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A Reselling Blog by Fazoom

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eBay is Still Dead. But we are ALIVE!

First, my apologies for just letting this blog go dormant with any warning.

As mentioned in our last post, eBay is Dead. Long live eBay!, our eBay sales took a nosedive in February. I had hoped that things would pick back up at some point, but it has actually gotten WORSE! Last week we only sold 3 items on eBay. THREE! This is Q4, right?!

Since the last time I’ve blogged here, we’ve been hitting Poshmark pretty hard and we’ve added a handful of items to Etsy. We removed almost all of our Mercari items and will revisit that at some point down the road. And Amazon is still being pondered but isn’t in the cards right now…it’s Q4, which is no time to be messing around (someone please tell that to eBay).

eBay Says We’re Awesome!

In my frustration with eBay underperforming, I finally broke down and got ahold of them to look over our main eBay store. And here’s the takeaway from that evaluation.

Typically we have a few things we can suggest folks to help improve their business, but it’s more than apparent you work hard to optimize your listings and account. We hope things turn around soon!

~ September 24, 2019 @ 7:13 AM

It was at that point that the new game plan that I was already working on became our number one focus.

Fazoom Goes Shopify!

As a programmer, my inclination is to “roll my own” as much as possible. There’s no sense in paying for things that I can easily do myself. So when it has come down to shopping carts over the past 20+ years I have always used open-source packages. But with that comes a much bigger time commitment. And time is at a premium these days.

That said, over the summer I began devising a plan to incorporate Shopify into blogs. Similar to what we did with e-junkie (a Javascript embeddable shopping cart) years ago. The gist is that you post an item and embed a purchase link so it could be purchased right there without even leaving the blog post. I’ll add some of these in future posts here so you can see what I’m talking about.

As I got more into what Shopify was capable of, everything started clicking. With this one powerful tool we could sell things anywhere we wanted to, including in person, and it only cost $29 a month. Sign us up!

Bye, Bye, eBay! (Sorta)

With the switch to Shopify, we imported all 3 of our eBay stores into Shopify as well as our old shopping cart. Then we closed 2 eBay stores and switched our other eBay store to a monthly Premium (1,000 items level) store.

The cool thing with Shopify is that eBay (currently) integrates with Shopify. We can push any listings we wish from Shopify to eBay with a few clicks. AND all of our customer information gets stored in Shopify. One place to control them both.

After Q4 the plan right now is to downgrade the remaining store to a monthly Starter (100 items level) or Basic (250 items level) store. Until eBay starts selling things again, there’s no point in curating thousands of items there.  We’re a business, not a museum nor a warehouse.

Hello Shopify, WordPress & MailerLite!

Fast forward to this week and we’re officially up and running with a combination of WordPress (https://fazoom.com/), Shopify (https://shop.fazoom.com/) and MailerLite (https://fazoom.com/subscribe/).

Over the coming weeks we’ll be rolling out a lot of new features, so stay tuned, and please sign up for updates.

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What Sold On eBay: April 8, 2019

What Sold On eBay

On Monday, April 8, 2019, I sold FIVE items on eBay. You read that right, five items sold. For a Monday that is back into normal sales quantity territory, which hasn’t happened very often in 2019.

Churchill Downs 2000 Kentucky Derby Alumni Weekend Coffee Mug

1. I sold a Churchill Downs 2000 Kentucky Derby Alumni Weekend Coffee Mug via a 30% off sale and a 1% Promoted Listing.

I picked up multiples of these at a thrift store last year and have been selling them on eBay and in our antique mall showcase. This is actually the last one that I have right now, but I’ll store the listing for when I come across more.

Being 90 minutes away from Louisville I run across Kentucky Derby items almost as frequently as I do Indy 500 & Brickyard 400 items. The standard glasses don’t sell as well as the mugs do, which would be a simple matter of supply and demand.

VERDICT: Buy! They might not sell right away, but they will sell. While the race is less than a month away, these have sold all year long.

97th Indianapolis Indy 500 Hat

2. I sold a 97th Indianapolis Indy 500 Hat via a 50% off sale and a 1% Promoted Listing.

This was picked up at either a garage sale or thrift store and was listed in September 2018. While I do sell some Indy 500 items all year long, it picks up closer to May.

In one of my other lives, I cover the races in a media capacity and will pick up anything Indy 500 related that I see. If it doesn’t sell I’ll enjoy it myself. Nothing beats The Month of May in Indy!

VERDICT: Buy, but plan on it selling around race time.

Vintage Boy Scouts of America Hat

3. I sold a Vintage Boy Scouts of America Hat via a 50% off sale.

This was picked up at a thrift store and listed in March 2019. A hat that sells in under a month is a good hat to pick up any time you see one.

VERDICT: Buy!

St. John’s Bay Blue Jean Denim Shorts

4. I sold a St. John’s Bay Blue Jean Denim Shorts via a 10% off sale, which is on top of the 50% price drop I made last week.

I made a mistake with shipping on this one and if I’m lucky I might break even. I need to write a blog post about this.

This was picked up at a thrift store and listed in January 2018. This was back when I was just starting to get an idea of clothing brands and I now know that this is a bad one to resell.

You should be aware that St John’s Bay is a JCPenney brand. Not to be confused with St John which is a higher end brand of designer clothing.

VERDICT: DO NOT BUY THIS!

Bimini Bay Button Down Fishing Shirt

5. I sold a Bimini Bay Button Down Fishing Shirt via a 10% off sale, which is also on top of the 50% price drop I made last week.

Again, another small sale, but it’s gone and I probably made a few dollars profit on it.

This was picked up at a thrift store and listed in October 2017. 18-months for a few dollars isn’t worth it. Ever.

I see a trend of not selling things with “Bay” in the brand name on eBay.

VERDICT: DO NOT BUY THIS!

Weekly Listing Progress for 2019 Q2 W2

I moved 12 new with tags clothing items from eBay to our website and cross-posted them to Poshmark yesterday.

I listed 10 unique items on eBay, 12 in total quantity, which was recapped in yesterday’s listing post.

Platform Listed Goal To List
Fazoom.com 12 50 38
eBay 10 50 40
Poshmark 12 50 38
TOTAL 34 150 116

Stay tuned to the What I Listed category to see the progress.

What’s Selling?

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

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What Sold On eBay: April 7, 2019

What Sold On eBay

On Sunday, April 7, 2019, I sold one item on eBay.

1. I sold an Undated 2012 Christkindlmarket Chicago Boot Mug via a 30% off sale and a 1% Promoted Listing.

These are something that I find regularly at our local thrift stores so I keep the photos on hand for easy relisting. Two of these were listed in January 2019. Selling Christmas items all year long is a consistent thing around eBay.

Specific to this mug, they started releasing updated versions so you could start a collection and not have to worry about the previous years. Thus it does take some research to pin down which year the undated mugs are from.

2019 Q2W1 (Week 14) Sales Recap

When it rains it pours.

We only sold 13 items last week on eBay out of 1,213 unique listings and with 2,182 total items available.

That sell-through rate on the week is horrific. Based on everything you’re told, we should be selling 12-21 items per day (depending on which inventory number you choose to use) on eBay, i.e. 1% of our inventory.

For us, a one-third of a percent (1/3 %) sell-through rate has typically been the average day, which for what we sell on eBay I don’t have an issue with. In the past, 7-8 items per day have been a good day for us.

As a reference point, we averaged 3 sales per day in January. That is actually good for us in January as that’s usually one of our slowest months of the year. But then we hit February (1.64) and March (1.52), typically excellent months, and everything just took an unexplainable nosedive.

What’s The Plan (This Week), Stan?

At this point, I’m taking it a day at a time to see what headway I can make.

First, I’m going to move some of our new clothing items over to Fazoom.com and cross-post them to Poshmark. I’ve talked about clothing numerous times and my take is that if it’s going to be long tail, it can sit on platforms that don’t cost me anything to list on. I tried Poshmark a few years ago and didn’t have any luck, but I’m willing to give it another try. It can’t be any slower than what we’re seeing right now. Right?

Second, I’m going to list a minimum of 10 items on eBay each day this week. Most of this will be hard goods, but I am going to throw some more used clothing into the mix as I’ve not listed any used clothing on eBay since October and I have a lot of it just sitting here.

Third, I’m going to list a minimum of 10 items on Fazoom.com each day. This ties into the first goal of moving new clothing over.

Bottom line, the goal is to list 50 new items on eBay, list 50 items on Fazoom.com & cross-post 50 items to Poshmark. Stay tuned to the What I Listed category to see the progress.

What’s Selling?

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