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Slowest week ever, but we did sell some cool stuff. Love the cute vintage Land O’ Lakes stuff!
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Trash to Cash. A podcast about making a living on eBay.
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Slowest week ever, but we did sell some cool stuff. Love the cute vintage Land O’ Lakes stuff!
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We had our worst week on eBay that we can remember. Why? Difficult to say but there are probably several contributing factors. Since we’ve been starting our Amazon FBA business, we simply haven’t listed much on eBay over the past two months. Since we’re about to leave on four week trip, this listing situation won’t get any better!
Some sellers have said that the April 18 tax deadline has slowed slows down for them as well. Who knows. Some weeks are slow. Keep filling the pipeline.
Some listeners asked us why we aren’t angry at eBay for raising their subscription prices in the Spring Seller Update. Instead of just being angry at any kind of change, we encourage everyone to do their numbers. Let’s be specific.
In our Anchor subscription, I did the calculations and realized that though we’ll pay a little more per month, we can now list 6,000 more items (!!!!) as part of the price. So it’s up to us to keep filling the pipeline. That’s a bargain.
In our second eBay store at the Premium subscription, we ran the numbers and turns out we’ll be paying less per month because we were paying extra for items over the Premium limit. So $60/month for 1000 items saves us money.
It’s justified to be angry when change affects your business, but it’ll help us all if we base the anger in facts. Please feel free to share your numbers in the comments.
Hope you had a good week. Did anyone go buy a bunch of Marimekko at Target this weekend to resell?
Our Store Week April 10-16, 2016
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Hey I just checked, you can buy a Cessna airplane on eBay! There is even a Citation for sale for $760,000 (Best Offer of course).
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This week we ponder some deep philosophical questions that haunts all humans (who sell online): Which is more fun- eBay or Amazon? Is eBay your friend or your enemy? Are plush toys actually little seeds of evil that have been dipped in cuteness camouflage so you’ll take them into your home? Is it still okay to sell them even if they are?
We also discuss our take on the 2016 Spring Seller Update. eBay is always changing so get used to it. We break it down to see how exactly the changes will affect us. That’s all we can ever do. Look at the numbers.
Other than this, we actually had another solid week even though we still haven’t listed much on eBay the past two months. The pipeline hasn’t clogged up yet.
Our Store Week April 3-9, 2016
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Check out my what sold video (hope you post yours too!). Another thing to check out today is eBay’s Spring Seller Update for the latest in what’s changing behind the scenes soon.
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So this weekend we were surprised by Ryanne getting sick again. Looks like it’s just a regular cold (not the flu again), but we’re keeping this week’s podcast short. We have less than three weeks before we head to the West Coast for a month, so we need conserve energy to get stuff done.
BUT we did record an extra long episode of Shampoo and Booze yesterday before the sickness came on. It has nothing to do with selling on eBay/Amazon, but we discuss many of the same techniques running our Airbnb rental: doing the work ourselves, being patient, learning to be smart, and treating people right.
Here are the links we talked about in this short episode:
Next week should be back to normal. We’ll answer all the questions that have come in in a long episode.
Our Store Week March 27-April 2, 2016
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Gotta love the vintage wrapping paper sale! See more completed listings here. The stuff does sell.
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We had a great week on eBay EVEN THOUGH we have barely listed in the last six weeks. I’ll always encourage the theory that listing sparks sales, but sometimes people are just in a buying mood. And we have a large inventory just waiting for people to purchase.
Our Amazon FBA experiment continues. Until we have over 1000 items in the Amazon warehouses, we’re not going to do any final judgement. So far sales have been decent, but profit is super low. Selling an item on Amazon for $25 to make a profit of $15? Versus selling an item on eBay for $150 for a profit of $120?
Obviously, we need to find better inventory to send in to Amazon. It’s the eternal challenge of finding cheap inventory that other scavengers miss that will sell for a high profit. We’ve (pretty much) solved this problem on eBay but are still struggling with Amazon.
Griff responded to our question about why eBay invoices no longer have calculated shipping. It is indeed a bug that is being fixed. He says:
“The issue with shipping not showing on seller sent invoices has been reported and a ticket has been opened. No updates as of now but when I have one, I will post it on the Weekly Chat with eBay Staff discussion board
.”
Cayta sent us this Reddit thread about how to tell if a vintage shoe is “welted”. Here’s a video that shows how the shoes are made. Buyers will pay more if you have dress shoes produced in this style.
Read about how Amazon is using lobbyists to push the government to help improve their delivery systems. This includes writing clear rules for commercial drone use, more investment in road infrastructure, and strengthening the US Postal Service. Watch this video of how the Amazon drone program would look like.What a weird world we live in.
Hope you guys had a good week.
Our Store Week March 20-26, 2016
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Love the sale of the vintage copper and turquoise breadbox, called a Beauty Box, sold for $100!
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This week we took some time to remember why we started selling on eBay back in 2008. Quick answer: to live a low stress life. Longer answer has do with enjoying challenges and getting lost in our work, but only when we get to choose what work it is we do.
We also discuss how eBay is the cash engine that helps us renovate rental houses. We’re just about done paying off a $12k metal roof and brick chimney for our River House. This time around, it’s also helpful that we have the extra income from the Farmhouse that we renovated with eBay money. So it’s not just about endless selling on junk online. For us, it’s about investing our money in things we’re proud of and generate more income to give us the low stress life we crave.
We just interviewed Molly in Silverlake, Los Angeles who renovated a bungalow behind her home to rent out on Airbnb. She does a good job expressing her goal of quitting her grinding job and running her own business.
Here are the links we discussed in this episode:
Our week of sales stated very slow but ended with a big bang. Hope you had a good week.
Our Store Week March 13-19, 2016
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Amazon: $342.12
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