Ebay Sales Down

[Budler]

Originally Posted by premium1981

I've always had cards worth thousands and tons in the hundreds rotating through my possession. But I think what has made me the most successful over the years is the foundation of lower end cards. Higher end cards are volatile and will be hit the hardest if buyers pull back their spending for any reason. Because of that, I almost never target those for purchase, and when I get them I am usually aggressive in trying to move them. But I am always amazed how how steady my income is from low value cards in the $1.99 range. I know everyone can't do it because of the time involved, but if those aren't moving I would recommend looking at changing up what you purchase. Buy more cards of lower value where people aren't as likely to pause at spending that money.

I do not know why someone would be surprised or amazed that you can get a steady income with low value cards. There are a Lot of buyers that just buy cards under $10. They are called collectors.

It may take the same amount of your time and effect to sell a $1 card and a $1,000 card. You may need to sell a lot of $1 cards to make the same profit of a $1,000 card. you do have a lot more people willing to spend $1 then $1,000.

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by Budler

I do not know why someone would be surprised or amazed that you can get a steady income with low value cards. There are a Lot of buyers that just buy cards under $10. They are called collectors.

It may take the same amount of your time and effect to sell a $1 card and a $1,000 card. You may need to sell a lot of $1 cards to make the same profit of a $1,000 card. you do have a lot more people willing to spend $1 then $1,000.

Of course you can get a "steady income" but I guess I should have been more specific. I'm surprised at how high that floor is when you become established. Technically $10 a day is a steady income. Just not enough to survive on.

I always hear people here, and in other places talking about crazy ups and downs with sales. My point was that you can have a rock solid foundation if you concentrated on things other than higher end. Even though it isn't as sexy. Not talking about junk wax or garbage listings. But actual cards people want. The newer the better for moving quantity.

[BGT Masters]

Originally Posted by shrevecity

That is what mine says as well. Evidently has fallen below the threshold since Mar 1st. I was thinking it should be February but looks like they are at March 01 instead.

So its based on 400 sales in a quarter? But I have met 400+ sales each quarter? It doesn't matter but it was just something I was trying to make sense of since it wasn't there two days ago.

As far as I can tell I have met the 400 sale threshold each quarter. From Jan to March 31 I had 535 sales. If my evaluation date is on the 20th every 3 months my sales from Feb 20-May 20th are 451.

From December 1st to March 1st I'm at 523? None of these 90 days periods are making any sense, I'm not even close to being under 400. Unless its actually 500.

[Bosoxfan5990]

Interesting phenomenon this morning.

I woke up to 20+ items available to send seller offers.

I usually wake up to 5-10, max.

Majority did not have any watchers, and when I went to send the offers, I received notification that they were no longer eligible for seller offers.

Anyone else have this happen today?

[shrevecity]

Originally Posted by BGT Masters

So its based on 400 sales in a quarter? But I have met 400+ sales each quarter? It doesn't matter but it was just something I was trying to make sense of since it wasn't there two days ago.

As far as I can tell I have met the 400 sale threshold each quarter. From Jan to March 31 I had 535 sales. If my evaluation date is on the 20th every 3 months my sales from Feb 20-May 20th are 451.

From December 1st to March 1st I'm at 523? None of these 90 days periods are making any sense, I'm not even close to being under 400. Unless its actually 500.

It's not quarterly its the last three months. Based on tge numbers you presented in April and June you only sold 230 items in that period that means unless you sold 170 or so in March you would be below the threshold.

This is why I have said in tge past its crucial to keep at least 135 a month. And will run penny listings with free shipping just to meet those numbers. I have seen sellers go from a trs to below standard or worse due to this drop-off hitting them

[BGT Masters]

Originally Posted by shrevecity

It's not quarterly its the last three months. Based on tge numbers you presented in April and June you only sold 230 items in that period that means unless you sold 170 or so in March you would be below the threshold.

This is why I have said in tge past its crucial to keep at least 135 a month. And will run penny listings with free shipping just to meet those numbers. I have seen sellers go from a trs to below standard or worse due to this drop-off hitting them

Still doesn't math properly. Here are my numbers by month. 442 in the last 90 days from the day it changed May 20th. 1 late scanned in item out of like 2000 isn't going to mean much I was just curious where they got there statistical break down from. Still doesn't make sense.

April 140
May 131
June 176
July 178
August 166
September 141
October 175
November 160
December 177
January 181
February 188
March 166
April 146
May 90 (still 9 days left in the month)

[shrevecity]

Originally Posted by BGT Masters

Still doesn't math properly. Here are my numbers by month. 442 in the last 90 days from the day it changed May 20th. 1 late scanned in item out of like 2000 isn't going to mean much I was just curious where they got there statistical break down from. Still doesn't make sense.

April 140
May 131
June 176
July 178
August 166
September 141
October 175
November 160
December 177
January 181
February 188
March 166
April 146
May 90 (still 9 days left in the month)

How many for this month on tge 20th. You are very close and will likely be back up next month. It really does not matter much unless you are on tge fence with your seller rankings

[BGT Masters]

Originally Posted by shrevecity

How many for this month on tge 20th. You are very close and will likely be back up next month. It really does not matter much unless you are on tge fence with your seller rankings

May 1-20 there are 83 sales. None of the math is adding up to less than 400 sales in 90 days, or even close. Like I mentioned earlier it doesn't matter because I am not even remotely close to it having any effect on my seller ratings but just couldn't make any sense of it.

[shrevecity]

Originally Posted by BGT Masters

May 1-20 there are 83 sales. None of the math is adding up to less than 400 sales in 90 days, or even close. Like I mentioned earlier it doesn't matter because I am not even remotely close to it having any effect on my seller ratings but just couldn't make any sense of it.

166 and 146 is 312 plus 83 is 395. 395 is less than 400

[BGT Masters]

Originally Posted by shrevecity

166 and 146 is 312 plus 83 is 395. 395 is less than 400

Yes, but there are more than 20 days in May. If I go back 90 days from May 20th I am well over 400 sales. You are correct though from March 1st to May 20th I am just below 400.

[shrevecity]

Originally Posted by BGT Masters

Yes, but there are more than 20 days in May. If I go back 90 days from May 20th I am well over 400 sales. You are correct though from March 1st to May 20th I am just below 400.

. Tge next 10 days will count in next eval. They cannot evaluate on sales that may or may not happen. As of tge 20th it was just short. That's just how they do it been that way for years.

[BGT Masters]

Originally Posted by shrevecity

. Tge next 10 days will count in next eval. They cannot evaluate on sales that may or may not happen. As of tge 20th it was just short. That's just how they do it been that way for years.

Gotcha, so its not based on 90 days but 80. Makes more sense now.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by premium1981

Of course you can get a "steady income" but I guess I should have been more specific. I'm surprised at how high that floor is when you become established. Technically $10 a day is a steady income. Just not enough to survive on.

I always hear people here, and in other places talking about crazy ups and downs with sales. My point was that you can have a rock solid foundation if you concentrated on things other than higher end. Even though it isn't as sexy. Not talking about junk wax or garbage listings. But actual cards people want. The newer the better for moving quantity.

The flip side is, sometimes you get four days worth of sales in one day...

On a serious note, I wonder how far apart our variance really is?

If I index my average four week rolling average to 100, my low is 65 and my high is 140 for the calendar year. That includes exacerbating behaviors like not adding any new inventory for a month while I goofed off with a Strato-matic draft and my Spring Training gig and the two weeks where I refreshed all 2200 listings and lowered prices (twice!). If I go weekly, it's 40 to 175 (keeping in mind that the low and the high were in back to back weeks).

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

The flip side is, sometimes you get four days worth of sales in one day...

On a serious note, I wonder how far apart our variance really is?

If I index my average four week rolling average to 100, my low is 65 and my high is 140 for the calendar year. That includes exacerbating behaviors like not adding any new inventory for a month while I goofed off with a Strato-matic draft and my Spring Training gig and the two weeks where I refreshed all 2200 listings and lowered prices (twice!). If I go weekly, it's 40 to 175 (keeping in mind that the low and the high were in back to back weeks).

I'll bet I can answer my own question. Those numbers above are for $. If I do the same exercise for items it's;

Four week rolling average: 70-130
One week average: 45-160

That is not much of a difference.

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

The flip side is, sometimes you get four days worth of sales in one day...

On a serious note, I wonder how far apart our variance really is?

If I index my average four week rolling average to 100, my low is 65 and my high is 140 for the calendar year. That includes exacerbating behaviors like not adding any new inventory for a month while I goofed off with a Strato-matic draft and my Spring Training gig and the two weeks where I refreshed all 2200 listings and lowered prices (twice!). If I go weekly, it's 40 to 175 (keeping in mind that the low and the high were in back to back weeks).

Absolutely. I go through stretches with a ton of higher end stuff and it feels great when some of those pop off. But if those sales stop, slow, or I move them out in full I still get to maintain solid sales. The combination really makes me feel secure when I am responsible for my supporting my family. I think I would have a panic attack if I didn't have that bottom line security of low dollar consistency. I think it would take a wide spread economy depression to change those sales.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by premium1981

Absolutely. I go through stretches with a ton of higher end stuff and it feels great when some of those pop off. But if those sales stop, slow, or I move them out in full I still get to maintain solid sales. The combination really makes me feel secure when I am responsible for my supporting my family. I think I would have a panic attack if I didn't have that bottom line security of low dollar consistency. I think it would take a wide spread economy depression to change those sales.

I hear you. The way I handle this is to have a big pile of cash sitting in the bank. Then I can make decisions based on optimizing earn rate instead of getting the bills paid. A month or two (or four at the end of the year!) at 50% of my average doesn't scare me, because I've got my bills covered for the next 6-10 months.

That said, my bread and butter is still cards in the $5-$20 range. I've got plenty of $1-$2 cards too. In fact about a quarter of my listed items are at 99¢ plus S&H.

[Raleigh504]

Especially on lower end cards, when I do a 5% off or even 10% then sales seem to jump a lot. Reality of dropping a $2 card to $1.80 it isn’t a ton off but it seems to move more of those cards.

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

I hear you. The way I handle this is to have a big pile of cash sitting in the bank. Then I can make decisions based on optimizing earn rate instead of getting the bills paid. A month or two (or four at the end of the year!) at 50% of my average doesn't scare me, because I've got my bills covered for the next 6-10 months.

That said, my bread and butter is still cards in the $5-$20 range. I've got plenty of $1-$2 cards too. In fact about a quarter of my listed items are at 99¢ plus S&H.

I’ve got a very healthy financial picture but I want my daily sales to cover my expenses. I like to use my money for investments and travel. I want eBay to pay my bills. I have high expectations for myself, and I would feel like a failure if this was my full time job but I wasn’t maintaining sales to reach the levels I have set for myself. Even if I had a million in my savings account I would be bothered by sales being lower than I felt they should be. But I also know everyone isn’t like me. Haha. I want to be the best at everything I do.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by premium1981

I’ve got a very healthy financial picture but I want my daily sales to cover my expenses. I like to use my money for investments and travel. I want eBay to pay my bills. I have high expectations for myself, and I would feel like a failure if this was my full time job but I wasn’t maintaining sales to reach the levels I have set for myself. Even if I had a million in my savings account I would be bothered by sales being lower than I felt they should be. But I also know everyone isn’t like me. Haha. I want to be the best at everything I do.

Now I'm confused. If you've got enough put back, why does it matter if you make $200 in one month and $0 in the next or $100 in each? It's still $100 month. Beyond that, if it's a choice of $100/$100 or $0/$220, I'm taking the higher earn every time...or in my case taking the $200 and goofing off 10% more. Either way the second, higher variance scenario, is better. What I'm asking is, why does it matter if you make enough to cover your bills for a month so long as you make enough to cover your bills for the year?

Most people I know (all of them actually) that "need" a steady paycheck need it because they don't/can't save. Of those, most of them end up taking lower overall pay because of that need.

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Now I'm confused. If you've got enough put back, why does it matter if you make $200 in one month and $0 in the next or $100 in each? It's still $100 month. Beyond that, if it's a choice of $100/$100 or $0/$220,

I guess I have poorly worded what I meant, my fault. I can't earn $0 in a month and still pay my expenses without using other money. I don't want to buy groceries, pay my internet, gas, insurance, etc with anything other than ebay money. I want 100% of every expense I have to be paid by ebay 100% of the time. I don't want to dip into my personal checking or savings this month because of bad sales, then put money back next month when sales are better. I want consistent reliable sales so I know that flow will continue. The biggest difference seems to be this being a side hustle for you versus my actual job.

I make over 6 figures every year in this business and have my tax structure for my LLC as a S-Corp to save on taxes. In order to do this I have to have an actual salary and I have it set up similar to what most people have at their jobs. Direct deposit transfers automatically going from business to personal. But again, I know what I do and how I do it doesn't really apply to everyone here. My original post was just a comment about keeping steady sales after you mentioned you have not been able to move any of the higher end stuff you had gotten in.

[shrevecity]

Originally Posted by premium1981

I guess I have poorly worded what I meant, my fault. I can't earn $0 in a month and still pay my expenses without using other money. I don't want to buy groceries, pay my internet, gas, insurance, etc with anything other than ebay money. I want 100% of every expense I have to be paid by ebay 100% of the time. I don't want to dip into my personal checking or savings this month because of bad sales, then put money back next month when sales are better. I want consistent reliable sales so I know that flow will continue. The biggest difference seems to be this being a side hustle for you versus my actual job.

This is similar to how I do things. I figure up what tge monthly bills are on average then add 300 or 400 for incidentals and divide by 30. That gives me a daily figure of what I need to bring in to cover the bills. So you need the consistency to ensure that. Doing it this way you don't get that mad rush at end of month or when bills come up

[rwperu34]

I sold a third one of those items today. So seven months, zero sales. One week, three sales. It just goes to show that the best way to generate sales is to complain about not getting sales.

Here's a few tidbits from what is likely my best 7 day stretch ever;

1) Even without the biggies, sales are up. Volume is up about 30% and total dollars are up 60% (again, not counting the big ones!). The culprit for this is very easy for me to see. Recently purchased items are dominating my sales. I'd say 75% of my sales were purchased within the last 3-4 weeks. That was not the case at any point over the last seven months, and a pretty good indication that the market has leveled off.

2) Of the three biggies, all three made a profit. Yay! That is cause for celebration because I've sold more cards at a loss already this year than the previous two years combined! I'm not talking about busted prospects I bought in 2021 either (I'm looking at you Jo Adell!) or Joey Gallo. I'm talking about cards I purchased in Oct-Feb targeted for this year.

3) Of those three biggies, two of them did not meet my margin goal, but as a group they far exceeded it. My margin goal is I want to pay the sales force (me) 20% off all revenue. Basically the one sale beat my goal by so much, it more than made up for the two that were less profitable.

4) There is now a fourth big one sold already tonight. I haven't processed it yet, but it's going to be a loss. I'm still jumping for joy that I got the sale. Dude now has 1 homerun, up from 0 yesterday.

5) I did not run out of bubble mailers. It would have been no big deal, just meaning I would have had to use the #0 when I could have used the cheaper #000. Last week I hit the line the indicates I need to buy more, but didn't do it right away. Then I forgot, because that's what I do now. When I realized I was getting close I actually paid a couple bucks more to have them shipped from SoCal, but they still came from PA. They arrived today. I had two left.

[rwperu34]

For the last week or so, when I ship a card and go to leave feedback, the order would disappear from the "needs feedback" section. I could go to all orders and leave the feedback from there, no problem. This was only on one account. The other worked just fine.

Tonight, on both accounts, I shipped items and they are not showing as shipped. I was able to leave feedback from the awaiting shipment page, but all are showing as awaiting shipment. The labels were printed no problem and the total was deducted on the order details screen. Normally when this happens it lasts only few minutes, but not so far tonight. I'm at about an hour for the oldest.

[nam812]

This has been my slowest month (volume and $$) since I started keeping very detailed records 14 months ago. February was pretty bad, but this month has been even worse.

[Bosoxfan5990]

Originally Posted by nam812

This has been my slowest month (volume and $$) since I started keeping very detailed records 14 months ago. February was pretty bad, but this month has been even worse.

May is also trending to be my slowest month this year by volume.

January - 163
February - 194
March - 228
April - 191
May - Prorated to 147