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.

It’s summer and our eBay sales have been slow. This comes every year and it’s never fun for sales to hit a wall. But these days what we do is use this slow time for sourcing, experimenting, listing, and relaxing. People will always start buying again so we are loading out store up.

But let’s talk about the future. We interviewed our friend, JL Collins, a couple months ago about investing for retirement. As self-employed business owners with no safety net, it’s always in the back of of mind about what our future will be like when we’re older.

He actually just published a book called The Simple Path To Wealth where he clearly lays out all his years of experience and wisdom into an easy to read ‘investment instruction manual’ with some fun stories thrown in. We got to read an advanced copy and highly recommend it.

Our blog is about how to own your time. To do this, you need money so we looked around and saw that scavenging was a fun way to earn a living. What Jim provides is the next step. What happens when you actually have more money than you spend each month?

I’ll give you the spoiler to the book. Jim’s single best recommendation is to put your money in Vanguard’s VTSAX is a total stock market index fund. That’s really it. Start now and let your money make money and keep making money. But Jim’s book is really so much more. It’s all about how to think about money, our time, our short existence on this earth, and how much time we want to think about money.

I love what Jim says in his introduction: “Here’s an important truth: Complex investments exist only to profit those who create and sell them. Further, not only are they more costly to the investor, they are less effective.”  This is the same approach we’ve had on Scavenger Life. Keep it simple. List it and Forget it. Wealth comes by taking things in tiny steps, day by day, and letting success build up over time.

It comes down to holding only a single Vanguard fund over your entire lifetime. This means betting on the entire US economy will be good over a long period of time. If you think the zombie apocalypse is coming, then definitely invest in guns, walls and food. But throughout the ups and down of this country, we are still a strong nation.  And as Jim says, “The market always recovers. Always. And, if someday it really doesn’t, no investment will be safe and none of this financial stuff will matter anyway.”

Blogs about financial independence and smart retirement has been bubbling up in small online communities for about ten years now. But now it’s becoming mainstream. Just watch this segment from John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” where he does a great job illustrating the advice that Jim’s book lays out (Thanks Brian for the tip!). You can skip directly to minute 18:00 for the quick advice on how to invest:

So please check out The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins if you’re freaking out about the future and need something to read this weekend.

eBay’s new Seller Dashboard has been out for a couple months. Didn’t seem like that big of a deal. A cleaner look with some semi-interesting stats about our sales. But one of our listeners (thanks Len Pettis!) pointed to the new “Growth” tab that shows how your items compete with similar items on eBay. If you’ve opted into the new Dashboard, check it out here.

We played around with the new feature which lets you basically reprice items. It gives you a percentage of how likely your item will sell. Amazon has a similar feature that let’s you quickly reprice items to compete for “the Box”. Unfortunately with eBay, you have to open a new window and click multiple times to reprice a single item. Didn’t seem very usable to quickly deal with multiple items.

Of course if you sell weird, vintage items like us, being the cheapest price isn’t always our goal. On eBay, buyers are not just looking at prices, but the photos and condition. The Growth tab is still a cool tool that at least gives us an idea of the competition. For those sellers worried about slow sales, this is the tool to see how competitive your items are.

This is an open thread. Our sales have really taken off the last couple days. No real rhyme or reason why.

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.

The past couple weeks has uncovered a secret network of nurses who are also Trash Elves. It’s been interesting to hear what motivates nurses to scavenge and sell online. Here’s an interesting email we received from one of them.

Good Morning!

I listen to your podcasts while I organize-clean-list-pack-ship and heard your observation regarding the number of nurses who sell on eBay.  On a personal level I can speak to why I and my friends do it.

1.  I retired early due to health problems; the nursing industry is not friendly when one of its own is ill.  There is truth to the adage that “Nursing is the industry that eats its own”.

2.  Selling on eBay offers the fun of sourcing.  In order to be a nurse we have to learn to make something from nothing and creatively squeeze the goodness from everything we have available.  eBay rewards us for doing that, while nursing continually beats us down for not doing more. We love our patients; providing care is endlessly rewarding, but the ‘system’ is brutal & thankless.

3.  There is no life & death in an eBay sale.  Even if we have a return or disgruntled buyer, we are accustomed to hearing people bitch all the time and we are masters of de-escalation.  Also, no blood, guts, poop, CPR or other unidentifiable body substances are involved (usually) in an eBay sale.  It is blissfully low stress compared to our regular day.

Those are some of the biggest reasons nurses sell on eBay part time ~OR~ retire to sell full time as I have. I am fortunate that my husband backs me up and is planning to retire early to help full time.  He works for the state (KY) and has been a picker on the weekend for about 15 years so I have a barn, a garage, a shed AND a basement already full of treasures to sort, clean and list.

I hope this offers some clarification for you.  I have been retired eight months and selling on eBay about three, with a decent amount of success.  I take a great deal of joy in using my Master’s Degree to scrub bird shit off of vintage glassware!!

Rock on & Remain awesome…
A cool old broad in KY’!

This week has been relatively quiet for us. Maybe because of the warm weather? Maybe because people are traveling? Good news is that sales have picked up since last night. Maybe because people are not getting the gifts they wanted so they’re buying for themselves? Whatever, bring it.

Hope you guys are having a merry Xmas and happy holiday with those you love.

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.

Last month we talked about paying off one of our loans for two acres of land we bought in 2013. Here’s the bank statement that we received. I loved seeing those words: PAID OFF

The land is across the street from our home. One day we saw a for sale sign go up. The previous owner defaulted on the loan so the bank was selling the land. We called the bank and bought it to avoid someone building next to us. The bank gave us a ten year loan, but we paid it off in two years. I guess you’d say it’s a luxury purchase, but having privacy is important to us. We have no plans to ever move so we’re investing in our long term future. The two acres is also a prime piece of forested real estate if we ever wanted to build on it ourselves. Land is never a bad investment IMHO.

Anyway, we always love hearing sellers talk about how they use their profits beyond just paying monthly bills.

This is an open comment thread (is it ever not?). Ask and answer as you see fit.
Some simple rules-

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.

We can’t full explain how good it is to be back home and settle into our usual rhythm . It’ll honestly take another week before we really feel caught up. Selling on eBay is all about creating a routine, but it’s so easy to get distracted. That productive rhythm takes time to build back up and can’t be turned on/off like a light switch.

We recently saw this video cool series on small, family businesses.

You can watch five stories of different small, family businesses and why they think they’re successful. These stories remind us of our own “Mom & Pop approach” to business (one of our personal favorite podcasts). It’s about running a business beyond just making money. We’re creating an environment for ourselves to live a challenging but healthy lifestyle. Our day to day activities must feel like we have a purpose and contributing something to the greater world. If we had kids, I imagine our business would be built around raising them and incorporating into our business as they grew older.

I love the topics they bring up:

• Family members are a great source of sweat equity. (We save money by doing all the work!)
• Plan for succession, and train your next generation of leaders. (Teaching kids how to run a business is probably the best education we could give them)
• Seize opportunities. (Being our own boss means we can take chances which, in turn, makes life exciting)
• The human touch pays off. (We never felt we could be ourselves when working for other people. Felt more like a cog in someone else’s machine)
• Running a business is hard, but it should also be fun. (This the is most relevant statement. We’re excited to wake up each day to do what we need to do for our own business)

I especially love this quote from a family that makes furniture:

“Our business philosophy is something like, ‘Every day we go to work, and we try to make something beautiful,’ ” says his son Zui Hanafusa, who has joined the business. “It’s more of an artist’s way of thinking through business.”

We’ve said before that we’ve been trained as artists that happened to enjoy running a business. This is why we’re so adamant about scavenging/selling items that we think are “special” (though we also  anything “practical”). We look for items that have a crafted feel or design that are uncommon, especially if it adds to someone’s sense of nostalgia.

Anyway, that’s our deep dive today into why we do what we do. Hope you’re week is doing well.

We’re ending Week Two of our Amsterdam vacation…and there’s still a third week to come! It usually takes us at least a week just to clear our minds to enjoy where we are. Be nice if it was a human right to three week vacations, but in the meantime we can save and scavenge to give ourselves the vacations we want.

Our store has been slow as molasses probably due to our long handling time. Any sale is a bonus to us at this point. We’re really psyched to see the active sellers report good sales.

As an eBay seller, it’s important to keep up on the new updates that eBay puts out every six months. The Corporation is always tweaking its system to the chagrin of many sellers. Changes are never fun, but I find that most updates that we’ve experienced since 2008 have made sense. Here’s the new Fall Seller Update.

Big news is a change in the defect system for the better. No more punishment if you solve the buyer’s issue without eBay getting involved. So returns are cool as long as the buyer is happy. Also no more defects for DSR’s (bye bye nebulous 3-star ratings). You simply have to ship when you say you’re going to ship, and treat customers humanely. Isn’t this what we all wanted?

There’s a new Seller Hub that I assume will replace the current Seller Manager Pro. Hopefully it just modernizes and streamlines the info we’re all using in our day to day business.

There’s a couple listeners at the eBay 20th Anniversary Celebration. Sounds like there’s good food there. Let us know if you’re there and what’s going on. Let us live vicariously through you.

Feel free to post questions of any issues you have. Some simple rules-

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay Forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.

Here are some things we’ve seen while in The Netherlands:

Art deco entry way tiles.

Goats getting an electric brushing at the Amsterdam Bos farm.

A window looking into a basement that I thought I was going to fall into.

An old fashioned windmill in Haarlem.

Ketchup and Mayo packets cost money everywhere but the US. It’s absolute MADNESS.

Lots of electric cars, hurray!

After having been home for less than a week from NYC, we’re flying out to Europe tomorrow morning. It’s certainly nothing to cry about, but we wouldn’t have planned all this travel so close together. But as Scavengers, we have to take advantage of free flights and NYC apartments when we can. It’s exciting.

Since we’ll be away for the entire month of September, we’ve put out stores on handling time of 30 BUSINESS days. So that’s 30 days not counting the weekends. Will stuff still sell? Will buyers wait that long to get their items? Who knows! But past experience has shown that many buyers will gladly wait if they get a good deal on a special item. Last year, we sold 188 items while we were in Amsterdam. August has been really slow for us so we hope things pick up.

We’re going to get the podcast out this Sunday as always which means Ryanne will be editing on the plane! She’s dedicated.

This is an open post so talk about anything you want. This place can be whatever we want it to be.  It’s been great to see new people show up here lately and other sellers answer their questions calmly and professionally. The TrashElf 3000 has been dormant for quite some time and this is good.

Feel free to post questions of any issues you have. Some simple rules-

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay Forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.

Ryanne and some of the many free boxes we wanted to take home on the streets of Manhattan.

We’re wrapping up our two week trip to NYC. Two weeks is such a great luxury to have in any place because it really gives us time to explore, relax, and get into the rhythm of daily life. These are the weeks we are supremely grateful for the freedom that selling online gives us.

We also had the pleasure of meeting up with a group of NY and NJ sellers (Thanks Anastasia!) at a pizza restaurant uptown. Some had listened our podcast (many had never heard of us), and it was fun to hear people’s strategies of scavenging on the NYC streets and running a store in a small apartment. We all got extremely loud and rowdy, so we bet the pizza owners probably thought we were nuts.

This is an open post so talk about anything you want. Feel free to post questions of any issues you have. Some simple rules-

• We do allow anonymous commenters, but we encourage you to use your
  ID so people can get to know you. Plus you won’t have to re-enter the
  code for each comment.
• Be civil. People have different ways of doing the same thing. If we disagree, no big deal.
• We are solution oriented. If you want to simply hate on eBay, go to the dark depths of the eBay Forums where your hate can be polished like a precious jewel.
• Please back up any issues with facts and specific links. We don’t deal in rumors.
• Comments are threaded (what?). So you can either reply to a specific comment or start an overall new topic.