Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I like Everlance (had been recommended by others here). It automatically generates your mileage by tracking your movement in trips which you then can swipe left or right to classify as work or not. It has an easy-to-use expense entry feature to manually enter amount and take a picture of the receipt. The free version gives you up to 30 trips a month which is enough for me.
Good sales, Steven. Every time I’ve sold an old phone it’s gone out of the country. Last year one went to Malaysia.
Sales have been much slower for me in April and May, mainly mundane, low-dollar items, so it hasn’t been worth posting lately but have been enjoying your videos. And watching your critters enjoy the return to Spring.
This British Army DPM camouflage shirt dates from the 1980’s, shows a bit of wear and is in an undesirable small size. $5 at a yard sale, it sold for $30 plus shipping in a month or so.
Pakistan was the source of many knives for the flea market trade in the past. Since knife collectors turn up their noses at them, they can be picked up for cheap, but eBay buyers will pay decent prices for them if the blade has not been ground on (what possesses people to sharpen a knife with a bench grinder?) and there’s no lateral play in the pivot when the blade is open. I had about $2 in this 11” Pakistan lock blade folder as part of a box lot and it sold quickly for $28 plus shipping.
Sealed printer ink cartridges are not very exciting and there is a great deal of competition but I find they are quick sellers and can be sourced all over. I guess it helps that many eBay ink sellers are slow shippers with low feedback. I paid $1 for this Canon 221 set and they sold quickly for $28, free shipping (first class package). These were not dated. HP cartridges for example have an expiration date but I have never had a problem selling expired ink with full disclosure and a guarantee of full function. Never had a complaint.
When I bought this 8mm 1945 football highlights film for a couple dollars at a yard sale I thought it would be a great seller at a decent price but I was disappointed to find very little interest in this type of thing and comps with very low selling prices. So I put it up for $10 and it sat and sat, but did finally sell.
Huge quantities of these Romanian M59 rifle bayonets have been imported to the US, many of which are in poor condition or missing the leather frog, rubber insulator, and wrist strap. So they’re a dime a dozen and even nice ones can be bought relatively cheap. This was in very good condition, had all its parts, and the serial numbers matched on the bayonet and scabbard. I picked it up for $20 and it sold within a month or so for $66 plus shipping.
This vintage cotton fishing hat was .50 at a yard sale and did not take long to sell for $25. Much faster than my ball caps that sit forever.I was getting upload errors while listing yesterday. I attributed it to my Dropbox setup, as Dropbox was syncing the pictures as I was trying to upload them to listings, just after I downloaded them onto my desktop off my phone.
Giving Dropbox a few minutes to sync after downloading the photos and before I uploaded them seemed to cure the issue.
You don’t need to offer free returns to be a Top Rated Seller but you do need to offer free returns on a particular item to receive the Top Rated Plus icon on the listing and to receive the FVF discount for its sale. I think many of us have been sloppy about distinguishing the two and I know I have, but they are two different things. You could be a Top Rated Seller and not receive any discounts on your listings if none of them have free returns, the way I understand it. On the other hand you do have to be TRS to get TRP on a listing.
I recently received an email from eBay soliciting me to join the WebInterpret program. It stated that it is “not applicable to sellers on” the GSP (which I’m not).
I’m not planning on signing up, though. I’m going to try and post the email for those interested on a new subforum here if I can.
05/27/2019 at 9:38 am in reply to: Not Accepting Returns, 2 day Shipping, How Long Can It Last ? #62502Back at ya zoomie and thank you for your service! I jumped out of many perfectly good USAF C-130s etc in the ‘80s but it wasn’t because I did not trust you all to land them safely. 🙂
Regarding INAD risks, I posted this a couple months ago:
Aside from the actual loss from the specific transaction, there are two possible seller account impacts with INAD returns. The first is to your Transaction Defect Rate, visible on Your Seller Level page in the Seller Dashboard. INADs have no impact on your Transaction Defect Rate so long as they are not “closed without seller resolution”. Ebay says: “A case closed without seller resolution is any case the seller is unable to resolve with the buyer prior to the buyer asking us to step in and help with a request, or escalating a case to PayPal for review, and eBay or PayPal determines the seller is responsible.” The Transaction Defect Rate is used to assess your Seller Level, such as Top Rated. Obviously the Transaction Defect Rate is under your control and that is not a reason to contest an INAD so long as you take care of business.
The second possible impact with INAD returns is to your Service Metrics, and this I think is what you’re driving at because ALL INADs (and Item Not Received cases) – whether you resolve them or not – count towards your Service Metrics. Service Metrics are determined by comparison with your peers in specific categories. On the 20th of each month eBay calculates the Service Metrics, counting your INADS/INRs for the past 3 months for sellers with 400 or more transactions in that time, or the past 12 months for sellers with fewer than 400 transactions during the last 3 months.
If you have a “very high” percentage of INAD/INR transactions compared to your peers (whether or not you resolve them), you “might be subject to” an additional 4% FVF for listings in the categories where you’re very high. This is where the mere fact of an INAD can hurt you, if you get many of them.
See https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/seller-performance-policy/service-metrics-policy?id=4769 for the policy and https://www.ebay.com/sh/prf/service-metrics in order to see your current service metrics.
So with selling clothing, at the rate you’re going so long as you resolve any cases that come up, you’ll be fine since clothing sellers have a high rate of INAD/INRs and you’re compared with your peers.
05/24/2019 at 12:10 pm in reply to: Easiest/Cheapest Way I've Found to do My Numbers and Get Net Profit. #62405I use the Everlance app to track mileage. At .58 a mile to deduct, it can add up. If you only drive for business on weekends you can probably get away with the free version. It logs your trips automatically by tracking your movement so it’s great for multi-stop yard sale days. You just swipe the entry left or right for business or personal (or also categorize the trip as commute or charity). I also enter my cash inventory purchases in the Everlance app when they happen.
BTW I am a big fan of EAT and have been using it for several years. Off-eBay expenses and mileage can be manually entered into EAT if you wish to make its P&Ls and summaries more accurate, but I don’t bother as I have a single source of mileage and cash inventory purchase data (Everlance) and online or in-person credit purchase data (a single dedicated card) so big picture is easy to generate (except for home office takes a little more work).
05/24/2019 at 11:49 am in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62403Modern glues glow under UV light as do modern paints; post-1940-ish paper products, fabric and thread; and certain real Depression, Vaseline, and art glass objects. It’s not foolproof (and hard to use unless you’re in the dark) but if you’re looking for real antique items of the kind that are heavily reproduced (or very old furniture), the UV is indispensable. Of course, in the UK I think they’re generally more likely to run across real antiques in the wild than we are in the US.
Sorry; I forgot you’re in MX. The previous owners’ issues may have been due to having a large shipment and screwing up the paperwork. There’s a De Minimis Customs clearance for shipments to the US of up to $800, duty free, and a “mail entry” process that should make it easier for you to sell onesies and twosies to the US, though of course the declaration form and invoice/bill of sale have to be complete and right.
The main thing is to establish that they are civil aircraft parts, not military, with detailed descriptions and correct HTS Classification Numbers and of course not manufactured in North Korea or some other embargo country. Here are a couple links if you want to try it:
https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/internet-purchases (aimed at US recipients but still informative)
and
http://arsa.org/regulatory/customs/ (discusses US import of aviation articles)Don’t forget that the customs laws apply whether you’re mailing stuff to buyers or carrying it into the US with you.
There is private general aviation in Mexico. If you’re close to any airports that have it, you could stop by the terminal and ask the desk clerk if anyone would be interested or call any repair stations that are there. Back in my pre-internet picking days, besides selling at flea markets i would drive stuff around to places that might buy it.
05/23/2019 at 8:05 am in reply to: Seeking advice on college admissions / application process #62339Great article on private school money. A relative’s kids both went to Franklin & Marshall; basically paid nothing. It’s a feeder school for investment banking. Both kids started in it, sucked up the pain and made some money, and then bailed out and used their savings to start small businesses.
I sold an altimeter on eBay once. Easy peasy. Aviation Parts and Accessories is in eBay Motors. Currently has 211,828 listings.
05/22/2019 at 9:19 pm in reply to: Seeking advice on college admissions / application process #62323Some good comments here I would agree with. Our daughter is a rising junior at UMASS Amherst and our son a rising junior in high school, so we did it not too long ago and will be doing it again soon. But boys are different than girls….
There were a couple things about the process with our daughter that have stuck with me. We hired a local college admissions advisor so that our daughter would actually listen to advice she wouldn’t be getting from mom and dad (besides neither one of us had a clue, being many years from college and not personally having had the typical college experience). We hired the advisor by the hour, a la carte, and it was ridiculously cheap for the value she provided. She listened to our daughter’s back story and desires, reviewed her record, and came up with a list of schools she thought we ought to look closer at that were categorized in three tiers of selectivity – sure things, just about right, and reach schools. It was a good list – public and private, big and small, city and rural. The advisor had a good feel for the colleges’ personalities and strengths and weaknesses. She also answered questions about specifics that came up in the applications and what was needed for a strong essay. Overall the advisor was extremely helpful and I would definitely recommend that with any kid who’s not sure about what they want to do. (We probably gave our daughter too much leeway early on – we’re approaching our son a little differently.)
Our daughter initially had her heart set on a particular venerable small town private liberal arts college in New England in a beautiful setting and her secondary choices were similar. Yikes. Fortunately the advisor insisted that she look at and tour a variety, though, so I took her on a week-long trip to colleges in that area, getting official tours of eight and unofficial visits of two more. All different types and settings. The official tours especially were very helpful to both learn about the college and observe the types of kids who were touring. As a result of the tours, our daughter did not like those pretty little liberal arts colleges, after all. UMASS was way down on her list, until she got a tour and it became her first choice. So we found the tours to be key in the process.
Lastly, despite our best efforts our daughter procrastinated on her applications. As a result, she started hearing from friends and acquaintance who were celebrating their acceptances under various early admission programs before she had even applied anywhere. This injected a degree of panic and angst into the process for her that made her senior year much more trying for us. So in retrospect we should have insisted she at least decide on a couple sure-thing schools that she could live with and apply early based on her test scores and junior year grades. Having at least one acceptance would have done wonders for her attitude in further exploring her options.
Jay is right that the system is off the rails, though. It’s turned into quite a racket. And it really pains me that in the US, college has become the default and that effective vocational training has fallen by the wayside.
05/21/2019 at 9:20 am in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62174That “no resellers” thing is so annoying, and stupid. I have seen that in a couple independent thrifts. I guess it stems from some misplaced do-gooder sentiment that their purpose is to help people with low incomes buy things for cheap. Invariably, though, they probably don’t have any low income clientele because they are charging $2.99 for things you can buy new at Dollar Tree for $1, or charging $9.99 for things that are $5 new at Dollar General.
I am shipping something to France today and recalling this thread, I tried various shipping methods on the eBay shipping label page to see what options there were. It is a 1 lb 14 oz package and First Class International is about $20, Priority is about $38, and Priority Express is about $53. For all three of the options – including Express – the Signature Confirmation button was grayed out and it says that Delivery Confirmation is not available. Also I do not see an option to add Registered Mail to any of the shipping methods.
That is a good deal. Well, you can definitely sell stamps to get rid of them. They are in the top two of worldwide collectibles, to this day (the other is coins). If you get tired of looking at them and sticking 30 on a package you could list them in bits and pieces. Sellers do get over face value in smaller lots of older stamps. Or if they’re common and boring you can lot them up to sell so that 2 or three together in the lot add up to .55 and get close to face value, like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Postage-Love-Bird-Below-Face-50-each-52c-3c-Mint-Unused-/153353413051?_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137&nordt=true&rt=nc&orig_cvip=true -
AuthorPosts