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Here’s an update:
I signed up for Sixbit and began cross-posting on Etsy on 10/5. On 10/22 I finally made my first sale. Didn’t sell anything else on Etsy in October, but by November things picked up and by the end of the month, Etsy accounted for 13% of my revenue and about the same for my expenses. So far for December, Etsy has accounted for 11% of revenue and 13% of expenses. I have 409 listings on Etsy now, compared to 1655 on eBay (roughly 25% of my inventory).
In total to date, I’ve now made 21 sales on Etsy for about $1600 in revenue. Of course, I had one sale for about $500 total with shipping, so that did make a significant portion of my total sales and may skew things a bit.
As far as the time I’ve spent listing on Etsy, once I got used to Sixbit and learned some of the tricks (such as bulk changing some of the fields for similar items), it’s really pretty quick. You can automatically bring over the photos, title, and description, as well as quantity to list and price from eBay. Maybe takes a minute or less per listing. Sometimes it might take up to 3 minutes if I try to add all the tags they allow.
While the final value type fees on Etsy are actually a bit lower than eBay (about 8% on Etsy), they also advertise on Google Shopping, Bing, etc, and if it sells through one of those channels, they charge an additional 15% fee (so far, 6 of the 21 items I have sold have been via external ads).
To account for this, I usually up my prices at least 15%, but on a few occasions I’ve sold items on Etsy for significantly more than eBay. For example, I had a hat that was sitting on eBay for a couple years that I had at $9.99, but listed on Etsy for $29.99 and it sold for that price. Seems like buyers on that site are generally willing to pay more. I’m still experimenting with different categories to see what generally will and won’t sell on Etsy versus eBay. I’m sure some of the items I sold on Etsy would have also sold on eBay, but a good portion of my Etsy sales were items that have been sitting on eBay for a year or more.
Overall, I think the experiment has been a success thus far. I was really only expecting to make enough profit on Etsy to cover the $100/month Sixbit fee, but so far it has greatly exceeded my expectations. Now I’m curious to see if the Etsy will totally die after the holidays or if my sales stay steady.
Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the sticker at the time and can’t read it in the photos.
I buy bubble wrap / boxes / kraft paper / packing peanuts from a local packaging supply company. I imagine if you travel to your nearest metro area, you can find one of these companies and stock up. Usually cheaper since you can get it in bulk and don’t have to pay for shipping. If you don’t have room to buy bubble in bulk, it’s hard to beat Sam’s Club prices (although it’s generally lower quality than the stuff I buy from my local packaging supply company).
If anyone else is in the Kansas City area, I can highly recommend Alta Pak Midwest. It’s family owned, good prices, and the employees are all really nice.
After posting this, I got my first sale last night. Hopefully it’s the start of an additional viable income stream.
If it’s a vintage John Deere hat, I doubt you will run into any VERO problems. I’ve sold lots of John Deere hats (usually for specific dealers) and never had any of them flagged. I’ve never measured any of my hats at all. The snapback allows the user to adjust it.
I ship any hat at $40 or less via First Class. Over that amount and I go Priority. Either way, I use Scotty Stuffers for this purpose. Gives the protection of a box but goes in an envelope. These are designed to be the maximum size box you can use in a Priority Padded Flat Rate Envelope, but they also fit the large size eBay envelopes to go First Class. https://www.bubblefast.com/store/pc/50-Scotty-Stuffers-font-size-1-sup-TM-sup-font-br-9-x-5-5-x-3-5-p1633.htm
I have encountered the same issue multiple times in regards to GSP. The eBay reps are clueless and seem to always suggest removing GSP as the solution to the problem. It’s not. You just need to list in a different category. This has worked every time for me at least.
About 5 years ago, I went to a family-run estate sale and they had about 250 brand new packages of girl’s bobby socks from K-Mart from the 1980s (I think).Each package contains 8-pairs of these old white children’s socks. I have no idea why this old lady had hoarded so many of these socks. A very weird find. Got the whole lot of it for $30. Still (slowly) selling them 5 years later, although getting close to the end finally.
Now that your hours have been cut at your job, use that extra time for your online reselling business and see how it goes. Keep that steady income flowing in the meantime, as you’ll probably need it. Pay off any debt you owe (especially credit card debt and car loans), and build up a large reserve of cash. Having 3 to 6 months expenses in savings would make a full-time reselling transition much less stressful. If your current employer sucks that bad, though, certainly find a different part-time job. In any case, don’t jump into full time reselling expecting it to pay your bills within a month or two.
I had a somewhat similar situation about 5 years ago when my full time temp job was cut to 24 hours/week. Rather than get another job, I stayed at the temp job and put all the extra time into eBay. It’s worked out well for me. I basically still can work 40 hours many weeks on eBay, but also maintain the steady income from my other part-time job. I could live off my eBay income, but some months would be pretty tight and I don’t like that stress. Plus, it’s nice to have the social interaction of my part-time job, as reselling often can be isolating.
Surprisingly, the buyer left positive feedback (generic, but positive). Still not selling to them ever again, but maybe they didn’t have ill intentions at least.
Would Amazon give a refund on an unauthorized return months after the fact?
The person just sent you a gift. Ignore/block them and sell the item again.
Now that eBay has the background removal tool, every photo can look like a stock photo. I’ve had at least one buyer message me thinking my actual photo was stock photography. Are you arguing that small sellers should take worse pictures to stand out more from large pro sellers?
Here’s my idea: eBay should include a filter button on the search bar for “small business seller.” The search results would then filter out any seller with more than 5,000 transactions in the past year.
I chatted with eBay customer service and they told me to decline the return. Then I guess the rep did something so the buyer could not leave feedback. It wasn’t entirely clear, but that was my impression.
It is kind of buried trying to find it though.
That pretty much sums up nearly every useful feature on eBay’s website.
A repricer could be disastrous for oddball vintage stuff without a UPC (assuming it is even compatible with non-upc items). How would it determine which items to compare? For example, let’s say you have an antique Victrola phonograph. Someone else is selling a modern “Victrola” branded phonograph. Would the repricer see these as equivalent items?
