I've been concentrating on working through my backlog of books inventory. These are mostly low dollar listings for single books or creating lots of books. I did list three large lots this week. My plan is to keep working through old inventory and then to start buying new inventory that has a higher return. Maybe I should just donate all of this backlog and move on right away instead of wasting my time on it..it feels like throwing money away though if I donate it. Money I spent on the inventory. But on the other hand I'm throwing my time away on listing items I know aren't going to bring in much money. What would you do?
So back to my sales for the week. My best sale was this set of Salt and Pepper shakers. Paid $2 and sold for $28 with free shipping. They are made by artist Karen Donleavy
My other sales were all books or patterns. The two best were these.
$12 plus shipping
$9.49 plus shipping
I'm hoping for better sales this week.
I don't know what to tell you. I'm in the same boat (except I don't have a store and only periodically list stuff on Ebay) in that I have stuff I bought to resell and now don't know if it's worth it. My husband of course wants me to just donate it back to the thrift!
ReplyDeleteI am putting a pile together for the thrift but I'm keeping the majority so far. Good luck with your stuff :)
DeleteDismal is the perfect word. My sales have been dismal as well but I had a few good ones today. Sunday is usually my best day for sales.
ReplyDeleteSo far I've had one sale today that will net me about $10. My inventory had just reached 601 and then had a sale. Maybe 600 was the magic number ;)
DeleteI had dismal sales too. :( Its so crazy that with as many listings as you have its so slow. I think its just that time of year.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ashley. It's good to know you're not alone. Here's looking at a better week for both of us!
DeleteI am really new to the eBay selling game and I already have some items that I think I might have to put back out to pasture. Like some mugs that I bought for $1 that, according to my post-purchase research, would probably only sell for $5. I'm starting to think that the only way to win eBay is to make at least $10 profit on an item. If it can't be marked up at LEAST that much, it might not be worth buying. Because like you said, at a certain point an item isn't even worth the time it would take to list it. I dunno.
ReplyDeleteHi Kait. Thanks for stopping by. Ten dollars is about where I draw the line except with the huge pile of books I'm working through. Some of those I'm pricing at 9.99 with free shipping. A lot of them I got dirt cheap, filling a grocery bag for $5 so I've got little invested. It would be more work for me to haul them all out to my car LOL then take a couple pics. They are easy to ship. In the future though I won't be buying books unless they bring in a better profit. It's just fun to go through the book section of the thrift though. I just enjoy lookin' at books! I have since I was a kid. Good luck with you new venture :)
DeleteI have that same issue where I realize I have an entire pile of items that, in retrospect, aren't worth my time listing. But it's feeds into my desire to keep cool stuff out of the waste stream. Someone will like it!
ReplyDeleteWith so much stuff to buy and sell, it's best for us to give back items that won't bring a good profit. We're much better now buying only items that are good money makers. Listing an item that will only sell for $10 takes as much time as listing items that sell for $100. So we focus on the higher end these days.
Jay what did you do with the items that you later realized weren't worth your time? Did you donate them back? List them anyway? Part of me wants to just slog through them and then moving forward learn from my mistakes. Part of me thinks I'm wasting my time...but I somehow feel I owe it to this stock to list it. I struggle a little with hoarding tendencies and want to keep them all and list them. Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face? I only have so much space to store things but I do have quite a bit of space. It's just so unorganized right now. Books take up a lot of space when you have hundreds. I want to get more like you and Ryanne and be selling items in the 30 to 40 dollar range but right now I'm listing lots of books that will probably only bring me 10 dollars.
DeleteI totally understand. Once I bring something home, I feel obligated to organize and sell it. It's my responsibility.
DeleteBut let's be real. It's just stuff. I give the stuff back to the thrift store so it can be found by someone else. It's a very freeing experience to unload several big boxes of stuff that have been staring at me for months.
Then I realize it was junk and I was hypnotized. Nothing to feel bad about. I didn't pay much for the junk anyway. I can now focus on really cool items that are more exciting and will bring a bigger profit.
Do it today. Just take the books back. Donate them to a school. Don;t let it bring you down.
Great reply Jay. I love how you put it....being hypnotized. I don't know if I'm ready to do it today but I'm getting there. Thanks for the good advice.
DeleteThe other strategy is to just hunker down and get it all listed. I have about 100 pairs of men's pants that I've scavenged over the last year. Anytime there's a bag day or 25-cent clothes sale, I'll grab the nice men's pants. Wool, cotton, designer, hunting, military. Now it's a huge pile that I walk around for the past several months. Huge.
DeleteInstead of getting rid of them, I'm going to photograph them now. Just do six days of all pants. No in-between. That's what I'll probably be doing when you read this.
That's what I've been doing the last few days Jay. Hunkering down and getting them listed or putting them in a bag to donate. I've got a few bags ready to go back to the thrift..just aren't worth listing.. but I've also listed quite a few that had just been sitting and even sold a few already. It will take a few more days but I'm going to get it done and move on. Hope your pants are doing the same :) That's a lot of pants. Course I've got a couple hundred books. What's worse LOL.
DeleteSeems to be a trend, my sales were hooooorrible this week. Try nothing, maybe? $25.00 max? I'm working on moving everything over to eBay, doing what you're doing, trying to list all I have and see what happens. Been considering donating the non-moving stuff for fast-movers, too. It's a lot of labor to list slow moving stuff and it might be worth it to cut losses and only hunt for high sales items. Good luck getting your sales back up! Hopefully it's just been a bad week/month.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to give up on stock already purchased but in reality I know with a few good items I could easily make back what I'd lost if I redonated old inventory. Still I'm slogging through it. Hopefully I'll learn some lessons on what to buy in the future. Good luck for better sales next week. We learn as we go.
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