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Thanks Mike. Yeah, I think between forcing GTC, screwing up all the Item Specifics (we are still working through them), and other issues, it just tanked our sales. 30% drop YOY is not what you want to see in December…
Glad Susan is on the mend and mostly through her journey. We still think about her and send prayers for both of you!
Thanks Almasty!
Definitely tougher now than before, and with the goals that we have for the next 20 years, setting that foundation by increasing our income now and having the ability to get financing is more important.
@Jay: He will still end up with debt, becoming a doctor is just too expensive, but we are working some angles to keep that down. The schooling is too rigorous for him to work, so we are looking to help pay for his housing/living expenses. Hoping to find a duplex that we can house hack to help that, so gotta get the financing for that, and me having a very good salary helps with the financing…
It is long term where we are planning to go anyway, and better to slowly buy an investment than just pay rent. Just have to find a place where the numbers work out…
Thanks Jay. That is definitely the case. I still work the backend admin and accounting work, and I do crossposting to Poshmark, but I’m not listing at this point. Feels strange to be back in the full time world, but with things really slowing down for us lately, and we have had some big car expenses, plus getting ready to help our son with his college expenses in Texas (that is a whooooole other subject), it is a blessing to have that consistent stream of income to handle the regular bills.
Thanks Retro! Yeah, it has been very busy for a while now. It has been a blessing to have the full time job now since eBay has really taken a nose dive for us. But it was good that it prompted us to reassess our short and long term goals and reorient our actions.
Getting things to the point that they are at with our store has made it easier to pull back on the activity with it, and we can see how we can maintain the store as a supplemental income rather than carry the full burden.
Gonna be a lot going on overall. Veronica and I keep having ideas as to what the next 2 years holds, and it keeps changing as we keep getting changes in our family stuff.
Man plans…God laughs…
Week of 1/12-1/18
Total Items in Store: 3,262 (Up 30% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 75
Number of Items Sold: 58 (Down 28% YOY)
Weekly STR: 8% (Down 6% YOY)Total Product Sales: $1,996 (Down 8% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Down $594
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $431
Cost of Items Sold: $402.60Still seeing a very low amount of sales compared to prior year. We have transferred to me working full time for the foreseeable future, and Veronica is on eBay. We are in a complete transition year, with my mom moving from Montana, our younger son moving to Texas, and we are beginning our real estate ventures.
@dianneo: Yes, when you relist through SixBit and check the Box to “Send as New”, you get a new number. Ebay sees this as a fresh new listing (like Sell Similar does on eBay).
@dianneo: For us, we use the SixBit feature to end the listings and then relist as new.
After items are ended, we can see the items that have inventory but are not listed. We work on them (item specifics especially now, but also any pricing or other tweaks we see needed), then resend the item as new.
The painful part for us is that since we are so heavy on clothes, the ebay glitch on the size killed us. We still see that we have listings were the Size item specific is blank. This prevents the buyer from finding our items if they use Size on the left search bar.
Painful, but just part of the process I guess…
PS – Back on the Inventory system topic. There are many who say to put different things in each bin vs putting like items in the same area. This weekend is why I say to put like items in the same area…
We couldn’t find a pair of jeans. Been years since that happened. But the good news is that we only had to look at the areas where we store pants, not EVERY area something could be stored. Found them fairly quickly (was put in P11 not J11). So while we looked at all jeans locations and didn’t find it, the only other place that made sense was the Pants locations and I went to P11 and it was right there.
Week of 11/03-11/09
Total Items in Store: 3,275 (Up 19% YOY)
Number of Items Listed: 79
Number of Items Sold: 88 (Up 5% YOY)
(Includes 4 Etsy, 12 Poshmark, 0 Bonanza, 0 TrueGether)
Weekly STR: 12% (Down 1% YOY)Total Product Sales: $2,812 (Up 8% YOY)
Sales Volume Variance to Prior Year: Up $125
Sales Price Variance to Prior Year: Up $73
Cost of Items Sold: $498
Cost of Labor: $147
Highest Item Sold: $124 – Set of 5 A Christmas Story Glasses
Competition: Highest Priced Sale: Veronica wins the week and Veronica leads for the year 26-20.Wow, lots of good topics. Diversification on platforms? I think so, just to stay relevant. All platforms? No, but the right ones yes. For us it is Poshmark for the clothes and Etsy for the hard goods. I did some Mercari in the past but it never really caught traction. I might try again some other time.
As for slowness, I think there are a lot of factors. More competition (more sellers on eBay), more sites that people are shopping on (Poshmark, Etsy, Mercari, etc.), more shoppers that like to shop on Amazon and buy new, changing tastes of consumers (more want new and cheap vs vintage and quality)…
I think there is truth in all of these factors. This is why I love your diversification of income (ebay, rental income, your video jobs). The slowness and since we also like the diversification is why I took a part time gig that became full time for now. Make money when the sun shines, and at this job I make really good money. If I can use this to help us get the rental income started in 2020, we can ride out ebbs and flows in other areas.
Things change, and we always need to change with it.
What messed with us is that we had NO IDEA this was an issue until a buyer messaged us. He was asking for measurements that we knew we had in the Item Description. When we went there to answer him, no data. Veronica called eBay and they saw the issue and logged it.
I happened to check Scavenger Life to see if anyone knew (and to let folks know if they didn’t), and lo and behold MyCottage was ahead of us on this.
Thanks again MyCottage.
Good news was that the fix was quick, just make the changes, select all listings, and revise.
But still…
Yep, was on every…single…listing….
And now all the soft errors for not having Size, Department, etc because eBay screwed up the Item Specifics.
So…with eBay making the change and screwing up the Item Description for SixBit listings, then screwing up the Item Specifics…no wonder we are at a lower STR than what we should be.
Because what I really want to do in Q4 is to REDO ALL MY LISTINGS ONE BY ONE SO THAT THEY COMPLY WITH THEIR CHANGES AND GET SOLD!!!!
rant over…
@MyCottage: Thanks for all this! I did a test on one and that revision works.
What concerns me is that I’m at least 600 listings in and I still don’t see Item Descriptions. I may have to revise all.
How long has this been an issue? Did they say?
