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Looking over my sales numbers, after removing ebay and Amazon fees from the equation, I make about 35% of my annual income from Amazon (kind of scary, now that I look at it).
The ebay versus amazon percentages vary a lot from month to month, but that’s the overall bottom line for me for a year.
Congrats on quadrupling your sales without quadrupling the size of your store. That’s amazing. Thanks for sharing your tips. Great advice and fairly simple to follow.
I might suggest using the “eValuator” app rather than the eBay app. This app searches sold/completed items only. In addition to showing you sold items, it divides everything up between auction and buy it now and shows you the average price sold and the percentage of items that sold (indicating demand). You can also differentiate between new and used and also pick the most relevant category for your search. It is so much faster than the eBay app and has exactly the info I need as a seller. And it’s free. I look up almost everything using this app before I make a purchase.
For Android:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.koloch.evaluator.free&hl=enFor IOS:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whats-it-worth-on-ebay/id985182743?mt=8Amazon has a real problem with knockoff products, and gating off brands (by requiring extensive documentation and a large fee) is directed at eliminating the scammers. While that will probably reduce the knockoff problem, it also eliminates a lot of small, legitimate 3rd party sellers doing retail arbitrage. Amazon has also been taking steps to make it much easier for Chinese manufacturers to put their products directly on Amazon. This squeezes out the American middle men.
Amazon may have made it too easy for normal people to list products on their site. They’ve filled up the warehouses and are now scrambling to reduce all the junk people have sent in. I’m subscribed to a Facebook group (The Amazing Seller) with 40,000 members. In just this one group, thousands of people are desperately trying to find some under served niche on Amazon and send in “private label” Chinese products from Alibaba. Until recent rule changes, the whole “cult” of this group was based on the idea of slapping a label on a generic product from China, spending a fortune on pay-per-click advertising on Amazon, and then paying for a service to get a bunch of those lovely “I received this product at a discount for my honest opinion” reviews. Some people made a lot of money that way, but the fake reviews have definitely hurt Amazon as a company.
It really feels like a bubble with Amazon. Too many people trying to get rich in a hurry. I wish I would have got into Amazon maybe 10 years ago, when it really was easy money, but I think that ship has sailed. The rules change constantly and the system is set up in a way that sellers really have no recourse if your account or product gets flagged or suspended. Squeezing out 3rd party sellers is bound to increase prices. Combine that with a plethora of fake reviews, knockoff products, and cheap “private labels,” and eventually consumer trust for Amazon will sag. I think a lot of sellers are turning back to channels like eBay, as well.
That said, I’m still making decent money selling on Amazon, even as a “scavenger” style seller. I don’t feel especially secure in that income for the long run like I do with eBay, but I believe in staying diversified the best I can. For me, I’m going to stick with books on Amazon for the most part, although I’m going to be much pickier on what I send in.
Lately, when I list any vintage electronic item, I try to write my description in a way to almost scare people (idiots, mainly) off from buying it. For an old Smart Media memory card, for example, I will write something similar to this:
“This is an older memory card designed for older equipment manufactured circa 2004. It will not work with newer cameras/phones/etc. Please be sure this is the card you want before making this purchase.”
Or for an NES, I might write:
“This machine was built in the 1980s and was not designed for modern flat screen high definition TVs. It is built for the old style giant tube CRT TVs. It will not work with most newer televisions. Do not buy this unless you are sure it will work with the TV you own.”
I sell a decent amount of electronics and most of the time everything is fine. I think my descriptions usually scare off the grandma and grandpa / tech idiot buyers. Occasionally, I still do get an idiot buyer, but I make enough profit otherwise that I can afford to eat the return shipping cost a few times a year.
If it was advertised as Priority Mail in the listing, it sure as heck better be shipped via Priority Mail. Priority Mail takes 1 to 2 days on average. First Class is 1 to 3 days. Thrifty, I don’t see any problem with how you handled the situation. You even sent a nice message and requested a refund for the shipping difference. The seller deserved a negative feedback for brushing you off.
As a seller, I have never downgraded a customer to First Class who paid for Priority Mail. Occasionally, if I have some margin on the item, I’ll upgrade a customer to Priority Mail from either First Class or Parcel Select.
You should always strive to exceed customer expectations. You are risking a neutral or negative feedback (and future sales) over an extra profit of $4. That is not a mindset that results in long-term business success.
I sold a one of a kind Japanese woodblock print for $1500. Had $75 in it and it took over a year to sell.
The second best sale was for a lot of 20 Oral B Hummingbird battery powered dental flossers. They are a discontinued product. Picked up all of them for $20 at a garage sale. Put them on eBay for $55 each and the next day a reseller bought all of them for about $1100.
I decided to go ahead and ship the item to this buyer rather then attempt to cancel the sale.
I double boxed it and included a thank you note for good measure. Now, I’m crossing my fingers that all goes well.
I don’t do any true dumpster diving, but one time when I was out walking I did find a box of textbooks by the curb marked as free. Made about $200 on Amazon.
Another time I picked up an empty box for an Xbox One that was sitting by the trash. Sold it for $12 on eBay.
I would assume he’d be mad that I blocked him from buying it through his normal account, so he might retaliate.
Also, in my experience, if the buyer is asking for a refund before you even ship the item, that’s probably a person to avoid if possible. I just got a bad vibe from this situation.
Update: I called eBay again this evening. I used the magic words (“buyer’s remorse”) and after she reviewed the case for a few minutes, she agreed. The buyer will be required to pay return shipping. My faith in eBay has been restored.
Not entirely sure what happened before. I think when a buyer is pro-active and calls eBay, the reps have a tendency to cave in and give the buyer what they want. And I think the rep I called yesterday was 1)not very confident in her job and 2)really confused because it was a technical issue with the product. I kept my argument much simpler this time, quickly laying out the process of events and then saying I felt this was a clear case of buyer’s remorse.
Thanks everyone for the good advice.
For high dollar items, I have started taking them to Fed Ex to let a professional pack them. Then I print my own label at home to get the eBay discount. A large painting was only $20. Packing cost for a small TV VCR was $25. A smallish typewriter was $20.
For me, the time, energy, and frustration saved is worth it.
Glad you finally got it removed. You shouldn’t have to call 6 times, though. That’s a ridiculous waste of time for both you and eBay.
The brass part is decent quality, but the knife itself is definitely ornamental. I don’t think you could cut anything with it.
In Kansas City, we average around 15 estate sales every week in the metro area. I keep a list of the estate sale companies and write down which ones are horribly overpriced. The other day, I went to an estate sale that was charging $8 for a bottle of mouthwash, so they went on my “never again” list. A select few estate sale companies actually have competitive pricing, and I’ll hit those sales on day one.
Normally, I have the most luck at estate sales by looking for the categories the company has identified as junk. This varies from company to company. The basement usually has the best deals, in my opinion. I totally skip anything in the main room that they have established as “valuable.” Unless I have sold the exact item before, I almost always look everything up on my phone before I purchase it. I don’t like to waste money and it only takes a few seconds to search.
