how do you handle listing?

[keziak]

One of the worst problems in my business is my inability to keep on top of listing. I spend a great deal of time on processing mail and scouting. I list on Amazon, ebay store and ebay auctions. I want to resolve to solve this problem in 2023 but if I knew how, I'd already be doing it. I was able to get a lot listed on Amazon this month because I curtailed Ebay listing. But I'm not ready to give up on Ebay.

I tried one approach: getting up extra early and listing first thing in the morning.  But that  just led  to greater exhaustion in the evening so I wasn't able to list then.  I'm 62 and while in many ways I kick butt just as I've had for decades, I am more easily exhausted. Between my business labor and my heavy work sorting books at multiple libraries, I work heavy and hard.

I could try skipping my afternoon nap but see previous paragraph.

I tried raising my minimum price on Amazon and ebay store but somehow I have just as many books as ever (I still often list auctions at cheaper prices, could work on that).

Long story short: any tips out there for keeping on top of listing? Am I missing something? I don't feel constitutionally able to hire someone to do it.

[laststopgeneralstore]

Stick to one platform. Multi-tasking is impossible for anyone to do and their are plenty of studies and statistics to back this up. The whole "don't put all your eggs in one basket" is a false when it comes to reselling. You want to put all your eggs in one basket. You can either master and be great at one platform or be crappy and mediocre at best on multiple platforms, you chose. Choose the platform you want and go all in. If it doesn't work after 6-12 months then re-evaluate and chose another. Assuming you have patience(most people don't) and don't need to have everything this second, you'll understand.

Listing isn't hard if you have all of your process's down and know exactly what your doing and how you are going to execute it. Do yourself a favor and time your self on every task you do when it comes to reselling, you will soon realize how much time you are wasting. If you are listing less than 20-30 items per day then your listings should take you under 2-3 hours in my opinion(does for me). Good luck.

[keziak]

Yes, that is good advice, keeping a better handle on what I do everyday and see what that tells me. Hubby is a lawyer and he has to keep track in 15 minute increments or something. 

Broadly speaking my days are taken up with hours of mail processing, library work and scouting. 

The New Year is nearly here. January is also likely to generate a lot of orders but there is no reason I couldn't make myself curtail the scouting until I am caught up. Just need to make myself do it. My best friend is also very driven to find and buy inventory but she doesn't use ebay and that gives her more time. 

The eventual solution will have to be closing my Ebay business. That will do away with heavy lots, many boxes of books to drag to the P.O. and a basement out of control with every size box because I need many sizes and shapes. I would miss it though. At some point I have to admit that I can't "have it all".

[stainlessenginecovers]

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@keziak wrote:

I had a sleep study once but years ago and they said I am a good sleeper but I  snore.

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When you snore, you don't breath as the flap is shutting causing the 'snore'. When you don't breath, you don't sleep (into REM). Must've been an old study or a place that didn't know what they were doing. 

[keziak]

I don't know. I have plenty of dreams and when the cat wakes me up in the middle of the night (another story)I am always very "deep". But maybe I should bring this up at my next checkup. 

[keziak]

I ran that experiment - for the most part - in December in that I cut back hard on auctions and didn't double-list when listing Amazon books. I was more productive. I made enough extra on Amazon to make up for losing what I might have made on Ebay. However, December is always an outlier in my line (books). It could be very different in March. 

After reading the suggestions here I have decided to leave my comfort zone (scouting) and focus hard on listing until after the new year. This means the libraries will see less of me but there is a certain amount of being taken for granted in doing that work if you are too dedicated. A little piling up of donations might do them no harm.

[ms.rodriguez*]

Maybe that is why you are tired. Lock up that cat in another room at night.  Put on ear plugs and drink some ZZZZquil to help you sleep.  Buy the generic at Target for 4.99.   It works great.

[farmalljr]

As far as time..... You make more production when you can do the same thing over and over. Do pictures all at once, list all at once, and so on. 

You can bank listings in drafts, so you can release some every day, and not have to worry about setting aside X hours a day dedicated to eBay. 

Another thing that helps is organizing whatever you are listing into likes. If you can sell similar items and not have to change a bunch of item specifics, it makes creating listings faster. 

[yuzuha]

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@creativecrisis wrote:

You could decide not to source any more books until you list what you have on hand.

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This was going to be my suggestion. If you're behind on listing inventory that you already have, the LAST thing you want is to constantly be bringing in more. Take a break from sourcing and work on getting what you already have up first.

[yuzuha]

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@farmalljr wrote:

As far as time..... You make more production when you can do the same thing over and over. Do pictures all at once, list all at once, and so on. 

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This is what I do. I'll spend an hour or two just taking photos, and then later in the evening I might spend an hour or two making listings once I have the photos all done and ready to go. I don't try to do it all at the same time.

[slippinjimmy]

My "secret" method in recent years is to only list Items I have many multiples of. 2022 has been an average year for sales but I did not create a single new listing, completely depending on items I have anywhere from 10 to 200 of the same thing.

[keziak]

Yes, I posted that I will try  hard for the rest of the year to list what I have. I'll never get to the end of it but I know I can make progress if I buckle down. The mail is a wild card. Might be a lot, might be slow. I guess I can go back through reports and get a crystal ball reading based on last year. 

[keziak]

In my line, books, it's uncommon to have multiples of any particular book. If I do it's  usually a current best seller and I list those on Amazon because they turn over fast and I don't need them in my ebay store. 

[slippinjimmy]

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@keziak wrote:

In my line, books, it's uncommon to have multiples of any particular book. If I do it's  usually a current best seller and I list those on Amazon because they turn over fast and I don't need them in my ebay store. 

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Not disagreeing really but my book experience (very limited) has been the opposite. The only books I have sold on eBay were remainders bought by the case (for pennies) from liquidators. Most of them were published 30 or 40 years ago and would never have been considered "current best sellers" even when they were brand new. They have all been very niche subjects that are not fast movers but I'm happy to sell one a month and don't care if it takes 5 - 10 years to move them all because those sales all result from a single listing and I find creating listings the most time consuming and least enjoyable aspect of selling online.

The main thing is that it takes the same amount of effort to create a good listing for something I have 100 copies as it does to create a listing for an item I only have 1. The only maintenance required is to raise the price as my remaining stock dwindles.

[keziak]

Our operations sound a little different. Due to constraints on my shelving I do not keep books that have been in inventory longer than 15-24 months (varies due to whether I  have time to delete and pull any). I've often though  how sweet it would be to have a lot more space to store single books and lots. I mostly make room by inventory work because it kicks out plenty of books no longer even online.  This happens to my friends too. Must be Amazon bots deciding for themselves what can stay online, with no information provided for w hat they delete.

[sin-n-dex]

I work full time, so I do my packing orders for an hour or two before work, drop packages off at lunch when working in the city, after work I do my listing, unless other things need to be done (like bookkeeping to get the coin shop their share calculated).

Weekends are dedicated for taking pictures and processing new stuff. Sometimes I feel a bit behind by having lots of listing to do, but processing inventory is important (which is a necessary task when I get bags of tokens from the coin shop).

My partner is an entrepreneur and works 16 hours a day on his business, including lots of weekend time... so things work out well with me spending so much time working on eBay. I bring my coins and stamps over there on Saturday afternoons to spend time on it while having a bit of company on and off throughout the day. Processing inventory is something I really like to do, because I get to examine all my coin shop goodies (or stamp albums, or whatever I have that week). Creating the lots to sell is lots of fun.

Some days I get lots of listing done, like 50-100... last night I did only 7 listings because my one hour to work on inventory became a 4 hour task because it just took so long. I'm hoping to get some listings done tonight if I can avoid being distracted.

BTW, I do auctions and fixed priced listings.

C.