auction Price, you can’t submit to Auction. Took me a while, but I have learned. I batch upload now, spacing out my listings so they don’t hit all at once. (and I LOVE the ability to schedule listings out into the future).
Hit me up anytime directly…
JAY – what is the proper etiquette for sending out my personal email address? Is it okay to put here on the forum?
Here are my thoughts for doing the “implementation”:
If you are using the Custom Label field in eBay as a SKU (unique number for each listing), make sure to designate it as such when importing your items. SixBit asks if you use this field and if so, for what purpose (as a SKU or Inventory Location). In SixBit, these are two separate fields. If you are using it as a SKU, make sure that you don’t have any duplicates. That is a no-no in a database like SixBit.
When importing your information, I would recommend to import your active items only. I let it pull information from the past 30 days, and it was WAY more than I needed, and I had a lot of cleaning out to do.
Take the time in the free 30 days to customize your screen the way you like it and practice listing with your screens. This helped me a lot in moving efficiently.
Use the Snippets in your Item Description for some information so that you only have to enter it once. For example, I put the Item Condition Snippet in the Item Description as well, so when I type in the Item Condition, it puts it in the Item Description automatically.
Use the heck out of templates. I used them in eBay, so I had to recreate them, but that keeps my listings efficient. For clothing, I currently have 17 different templates, that have lots of the data prepopulated, especially custom Item Specifics. It helps to get a lot of relevant information in your listing quickly.
Think out your Shipping Presets. We have 13 Shipping Presets that handle all of our listings. The downside is that you will have to manually put the correct shipping preset onto each active listing (and that is where your Handling Time is done). So if you want to quickly change handling time for vacation or such, you will have to put a preset on each listing.
To be honest, just using SixBit only made me a little more efficient than where I was with listing through eBay direct. The improvement on the process was that if I was listing something similar to and item I listed a few months ago, I could quickly find it in the database and make a duplicate. Cindy of AmazingTaste uses SixBit a ton, and she said her efficiency increased a bunch when she went to SixBit.
(side note: I am very familiar with using the QBE line in the database. It is Query By Example. on the grid views, there is a blank row at the top of the grid. You can type into that row and the grid will find matches for that information in the column you type in. I LOVE this since JDEdwards software is the same. If you need help with this, let me know.
The largest time savings is the Auto Relisting feature. We swear by 30 day listings, since in clothing, you have to stay up in search, and 60+ day listings are “stale” and drop in search. With the Auto Relisting, you can stay on 30 day listings, but it will relist for you. And since the listing is coming from outside of eBay, eBay sees it as a true relist.
Above all, when you have your 30 day trial, you get Gold Star support, so ask a TON of questions. I have met John Slocum and some of his team. They are great guys and their support system is fantastic. I didn’t keep the Gold Star support for the price after 30 days, so hammer them early. But even without Gold Star support, they respond within hours and are great.
There are still some items that I have to do extra with SixBit as an OCD measure each day, but it is worth it. If you want my morning task list, let me know.
P.S. – If you have your eBay store tied to Bonanza or TruGether, AND you are auto relisting, sales on those other platforms can be tricky. When you sell on those platforms, they end on eBay. Well SixBit sees that the item ended on eBay, but it doesn’t know that it was a sale (since eBay doesn’t show it as a sale, just an ended listing). So if you aren’t careful, it will relist on eBay and could sell again. The solution is that once you see a sale from one of these platforms, you manually create an order in SixBit, and it will move the inventory in SixBit to zero and not relist (or will end a relisted eBay listing). Takes about 1 minute.
If I think of anything else I will let you know. Ask questions if you have them. And watch all the YouTube videos. They are a great primer!
