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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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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

          ———

• 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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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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We’ve seen some articles lately stating that another recession could be coming.  It could just be the result of nervousness around the upcoming Presidential elections that feels more and more out of control, but our American economic system has long history of ups and downs. A broken clock is right twice a day. I’m sure the economy will hit a rough patch one of these days.

So is eBay a recession proof business? When we started selling on eBay in 2008, the country was in the depths of the Mortgage Crisis. Selling old shoes online didn’t seem like a bad idea as work was difficult to find and gas prices were almost $4/gal. We found that people needed to buy clothes and practical items even in bad times. People probably start looking for deals when money is tight. And remember that not everyone is doing poorly during bad times. A recession wasn’t the zombie apocalypse. People were still buying collectibles and everything else we were selling. But every recession could be different.

Maybe a better question to ask is: how do we prepare for a recession? Because we’ve been self-employed for almost 12 years, we always assume the worst is around the corner. Here’s what we do so we can sleep at night:

–First we make sure our expenses are as low as can be. We still feel like we’re living a life of luxury because we own our time, but we have few “fancy things”.  We don’t borrow money for luxuries.
–We talk with each other about any purchase over $20. Our default is to NOT spend money.
–We cook almost all our own meals instead of eating out.
–We have enough savings to pay for at least two months of expenses. Some financial gurus say six months is the goal, but we feel good with two months of breathing room.
–We’re cautiously investing in our rental business which diversifies our income (you can hear about these adventures at ShampooAndBooze.com). There is no guarantee any business will succeed, but it’s important for us to take chances while we’re young. We think you can’t be too careful.

Anyway, there’s no absolute safe space in this world. Our point is that eBay feels like a good place for us to invest our time and have come control over our own lives.

Oh, here’s a photo from Dan and Lisa of NewVintageNY taken at their collector’s event in Upstate NYC. You can also see one intrepid Scavenger, Derik, which you’ll soon here from in an interview we’re recording. Hope you had a good week!

Our Store Week June 26-July 2, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3911
• Items Sold: 31
• Cost of Items Sold: $203
• Total Sales: $1,464.14
• Highest Price Sold: $130 (Perfume set)
• Average Price Sold: $47.22
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
• Number of items listed this week: 1

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 20
• Amazon total sales: $693.04
• Amazon FBA Fees: $255.51
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $30
• Net profit after COGS: $407.53

         ———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1100
• Items Sold: 16
• Cost of Items Sold: $31.30
• Total Sales: $519.55
• Highest Price Sold: $65 (Wool Hat)
• Average Price Sold: $32.47
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 11

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Hi all. It’s been a slow week and there was a big lightning storm that knocked out our internet, so I’ll keep this short. We are remembering that when things are slow, experiment because you have time to do it. So far it’s paying off.

Links we mentioned:

• eBay’s scanning conformation policy: They give you three chances to check to see if your shipped on time
• Incompetent Picker sent us:Dynamic USPS zone map 
• USPS Customer Service Number 1 (800) 275-8777

Our Store Week June 19-25, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3937
• Items Sold: 14
• Cost of Items Sold: $20
• Total Sales: $446.34
• Highest Price Sold: $60 (Riding stirrups)
• Average Price Sold: $31.85
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $120
• Number of items listed this week: 106

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 10
• Amazon total sales: $244.18
• Amazon FBA Fees: $148.14
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $30
• Net profit after COGS: $76.04

Bonanza:

• Sold 3 items for $79

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 1105
• Items Sold: 10
• Cost of Items Sold: $12
• Total Sales: $271.41
• Highest Price Sold: $50 (Purse)
• Average Price Sold: $27.14
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 43

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“How Much Do I Need To List To Make A Living On eBay?” This is one of the most common questions that people ask us. The person knows they want to quit their job, they’re ready to courageously take the jump, and all they want to know if what they should do. All we can ever say is: “it depends”, or “read our Manifesto“.

This question especially becomes urgent as the slow summer sales begin and new sellers get totally freaked out because they aren’t making the same money they did during the busy holiday season. We point folks to a podcast we did last year on The Scavenger Equation. In the simplest terms, the amount of items you need to sell depends on how much your expenses are each month. If you live an expensive life with heavy debt, you need to sell a whole lot of old shoes. If you are frugal like us and have no debt, selling becomes a much more casual endeavor.

If you ask this question to a hundred eBay sellers, you’ll get a hundred different answers because we each have our own equation. Some scavengers have five kids and another on the way. Some have no kids and only have a cats to take care of. Some of us are just out of college and need to pay off student debt, while others are in retirement and just supplementing social security income. No one can really tell you how much you need to sell on eBay to make a living. You have to do the dirty work of working out a realistic monthly budget, cut out as many expenses as you can, and start listing.

In this episode, I mention this article about a whole batch of new online services that help people sell their stuff. These are the high end folks! They’ll always be leaving stuff for us Scavengers to find and sell.

 Our Store Week May 22-28, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3698
• Items Sold: 23
• Cost of Items Sold: $91
• Total Sales: $857.65
• Highest Price Sold: $150 (vintage headboard)
• Average Price Sold: $37.28
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $100
• Number of items listed this week: 84

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 14
• Amazon total sales: $145.27
• Amazon FBA Fees: $75
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $10
• Net profit after COGS: $60

Bonanza:

• Sold 0 items

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 882
• Items Sold: 10
• Cost of Items Sold: $22
• Total Sales: $431.61
• Highest Price Sold: $90 (leather garment luggage)
• Average Price Sold: $43.16
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 20

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Here we are in The Big Easy, The Crescent City, New Orleans. We’re working our tech job so we’re super tired and maxed out. But we did have time to record this podcast before we started the madness.

Here are the links we mentioned in this episode:
–If you are considering selling clothes for full time money on eBay, listen to our conversations with Cindi of Amazing Taste and Dan and Lisa of NewVintageNY. Both stores are extremely successful but you’ll hear the work it takes to make it happen.
–We all discovered the free shipping supplies from eBay that you can get if you have a store subscription. Read more about it here.
–Read about the designer Hawaiian aka Aloha shirts that are now in style.

We know it was slow for some. Hope things pick up for us all.

 Our Store Week May 1-7, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3665
• Items Sold: 19
• Cost of Items Sold: $94
• Total Sales: $1,349.49
• Highest Price Sold: $450 (vintage painting)
• Average Price Sold: $71.01
• Returns: 2
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
• Number of items listed this week: 0
• (Thanks for the numbers help, Felisa!!)

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Number of items sold: 14
• Amazon total sales: $265.64
• Amazon FBA Fees: $121.93
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): $25
• Net profit after COGS: $118.76

Bonanza:

• Sold 1 items for $40

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 853
• Items Sold: 9
• Cost of Items Sold: $25
• Total Sales: $403.74
• Highest Price Sold: $125 (vintage brass rubbing)
• Average Price Sold: $44.86
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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We’re wrapping up our week vacation in Bend, Oregon. A week is never enough to enjoy a place.  Just when we start relaxing and finding our favorite places, it’s time to go. Staying longer is always a huge benefit to owning our own time. We’ll be doing the next podcast from New Orleans.

Let’s talk about The Master Plan.

If you’re just starting selling online, then the most important thing is figuring out a sane process and successfully selling one item at a time. Most new sellers stumble and fail at the start. Scavenging sounds fun, but then the selling part seems to much trouble. It feels like work.

The next step is to get all your monthly bills paid from scavenging. For those that can do it, this is a big accomplishment. There is a trail of burnt out eBay stores that just couldn’t consistently list and sell.

Or you might have a full time job that you love/tolerate, and just sell on the side. The goal is to make extra money for a yearly vacation, make an extra payment on the house, etc. Your eBay store is some nice extra income, but you can live without it.

But then you might be like us. You’ve built a robust eBay/Amazon pipeline. You do this for a living and live in frugal luxury. All your monthly bills get paid. You have no consumer debt. You are making extra payments on the mortgage. You’ve built up savings to buffer any down times. If you’ve done everything right, you still have extra money. Now what?

There’s single answer for everyone. We’re investing in rental property. Now we’re starting to think where we want our lives to be when we’re in our 50’s. Our interview with Jim Collins was cool because he’s part of a community that believes in Index Funds. We see eBay as our jumping off point. And we have to be grateful we aren’t living hand to mouth anymore. Hope some of you are finding this freedom too.

Here are the links we discussed in the podcast:

• eBay is now selling branded tape rolls: 6 rolls x 75 yards for $12 + free shipping.
  Supposedly we’ll get a coupon with our eBay Store Subscriptions to buy shipping supplies. If true, cool!
• eBay also has other shipping supplies for sale, including poly mailers. Buying this stuff only makes sense if we get those free coupons. Scavengers to the end.

Our Store Week April 24-30, 2016

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3682
• Items Sold: 13
• Cost of Items Sold: $86
• Total Sales: $1,065.87
• Highest Price Sold: $500 (jewelry, unpaid)
• Average Price Sold: $81.99
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $50
• Number of items listed this week: 0

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
• Amazon total sales: $654.77
• Amazon FBA Fees: $242.21
• Net profit after COGS: $436.42

Bonanza:

• Sold 2 items for $50

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 864
• Items Sold: 9
• Cost of Items Sold: $10
• Total Sales: $228.33
• Highest Price Sold: $50 (vintage hipster cap)
• Average Price Sold: $25.37
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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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

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3719
• Items Sold: 15
• Cost of Items Sold: $107
• Total Sales: $500.26
• Highest Price Sold: $140 (vintage books)
• Average Price Sold: $33.35
• Returns: 0
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $60
• Number of items listed this week: 47

———-

• Amazon FBA Store
  Sales: ?
  Amazon total sales: $??
  Amazon FBA Fees: $???
  COGS (shipment to FBA included): $??
  Net profit after COGS: $??? 
• Bonanza:
  Sold 4 items for $180 
•  ———-
• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 884
• Items Sold: 8
• Cost of Items Sold: $15
• Total Sales: $408.94
• Highest Price Sold: $97 (vintage Lotus software)
• Average Price Sold: $51.12
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 25

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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

• Store #1
• Total Items in Store: 3687
• Items Sold: 42
• Cost of Items Sold: $193
• Total Sales: $1,667.00
• Highest Price Sold: $200 (wool rug)
• Average Price Sold: $39.69
• Returns: 1
• Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $65
• Number of items listed this week: 0

———-

• Amazon FBA Store 
• Number of items sold: $?? 
• Amazon FBA Fees: $??? 
• COGS (shipment to FBA included): ??
• Net profit: $275.45

———-

• Store #2
• Total Items in Store: 866
• Items Sold: 12
• Cost of Items Sold: $25
• Total Sales: $401.89
• Highest Price Sold: $65 (gravity boots)
• Average Price Sold: $33.49
• Returns: 0
• Number of items listed this week: 0

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