Christmas shopping is upon us! What are your plans to maximize your sales, or are you just going to 'go with the flow'? Have your sales picked up or not yet recovered? And what thoughts have you given to 2022?
Inquiring minds would like to know!
-Bob.
sold a few more big items and a couple more smalls. Enough to keep me happy, but not enough to really get me too excited. I've sold three PCs locally now -- the fourth has something wrong in the mobo so it's back on the shelf as I try to focus only on those that can be flipped quickly.
Work is busy. The retail stores are doing quite well, Amazon sales keep growing, and I'm getting better at keeping the eBay shipping & listing on track. Sales have stabilized, but not where they really should be - yet. Adding to the fun: we lost power Monday night and probably won't have it back until the weekend. Not because of the bad weather ... because someone knocked down a main transformer pole, it landed on the building, and ended up shorting out and damaging just about every electrical junction box in the mall!! Fun Fun Fun! Spent today pulling stock by flashlight, moving the shipping computer from one store to another, and then packing/shipping without half the tools that make it easier. Oy!!
And Monday I found FOUR boxes of video games - Xbox, Playstation, who knows what else. About 150-200 per box, about 1/2 new in package, the other Gamestop 'Previously Owned'. Listed about 50 Nintendo DS cartridges (no cases) last week - sold enough that the entire lot has been paid for twice over. Good place to be! I can't wait to get into the video games.... 🙂
Tomorrow's adventure -- finding the Win95 PC game, new in box, that I just sold. I know they are all in a sealed tub... but I'm not quite sure where I stashed the tub. 😞 It's always something...
Cooling off this week, rain Thur eve, Friday, Sat morning. Then colder. Oh boy. Happy Happy Joy Joy.
-Bob.
@rabites-n-chocobos wrote:Just started in September. Sales have picked up as I've increased my inventory over the months, but also as we've headed into Christmas shopping.
I haven't listed in a week or two as I've decided to wait until after Christmas to really hit it hard. I think that's the time to really start listing, and selling the big stuff.
If you do not have a Store (new sellers probably shouldn't right away), then you have 250 free listings each month. What I try to do, altho not as much lately, is keep getting inventory ready, even if I've used all my 250 listings. Just remember it's 250 each month, including GTC rollovers, so keep an eye on your numbers.
I'm also taking some time off - I'll blast out a lot of relists between Christmas and New Years (I use SixBit to do this for me automatically - no keyboard time involved!) as well as working on adding new inventory to one of my selling IDs during that same week while I'm on 'vacation'. 🙂
-Bob.
Sales are slowing at work (we had 4 sales today, 12/21), and I haven't had a personal sale in too long. I've been letting all my listings end, and then I'll schedule reposts to run the week I'm on vacation - 250 listings posted in 5 days (12/27-12/31), and then another 250 available right after that (1/1/22)! If I can get the stuff I have processed, I could have a month with 500 running listings in 2 of my 3 selling IDs!!
Boss stopped by today - we needed to talk about a few things, and he brought over yet another box of product to list. He is under the impression that you can post as quickly on eBay as you do on Amazon. I've been trying to teach him why that's not true, and sometimes I think he gets it, but then that fades and I have to start all over again.
After we'd finished reviewing the inventory and discussing the stuff I needed his OK on, he mentioned that he's planning to 'shake things up' after the New Year. Like switching to straight commission instead of hourly pay. Which will mean I'll be leaving -- half of what I do, even now when it's just me, is not posting but what would be considered sales support: managing supplies, handling customer complaints, pulling expired products, pulled aged/worthless inventory, shipping, and trying to keep the walkways clear enough that I don't face-plant on the concrete floor. I know he's thinking it's a great way to boost sales -- if I earned 10% of sales of everything I list, I'd need to list $12K of product a month. But that's kinda hard to do when a lot of what we have is $20-$50 items. Especially when you need your own pictures, and more than just one, and a description that's keyword-rich (along with the title) to get you better index exposure.
Amazon is: scan barcode, match picture to product, set a price, set the inventory count, and done. It's like comparing Polaroid pictures to marble statues -- both are art, both can be done by a single person, but one is a whole lot more work than the other.
Very frustrating. With just a couple people of decent intelligence who are willing to actually learn something new and then use that new skill in their job, and a bit of support in the form of getting rid of the old to make way for the new (we can't list too much new stuff because there's no place to safely store it!), we could easily get eBay sales back on track to a $1M year.
If he is set on commission only, then I'm going to counter with a consignment contract, mostly for electronics, computers, and gaming items. Without someone with my experience and understanding of how to work within eBay's rules, his eBay account would likely be closed within 6 months or less. And if he tries to start a new account from the new store, the same thing will happen -- that one too will implode. You can't do "cash & carry" online. It just don't work, for so very many reasons.
2022 is shaping up to become a very interesting year!
-Bob.
