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Never had a problem shipping perfume first class. Just make sure to bubble wrap it and seal it in a bag to prevent leakage.
This photo is further proof in my argument that all artists should either learn to sign legibly or sign and then print their name underneath. 99.9% of artists will never be famous enough that people will recognize those squiggly lines they call a signature. If you don’t sign your work legibly, you are condemning your art to anonymity for the ages.
I’ll second the nomination for Adobe Lightroom. It is fairly simple to use, has great features, and is really reliable. I’ve never found a free program that can hold a candle to it. In my estimation, at $10 a month, it pays for itself due to increased productivity and potentially increased sales. Plus, you get access to Photoshop, which is also an amazing program if you know how to use it.
I’ve sold a number of Betamax VCRS. Other than the tape type used, they are really no different than VHS VCRs. You’ll just need a tape to test it. Play. Rewind. Fast Forward.
If you do go on eBay to buy a tester tape, I’d recommend getting 2 or 3 in a lot. That way if a VCR eats one of the tapes, you’ll still have another for the next time you find a Betamax.
Considering the age of the machines, they are typically pretty reliable. Unlike latter day VHS VCRs, the typical Betamax player is built like a tank. They usually retailed for over $1000s back in the 1980s, so they were designed to last.
I received this message from a potential customer today about a package of 36 vintage (made in USA) Berol colored pencils. I have them listed for $80.
“why are they so high.. can get 50 crayola for 7 dollars.. i would like to put them to use but not for super high price.. if you are selling them as antique i understand.. someone might collect pencils.. otherwise. can you sell them for 6 total.. these are most likely low end pencils but i would like to try them. been trying all the lower end ones i can get”
Granted, my price is pretty high, but I’m always amused by people who try to convince me to sell an item at less than 10% of my asking price.
I’ve had a buyer mistakenly write a positive feedback when he obviously meant to give me a negative. It was a long, angry complaint that cut off mid sentence once he hit the word limit. I wonder how many paragraphs he typed, oblivious that his rant would never be seen?
I try to be creative in the auto feedback I leave for buyers, but sometimes it leads to confusion.
“Thank you, but your princess is in another castle.”
Someone who had never played Mario Bros sent me a frantic message after that one. They thought that feedback meant I was going to send the item to a different address than the one they provided.
Quick word of advice: If it is past the return period, DO NOT decline the return. Call eBay and ask to have the return closed out. This way it blocks any feedback from the buyer. I learned the hard way. I declined a return request that was past the 30 day limit and the buyer immediately left negative feedback. Ebay has repeatedly refused to remove it.
Update: The buyer left positive feedback. I guess I was worried about nothing.
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.
