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I think the problem is, if you don’t have the item, you’re going to have to cancel. If you do lose your top rated seller status, you could always regain it pretty quickly. Just work hard and do the right things, and you will get it back pretty quickly.
True, but eBay only pays if you ship within your handling time. If you offer Free Shipping, and you don’t meet your handling time, my understanding is that they will ding you for the $5 coupon.
The puzzling part is on the Door-to-Door solution, they state that if you guarantee Door-to-Door, and offer free shipping, that eBay foots the bill.
“If a seller chooses the door-to-door option and the item is delivered late, the seller recompenses the buyer. However, in the case that the buyer wants to keep the item and shipping was free, eBay will provide the buyer a coupon to be used toward a future eBay purchase.
???
That is puzzling. Why wouldn’t I always do that then? eBay holds the risk in that case (if that is really what they meant). I heard something similar when I listened to the eBay Radio podcast. I rewound that section multiple times to make sure that is what I heard, and now I see something similar in the FAQ. I wonder if they really mean that, or if it is a mistake.
Or a maneuver to have people move to Free Shipping to compete with Amazon?
Or did they mean that they will provide the $5 coupon to the buyer, and then take it back later from the seller?
Agree. You only have an issue if they decide to audit that part of your taxes, and if you keep the paper trail, you are good.
We use our P&L out of PayPal as our info for the 1065 (we are set up as an LLC, so we go through the 1065 and the K-1 to our 1040), so we never tie to the 1099. The IRS just use this to make sure that you aren’t underreporting income, and since they have to take into account adjustments, discounts, etc., your total revenue line will not match anyway. And if you sell on other platforms, cash sale, etc, you won’t match.
Below for the full scoop (be careful not to operate heavy machinery while reading)
FYI – Updated FAQ on Guaranteed Delivery…
Although thinking about how you did that transaction…maybe better to NOT tell PayPal, and just put the correct revenue number in for your taxes.
I would report just the $20k as income. The 1099 would be incorrect in this instance.
You could call PayPal and see if this will be included on the 1099. You can also get a 1099 detail download into Excel from PayPal at the end of the year to see if this transaction was included.
As always, I would check with a valid CPA for proper treatment for taxes, but here is my take.
You are already deducting the purchase of the goods on your taxes (eventually, through COGS. Beginning Inventory + Purchases (this transaction) – Ending Inventory = Cost of Goods Sold). So the money you “loaned” yourself is deductible due to the nature of the expense.
As per your 1099, I would keep a note of this “loan” amount for your 2017 taxes, and make sure that you DO NOT include this amount as “Revenue” for your business. We use Quicken for our business, and our Revenue on our P&L never ties to the 1099, since we have sales on other platforms, cash, etc. 1099 is just to let you know what they are reporting to the Feds.
The only extra cost that could be deducted is any interest on the loan (since it is a business loan, it is a business expense). You won’t have that here.
This is from my thoughts as an accountant, and I do our taxes myself, but I am by no means a tax expert, these are just my thoughts. Again, check with a pro to be sure. And if you do, let me know if I missed anything (as I still like this type of stuff!).
Welcome to the biggest question in the eBay universe, GTC or 30 Day…
We moved from 30 Day to GTC once, and within 8 weeks, moved back. We saw our sales plummet. When we went back to GTC, our sales increased. I think a lot has to do with what you sell. For our clothes, being more a commodity, we have to stay high on the Best Match, and new listings get a boost in the first and last 24 hours. And we have years of experience that when we relist items, we always seem to sell something within 24 hours. All anecdotal, but our own personal experience is what we trust the best.
If you have more rare collectibles (like most of Jay and Ryanne’s items), GTC can be beneficial as I think you get more O/S ebay traffic, and I think GTC works best for multiple quantity listings that are selling, as I know listings that sell get moved up in Best Match.
Relisting can be a time suck, but we prefer it since it forces us to relook at pricing, freshen the pics, change keywords that may not be working, etc.
I think all discussion on which is better is all anecdotal, as no one can show definitive proof. I know eBay considers listings over 30 days to be stale. I know that when we freshen our listings (change pictures, change keywords, change pricing), we improve our sales. Other people have other experiences. So I would say experiment and see what works for you.
No, you can ship anywhere in the US with the Regional Box. Regional only means that the price is based on how many regions the package travels.
Check the link below for better information. You get a discounted price using eBay than what they show here. The box I use most for suits/sport coats is the 11 1⁄16″ × 2 ½″ × 13 1⁄16″.
I have only used the Regional B box once, and that was because a buyer purchased a sport coat and 5 shirts on one order.
You have to order the Regional A & Regional B boxes from the Post Office Web Site.
It is a lower pricing structure for Priority that bases the cost on how many regions the package has to cover. It allows for up to 15lbs in the box (for Regional A), so the weight is not the issue, only the number of regions away you are shipping.
We find that the MOST we ever pay is $9.99 (Colorado to New York), so we just flat rate that for the customers. We will actually at least break even if not make a little on the actual shipping cost).
If you order the Regional A boxes, check the sizes. There are at least two sizes, and you want the short flat box (height is around 4″=5″) for suits, sport coats, jackets etc. We rarely use the other size (sorry I don’t have the actual dimensions with me now, and Veronica always orders the shipping supplies!).
We sell a lot of clothes, and for any item under 1lb, we do First Class shipping, with a secondary option of Priority Padded Flat Rate.
For items over 1lb, we check to see if it will fit in Priority Padded Flat Rate, if not, 1st option is Parcel, second option is Priority (by weight).
For suits, sport coats, and other items that fit, since they are over 2lbs, we offer flat rate $9.99 Priority Regional A pricing, as that is cheapest.
We use the 30 listings rather than GTC, as we like to see what hasn’t sold, freshen up listings, look at prices, etc. We stopped using Sell Similar for the same reason, to avoid duplicate listings and just use the Relist button.
There is talk about “stale” listings after 60 days, and we see that when we relist. Items that are over 60 days old will have less views each time if we don’t freshen up the listings. So to avoid having duplicate listings but keep them “fresh”, we Relist (no Sell Similar) and on listing that had very few views in the month, we change the gallery picture, check our pricing, change title/item specifics/item description, etc.
I agree. I think the hard thing is to really get good data on the effectiveness. I know that it is important to have them be correct, as when we updated ours, we started seeing more impressions and ultimately sales. But how much the keywords were part of that is a mystery.
We look at it this way. When we set up our categories, we make sure that the keywords for that category are correct, and then we never touch it again. We know that having the right keywords helps (though hard to measure), it takes 2 minutes, so we do it.
Maybe asking some of these questions to eBay would be worthwhile. It could be that these were important when eBay listings were largely seen on Google. I know that at least for us, we have very few O/S eBay views in the last two years. If you look at our Page Views in the Performance \ Traffic section, we average about 650-690 page views per day, but only 10-12 are from O/S of eBay. It may be because we use 30-Day listings rather than GTC, but we do that as a conscious decision to see what hasn’t sold, refresh the listing, change pricing, etc. In the end, we aren’t in the inventory business, we are in the selling business.
Glad to help Rydell. It is a little different using bulk shipping, but we are used to it now.
Check EBay and see if your shipping labels now show the scan that they were picked up.
Good luck!
Jay, a perfect question to ask EBay about in an interview!
The effectiveness of the keywords is very difficult to measure, although once we updated them the first time, it did appear that our sales increased in the later months. Not very scientific, but it does seem to be important.
We haven’t change them after the initial set up, we just make sure they are correct once we set up a new category.
