Money Monday: Two Weeks Behind

Time flies when you stay busy! And that is a good thing. For the last two weeks I have been pleasantly surprised with how busy eBay has been.

 

I have set a mini-goal to list AT LEAST five items daily. By doing this, I am not so overwhelmed with trying to build my store inventory. Some days, even listing just five items can be a challenge.

 

Sales have been consistent over the last two weeks. Many of my sales were my Fire King dinnerware collection. I am glad that it is finding its way to a new home.

One of my best sales these last two weeks is this 1930 Jaro Hess litho/poster. It shows the geography of the land of make believe, with all the fairy tales and nursery rhymes

I found it all rolled up with other posters in a bucket at a thrift store. I carefully unrolled all the posters, they were all vintage and exceptionally pretty. But this one caught my eye. Even though it was rolled up you could instantly tell the the quality by the feel of the paper and the beautiful graphics.

It was originally marked $1.00 but the thrift store was having a 75% off sale on all art work. My cost was 0.25 cents.

They

 

The poster also had a big huge rip of 16" from the left side into the middle of the poster. That made me a little sad, but I knew it had value even with the rip.

After checking completeds, my intuition was correct. This particular poster without rips in it has sold for $275.00. When I saw that, I was really excited!!

I wanted to be competitive but I didn't want to give it away, even though I only paid a quarter for it. I priced it at 199.00 and took a best offer of $150.00!!

 

Here is how last two weeks went:

Active listings: 644

Cost of items sold: $45.00

Number of sales: 32

Total sales: $950.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $45.00

Average selling price: $31.00

International sales: 4

Returns: 1

Feedback: all positive this week

Last but not least, here are some of my coffe mugs sales.

Each mug cost on the average, about 0.50 cents.

The average selling price of the mugs was 27.00 with free shipping.

 

Have a great week!

 

 

Money Monday: Much Improved

Sales were much improved last week. As I read through my blog list, it seems that it pretty much true for the majority of eBay sellers. Isn't it nice to hear the "cha-ching" on your phone when you have a sale? I still get excited when I hear it.

 

Last week I was busy with chores around together house so my listing numbers are about the same. We have a lot of fix it projects to complete before the end of the year. Sometimes it is hard to find a balance between eBay and things that need to get done around the house.

 

One of those projects is both eBay and house related. I am trying to get my inventory under control so I know where items are and how many I have of each. Definitely a thankless task, but needs to be done. This project will definitely take more time to complete.

See the Banker's Boxes in the picture? I am attempting to put my mug inventory in them. It is time consuming, but at least I can see what I have, tweak the listing and improve the picture quality. I am also trying to include 12 pictures into my listings. eBay provides twelve free pictures, and I figure of I can use all of them ( at least on my new listings) my items will place higher in the search.

 

I had a couple of good sales last week. My best sale was the Indiana Blue Teal Thumbprint Tumblers. These tumblers were part of the church estate sale over a month ago. I paid $5.00 for the whole box of glasses (48 total). That was the specific price on the box, but if I average all the listings by the $50.00 I spent for the WHOLE lot, the price would be closer to 0.83 cents a listing. ($50.00 divided by 66 listings)

 

Back to the tumblers. Monday, a customer bought ALL 12 of the tumblers! She paid $151.00 with F/S.

 

 

Mug sales this week were pretty good. This is the best one, I think. Four Zodiac mugs ( vintage Federal glass) sold for $45.99 and shipped internationally to England. The buyer paid $65.00 in shipping, can you believe it? If they would have sold in US i would have paid shipping. All four mugs cost about $3.00 total.

 

 

 

 

Last week was a pretty good week on eBay!

Here is how last week went:

Active listings: 615

Cost of items sold: $27.50

Number of sales: 20

Total sales: $485.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $30.00

Average selling price: $24.00

International sales: 2

Returns: 0

Feedback: all positive this week

Hope your week was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

Money Monday: What's The Prediction

Last week I tried to concentrate on listing more of the Fire King but that is just going to be an on going process.

 

I did hit up the Goodwill and one garage sale. The Goodwill did provide a few good items one of which has already sold.

 

Yes, this lovely bright green afghan sold in three days for 32.15 ( f/s) I paid $1.99.

 

Here is the other Afghan I found for $1.99. It's available :-)

When I go to GoodWill I usually check put the plush. Lately, they have been putting together bags of plush for $4.99. The bags they use are the same ones that comforter sets come in, so they are pretty good size.

Plowing throughout the bags of plush, I see these feet. Do you see it? I could not grab that bag fast enough!!

 

After I got it out of the bag and had a good look I saw that it is a newer Duffy Mickey Mouse. That's okay!!! I am excited to have found one. It's almost like a can mark that off my bucket list :-)

 

 

 

Cool mug sale of last week: paid .0.99 and it sold for $29.99. (f/s)

You just never know!

Three boxes of Tarot cards. It was fill a bag with books for 1.00. The Tarot cards were included. After all was said and done, they ended up costing about 0.20 cents each.

 

 

 

 

 

I checked the completeds and it appears that the I Ching cards may be the most valuable. We will see what happens. I did not test any of them out to see what they predicted.... Just not in to all that.

Here is how last week went:

 

Active listings: 612

Cost of items sold: $24.50

Number of sales: 13

Total sales: $313.00

Amount spent on new inventory: $35.00

Average selling price: $24.00

International sales: 1

Returns: 0

Feedback: all positive this week

Hope your week was awesome!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revisiting July's Goals and Hello August!

I set a lofty goal of $3000.00 gross for my eBay sales last month. Did I reach that goal? Ahhh.....no. My gross sales were $1086.00 or 36% of the $3000.00 goal.

I also set a goal to get my listings up to 1000 by the end of the year. At the beginning of July, they were hovering at 500. As of last night, they were just over 600.

I am still working on tweaking my categories and sub- catagories. Here is a link to my mug category and it sub-categories. I think I need to add another sub-category titled " made in Japan". I have a lot of vintage mugs that are made in Japan.

I also wanted to raise my average selling price to the $35.00 - $40.00. Of course I would love to sell a bunch of items in that price range, but truthfully many of my items are not priced that high. I source many low cost items ( mostly mugs) and try to flip them quickly.

Packing and shipping mugs via the FOMO method is quick and easy work. So I will be happy to sell a bunch of mugs and boost sales that way. To do that I will keep the price the same unless I need to add a but to compensate for free shipping. And I will run frequent markdowns in that category to stimulate sales. Whatever works!

For August the goals will stay pretty much the same. Strive to reach $3000.00 in gross sales, increase my listings to eventually reach 1000. (hopefully by the end of the year)

Raise average selling price? Well, at this point a sale is a sale. :-)