September, so I am told, is the early edge of the Christmas shopping season now. The point in time where the early, early, early bird shoppers start looking for bargains and unique gifts. And it's the last 'calm' month before next January -- sure, we have Labor Day, but that's just grilling in the back yard and relaxing with family. October has Halloween, multiple sugar treat runs because you keep eating them, costume anxiety, and then all those little creatures ringing your doorbell! November has Gluttony Day, otherwise known as Thanksgiving, with all it's required food shopping, preparation, and decorating the house to stand up to the in-laws commentary. December... well, December should be calm since it only has a birthday party to get thru, and what is generally a quiet one for those who are close friends with the birthday boy. But Madison Ave got ahold of the idea to make it into the worlds biggest carnival, full of crazed shoppers fighting over some overpriced toy that will break the third time a child plays with it (an improvement over recent years), yelling and screaming about parking spaces, excessive levels of financial stress brought about by the feeling that it's required to max out all your credit cards (or you aren't a good gift giver).
So... September is our last calm month. How are you prepping for the upcoming holidays and what will hopefully be a better selling period for many/most of us?
-Bob.
My goal for September is to not let my sales get any worse. Without becoming massively sleep-deprived.
Weekly status: Personal sales are still dismal - I think I made less than half a dozen sales in the whole month of August. On the good side - there's no way I'm going to have to pay taxes on any of my sales income, since I have more than enough expenses to cover this level of selling. I may even be able to reduce my W2 income as well - need to spend a bit of time with my CPA again. 🙂
Work sales are getting slowly better. This week was more stable than usual... we had relatively the same number of sales per day thru the entire week, instead of the prior peaks & valleys (Monday would add a dozen sales, Tuesday only 5-6, Wednesday around 10, Thursday about the same, and then Friday would plummet as everyone was looking to the weekend instead of eBay). Still working on increasing that Average Selling Price, but having a regular daily volume is a good start.
Boss wants more posted each day, so I figured out how to do it. SixBit holds all my inventory records - everything I've sold out, have running currently, or have inventory but no listings. It's that last group that lets me keep my weekly posting levels up. These are inventory that we had listed at one time but they ended, or were ended, and were not reposted. So I grab 10-12 Items, print a quick report that shows what, where, and how many, and then physically verify the count and condition before posting. Since everything else is already there -- pictures, description, Item Specifics, pricing research (I add that in the Item Notes box) -- it takes little time to verify, refresh, and post. Once those are done, I move on the new-in-the-door inventory, trying to list the best sellers first, if I can figure that out.
The house emptying trudges on. Got both boys coming up this weekend - everyone has a long weekend, so Dad gets at least one day from each. Oldest is clearing out the kitchen - the safe food is already gone, now they are looking at the dishware/cookware. Whatever youngest doesn't want (most of it), oldest will put to use one way or another. I think he gets that from me -- I hate throwing anything out...surely it can be reused or repurposed!
Found my second heavy duty rack unit -- 1000lbs total weight capacity, 500lb on each of two shelves. 6ft long, 2ft deep, 5-1/2 feet high. I knew I had two, just couldn't find the second one. Now I did. Works great for storing boxed items...we can really pack them in there and keep them up off the floor as well. They were expensive, but I purchased them when I was selling at a $250K annual level and had the funds and the ability to deduct the expense. 🙂
So a busy weekend for me. Actually kind of looking forward to it -- it's something different, half of it is outside (the storage units are enclosed, yes, but the big door makes it more like a three sided box, not an enclosed room). No grilling, but we're both OK with that. We enjoy it when youngest cooks for us, otherwise the stove and oven work just fine. 🙂
Have a safe weekend everyone!
-Bob.
@debbiet22 wrote:Bob-sounds like you are making progress in all aspects. Hope you get everything accomplished you want too. Glad you found your heavy-duty rack. Hard telling what is found when we start going through things. We either forget we had it or can't find it.
We had a good holiday weekend - the boys both showed up and got things moving forward, and my wife got to spend more than enough time with two of younger grands. I got one of my metal racks back on it's wheels and rolling, and set up another metal rack without wheels to put some of the heavier PC items on. The wheels are rated for 250lbs... the rack for 300lbs per shelf, with 5 shelves. Can't load the rolling ones with too much heavy stuff....
I was a bad boy this weekend... I went out Sunday and picked up another full SUV load of PC's, laptops, printers, tablets, PC parts, laptop parts, and miscellany. And when I say 'full load', I mean side to side, from the back of the front seats, over the folded 2nd row, over the folded 3rd row, and right up against the hatch. And stacked to the roof... frankly, I was a bit concerned that a hard corner or fast stop/start would start things sliding and take out windows...or my head!
It's a good load - already recovered a 27" iMac similar to one I sold earlier this year for $300. This one is a bit better equipped (hdd & sdd both, more memory), so I'm expecting a bit more. But even at $300, it will recover what I invested in the full lot, and that's a good feeling.
Personal sales are stalled, completely. My PC parts haven't sold in almost a month. My collectable pennies are about to be blast-listed (the full 250 for the month over 15 days) and I'm thinking of posting them Fixed Price for 30 days (SixBit will end them for me 1/2hr before they renew) to see if that generates any sales. I'm also working on an embedable link (eBay does allow links that stay on site and within your own ID) to help 'group' some of my coins. The "see more elongates like this one - click here!" type links. Easy to do with a Store, a bit trickier without one. But I've done them before, so I'll just dig out the old html, brush up my web page skills, and try not to blow anything up. 🙂
Sales at work continue to slowly climb. The weekends generate the same count, but higher ASP than months past. The weekdays are generating a few more sales but the same $30 ASP. I am getting more previously listed stock relisted - it's already in SixBit, so I just confirm qty and condition, brush up the listing text and pictures a bit, and it's ready to post! I can post 2-5x more listings per hour doing this, and there are over 600 of these SKUs that need to be gotten to. For example, found that some of our best selling suncare from last year hadn't been relisted. So I processed it and we sold out within a week. I definitely like that!
This coming weekend is supposed to be clear and dry - perfect for removing the last of the furniture and those items that won't fit in the back of the SUV. And I have been making headway in getting some of the trash removed so I can get to the boxed items behind it. And we got the AC fixed!! Yeah, it's pushing the electric bill up a bit, but it is soooooooo much easier to work in the house if we bring the temps down to 70 while we are there and back to 76 while we are not. My oldest boy's girlfriend has some kind of cleaning fetish...and she's making short work of those refrigerators! Youngest has been going thru various rooms and making sure he's got all his stuff, then oldest goes in and grabs whatever else he wants. Then the trash gets bagged and anything else either gets curbed or moved to storage. We may actually be finished by the end of the month!! Youngest has a couple grand of auto parts to deal with, and I have a LOT of shipping supplies and assorted inventory to deal with.
Maybe Sunday we'll start emptying the attic -- it's a walk-in, not a climb-in, and chock-a-full of the Christmas decorations (in tubs, not loose) and more boxed stuff. Probably no more then 2-3 SUV loads -- those tubs are BIG! We have something like 60+ ceramic lighted houses for the Christmas village, along with about half a tub of 'accessories' like people, vehicles, carolers, etc. We haven't set everything up at the same time in over a decade, and probably won't again until we're in a new house with space to actually do it right. Stressful to set up and take down, but so relaxing when you turn off the room lights, turn on the little house lights, and just sit back in the recliner with your hot chocolate and Christmas cookies!!
Have a good sales week everyone! September is nearly half over!!
-Bob.
@downrightspecialkids wrote:I am still trying to go through all my stuff, but just have so much. I haven't been to a yard sale all summer and was really bummed to see today was the community one I love so much and I missed it. It's so crazy they have police directing traffic. Oh well. I don't need more stuff anyhow. I seem to be selling a lot more low ticket items, and have many items with watchers, but no one is biting.
The house is in progress, just slower than I would like. But I do have health issues with heat and intense activity, so I'm working at a safe pace and just trying to keep a steady pace.
Here's a thought for basically any seller that's having issues with their stock overload -- why not join the "source" side of the equation and participate in community sales or have a yard sale to clear out what has simply been sitting around too long. I have zero experience doing this - the few times I've visited local yard sales, I've always come away less than impressed. And this was years before eBay gave everybody inflated ideas of what their 'stuff' was worth. 🙂
We had a poor weekend at work this past weekend - sales down almost 50% and dollars down the same. Today was decent - a bit lighter than we'd been seeing, but not by much and we had good sales popping around the time I head home (typical). But I've got some great new inventory (like $200 Beats wireless headphones in a limited edition color - but not on this ID, so this is not an advertisement) -- I'm just going to need to get faster at listing. I can do it some afternoons, but not consistently. That's the irritating part -- after all these years of doing this, you'd think I would have gotten faster....
Good weekend coming up and I think I'll be getting help from both of the boys! I need some help getting racks set up in the second unit -- you can't get the best use of rental space unless you go up...and racks do that quite nicely. Then it's just a matter of moving boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes...... 🙂
-Bob.
