posted on May 1, 2001 11:09:28 AM new
How many auctions do you have going at any one time...and do you do all the work yourself or have an "organization"? While browsing I just came upon a seller with 1800 feedback...who currently has 1865 auctions running!
posted on May 1, 2001 11:21:32 AM new
I know a seller who has 3,050 auctions running at the moment. He typically has 200-300 closing every day. His feedback is 12,208, and he has only 9 negs.
He does almost everything himself, except for the scanning and sorting - he has two part time people who help do that.
posted on May 1, 2001 11:37:07 AM new
One seller I have purchased from now has 2036 running. (Over 11000 feedback and just over 200 negs.} I had problems with the items I last purchased and though he refunded I found it was a bother.
His descriptions have become very short and since most of the items are breakables I doubt I will purchase from him again.
posted on May 1, 2001 11:40:22 AM new
I partner up with someone and we alternate months. It's her month this month. I hope she has as much luck as I did in April.
posted on May 1, 2001 12:16:28 PM new
I usually have about 100-150 up at any giving time.
Once they are up, I just keep relisting them (since I usually have multiples of each item) until the items are sold out. (thank goodness for Vrane's Power Relister on THAT one - huge time savings for me).
Done via Mister Lister (listing), Vrane (relisting), and I do all my processing, packaging, and record keeping myself.
Occasionally have the significant other run to the PO or store for supplies, but that's about it.
posted on May 1, 2001 12:19:18 PM new
Back on the lower level where we common people live--
I try to do 5 auctions a day. I also work part-time and have a family, home and animals to take care of in addition to my e-bay stuff, which I do by myself. When things are selling well, 5 a day can seem overwhelming as I try to list for the next day--package up what's been sold--and keep track of the paperwork. My goal? To list up to 10 a day when I quit my part-time job later this month.
posted on May 1, 2001 12:33:44 PM new
My husband and I have a division of labor with the exception of email questions. We
both can do that.
He does 98% of the buying (yardsales, thrift shops), takes the pictures, writes the copy, does packing.
I do the listing, image manipulation, bookkeeping, label making, shipping calculation, EOA's, UPS forms, etc.
We go to UPS and the PO together.
We try to keep at least 50 auctions active. Right now I think we have 90.
posted on May 1, 2001 02:00:29 PM new
I used to keep about 12 going at any time, currently it's usually 25-40. I was going to try hard to up the number to 50, but I am starting to get too high a percentage of auctions closing with no bids, so I am stepping back. I do books almost exclusively, and right now I'm listing heavily on half.com and Amazon.
I just sold a book on half for $12 that didn't get a nibble for a minimum bid of half that on ebay. It's always a challenge to figure out: better to pay listing fees and less in commission, or no fees and 15% or more at the end?
posted on May 1, 2001 06:40:38 PM new
fraidykat: I just remembered that I ran some numbers on this once.
Simply put, I ran across a seller who always had 5,000 open auctions. Some were duplicates but there were at least 2,000 unique items in their inventory. Only, very few of their auctions closed with a winning bidder.
This fascinated me, as I had about 200 auctions up at that time and had always dreamed of being an ultra-high-volume seller. How can you make money that way, I wondered.
So I randomly chose 25 of their auctions (won or not) from the previous day. For the same day and same time of day I selected 25 of my own.
Us.: Fees as % of sales = 14.8
Them: Fees as % of sales = 16.3
Their fees are higher since they start most of their auctions between $10 and $25. We start almost all of ours at $9.99 or less.
What do we learn from this? What I learned is that high volume isn't necessarily better, especially if you're handing 16.3% of your sales to eBay. This seller takes Billpoint and PayPal as well (we do not), so incurs those additional costs, but the effect of that was impossible to calculate without more information.
BTW, I did this in February, which was a real slow patch for those of us selling precious metal trinkets. I should do it again now and analyze the results.
posted on May 2, 2001 07:18:05 PM new
I've seen one seller that had 5,000 items. Then he had two more accounts each with another 5,000! It was some sort of gemstone seller. He had like: userId1 userId2 userId3 for his usernames. Then his auctions had links to the other usernames he had.
I haven't run across any of their auctions again, but 15,000 * 25 cents at the time is a heck of a lot of listing fees a week!!!!
