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Everytime I refresh my listings, I get inundated with people who want something shipped, but because they were hacked one time they can’t pay via facebook marketplace checkout and instead want to pay with Zelle.
I thought I’d give a final follow up on this topic I started.
After my annual Shopify plan came up for renewal, I decided to shut it down. For one, Shopify upped their prices fairly significantly. Mainly, though, I just wasn’t getting nearly enough in sales to bother with the hassle (I was lucky if I got 1 sale a month total between the Shopify Store itself and the integrations with Google Shopping and Facebook Marketplace). With the higher price to renew, I likely would have lost money on it overall most months and I didn’t see it growing over time.
I never could get Facebook Marketplace to consistently show my listings in Marketplace search, despite going back and forth with Meta’s horrendous tech support for months (they did fix it briefly, but the problem came back). I’m much happier to be done trying to force that Shopify/Facebook Marketplace integration to work properly.
Moving on, I’ve put an emphasis on my personal Facebook Marketplace to try to get some additional sales. Without a way to directly integrate with eBay or Sixbit, I’m either adding each item manually or using the bulk upload spreadsheet (where you can do 50 items at a time). I have about 300 items listed on there now. Despite offering shipping on many of my items, I’ve only had 1 sale that I actually shipped to someone over the last couple months of this experiment. I just don’t think people really shop for used items with shipping on Facebook. However, I’ve had pretty good luck with local pickup. It’s a bit of a pain to meet up with people, but I am selling at least a couple items per week. I’ve moved some items that had been sitting in my eBay store unsold for years (mostly larger stuff) for around the same price (if not more) than I was asking on eBay.
I’m now experimenting with joining different Facebook buy sell trade groups for various kinds of collectors and posting my items to those groups. It’s kind of like free targeted advertising, although I haven’t sold anything so far (mostly, the collectors just crow on about how my prices are too high).
Just as a quick update, Seller Ledger now supports Etsy. The beta period is also now over and they are requiring users to pay to use the service. It’s $100/year for 250 transactions per month.
This week I had a couple high priced sales and then some interesting smaller items.
This Polaroid camera was the sale of the week. It took about a year to move, but finally sold for $725. I found it at an estate sale and got it for practically nothing. I guess they didn’t bother to look it up.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285045074086?hash=item425e02a8a6:g:A04AAOSwrZpjeU00
I also sold this brand new VCR for $250. This was found at the local outdoor flea market for a really good deal.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285045057311?epid=1203389352&hash=item425e02671f:g:c10AAOSwkJ1jeVIf
On the smaller, but fun side of sales, I had a couple interesting items move that week.
This button for New England Telephone sold within a few days for $20 with free shipping
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275517656761?hash=item402621ceb9:g:XE4AAOSwE21jW0dP
I sold some vintage wrapping paper from the 70s for $20. It took maybe a month to sell.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275539961052?hash=item40277624dc:g:7CUAAOSwbkRjclr8
On the other end of the spectrum, I finally sold these vintage photo albums that had lots of pics of camping and girl scouts from the 60s. This took 3 or 4 years to sell. I had finally lowered the price and they sold for $30.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275549052589?hash=item402800dead:g:xyQAAOSwUixjekf8
I see you already marked down the Dept 56 snow village. Do you normally discount things you just listed?
That mug took about 3 months to sell, which is pretty fast for that type of item in my experience. Some can take years to sell (if ever). Pricing for old plastic mugs is a bit tricky. It’s partly based on age, partly based on perceived brand equity, but also based on the uniqueness of it. I love Casey’s (especially the pizza), so I bet other people do, too. And that mug was VERY 90s. Most of my plastic mugs are in the $15 to $45 range.
Yeah, that scan is definitely the same book edition. Although mine is in way better condition than the one they used for their source.
Thanks for finding a comp. My biggest fear is that I would sell it for $300 and then find out later it was actually worth $3000 or something. That would be really depressing.
eBay Global Shipping has a warehouse in Kansas? I live in Kansas and they always have my shipments go to a GSP warehouse in Kentucky. Weird.
I sold a huge vintage gold starburst Syroco clock for $150. It was a real pain to pack, but it definitely qualifies as interesting. I don’t think I’d want it hanging in my house, but to each their own.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275546976862?hash=item4027e1325e:g:P~AAAOSwt0djeVPz
I sold a vintage Cosmo Time Talker talking alarm clock. I had been sitting on it for years and I finally took an offer of $105.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275546792671?hash=item4027de62df:g:Z70AAOSwcXFjeUeM
This vintage gas station mug from Casey’s sold for $40. I love selling weird items like this.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/285045470013?hash=item425e08b33d:g:BaIAAOSwCUljeVSb
I did some more research and possibly this is a 1936 cake plate, which was the first year the company existed. These were not marked.
https://www.happyheidi.com/antiques/Fiesta_Gallery/fiestaware_cake_plate.shtml
I clicked on the top 20 or so insanely-high-priced corningware listings and the vast majority were either relisted or entirely removed from eBay. Maybe someone is trying to artificially inflate the market?
Shopify has free integration with Facebook Marketplace (which I am doing). FYI: Facebook Marketplace has really sucked for me. Maybe if I ran paid advertising it would be good, but it’s pretty pathetic sales so far with just organic traffic.
And I think Amazon only works with Sixbt if you are “grandfathered in.”
But yeah, it doesn’t have those other sites you mentioned, unless you could find a Shopify integration tool.
Still, you could probably get your whole eBay store on Etsy in a day rather than a year.
If you are cross-listing to Etsy, you should look into SixBit. It is pricier than List Perfectly, but it’s a real time saver. Not only does it make cross-listing (relatively) pain free, it also manages your inventory. When something sells on one platform, it is automatically removed from your other platforms. And you can use it to track the location of each item in your inventory and print a pick list when you are getting ready to ship out. It’s so nice to know exactly where to find each item. SixBit has a learning curve, but once you figure it out, it is an amazing piece of software. I upgraded to the highest functionality plan, so I now sell on eBay, Etsy, and Shopify. If you are interested, let me know and I’ll give you my referral code.
After what had been a very slow year for sales, this last week sales were crazy. I had one sale for $1400, so that made up a big portion of this. It was for some new industrial AC drive motor (I’m honestly not sure what it is used for). Then I sold a lot of other random items, many of them over $100.
Nov. 13 – 19, 2022
(sales numbers include shipping)Total Items in eBay Store: ~2,180
eBay Sales: $2,900
eBay Orders: 13Total Items in Etsy Store: ~1,170
Etsy Sales: $366
Etsy Orders: 7Total Facebook Items in Shop: ~1,900
Facebook Sales: $100
Facebook Orders: 2Total Sales All Channels: $3,366
Cost of Items Sold (rough guess): $260
Shipping Cost: $152
Profit Before Fees: $3097
