Thanks to Steve Schultz again this week for the guest video! Some great sales including a pair of classic Vintage Doc Martens, made in England, which you should always look out for in your scavenging.
Scavenger Life Episode 270: Self-Doubt and the eBay Life
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Anyone that runs a business of any type or size deals with self doubt. When you’re the boss, no one tells you if you’re making the right choice or the wrong choice. Maybe the next decision will ruin everything! Maybe it’s better to do nothing? Who knows!
And if you’re just starting your eBay business, it truly is a leap of
faith. Often you must list several hundred items before you see if
you’ve scavenged the right items and priced them appropriately. The big mistake is to only list a couple items and then judge your success on whether those two or three items sell quickly.
Even though we’ve successfully sold on eBay since 2008, self-doubt still creeps into our eBay business from time to time. Usually this happens when sales are quiet, or when we get a series of unexpected returns. Luckily we have each other to talk through these times. We know that we must look at our numbers over the entire year, and not judge our success on any one particular slow week. We listen to the experience other sellers and research (and more research) to make sure our methods are still reliable. The worst thing we can do is get paralyzed. Having fun and constantly experimenting is our cure for self-doubt.
These are the links we mentioned in this podcast-
- eBay has a new podcast called Open for Business
. It’s hosted and produced by a cool, independent podcast company called Gimlet.
- eBay has posted recordings from sessions at the recent eBay Open
event in Las Vegas. It’s free, but you have to sign up to watch. Maybe they’re also on Youtube.
Hope you guys had a good week!
Our Store Week July 31-August 6, 2016
- Store #1
- Total Items in Store: 3974
- Items Sold: 22
- Cost of Items Sold: $61
- Total Sales: $745.87
- Highest Price Sold: $125 (vintage painting)
- Average Price Sold: $33.90
- Returns: 0
- Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $250
- Number of items listed this week: 70
- Amazon FBA Store
- Number of items sold: 12
- Amazon total sales: $241.36
- Amazon FBA Fees: $104.03
- COGS (shipment to FBA included): $15
- Net profit after COGS: $122.33
- Sold 1 items for $25
- Store #2
- Total Items in Store: 1112
- Items Sold: 11
- Cost of Items Sold: $13
- Total Sales: $220.85
- Highest Price Sold: $25 (five items at this price)
- Average Price Sold: $20.07
- Returns: 0
- Number of items listed this week: 0
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Bonanza:
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What Sells On eBay: Steven Schultz Guest Edition
Nice sales courtesy of Steve Schultz! Check out what vintage mailboxes go for. We always pick those up and they sell well.
Scavenger Life Episode 269: Being a Scavenger is Being an Opportunist
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We recently asked listeners to share their “manifestos” on the blog so sellers could share the different strategies they use to run their eBay stores. You can scroll through them in the comment section here.
Lots of great ideas were shared, but we especially loved what Tim Snoper shared. He said that being a scavenger is all about being an “opportunist”. To us, this means setting up your lifestyle so you can run into the great finds that are always out there if you look for them. It’s about creating your own luck. This can mean running a full-time eBay store so you have time to always be scavenging when you’re out of the house. We’ve found amazing items at random yard sales that we’ve just happened to drive by because we had the freedom of our time. We also love that we can go to any auction we want to because it’s our job.
Or it can mean making sure you visit thrift stores on your lunch break. A worker at your local thrift store could be placing an extremely valuable item on the shelf right now! Just making time to stop in and check to see if there’s anything new each day is a great way to improve your chances to find good items.
Here are the links we mentioned in the podcast:
–Pinterest is starting a new program for “buyable pins“. It’s unclear who will be able to sell items, but it’s smart.
–The last factory on the planet that makes VCR’s has closed down. To us, this means it’d be smart to start buying up any VCR you see for cheap. It’s not uncommon to see them for $1 at yard sales. If you have the storage, who knows when they’ll start having value since they’ll never be made again.
–eBay updated their mobile phone app on iPhone and Android. Has anyone used it yet? Worth updating?
–One of our listeners, MyCottage, said some sellers can created “codeless coupons” to send to select groups of people. Never used this feature before, but might be cool.
Hope you guys had a good week.
Our Store Week July 24-30, 2016
- Store #1
- Total Items in Store: 3911
- Items Sold: 20
- Cost of Items Sold: $375
- Total Sales: $1,200.87
- Highest Price Sold: $500 (Autographed photo)
- Average Price Sold: $60.04
- Returns: 0
- Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $30
- Number of items listed this week: 50
- Amazon FBA Store
- Number of items sold: 10
- Amazon total sales: $323.31
- Amazon FBA Fees: $75.58
- COGS (shipment to FBA included): $20
- Net profit after COGS: $227.73
- Store #2
- Total Items in Store: 1128
- Items Sold: 9
- Cost of Items Sold: $32
- Total Sales: $361.45
- Highest Price Sold: $100 (Vintage wool prayer rug)
- Average Price Sold: $40.16
- Returns: 0
- Number of items listed this week: 0
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What Sells On eBay: Steven Schultz Guest Edition
Steve had some unique sales this week, thanks for sharing. Check out vintage slide rules like the one Steve sold and how much they go for! Amazing.
We encourage you to post your own “what sold” video in the comments too.
Scavenger Life Episode 268: Can Struggling Artists Fund Their Art with an eBay Store?
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Ryanne’s sister visited us this weekend from Boston, so we’re enjoying our town like tourists again. Swimming at the lake, watching a movie at the theater, grilling, hanging out with friends. Instead of our normal “what happened this week”, we’re posting a recent conversation we had with Deric, who’s a comedian and scavenger in upstate New York.
We’ve been trying to find someone who funds their art through their eBay store. Like an actor, filmmaker, dancer or writer. Instead of working for low pay in restaurant or temp jobs, we imagine that a struggling artist would make more money and have more flexibility scavenging and selling online. An actor could go on auditions anytime she wants and just work on his eBay store in her downtime.
Deric now has a wife and young daughter, so he’s taken on a full-time job and just sells on eBay in his spare time. But he still does stand-up comedy and we imagine together what his life would have been like if he sold on eBay in his early days of comedy. He described how he does a lot of scavenging in between comedy gigs when traveling. We also talk about how he presently juggles everything while running his store. And instead of working with his wife on eBay, they both run their own separate stores since they each have different specialties.
You can find Deric at these fine spots. he says he’ll answer any questions in the comments below.
- eBay store
- And check out a 30-minute comedy set on Youtube that he did. Be warned that this video is NOT safe for work.
We had a much better sales this week. We’ll post our numbers in the comments. Hope things are good for you! Christmas is just five months away!
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What Sells On eBay: Steven Schultz Guest Edition
Thanks Steven for sharing your cool sales! Check out how well Banker’s Lamps can sell for if you find the right kind.
Scavenger Life Episode 267: Updates on Our Adventures in eBay Search
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This week we wanted to clarify a bunch of ideas we introduced on the last podcast where we discussed how we were re-thinking our listing formats to better show up in eBay’s search. It definitely sparked a lot of conversations, competing interpretations, and pointing out some things we got wrong. Cool.
Remember that we’re just Trash Elves scavenging for items that people leave behind for junk. That’s our strength. The world of SEO is foreign territory to us. All we know is that an eBay customer service rep sent us a detailed email outlining on ways we could improve our listings. We shared this info with you so each seller can make their own determination. Go ahead and listen to this episode to hear about some clarifications to our way of thinking. Let’s keep evolving by sharing info backed up by fact.
Hope you had a good week!
Our Store Week July 10-16, 2016
- Store #1
- Total Items in Store: 3862
- Items Sold: 16
- Cost of Items Sold: $62
- Total Sales: $740.43
- Highest Price Sold: $149 (Bathroom Fixture)
- Average Price Sold: $46.27
- Returns: 0
- Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $85
- Number of items listed this week: 0
- Amazon FBA Store
- Number of items sold: 11
- Amazon total sales: $639.22
- Amazon FBA Fees: $157.15
- COGS (shipment to FBA included): $50
- Net profit after COGS: $432.07
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- Store #2
- Total Items in Store: 1091
- Items Sold: 6
- Cost of Items Sold: $4
- Total Sales: $219.95
- Highest Price Sold: $70 (Vintage software manuals)
- Average Price Sold: $36.65
- Returns: 0
- Number of items listed this week: 0
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Mid-Week Conversation: Watch an eBay Engineer Explain How Their Search Engine Works
The above video has been brought up several times over the past year
(Thanks Mike and Kristen). It shows a talk given by an eBay engineer
where he explains how Cassini, the eBay search engine works. There’s no magic bullet here, but does remove some of the mystery.
In this week’s podcast, we wanted to do was present the information that the Customer Rep gave to us. It’s been endlessly fascinating to read everyone’s interpretations and opinions on how to best format an eBay listing to get the best search result. We also shared how we’re updating our old listings to get them up to a single standard. Beyond this, we’re going to continue to watch for guidance from eBay and just keep finding cool stuff and list.
Anyway, we’re plugging along. If anyone has made a “what sold” video, feel free to post it in the comments. Give it a try!
Update:
MyCottage posted a link to the Spring 2016 Seller Update that clearly states that eBay will block any listing with javascript or plugins in 2017:
Remove active content for peak performance
The use of active content in listings, including JavaScript, Flash, plug-ins and form actions, inhibits purchases on mobile devices and can lead to abuse in the marketplace. Beginning with the Spring 2017 Seller Update, eBay will limit the use of active content in all new listings across all devices and it will not be rendered by default. By the Fall Seller Update 2017, we plan to remove or block listings with active content. We encourage you to limit your use of active content now. We will provide more information later this year about which functionality will be limited and provide the specific timing in early 2017. We also are working closely with our third-party partners in cases where they use active content on your item descriptions or stores.
Scavenger Life Episode 266: Maybe eBay Conspiracy Theorists Were Right All Along?!!
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The past couple years we’ve had some long comment threads about eBay’s search engine and how to make sure your listings are “fresh”. The hypothesis is if you end listings and re-list as “sell similar”, then you can fool eBay into thinking it’s a new item and get to the top of the search. We’ve always asked for some data to see if this is true, but no one had any. Seemed like busy work. It’s been a hypothesis and not a proven theory.
But this week we had a bit of proof from eBay itself. We called the new Customer Service line for sellers with Anchor Stores. The woman told us that many of our listings were “stagnant” because they were missing a lot of required data. Many of these listings were several years old before eBay started transitioning to “mobile friendly” formats. They said we needed to make sure every listing had 12 photos, item specifics, and NO html templates with photos in the description. They also said to end the listings and relist as “sell similar” so it had a new listing number. Below is the actual email they sent us after the call:
Thank you for contacting Merchant Support today about your concerns. As promised, here is your stagnant listing report. The spreadsheet that I’ve attached to this email will show you items that haven’t sold it over 60 days or more. The attachment can only be opened through your personal email.
Stagnant listings are listing that you have on the site with very little visibility. Here is an overview of what we spoke about today:
1. Title: Use all 80 characters, use keywords that are relevant to the product being sold, use keywords that describe the item as the buyer would look for it, don’t include special characters and include: brand, model, style, type, part #, and EAN/UPC codes.
2. Item Specifics: Ensure required product identifiers for the categories your listing in are being used. Fill out all relevant options and recommendations within your syi form. Use custom specifics for setting clear buyer expectations: measurements, colors, material, etc.
3. Images: Use all 12 photos (3+ will give your listings a boost in visibility), add high quality photos (800-1600 pixels), use a white background (your listings will look professional), use gallery to identify any flaws, stock photos are only ok for items listed as “new,” and please do not use logos. *If you have watermarks, please keep specs to 5% of the total size and 50% or less opacity. Please keep in mind that Google’s doesn’t allow images containing promotional elements, names or logos of merchants.
4. Description: Keep it simple, clear and short business policies. With the increase of mobile purchases, you want to avoid using photos in the description. Also, please avoid using Java Script, Flash, plug-ins and form actions as it inhibits purchases on mobile devices.
5. Looking into your competitors’ listings to figure out what they’re doing differently that’s allowing them to sale these types of items. Sometimes it could be the pricing on your listings isn’t competitive to theirs. If you are unable to change the pricing, what makes your listing stand out vs your competitors listing?We recommend that you end your listings on the report and relist them using the “sell similar” option with new information based on the research you were able to do. Relisting the item will allow the items to jump back to the top of the search results, as when a listing doesn’t receive any sales on it and consistently is being renewed on the site.
Please keep in mind that we don’t want you to update your multiple quantity items that have had recent sales just because they are counted differently. The listing may have higher impressions, clicks and click through rates so they may have a higher ranking in search vs one of your older listings that have very little impressions and clicks.
Our goal is to help you to get more visibility to your listings. One last suggestion that I forgot about on our phone call was to consider putting your items on sale. Placing your items on a sale can add urgency to your listings and gain attraction by buyers. If you need any more ideas or strategies for listings, please feel free to contact us.
So there’s the proof that listings can go stagnant. What’s amazing is that we’ve been selling like this for the past several years and still making decent money. Strange that eBay didn;t just tell sellers the above info in a big announcement. Have we missed it somewhere? What will be interesting is to see if we actually sell more now that we’re updating all our listings. That will be the real proof.
Here are the links we mentioned in this podcast:
–Kadie let us know that you can order “Tracking Labels” from USPS for free. This lets you mail items to buyers in envelopes and add antracking number so eBay is happy. Wow!
UPDATE: Though the USPS site doesn’t say the tracking labels cannot be used for letters, multiple sellers have told us that you must pay the extra fee for letter tracking.
–David Hall created a website that reminds store owners when new quarterly coupons become available and where to find it: http://wheresthecoupon.com/. Double Awesome!
Sales were decent for us this week. Keep listing. Xmas is in only 6 months.
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