My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
I have to confess I am a little embarrassed that I have been selling items on EBay for this long and I just learned how to use the bulk editor. In my defence I thought that I knew how to use it but it just wasn't that useful. But I recently figured out how to update my return policy on all my listings. (Something I was convinced I couldn't do in bulk editor.) I guess the phrase "Better late than never" is applicable here.
In the selling page check the listings to be edited and click the edit button. (I have heard that 25 listings at a time is about all that the editor can handle so that is the number I used.) This example shows only two items being updated.
When the editing page opens re-check the Items to be updated.
Here is a closer look. I had to split it in the middle to fit on one page.
Now here is where I was confused for so many years. I thought that the only things you could edit were the items that appear in the column headings. You can change the columns that appear by using the customize button, but that doesn't give you access to all the editing options.
Hold the phones cuz you are going to think that I am really a dig bat but it turns out that the "EDIT" button on the left hand side of this screne is where ll the magic happens.
Who knew?
Anyway on the off chance that anyone else is confused by the bulk editor. Now you know you are not alone.
It still took some time but my return policy is now up to date with EBays new requirements.
Happy Ebaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
***
I guess that it is obvious that if you list more you will sell more. But here are some of my actual findings. Of course these are just my results but still they may provide some sort of guide post. As I have mentioned before my listings are 99.9% Fixed Price Good Til Cancel listings and they are also, I am just guessing here, 95% in the clothing category. I believe that these percentages are valid for last year as well as this year.
Some other stats are as follows.
For 2011 I had around 400 listings in my store for pretty much the whole year. Early this year I worked to get 450 listings in my store. Currently I have 456 listings. Now I am not advocating carrying more inventory exactly. But here are some interesting numbers from last year.
My listing numbers were all over the place anywhere from 14 items to 83 items listed in a month. My sales numbers on the other hand were pretty steady at an average 50 items per month. But perhaps the most interesting number is that I sold just 3 more items than I listed. In 2011 I listed 596 new listings and I sold 599 items from old listings and from new listings. All the while carrying right around 400 items in inventory.
As you may already know I did this working on average 10 hours a week. But I am trying to take my business more seriously this year and put in 20 hours a week dedicating most of my additional time to getting more listing done. As you can see I am carrying 50 more units in inventory right now.
Here are my listing and sales numbers for the year so far:
Now I know these numbers may not be that impressive but they do represent a few key things.
1) January and February show a 30% increase in units sold and March looks like it will be even better. (Of course this is only part of the picture. My margins also make a big difference. I don't have a number for March yet but for January and February my average profit margin was higher the last years average. So it is a double win if that makes sense.)
2) Based on the numbers above, limited as they are, the trend is a positive one.
3) My goal is to try to list on average 100 units over the average of 50 that I listed last year which is a 100% increase in listing.
4) Based on this I will have to watch my sales closely and hope that my sales percentage continues to increase or I will have an inventory level that might get out of control. But I do expect that my inventory level will be higher in 2012.
In summary I am please that my sales numbers are up so far for 2012 and am hopeful that this trend will continue. Of course there are many economical factors involved as well but I do know "if you don't list it you can't sell it."
How are your sales going so far this year?
Happy Ebaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
*****
You have probably already heard that EBay is offering Free Auction Style Listings for shop owners for the rest of this month That always sounds really great and perhaps I should do some more experimenting but here is what I have found in the past.
1) I don't sell much at auction. The last time EBay offered a three day Free Auction Style listing I moved around 45 listings from my Fixed Price Good Til Cancelled format to the auction style format. In many cases lowering the starting bid. I sold exactly 2 items one of them for 99 cents.
2) My items do not cause bidding wars (ie: if I sell something it just has one bid)
3) If I try to entice buyers with low starting bids like 99 cents I just end up giving my stuff away (see reason number 1 & 2 above)
4) Auction listings take more of my time because most of them end up having to be re-listed.
When I saw that EBay was giving us almost a whole month of Free Auction Style listings I was tempted to give it a try with my new listings. Having determined not to get caught up in moving a bunch of older listings like I did last time. But then I thought about it and my intuition tells me that my items are, for lack a of better word, "stumbled up" items. Sure you can search on red blouse and my item will come up but so will lots of others that are priced higher and lower and in the end I just have to wait for the person who likes my red blouse and thinks it is worth what ever I am asking for it. In most cases that takes time and that is what Fixed Price GTC listings provide. This leads me to my final reason and that is..
5) Once my buyers have stumbled onto my item and have decided that they want to buy it I assume that they want to pay and be done and that waiting for the auction time period to end is more af an annoyance then anything else.
It's important to know your products and the best way to sell them and I should probably continue to test my theories but I think I am going to sit this one out.
Happy EBaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
When I first started selling on EBay I would spend hours taking photos, evaluating which ones where the best and then I would spend even more time editing the photos and uploading them to my listing software for use in my listings. But time is money and somewhere along the way I figured out I was wasting a lot of it trying to make my picture so pretty.
Lesson 1 - I am not shooting pictures for the cover of TIME Magazine. It is true that you should try to have a clean background and you want to display what ever you are photographing in an attractive manner but it really doesn't matter if the photo is perfect. Here is an example of a not so perfect picture that worked just fine. This item just sold.
When I am shooting photos I try to keep the background clean but that doesn't always work. This item was a little to big for the background that I use. Those are my kitchen tiles in the lower right hand corner. I used to spend a lot of time cropping my pictures now I just try to fill the frame when I take the photo and if my kitchen floor shows a little bit so be it.
Lesson 2 - A picture is worth a thousand words but nobody likes a blabber mouth. I use Auctiva as my listing software and they allow you to have 24 photos of your item. Now if you are listing a complicated whats-a-ma-thingy for hundreds of dollars I think it could come in handy to have 24 photos but I have found that for my items in the price range that I sell in 3 to 5 photos is plenty and it is usually closer to 3 than 5.
Lesson 3 - Anything you can do to minimize your editing time matters (if you don't have to edit your photos please let me know how you do it.) Almost everything thing I list is one-of-kind which means it requires it's own private little photo shoot. I used to take pictures both horizontally and vertically. Now I take all my photos vertically. I do have to rotate all of my photos but I don't have to switch back and forth in my editing software anymore.
Lesson 4 - Hanging items to photograph is faster than laying items flat but laying them flat often looks better. I used to layout my items on the floor or a table to photograph them but it was quite tedious and it was also some times difficult to get far enough away from the item to get all of it in the photo. So I abandoned crawling around on the floor and climbing up on chairs and tables and started putting the items on hanger to photograph. This worked fine for most items but there are certainly some things that have zero hanger appeal. Like this little gem.
My solution is my handy piece of I think it is formica that I found in the garage. I started using it because it had a nice shiny white side to use for a background. This did not solve the no hanger appeal problem but, through just plain old dumb luck it did pave the way. One day I had a white item that I needed to photograph so my white background was not suitable. I happened to notice that the back of my white board was brown so I flipped it over and took a photo of my white item but here is where the crazy break through happened. The brown side was kind of rough and not at all slippery like the other side and I found that with the slightly tacky side of the board I could get the garments to lay out better. This is even more effective when the board is placed at an angle with the bottom farther away from the wall.
As you can see this greatly improves the items hanger appeal.
Lesson 4 - Batching like items speeds up the process. My shopping is kind of all over the place I see something I like or that I think will sell and I grab it and put it in my cart. But once I get the items home I start to group them by categories, shirt, pants, jackets etc. Once they are grouped they are photographed, edited, listed and put away as a batch. This save time at every step.
Lesson 5 - Lighting matters but I still suck at it. Maybe I just haven't had the patience to figure out good lighting. I have read that natural lighting is best and I do use mostly natural lighting. I have learned the best time of day (mornings) to take photos based on the direction that my windows face. I always take my photos in the same place but inevitably some things look better than others. Black is particularly difficult and always comes out very washed out.
Lesson 6 - Thank God for Photoshop. As I said before I would love to know how to avoid editing my photos but so far my camera and or my photographic skills have not allowed me to do this. You don't need to invest in Photoshop but some sort of photo editing software is helpful. Once again when I am at this stage I have to remind myself that I am not submitting my photos to TIME Magazine. I want to make quick color corrections so that my black sweater doesn't look gray or my red dress doesn't look pink but it is important to note that every ones monitors look slightly different when it come to color so perfection is not required.
If you photograph clothing for your EBay shop and you have other suggestions please feel free to comment.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy EBaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
****
If you sell on EBay then you already know that they are really pushing the Free Shipping thing. So I have been thinking about it and trying to figure out if and how it fits into my business and the problem always comes down to the fact that shipping isn't actually free. In fact postal rates seem to be increasing every year.
The items that I sell cost anywhere between $2.00 and $15.00 to ship in the United States. Certainly it would be easy enough to absorb the $2.00 cost into the price of the garment but the $15.00 is a little tougher. If I have a very heavy item that I want sell for $20.00 and my shipping cost is $15.00. I think that is how I should list the item. I could list the item for $35.00 with Free Shipping but to me that seems like a potential misrepresentation of the value of the item. The buyer of course in some ways has to see the value at $35.00 but it seem prudent to me to show what the costs really are.
The interesting thing to me is that EBay pushes buyers to offer free shipping. Now that they have changed the fee structure so the final value fees are charged against the shipping as well as the selling price they are making the same fee either way. So from a bottom line stand point it can't make any difference to them where I add in the shipping cost. So they must push it for the buyers sake. And I guess that Free Shipping has a nice ring to it. But in the end isn't it just a lot of smoke and mirrors? I mean do you as a seller just eat the shipping cost when you offer"Free Shipping" or do you add the shipping cost into the price of your item?
Maybe I am just being obstinate but I since I have the option in EBay to short items by price plus shipping I don't even have to do the math to know that the widget I want by is a better deal at $9.99 plus $2.00 shipping than at 13.99 with Free Shipping.
What do you think about "Free" Shipping as a buyer or a seller?
Happy EBaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
I have to say that 99.9 percent of the people that I deal with on EBay have been easy and understanding to work with but then there is that other tenth of a percent. In my experience they do not appear to be sellers on EBay and so I presume that they do not know a lot about the expenses we incur or the time that we spend or much about the selling experience at all. And that is ok they are not supposed to understand us. They bought something and they want to be happy about the purchase once they receive the item. That's what we both want right?
But here is the problem. Even though it is a popular mantra for most companies out there we all know it's not true. The fact is that the customer is not always right. I will admit that when in doubt it is always a good idea to acquiesce to the customers request and I do. When a customer tells me their item was broken I refund their purchase no questions asked. If a customer emails just to say they aren't completely happy for what ever reason I offer to discount the item, take the return or refund completely if the situation warrants. That's just good business but sometimes it just doesn't feel right to bend over backwards. Do you know what I am talking about?
Here are a couple of examples that I have navigated in my EBay Life.
I once received a message that read something about how I had shipped an item to the wrong address the email ended with the comment in all capital letters (to me, that's the equivalent to yelling in type) "Thank you for ignoring my special instructions." There was probably an exclamation mark at the end but I don't remember. I think that I was particularly taken aback by the sarcasm in the "Thank you" part.
I had in fact shipped the item to the buyer but he had sent me a message requesting that I ship the item to another address. So I had no problem accepting responsibility for the mistake and offering to refund the amount of the forward shipping but that left me with a hollow feeling that I was allowing myself to be treated in a way that was somehow unacceptable. So I did what EBay allows you to do. I took a deep breath and gave myself a little time to think about it before I typed a smart-alec reply that would surely push my buyer over the edge and insure that they left me negative feedback.
I wanted to say, "I am sorry." Ok.... really at first I didn't even want to apologize for my mistake. But I did make a mistake. The problem was that I couldn't get past how surly I thought the buyer had been to me. I wanted to be able to say something to the effect the I was sorry but that didn't give him the right to be rude. Which of course would have been the wrong way to put it. In the end I sent the apology, offered to refund the shipping and ended with this statement.
"Please don't treat me like I did this on purpose."
I admit I was a little surprised to receive positive feedback and a very nice reply that said not to worry about the shipping.
Maybe the buyer didn't think all caps was yelling I don't know. But I believe as a seller it is important to choose your words wisely when you are dealing with an unhappy buyer. In this case it all worked out for me.
My second example is currently unresolved. A few weeks ago I sold a pair of boots to a buyer. This pair of boots to be exact.
Upon their receipt I received this email.
Hi there,
Thank you for quickly shipping. I have examined the boots, and taken some boot black to them. The left toe area is more than a "little scuffed", the leather is permanently scarred, and does not take the black evenly with the rest of the boot.
I am going to take these to my shoe/boot repair shop to see if the toe area can be dyed or treated to accept the boot black more evenly to match the rest of the boot.
Because your description made the claim that the toes were only scuffed and needed polish, I am asking for a partial refund to offset the expense at the boot repair shop.
The partial refund is half of the price paid for the boots. I think ~$30 is fair to offset the boot repair cost.
Thank you,
dcannon
Now she was very polite and I can't argue what I meant in my description vs what she was expecting to get but I don't know where she came up with $30.00. It seemed too extreme for me. So I sent this reply.
Thank you for contacting me. I am sorry that the boots were not in the condition you expected. I will be happy to take them back and will refund your shipping cost in addition to your original payment.
She replied with:
Hi, thanks for your response and the offer - but the boots have already been dropped off at the shoe repair. It will be this weekend before I have a chance to pick them up.
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
I have been thinking lately about Top Rated Seller Status (having recently lost mine) and what that really means to me. Of course I am not happy about it exactly, but in truth I am not really loosing any sleep over it either and in fact I am wondering if I gave up too much of my bottom line to get it.
You might be thinking that I have lost my grip on reality here but let me try to explain. If you are a seller you already know about DSR ratings. We are rated on the following four items with 1 to 5 stars (5 being good and 1 not so much)
1) Item as described
2) Communication
3) Shipping Time
4) Shipping and Handling Charges
I may rant at a later date on why I don't think that number 4 should even be part of the rating system but for the purposes of this post all you need to know is that it is item number 4 that caused me to loose my top rated seller status. Item number 4 is also the reason that I didn't get Top Rated Seller status when EBay first started the program. So I have known that it is my trouble spot on the DSR system all along and I have been lowering my shipping charges since the implementation of the DSR system. Maybe I am not supposed to say this but I do try to cover my shipping cost with a little extra (usually around a dollar) for handling fees and packaging material. Sometimes I do make more than a dollar and sometimes I am actually in the hole because I haven't charged enough for shipping.
As I said, I have been mostly lowering my shipping charges for several months anyway but when I found out that I lost my Top Rated Seller Status because of shipping charges my immediate reaction was to lower my shipping costs even more. In many cases planning not to cover my whole shipping cost, by under charging by roughly a dollar (for a 2.00 total decrease in revenue.) On all other items I just eliminated my handling fee of roughly 1.00.
I did all of this in an effort to gain back these benefits.
| Here is the information directly from EBay (with my perhaps irreverent comments in blue) |
|
Top-rated sellers receive the following privileges and benefits:
Priority customer support (I don't know what this means and there is no additional information from EBay. I guess we can conclude that I didn't use this benefit when I had it, so it certainly doesn't make sense to mourn its loss.)
20% discount on final value fees (on item price portion only) (This is the only really tangible item which I will elaborate on below)
Unpaid item protection, which offers credit for certain listing upgrade fees on eligible listing formats (Maybe I missed something but follow this link and tell me if I am wrong. This benefit applies to all sellers not just top rated ones and it only pertains to certain auction type listings. I list almost exclusively in the fixed price format so again not worth crying over.)
Expanded seller protection from PayPal (Again I don't know what this means and there is no additional information)
A badge on listing pages 
(Yes this one does give you bragging rights and in truth if everything else is equal I would probably choose the seller with the pretty badge)
Improved search standing for fixed price listings in Best Match search results (The importance of this item is hard to first measure and second quantify but it sounds really good kind of like "Priority Customer Support" here at least there is some additional information but my thoughts are these: One thing is true, buyers do see the Top Rated Seller badge in the search function. The rest of it is some interesting double speak about how top rated seller status will improve your search standing in best match for fixed price listings and oh by the way there is no guarantee that your item will actually show up ahead of someone else's. Also I don't know about you but even though the search default is "Best Match" I usually end up searching by price.)
United Parcel Service (UPS) rate discounts (I didn't see anything about a discount or Top Rated Sellers when I clicked through this link. Maybe it's because I lost my status but I don't ever use UPS so in my case who cares anyway.)
So what is my point?
Well lets go back to the math (keeping it very simple because that's the way I do math.) I said above that on my new listings I was loosing 1 to 2 dollars per item in an effort to appease the shipping charge gods. When I was receiving my Top Rated Seller 20% discount it was between $14.00 and $19.00 each month. So just for the sake of argument lets use the $19.00 discount and the $1.00 decrease in revenue. The other number we need is my unit sales per month which averaged about 50 per month in 2011. I realize that this scenario is taking a very simplistic view of something that is actually much more complex but I think it still makes a valid argument.
For me it doesn't make sense to lower my shipping costs to have zero or negative profit. Using the numbers above my best case scenario shows I am loosing $50.00 to make back $19.00 for a net loss of $31.00. My worst case scenario shows I am loosing $100.00 to make back $14.00 for a net loss of $82.00.
Of course there is the question of whether or not the lack of a Top Rated Seller Badge is costing me actual sales but in my case I think the fallout is minimal since my items are mostly one of a kind I don't have apples to apples competition.
Don't get me wrong I would like to have my Top Rated Seller Status back but not at the expense to my bottom line. I feel a little smarter having thought it through. I certainly want to have reasonable shipping costs for the buyer but they also have to be reasonable for me. If you are still here thanks for hanging in there for this longer post.
Happy EBaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
This post is going to be short and to the point. To be honest I wasn't sure if I was really going to share this little factoid that I now have at my disposal but I have decided to be as open about this as I can be so I am going to divulge just how many hours I worked on EBay in 2011. To be perfectly honest I did not plan to keep track of the hours that I was working on EBay at the beginning of 2011 so this number is not perfect. But, I am a Virgo and a little OCD in some areas and so I write down everything I do and when I do it in my day planner. So I decided to go back through it and figure out just how many hours I had really spent working on EBay.
Some months and weeks were much higher than others but the average end result was surprising to me. I worked on average 10.32 hours per week, just 44.75 hours a month. I am actually a little embarrassed by this number. If I hadn't actually figured it out I would have guessed that it was at least double that number.
Armed with this number I am targeting at least a 20 hour work week for 2012 that I will keep track of on a weekly basis. Will let you know how that goes. And speaking of my 20 hour work week I had better get to it.
Happy EBaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
***
At year end I try to give some thought to the metric data that I should continue to track, any new data that I should track, as well as any other ideas I should work on to grow my business. I also try to think of things that I should stop doing because they aren't adding any value to my business. I suppose that it would be prudent to do this more often than once a year but I guess once a year is better than not at all.
On the continue doing list:
1) Tracking my hours spent on EBay. (This may seem like an obvious metric but I didn't bother doing it until last year and to be honest when you are first starting out you might not really want to know your hourly wage.)
2) Tracking total items and dollars sold per month and comparing them to 2011.
3) Tracking total items listed and total potential profit listed per month and increasing that number over 2011.
4) Working on a higher profit per item average (ie: better margin)
On the new items list are:
1) Work on lowering shipping charges.
2) Work on finding additional product sources.
3) Look for items with higher dollar sale potential.
4) Implement a more systematic way to write-off and clear out obsolete inventory.
I am sure that there are a lot more items that I should be working on but this seems like a sufficient list to keep me busy.
As for the stop doing list. This one is always a little tougher. I have been puzzling over it for several days now and I haven't come up with anything. In years past I have simplified my listing process. I started out using a bunch of different templates now I use just one. I have shortened my photo taking and photo processing time mostly by getting smarter about taking pictures. One of the biggest time savers in this area was that I used to lay the clothes out on the floor. They looked nice but it took a long time. Now I take hanging photos most of the time this is adequate for a decent photo and much faster. I have stopped paying as much attention to other sellers. But, so far this year I haven't identified anything to cut out. I guess I will have to stay mindful about that one and see if anything presents itself.
For now I guess I will concentrate on the things on the list above.
Happy Ebaying,
My EBay Life
(A series of essays about what it is like to sell stuff on EBay)
***
I am starting at the end but it also feels like the beginning. I finished my year end reports for 2011 yesterday and in some ways the news was quite underwhelming. But most things are rarely all good or all bad and bearing this in mind, here are some of the stats that I now have to work with and use for next years benchmarks.
1) My sales number ($$) was down 8.27 percent from 2010 :-(
2) My sales volume (units) were down 24.08 percent from 2010 :-( :-(
However
3) My net profit was up 1.97 percent from 2010 :-)
How can this be? The answer is......
4) My average profit per item sold increased by $2.08.
Sorry to my buyers but this was done primarily by:
5) My average selling price increase of $2.33.
Here is my brief assessment of those numbers. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of the hours that I was working on EBay in 2010. I do have an estimate for 2011 and I intended to keep even a closer eye on that number in 2012. Still I think it is safe to conclude that the amount of time I spent (at least on the back end specifically packing and shipping) was significantly, 24.08 percent to be exact, less than I spent in 2010. While it is not good that my unit sales were down by almost 25 percent I do consider it a success that I was able to increase my net profit particularly in light of the EBay fee change that happened in July of 2011. My estimate is that on average my fees increased by 25-30 cents per item sold. I wish I had that number to add directly into my bottom line.
Moving on:
It seems fair to assume that my increased pricing, at least in part, had something to do with my decrease in sales. I suspect that the decrease in sales also had something to do with how much was being feed into the system with new listings. I only started keeping track of this number last year so unfortunately for now it is just a gut feeling. Next year I will be in a better position to analyze the actual effect. Still it does seem prudent to pay attention to the balance between average selling price and average profit.
In conclusion I am pleased that the one thing I worked on was a success but it appears that I need to pay attention to a few additional things in 2012.
Happy Ebaying,
