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Haven’t listened to this week’s Podcast yet, but I wanted to comment on free shipping.
Jay and Ryanne, just my opinion, but I’d be surprised if any meaningful conclusions can be drawn from your experiment, no matter how long it runs. Since the subject is currently being discussed on the podcast this week, I’ll copy some of what I said in the freight thread a couple weeks ago.
The problem for a lot of us, not just for free shipping, but for any differences in listing methods, is coming up with meaningful results when we sell unique items, rather than either multiples of identical items, or items that are competing apples to apples with other sellers.
Despite the majority falling into one general category (CSA), my inventory is always changing and my sales swing so wildly from week to week that there’s just no way to come up with valid results from a basic experiment like rolling the cost of shipping into the item cost.
During any discussion of listing practices with people who carry a variety of items, I generally dismiss 90% of the reports that contend “I (* fill in the blank) and haven’t noticed any difference in sales”.
*started free shipping
*stopped free shipping
*started including measurements
*stopped measuring
*spend a lot of time on my photos
*stopped editing photos
*use a mannequin
*throw stuff on the floor12/11-12/17/2016
Approximate # of Items in Store: 285
# of Items Sold: 22
Average Cost of Items Sold: $7.73
Total Sales: $1,352.22
Highest Price Sold: $175 Fur Jacket
Average Price Sold: $61.46
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $4.00
Number of items listed this week: 25If only it could be winter in Ebayland, but not outside my window, all year long. LOL. Sold a mix of sweaters, coats and boots this week. Sales remained brisk and I continued to list from my backlog of inventory on hand. Except for a few that are air drying right now, all my sweaters are listed. Finished coats a while ago. Also tackled and finished ski pants this week (HATE listing those). The only exclusively winter stuff I have left to list is 5-7 winter scarves, which I’ll probably work on today.
I love this picture! Joyful anticipation. We have a copper-colored short-hair collie mix (at least that’s what they told us at the shelter). We adopted her when she was a year old and she’s coming up on 13 in January. Except for the coloring, her face looks just like your collies.
Thanks for trying this and a reporting back on your experiment. Like Jay said, you need apples to apples data to make a judgement.
Can’t wait to hear more reports.
I have a Uline H-150 that someone gave me several years ago and it’s still going strong. It’s night and day from the old one I had. You can find them pretty cheap on Ebay.
Thanks. About 90% pre-owned clothing, shoes and accessories. Men’s and women’s with a smattering of vintage. The other 10% is random stuff. The shirt was a vintage Pendleton.
12/4-12/10/2016
Approximate # of Items in Store: 285
# of Items Sold: 25
Average Cost of Items Sold: $6.64
Total Sales: $1,043.03
Highest Price Sold: $90 – Shirt
Average Price Sold: $41.72
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $15.94
Number of items listed this week: 39Happy with the total. Not my highest week dollar-wise, but I don’t think I’ve ever sold 25 things in one week before, so that was fun. Also, I’m a REALLY slow lister, so getting 39 new listings up is a fairly major accomplishment for moi.
Okay, I’m back and did a little research. The Inkfrog Classic plan isn’t open to new registrants anymore as they’re trying to phase it out at some point, so the only thing now available is Inkfrog Open.
The Inkfrog Open Professional plan ($18 month) limits you to 1,500 listings and two store ID’s. Jay, since you guys have so many listings, you’d need to do the unlimited plan ($29 month) which gives you an unlimited number of listings and an unlimited number of stores. It also offers “Staff Accounts”, which looks like what you’d use for employees.
After researching, it looks like Inkfrog would definitely be able to handle combining both your store listings into one store, although you’d have to bulk end all of your listings on the second store before being able to bulk relaunch them under the new ID. There’s a global tool (similar to Ebay’s bulk listing) and one of the tool’s options is “Ebay ID”.
The Inkfrog subscription is month to month, so if you haven’t come up with another method to combine your stores, it might be worthwhile to pay the $29 for one month, even if it’s solely for the purpose of combining all your listings into one store, though there’d be a learning curve, of course. I’d be happy to help Ryanne any way I can, although since I’m still using Classic, I can’t guarantee that I’d have all the answers. Maybe another one of your listeners is already an Inkfrog Open user.
On the rare occasion when I’ve had an issue with Inkfrog, their email customer service has been knowledgeable and quick to respond. There’s also a help forum. There is no phone support, though.
Yes, you can list in different stores from one account. I actually thought about suggesting that you guys look into this when Ryanne was discussing trying to consolidate your two stores into one without redoing all the listings, but I’m not positive that it would do what you needed it to do. I have to head out right now, but when I return I can give some more information on how I think it would work in that situation.
No first-hand knowledge regarding your second question, although I read here recently that it worked for that.
Like mayberrymom said, live and learn. We’ve all been there.
Did she actually tell you the necklace was authentic?
Good strategy! Glad it’s working for you.
When I research pricing, I sort completeds by highest price first and, unless there’s a reason that my item isn’t as good as the higher priced ones, I price right up there at the high end. I have plenty of storage space and very little invested in my iventory, so I don’t feel pressured to turn things over quickly.
How bizarre!
Like Ryanne suggested, I’d stop taking his calls.
As far as I know, there’s no way for you to initiate a return on his behalf.
I use Inkfrog. I’ve been with them forever, so I’m grandfathered into a plan that’s only $10 a month. Not even sure what the going rate is currently. They have two tiers and I’m in the Inkfrog Classic one. It’s been so long since I listed through Ebay that I can’t comment on whether or not it’s markedly easier to do a listing. What I love about it is that I can have an unlimited number of listing “profiles” with pre-filled information. I have one for just about every category I list in. Also, if you save your listing to the “library” after launching, it’s saved forever. I have library folders for each year. You can also stow listings in a library folder to bring out seasonally. Right now, all my spring/summer listings that didn’t sell this past season are stored to easily launch next spring.
You can also list with multiple ID’s on the same account. I have another ID that I use to list stuff that I personally owned and didn’t buy for resale as well as the few items I list here and there for friends. Basically, stuff that doesn’t need to be included in my income for taxes.
