Archives for April 2019

April 3, 2019 by Brian Leave a Comment

What Sold On eBay: April 2, 2019

What Sold On eBay

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019, I sold two items on eBay. Both graphic t-shirts that have been listed for ages.

1. I sold a Pac-Man Graphic T-Shirt via Best Offer.

This was picked up at a thrift store well over a year ago and listed in June 2018.

2. I sold a Rolling Stones Graphic T-Shirt at full price via a 1% Promoted Listing.

This was picked up at a thrift store in the fall of 2017 and had been listed since November 2017.

Saturated Clothing Market

I’ve stated before that I don’t like selling most clothing, but I don’t mind selling t-shirts. But the online clothing market is extremely saturated and I’m not really interested in sitting on t-shirts for a year or more. You’d probably need to have thousands of t-shirts listed at any given time to really make a go at it. And that’s a lot of storage space that most of us probably don’t have. You’d need to commit to it and have some help with it too.

What’s Selling?

What did you sell yesterday and on what platforms? How are your sales going?

April 2, 2019 by Brian Leave a Comment

Vintage Clip-On Earrings Listed for Sale on Fazoom: April 2, 2019

On Tuesday, April 2, 2019, I listed 10 pairs of Vintage Clip-On Earrings for sale on Fazoom.com.

Clip-On Earrings Gallery

Clip-On Earrings for Sale on Fazoom.com

April 2, 2019 by Brian 1 Comment

PayPal: A Business Cyber Attack Dream

PayPal Keeping Seller Fees After Refunds

If you haven’t seen PayPal’s latest update yet, there’s one line, in particular, that should raise a flag for any seller who processes PayPal refunds frequently.

Going into effect on May 7, 2019:

“We’re changing how we treat refunds. If you refund (partially or fully) a transaction to a buyer or a donation to a donor, there are no fees to make the refund, but the fees you originally paid as the seller will not be returned to you.”

Wait a minute. What?!

PayPal: A New Way To Lose Money

First, you have your returns to deal with. That’s a normal business activity. This is going to hurt in that regard and only cause you to raise your rates even more to cover the potential loss.

But secondly, I see a number of people pop in, buy something, pay for it, then right away request a cancellation and full refund. Sometimes for no reason, other times because they entered the shipping address wrong. Either way, that’s a bad deal for you all around.

To put it into perspective, for every $1,000 refunded you’d end up losing $29 at current 2.9% rates. And I’m assuming that the $0.30 fee per transaction is on top of that. That can add up fast depending on what your volume looks like.

PayPal: A Business Cyber Attack Dream

I know, I know, I’m probably a little “out there” in this line of thinking, but hear me out.

In business, we’re competing with other businesses for customers and sales. When you start to encroach on someone else’s bottom line that gets their attention and the war begins.

In some cases, you will see this on eBay in terms of VERO claims. Or on Amazon, you might see IP or unauthorized seller claims and suddenly find yourself “gated” in a certain product line or category. Those are only two examples, but you get the point.

Taking that a step further, there are stories of people having their entire inventory purchased, presumably by a competitor, then returned. This leaves the seller stuck with refunds, excessive shipping fees if you offer free shipping and free returns, and to add insult to injury, a product that can no longer be sold as new, if at all. Oh, and you can add the loss of PayPal processing fees on top of that.

With this new PayPal refund return policy, someone could set up a bot attack that makes multiple large purchases through PayPal, then immediately cancels the orders requesting a refund. While this is somewhat better than the scenario above, it could also be scaled much larger.

PayPal Protections

While I don’t think my cyber attack scenario is very likely to happen, it is feasible.

I’m going to assume that PayPal has some sort of measures in place to stop this and would work with you to refund you those fees. But even then, it’s still a waste of your time. Time that you could be spending working on your business instead of dealing with such headaches.

E-Commerce Platform Protections

While I could see this sort of cyber attack happening on any platform, you’d probably be more likely to experience it if you’re running your own platform on your own website. I know that we see people trying to push through fake orders on our website.

Also, if you’re using a third-party platform that keeps your money until a bank deposit is made, you probably don’t care what changes PayPal is making. Amazon, Mercari, Posmark & Etsy all come to mind. eBay is on the road to join them.

Suddenly eBay’s new payment system doesn’t seem so bad, now does it?

What’s Your Take?

What are your thoughts on this change? For those of you who use other payment processors, what is their refund policy?

Read the entire update at https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/upcoming-policies-full.

April 2, 2019 by Brian Leave a Comment

What Sold On eBay: April 1, 2019

What Sold On eBay

On Monday, April 1, 2019, I sold one item on eBay.

1. I sold a Windsor Canada White Milk Glass Coffee Mug at the full asking price.

This was picked up at a thrift store and listed in May 2018.

While mugs like this sell, expect them to be a long tail item. Milk glass just isn’t as hot as it used to be.

2019 Q1 Sales Wrap-Up

The first quarter is now behind us and looking at the numbers things aren’t headed in the right direction over at eBay.

Same quarter sales were down 6.7% over 2018. While that may not sound like a lot you have to take into consideration that we have 4 times the inventory listed this year on eBay and are selling through seven different platforms this year, many items cross-posted.

Last year we were only selling on eBay in Q1. Sales numbers this year also include sales through those 6 other platforms, so those numbers actually inflate the sales numbers above what eBay is doing.

Quantity wise, sales in 2019 Q1 were down 20.9% over 2018 as well.

What’s more troubling is that January sales were up 283% compared to 2018 but February sales were down 35.3% compared to 2018 and March were down 50.5% compared to 2018.

February & March sales combined to equal January sales. And that’s a problem since you usually see “Taxmas” season sales in February & March and those months normally do better than January does.

Is eBay on the Downslide?

The takeaway from all of that is that eBay appears to be on a downslide for some of the types of items that we sell.

As seen in my What Sold posts we sell a wide variety of items on eBay.

Clothing currently accounts for around 1/3 of our listings but typically sells less frequently than that.

Hats, mugs & other glassware & kitchen gadgets account for another 1/3 of our listings and those categories are selling at or slightly below that rate.

Then the last 1/3 is a hodgepodge of antiques, vintage, jewelry, collectibles and other random things that I come across. These are the items that sell the most frequently for us on eBay and are going to move into the 50-60% range of our eBay inventory in the coming months.

That said, unless something changes at eBay soon, I think the solution for us right now is to go after things that are interesting and have less competition, or better yet, no competition. The bulk of the clothing has to go this year, which includes adding another platform to the mix, Poshmark. Wish me luck.

What’s Selling?

What did you sell yesterday and on what platforms? How are your sales going?

April 1, 2019 by Brian Leave a Comment

What Sold On eBay: March 31, 2019

What Sold On eBay

On Sunday, March 31, 2019, I sold two items on eBay.

1. I sold a Legrand-Pass & Seymour White Three-Light Switch Plastic Despard Wall Plate K3-W at the full asking price.

This is a rather odd and boring item that I picked up back in 2017 in a large clearance lot at the local hardware store. These tiny switches are found mainly in older homes. Talking to my uncle who is an electrician, he said he had never seen a plastic one before and that you’d really want a metal wall plate to go with that sort of thing to fit the style. My best guess would be people remodeling older homes and going with a modern day look instead of historical. Or maybe they couldn’t find a metal one.

This is a perfect example of the type of “smalls” that I like to sell. List once and sell many over a few years. But it’s also something I wouldn’t recommend specializing in or buying by the gross. There’s a reason the hardware store got rid of them.

2. I sold a Celebrate The Spectacle 2006 90th Indy 500 CD Cardz via Best Offer AND with a 1% Promoted Listing.

Anything Indy 500 related is of personal interest and in my wheelhouse. And it’s readily available everywhere around Central Indiana. This particular item was picked up recently in an auction lot of costume jewelry and is the entire reason I went after this particular lot. There was a handful of these in there and they should start selling in April and May as we get closer to race time.

As far as CD Cardz goes, I couldn’t find a whole lot of information and no exact comp. Comps for other ones were all over the board, so I listed high and added Best Offer to the listing.

Is it May yet?!

What’s Selling?

What did you sell yesterday and on what platforms? How are your sales going?