eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎10-06-2022

I'm not sure how many people here work in addition to selling, but I was wondering how people manage their time with that. I've found that my operating is increasing in size, so as I said to the coin shop it's important to have routines and stay organized to be most efficient (and still have time for other things).

During my week:
Monday - Friday 6:30 am to 8 am are times for packing. I've picked up everything from the coin shop the night before, so if it sells after that, it goes the following day.

Monday - Friday Lunch time is to bring packages to Chit Chats Express or Post Office. I have a lunch delivered to my work most days to not have to spend time making lunches and dealing with that. (I have some preferred brands of frozen dinners for when I work at home, some of what they sell in Canada is pretty good).

After work is when I go to the coin shop to get what's sold for the previous 24 hours. If there's not many sales in that time, I might skip that for a day. Also sometimes what's sold is at home, if it's postcards or stamps.

Saturday daytime is "no computer time" - time is spent working on what I want to work on, that could be packaging coins, could be taking pictures, it could be making up stamp collections. No packages are packed on Saturdays, no listings go up until after sundown, and Saturday evenings my "family time".

Monday-Thursday evenings are for doing listings (or bookkeeping if I'm behind on the admin part of the job). On a good night, I can get over 100 done. Some nights listings are done for 4 or 5 hours, other times I just get to them at the end of the night because I did other things. If I'm feeling behind on my own stuff (not coin store stuff), I might make stamp collections and work on my own stuff for a bit before shifting into listings. I kind of do what needs to be done.

Sundays are auction days, but I haven't run auctions for a few weeks. Sunday evenings are for packing orders (items are usually picked up at the shop late afternoon, whatever sold from Thursday 4pm until then). I'll get orders packed Sunday morning if I happen to have any of the items that sold, just to lighten my Sunday evening load. I have had 25 orders to pack on a Sunday, so if some are time consuming postcards (which are a pain to pack), then getting them done earlier helps. I usually take pictures, make stamp collections on Sunday because I have good daylight to see what I'm doing.

Sunday nights after packing are for bookkeeping. My eBay payout is Tuesday, so if the bookkeeping isn't done Sunday, I finish it Monday so that I can give the coin shop their share once payout hits my bank account.

While it sounds like I'm very busy... rest assured I have blown off Saturday activities to go out and do stuff, and I have given up part of an evening of listing because I really needed a nap. I get a little tired running ragged like this. So not a hard and fast rule, just a way I manage my time so what needs to be done has a designated time that it will get done.

C.

discountdenimdeals · ‎10-06-2022

My ebay stuff is just a hobby. Anywhere from 300-$600 a month profit depending on what's sold. I started doing as a recommendation from my Dr to help with my back problems. I am 100% disabled and can't do constant motion stuff with my back. I am still able to use my back just not to the ability as needed in the working world. At one point my back was so bad that I thought the best thing to do was to do nothing. So that's what I did, nothing. I laid on the couch and did nothing for a long time. It temporarily helped my back pain, but not using my back at all led to long term problems. My doctors son sells on ebay and he recommended I try it out as a hobby and just something to occupy my time. Something to get me off the couch and at least moving around. And I have to say that it worked. The light lifting I do for my ebay work has slowly progressed the strength of my back and I've made a little money on the side.

I don't work in the evenings AT ALL. Or the weekends. The only thing I do on the weekends is mail off packages before noon on Saturday. I may take apart a microwave if I'm feeling like it but I try to save most work for during the week. I get more enjoyment from taking things apart to sell the items inside than I do actually selling the items. I love having a drill in my hand and tinkering with things and disassembling them. The profit is an afterthought for me. This is all therapeutic for me. It's also helped with my insomnia issues. Getting up and doing things and being productive during the day has helped me sleep better at night.

You are obviously on ebay for sales and profit and income. So I can see why you spend that much time doing what you do. It's just something to do for me. A few hundred dollars here and there to give to the kids or whatever. It would be great to be able to get a loan to expand my inventory and really create an actual business, but I'm happy with what I'm doing for now. I'd say I spend probably 14 hours a week max, in total. Disassembling items, taking pictures, searching for inventory, creating ads and dealing with shipping. I have a pretty nice setup in my home. A shipping station with a scale and packing tape and everything right in its place and readily available. Majority of my items are already halfway packaged anyway. So it doesn't take much work when an order comes in. A great time saver is numbering your inventory. And I stress this to all new sellers. Number your items in your inventory! Post that number on the items package itself and post that same number at the bottom of the ad for that item. So when it sells all you have to do is scroll down and look at the number and then go find that number in whatever bin or box you placed it in. Also post the bin or box # on the ad. Doing this will save you tons of time. Anyway, that's my rant. Was great reading your schedule.

sin-n-dex · ‎10-06-2022

@discountdenimdeals wrote:
You are obviously on ebay for sales and profit and income. So I can see why you spend that much time doing what you do. It's just something to do for me. A few hundred dollars here and there to give to the kids or whatever. It would be great to be able to get a loan to expand my inventory and really create an actual business, but I'm happy with what I'm doing for now. I'd say I spend probably 12 hours a week max, in total. Disassembling items, taking pictures, searching for inventory, creating ads and dealing with shipping. I have a pretty nice setup in my home. A shipping station with a scale and packing tape and everything right in its place and readily available. Majority of my items are already halfway packaged anyway. So it doesn't take much work when an order comes in. A great time saver is numbering your inventory. And I stress this to all new sellers. Number your items in your inventory! Post that number on the items package itself and post that same number at the bottom of the ad for that item. So when it sells all you have to do is scroll down and look at the number and then go find that number in whatever bin or box you placed it in. Also post the bin or box # on the ad. Doing this will save you tons of time. Anyway, that's my rant. Was great reading your schedule.

eBay (selling part) started in 2012 as a little hobby to make me a few extra bucks once a month with world coin auctions. I was into collecting then (inexpensive common stuff, I was discovered by the coin shop from weekly visits to clean out their junk buckets, when I stopped going in, the shop owner tracked me down at my gym and offered me a part time job). Then it got out of hand...

I was just selling for the coin shop for a long time, until just before COVID anyway. And my partner and I went on a vacation together and invested in some stamp collections to see if we could take them apart, make nice looking pages of stamps, and resell them for profit. Thanks to that adventure and it working out, I now have 4000 things in my house that are for sale, but thankfully they fit in two closets (postcards and stamps).

As for numbering inventory... I didn't do this at first (actually most of what's at the coin shop isn't numbered, I've filed things alphabetically and by size of item, so all the UK UNC sets are together on one shelf, coins are in 9" boxes on another shelf, etc). For my stamps, because there's no way to organize that well as it grows, they have lot numbers (which is basically the same thing as numbering items). For a stamp lot, I go to "bin #A" and grab "A35" from that bin. I make sure the country matches what was purchased (in the event I made an error in the listing), and then check the photo since sometimes I have the same country right next to each other.

When I started on eBay, or even before COVID, I didn't really need the money because I work full time, but with my groceries costing me over $600 a month now (because of what I eat, which is basically no packaged foods, no cans, no boxes, minimal frozen), having eBay money helps. Not to mention all the other things that went up in price. In Canada where I live, a bag of grapes is $20, a bunch of celery is $4-5, a bag of carrots is $5, apples are $3 each. You get the idea...

C.