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Amen Mike! I love the ability to bulk change items very quickly.
Similar to Business Policies, we have 13 Presets that handle all of our shipping possibilities. Most of that is Large vs Small for the same type (since International First Class cuts off at 4 lbs). So it is nice that when we go on vacation and our boys will do all of the shipping, we can change the preset for the Large items to 10 day handling, and it is done. Takes 1 minute to change all of them. And when we return, 1 minute to change them back.
I don’t know as much about WonderLister, but I know Mike at MDC Galleries is really tight with them. We are using SixBit and expanded to use Etsy, and it is great! We can do a listing for eBay in the normal time, and in about 60 seconds (max), we can have the listing sent to Etsy. Very efficient.
Nice tool Mike. I had not heard of this. Do you have this view in WonderLister also? I used your link to check our listings, and it found a possible duplicate, but I know it isn’t, I just had two shirts that I used the exact same title, but different pictures (the condition was different so I listed them separately). I have this view in SixBit (checking for duplicates) and it had the same info.
This subject fascinates me, as we have never had this happen. In fact, we have had warnings when we had identical listings by mistake. I know eBay will allow the same title as long as the Gallery Photo is different, but it will not allow the same title and same gallery photo.
Weird…
I wouldn’t start another store. I would give each of the estate items their own SKU (ESTATE1, ESTATE2, etc) and in your COGS when you do your tax filing, the cost is the same as what you are sending to other people.
This is how we have done it, so that the only profit we show is on our commission.
For us, reselling was the opportunity to work for ourselves and own our time and own our life, rather than feel like we were always working for others. Now it is moving to providing the capital to invest in other areas, like rental property.
Week of 10/8-10/14
Total Items in Store: 1,740
Number of Items Listed: 30
Number of Items Sold: 83
Weekly STR: 20%
Total Product Sales: $2,345
Cost of Items Sold: $419
Gross Profit for Week: $1,647
Highest Item Sold: $250 – Huge Lot 100+ Assorted Action Figures (I sold an Armani suit for $160 and STILL came in second this week!)
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 24-16.Listings took a hit with me having to do a lot of prep this week for my annual hunting trip. Same will be true for the next two weeks while I’m out hunting, and I won’t be able to report numbers until I return. This is the other side of Scavenging…hunting, gardening, etc. It will be good to get some time with my youngest son who hunts, and to see my parents (my mother and father still hunt, and yes, even my mother can shoot…she has the biggest buck in the family, and that was just two years ago).
Veronica will be holding down the fort, and it has been tough sourcing recently on the non-clothing side. She may be forced to dip into clothes to keep productive. Though I am planning to get the Etsy side of SixBit up and running so that she can spend some time expanding our platforms and getting more sales.
Yet even then, it is not automatic. You can have each listing as a pipeline, but you have to keep creating new pipelines. Many lines will dry up at some point, and you will have to find new ones. It reminds me of the Oil & Gas Industry. You have to keep finding new wells to tap, and you may have to dig a few dry holes in the process.
Like most things in life, there ain’t nothing free and easy…
It was, but I changed it to my Yahoo address and now I’m getting them. There must be something in the Mindspring folder that is blocking it.
We are about 95% used, and 5% new.
I agree with Jay, finding new items to sell is a different beast. We are looking into options to expand that side of the business though, as long as we can find that the margins are there, if not on the ROI, at least on the ROI of time through multi-quantity listings.
I have long said that people shop on eBay for two reasons:
1) Unique Items
2) Cheap ItemsCheap happens in the commodity game, and will definitely be part of the NEW items that are out there. I deal with that (a bit) in the clothing arena, since there are a LOT of clothing sellers, and some items will come down to price. I have been moving away from that as much as possible by trying to source unique items, as I find the uniqueness will either fetch the higher price or will increase the sales velocity. So Ralph Lauren/Banana Republic/J Crew/Brooks Brothers shirts WILL sell, but if it is a basic pattern that can be found anywhere, I leave those now and move on.
I don’t think eBay will ever truly move away from the used game, as that is where their unique selling position is. They are embracing this with the “Fill Your Cart with Color” campaign this year. But I do know that they are wanting to get all of us in the online retail game to improve our listings, our merchandise, our pricing, and our shipping strategies to be able to compete with Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, etc. And I agree with that.
Just because we list on eBay, doesn’t shelter us from the fact that we are competing with those other platforms for buyers attention and buyers dollars. For eBay to stay relevant in 2017-2025, they will have to change, improve, and deliver better services to the consumer. And they have it much harder, since they don’t control much of the experience, as WE are the ones that have to deliver that better service, merchandise, and pricing.
So even though we are all living in the 20% world (the used item market), we can still make a good living as long as there is a market for it. But I also know that when eBay is making 80% of their revenue from the New Item Market, they are going to make changes to keep that side happy as well.
Ben Graham is awesome.
And I love the topic, which is learning and applying skills and thought processes from other unrelated areas. You used Value Investing for Online Reselling, and it makes sense. I have played a lot of poker, and I used those skills in unrelated areas (business, negotiation). Fishing and hunting are also applied (patience). My Accounting skills are used daily (something that I see some resellers not look at enough…the numbers).
I love this topic. I will have to take some time to look at the skills that I have in one area that were influenced by skills from another. Could be fascinating!
Like how raising kids helps when managing employees… 🙂
Check to see if they paid through PayPal eCheck. It will still be in your Awaiting Payment, but with an icon that shows that it is waiting for the eCheck to clear.
We have this now on a Bonanza sale…It is still on all 3 sites (eBay, Bonanza, and TruGether), but has a pending eCheck payment against it.
