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It should be in your email and ebay inbox. Title will be “Your eBay seller protections monthly summary” It’s a fairly new thing.
Week Dec 29, 2019 – Jan 4, 2020
Items in store: 4436 Listings for 7317 Items
Items Sold: 104 transactions for 124 Items
Gross Sales: $7130.04
Highest Price Sold: $160 John Varvatos Suit
Lowest Price Sold: $12….pocket square
Average Sale Price: $57.50
Cost of Goods Sold $398, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1305
Number of new items listed this week: 0, took the week off to run end of year numbers and determine inventory values for taxes.
$$ spent on new inventory this week $0
International Sales, 28%
Repeat Customers 13I use List Perfectly for a few weeks now. I was drawn to it because it was created by/for a woman who suffers with arthritis and back pain, which I struggle with on a daily basis, and am always looking to find ways to make my process easier.
I do not use the listing tool to create listings at this point, but only have used their cross-posting extension on google chrome. It’s very easy to use, but you do have to edit the title and description at times due to character limitations. If you are already putting your best keywords in the first 55 characters of your ebay title, it should not be an issue. (BTW, you should be putting the most important keywords in your first 55 characters on ebay, since that is all that is shown when the buyers is searching in gallery mode.)
For my cross posting endeavor, I have been moving some of my non-consignment items to poshmark to try to expand my audience. It can be a pain because Poshmark requires square photos, and not all my ebay pics are square. So, I have been specifically targeting items that I know have square photos. The process is super simple once the chrome extension is installed. Simply log onto both sites. The extension adds crossposting buttons next to each active listing, click the button on the listing site, select the site you want it cross-posted to, and the extension automatically pre-fills as much of the listing as it can. Make a few adjustments and post the listing. Typically takes me less than a minute per listing.
Their site does allow a limited number of managed listings with the listing creation tool. Here, you can create the listing, see how the title will look on each platform, set all your specifics and description. Then click one button to send to all your desired platforms.
The basic subscription is $29.99/ month. If you are just using it to cross post existing listings, this is the one you want. If you want to create listings and have some inventory management, go for a higher subscription. So far I am a big fan.
Side note: I have not made any sales on poshmark, yet. But I am sure they will come once I can build my follower base up a bit. It’s a lot of work on the front end with all the silly sharing and stuff. I was able to cross-post about 90 items in a couple hours, while watching netflix in my evening down-time.
Since I am only cross posting from ebay to poshmark from existing listings, inventory management is not too bad. When I make the cross posting, I add “POSH” to the end of my ebay sku number to indicate it is also on Poshmark. When an item sells on ebay with the POSH SKU, I know to end it on poshmark. And since every item on poshmark is already on ebay, I know to end it on ebay when it sells on poshmark.
Here is the page about ebay send.
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/shipping/ebay-send.html#m22_tb_a1__3
A few things I hadn’t noticed before
1. You still ship to a US warehouse where the package is measured/weighed and verified
2. You are billed for the shipping later, on your ebay invoice.
3. The service includes $100 insurance.If you are referring to the classic Santana knits, those are typically a blend that is mostly wool content, usually mixed with rayon, so keep that in mind. I would typically list as is or pay to have something like this dry-cleaned, assuming you have a local dry-cleaner you can trust.
My mother has been the church/christian school secretary for 40+ years at the church/school which I attended. They were involved in one of these cost sharing programs for several years, until several members were left high and dry on their coverage. Now they participate in a more conventional insurance program.
A and C don’t really sound like anything new when it comes to independent contractors (IC), in terms of whether they need to be on payroll or not.
However, B may become an issue for resellers who outsource some of their processes (photos, measurements, listing creation). Sounds like they may now be unable to classify that third party help as an IC, and would need to pay them a wage/salary with all the associated tax implications.
As for the ebay seller/ebay corp. relationship, thats a nonissue.
A. Though there are rules on the platform, we are free to list however we like.
B. Ebay corp is not in the reselling business, they simply provide a platform as a service.
C. Ebay sellers a diverse group, some employed, some self-employed, some with multiple employment. If ebay wanted me to do some platform coding….that would be a different story.Additionally, Ebay doesn’t pay us, we pay them.
Thanks! Yeah, some helpers would be nice for sure. My wife has been helping me for the last year or so. She only bags and tags stuff for inventory after I do everything else, but it sure does save me a bunch of time. When school starts, I’m not sure if she will have time to keep doing that or not. I would love to get a helper in here, but finding a reliable person that I would feel comfortable welcoming into my home is the tough part……and I’m just so darn particular about my processes. I have two lines out to possible part time helpers, but it’s really only been casual conversation at this point, maybe one of them will turn into something at least semi regular.
I used to get down to that area at least monthly until 2017 when the pain came. It was usually about a 17 hour day. A two hour drive to the first store for opening, an all day thrift adventure with maybe 16-18 stops until closing time, then a three hour drive home. I just can’t do it like that anymore. Being down there weekly will help me split up the area and allow me to expand a little as well. It should be interesting. I’ve been planning this change since May, and am quite excited to get back out to the racks. If we do end up getting a second home down there, I would able to be there 2 days a week, which could end up being even more rewarding.
I did actually get a 3 day listing suspension for a Fireman’s jacket that was illegal to sell in France. Would never have happened if the warning messages had come through in the “High Priority” section of ebay messages. They just got swallowed up by the scores of offer/counteroffer messages I receive a day, so I never saw them. Fortunately, It didn’t really affect me though, since I list with a third party software. I just worked on my drafts for 3 days and released them when the listing freeze was lifted.
Ideally we would like to be as close as possible, obviously….but no more than 20 minutes commute. The thing is, the stuff that comes on the market gets snatched up so quickly. We are looking for something affordable, but also that doesn’t need much more than a coat of paint. There are lots of deals out there for fixer-uppers, but I just don’t have that kind of time, or energy at this point in the game. Heck, we still have two unfinished rooms in our house we’ve lived in for 15 years.
Her school is in the Laurel MD Area, my sourcing endeavors would be in the DC/NOVA area, which has always been my best source…..other than trips to Long Island NY. Neither of which I have been able to do as of late, due to my back issues and the long drive.
Yes, we will likely be looking for a very, very small, pet-friendly Condo to buy. That seems to be the best option, and in the long run we could rent it to future like-minded students of the same graduate program.
WebInterpret fees is basically $30/month plus 5% commission on all sales that occur through their service.
Shew, what a year. I hit my Q4 goal of $1K/day Gross Sales ending with just about $93K over 92 days…..need to keep that momentum up for a few years to offset my wife’s grad school. Big changes this year. Her school starts on Monday, it’s down in the DC area. We plan to commute for a bit first, but I imagine that will wear off quickly and she will be on board with my plan to purchase a small second home closer to the action. I plan to go down with her once a week to source. Will be nice, as I didn’t get out for as much thrifting as I like the past couple years since I injured my back, and the local shops just don’t have a lot of great stuff.
Here’s how the year looked, there may be a few loose expenses that didn’t get added, but only a few. Sales tax numbers seem way off, will have to wait for the paypal 1099K to square all that up I guess.
Income
$257,168.47 Sales
$104.56 Sales Tax Collected (No way this number is correct)
$28,419.86 Shipping Income
-$15,445.95 Returns
———————
$270,246.94 Total IncomeExpenses
$260.00 Accounting Fees
$17.95 Advertising
$8,453.00 Charitable Donations
$41,829.82 Consignment Payout
$30,444.59 Ebay Fees
$50.00 Gifts
$41,276.07 Inventory Cost
$1,703.00 Meals & Entertainment
$4,559.19 Mileage
$593.68 Office Supplies
$1,916.92 Other Expenses
$8,968.91 Paypal Fees
$59.09 Sales Tax Submitted (Also doesn’t seem right)
$36,734.63 Shipping Costs
$1,666.45 Supplies
$8.50 Travel (wow, I didn’t do a single out of town thrift trip)
$4,044.00 Utilities
$2,646.52 Web Interpret Fees
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$185,232.32 Total Expenses—————————
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$85,018.16 Net Profit….you had to take your 35mm film to Walmart to get your photos put on a CD, so you could take it to the public library to upload them to ebay, because your linux computer only had dial up and was too slow and incompatible with everything.
Coincidentally the first item I sold was a digital camera. lol
Week Dec 15 – Dec 21, 2019
Items in store: 4573 Listings for 7495 Items
Items Sold: 130 transactions for 144 Items
Gross Sales: $8771.53
Highest Price Sold: $775 Vintage 100% Vicuña Coat…though it seems it will likely go unpaid, which is fine because the price is a significantly lower than I wanted to get.
Lowest Price Sold: $2.49….shoelaces
Average Sale Price: $60.91
Cost of Goods Sold $510, Plus consignment payout, roughly $1200
Number of new items listed this week: 55
$$ spent on new inventory this week $7
International Sales, 20%
Repeat Customers 8Didn’t get as much listed this week, but that is to be expected with numerous birthdays and holiday gatherings.
Coming up on 15 years of consistent ebay selling. I’ve seen so many changes during that span. Some days things get a little monotonous, but I have the freedom to just go do something else to clear my head. Kayaking, gardening, frisbee with the dog, hiking, thrifting, or whatever my heart desires.
As ebay sellers it always hard to pinpoint what changes have the biggest affect on sales. Markets/trends constantly change, sourcing success goes up and down, devoted listing time may vary month to month, inventory costs/thrift prices may fluctuate, seller status, promotions, seasonality…..so many variables it’s nearly impossible to track.
We hired an accountant a few months ago, and he asked what I was projecting for my end of the year numbers. Uh…is “I don’t know” ok?
