A Practical Walk

Now that I’ve been doing ebay for a few months, I’m learning what works and what doesn’t and making little changes to streamline things. Here I’ve listed 4 changes I’m making.

I’m keeping track of my net earnings. I made a simple excel sheet that tells how much I paid for the item, how much ebay took (taxes, transaction fee, shipping) and how much the buyer sent me, then I end up with my total earnings.

This has been enlightening. In fact I learned that I lost money on 2 items! One I came out -$3.35, due to shipping being higher than expected. I’m still not sure what went wrong with that one. And the other one I lost 13 cents, simply because I listed the item so low, that it didn’t even cover the various fees. I learned from it and took down some of my other low-priced items. I’m better off donating those types of things.

I record the taxes I spend on items. When I started recording how much money I was spending on items to sell, I didn’t count taxes, but some of the places I get my inventory from do charge taxes. So I’m now including that in my price per item, it gives me a more accurate net profit.

I’m paying more attention to sell through rate. Carrie at Home explains this much better than I ever could. But basically if you want to keep your inventory flowing, this is important to look at. My husband found a Flowbee haircutting system. At the time of this writing I found 83 available for sale and 455 already sold. I’ve never had an item with such high sell through rate!

I’m getting pickier about buying items, mostly when I think about how much time it’ll take to list. For example, a linen shirt might need to be steamed…and then it’ll probably still look wrinkly for the photos. Then if there’s a stain or tear I’ll need to either fix those or photograph and mention them in the listing. If I’m only making a buck or two for all that work, I’ll probably hang it back up. If that brand sells particularly good and I think I’ll get more for it, I might decide it’s worth the extra time involved. I don’t mind only making a couple bucks on an item, if I don’t need to spend too much time getting it listed.

For example, I’ve sold light switch covers. Who knew that specialty light switch covers sell well? But you know what I love about them? They’re super easy to photograph, no steaming out wrinkles or spending time laying them out just right. They also package up easily. Just wrap in some bubble wrap and put in a little box or bubble envelope. Quick and easy for me! Also because they’re small, they don’t take up gobs of space in my inventory shelves. So basically, I not only think about the possible earnings, but also the time involved.

Any ebay sellers out there reading this? Have you made changes to the way you sell?