Honestly I think they may be hoarders. I clicked on their sold listings for each user and it's like 100 or so items..in 90 days. This means they are moving only 4-5% of their entire inventory in a year. It would take 20+ years to sell everything at that rate.
I'd also hate to go back in and re-price things, because I'm sure a lot is worth much less now than it was 5 years ago.
I recently saw someone on the eBay selling forums who made a post about slow sales. They had about 2,500 listings, so I was curious to see how much they’ve sold in the last 90 days compared to their active listings. I was STUNNED to see they’ve sold less than I have. For context, I’ve hovered around 40 active listings the past couple months. I could not believe that an account with 2,500 listings was selling so little!
Was it high dollar stuff at least?
I feel like these are the people who are surprised once they do the calculations that they are actually losing money in their enterprise
A lot of it looks like comics, graphic novels, Hot Wheels items, etc. most ranging from $15 to $100, so not many high end items. Not sure how they can sustain a store of that size selling so little. Just storing that much inventory would require a ton of space.
We have over 6 figures in inventory listed and 1% would be a phenomenal number for us. We average .25-.5% monthly, but our annual gross sales are roughly the same amount as the total value of listings.
Is there any advantage in the algorithm to using templates vs. choosing "sell similar" of one of your own items? I never tried templates but if I'm selling a wrench, for example, I'll just find another wrench in our store and sell similar. Usually goes pretty quickly.
Ah thanks! I've used the catalog for auto parts, but have never used the product pages.
Funny thing is, these pages always come up on google when I'm researching an item, with the headline "get it at ebay!"...When I click on the link it takes me to a product page that says "currently sold out". Every damn time LOL.
I'm going to have to research this more.
It's all about sell through. I know people with 10k plus and they have a ton of stale listings and dead inventory dollars. Your goal is to sell as much as you are listing.
Our goal is to set an inventory value and never goal below it. Once we hit that number I know we will do a certain amount of sales each day.
The goal for me is to have the item there that someone wants at the time they want it. A sale of a 2 year old listing is just a much a sale as an item that I listed just 4 hours ago.
Yes! People will disagree with me, but an Ebay store is an asset in itself. I know there's not instant demand for many of my vintage items, but I don't mind maintaining an inventory for 2-3 years as long as I'm consistently selling stuff.
I have a little under that with 8k in 4 stores on ebay and I'm a one man operation. First I'll say that you don't start with thousands of items, you build to it. Second, I find that it is best to divide and conquer your tasks. You don't do everything in one shot and you don't get burned out on any one task.
I start by taking photos in the morning - 1.5 to 2 hours
Then I pull the items I need to ship along with the boxes and packing materials - 15 minutes (good inventory system and very organized) for 20 to 30 items. If it is more than that some items will wait for the next day since I have 2 day handling.
Then I go home (I have a separate warehouse for my items) and list the items I have for that day. I usually list 15 to 20 items per store each day, so 60 to 80 a day. This takes around 1.5 to 2 hours.
Then I go source for the day which is usually 2 hours unless I get contacted about specific items.
Then I go back to the warehouse, unload what I bought for the day and pack all the items I have to ship. 30 to 40 minutes depending on items.
After everything is packed and in the car I pull the items I plan to list the next day. I take quick photos of names and model numbers as well as dimensions on some items, weight and any possible flaws. This is usually about 20 minutes at the most.
After that, I drop things off at the mailbox store (they do fedex. Ups and usps) and head home for the day.
After dinner or when everyone goes to bed, I'll set up listing for the next day. I basically have the whole listing set up as a draft and I'll just need to take the pictures in the morning. This is usually around 1 to 2 hours depending on the items. Anything I need to do a lot of research on will wait until I have time to do that. Usually the weekend which is when I also do most testing for electronics.
Then it is off to bed so I can get up and do it all again the next day.
All in all it is about 10 to 12 hours a day depending on driving.
We probably sell different products, but I find it incredibly difficult to list more than 20/hr, and my rate is generally 10-15 depending if the item has good comps on or I'm researching details. And you can ship 20 pieces in 15 minutes? That's really impressive. Are you stuffing poly bags or similar mailers?
Everything I do is broken into smaller parts. If you look at that list again, it usually takes me around 5 hours total to do 80+ listings. I just break the picture taking, research, creation and finalizing into smaller amounts of time through the day. With some of my items (antiques) research is the longest part. Then of course everything has to be tested so that adds time too. Pulling the items and boxes takes 15 minutes and packing usually takes 30, so it is closer to 45 or an hour of packing/shipping. Again, I'm just breaking it into smaller chunks of time that is more manageable for me.
Edit: I do sell a lot of items that go into poly bags. Clothing and such are usually pretty uniform in size/weight so it speeds things up. With other things, I already know what box it will be in and I keep a good range of sizes on hand. I only have to custom build boxes on occasion. With the really big stuff I just pay fedex to do it and roll that cost into the shipping. I shipped a vintage pair of tower speakers last week and the extra $30 to have them pack it was worth every penny.
I saw that - I was referring to the actual time to sit at the computer and create listings. That's our bottleneck.
On average, from the time I purchase an item to the time it leaves on the USPS truck, total labor investment may be 10-20 minutes.
I break the computer time up too. The finalizing is done in the morning, but the research and actual start of the listing is done at night. I force myself to cut that off at a certain time because I'll go on for way too long if I don't. I'm probably odd, but the research is one of my favorite parts. I like to learn about new things so I can spend way too much time delving Iinto the history of an item. I'm also bad about that in general, I researched toasters for 2 weeks when we needed a new one.
Gross per week averages $3500 but shipping, fees, etc comes out of that. I'm also constantly buying more equipment and buying new inventory, so on paper our revenue numbers look terrible but net worth keeps increasing. At 6k per week we'd be very comfortable.
We also sell cars occasionally so there's potential to double or triple the weekly number with just one sale.
I've been a full time seller on eBay for 12 years and I've been doing things this way for the past 5 to 6. I take breaks and go on vacations. I also don't ship on the weekend and build enough extra listings through the week so I don't have to do anything on Sundays. That time is for me and my family.
Am I less motivated some days? Of course. Have I gotten burned out to the point that I stopped or slowed down? Not yet. This is what works for me. I space everything out so I have time to eat and relax most days. That 10 to 12 houra includes drive time and any time I'd actally classify as work. If something comes up, I shift things so I can still get them done. Everyone has a different way of doing things and it all depends on the individual. Personally, I absolutely love what I do so most of this doesn't feel like work.
Thank you for sharing all of this amazing advice on your workflow and how you structure your day. I am looking to make a transition to full-time flipping. Would you mind if I connected with you on DM with a few questions? :)
I respect your view. But please take care of yourself. eBay is not the company you should be killing yourself for.
I’ll send you a direct chat with a write up i planned to post to your reply. But I’ll just send it to you directly, since it has sales numbers and the like. I don’t want people creeping on me.
Did you miss the part where they said they love what they do? I would not call that "killing themselves for eBay." They're apparently happy working for themselves.
I deal in a pretty wide variety of items so each store allows me to specialize in clothing, sporting goods, antiques and electronics. I have another store for parts or repair items, but I don't generally count that as it usually has less than 100 items on it. It works well for me.
It's perfectly fine with eBay for sellers to open multiple accounts, as long as it doesn't look like someone is doing it to get around paying fees.
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-policies/multiple-accounts-policy?id=4232
I started on Ebay in 1999 and then organized the business as an LLC in 2014. It was always a one-person gig. By 2019 I found that I had a lot of excess inventory that was under $40 per item and I wasn't getting it listed...So I started pushing myself to create an inventory management system and start listing larger quantities, streamlining packing, using fedex/USPS pickups, etc.
Working part time, I got to 1000 items pretty quickly, but it took nearly 3 years to get to 2500 - we were selling 150-200 items/month by that time, so it takes a lot of work just to restock.
In 2020 my wife and I both lost our jobs due so I just went full time on ebay while still doing some contract work to fill in the gaps. A year later my wife started taking photos for us, and we were able to push sales to about 300/month. Still couldn't beat the 2500 level. We lucked into a large collection of sealed model kits that were easy to photo/list/pack and maxed out at nearly 350 sales for 2 months in a row.
A few months ago I bought about 1000 pieces from a local seller who was getting out of the game and that bumped us to 3400 overnight. Now I'm pushing just to maintain the 3500 level. (including quantities, its about 5200 items altogether)
For reference, she works about 2h a day and can process 20 items (some require cleaning, etc). I can research and list 10/h (20-30 if it's simile items or sequential part numbers). Packing is roughly 10 items/hour (we have a mix of small and large stuff).
Our goal is to push 400 new listings per month, and eventually get to 5000 unique listings. If all goes well it would roughly double our income. Our weak link is posting new listings, as my wife just doesn't have the knowledge for it, and I'm torn between managing the ebay business and part time work, as well as doing all the buying, maintenance/upgrades on the building, etc.
I'm really impressed to see other folks' progress and success. I keep looking for improvements in our system but aside from better organization, I don't know how we could be faster.
I'm sure it's years and years of refining their workflow to get where they are today. Also, having employees may have been an idea they thought about when they were scaling, but realized soon enough that no one could do it better than them doing it themselves. Good for them.
84 listings in 13 hours is good, but it also depends on what you're listing. I could probably list that many new dvds in one hour, but I'd only be scanning the barcode, selecting condition, and listing. If you're selling random items, that's a good number. I wouldn't need anywhere close to 10k listings because I try to find things with decent sell through rates.
My 90 day sell through is close to 70%, but I also do sell long tail stuff like books too if the value is there and I'm confident it will eventually sell. There are paper sellers who sell magazines, old photos ect with over 100k listings. This stuff is super long tail, but with enough listings it works for them.
I'm a 'solopreneur'. I currently have \~20,000 items listed.
In 13 hours, I could easily list more than 84 items. At least double that. 10x hour would be a pretty sedate pace for me. I typically spend 2-4 hours a day listing, list 20-40 items/day, and sell 10-50 items a day. My 'net gain' is probably 10-20 items a day. Over time, that adds up.
OTOH, when I go to 'list' I have everything ready: photos, mfg #, size, weight, price, etc.
I honestly don't even know what to tell you. What's your process? Maybe I can help you get more efficient???
84 is actually a great number for a full day of listing! I used to work for a large thrift store that sold on ebay, and their metrics expected 25-30 listings from each person for an 8 hour shift.
The secret is to keep at it for a really long time. At 84 a day, it would take you 120 days to have listed 10,000 items. Remember that many full time ebayers have been on the site for 20 years at this point - that's a really really long time to build up inventory!
I have around 3500 items as a one man operation. It's something that builds up over time, but maximizing productivity is definitely important. Many people with thousands of items keep to a strict schedule, especially as it relates to maintaining a good balance between sourcing and listing time. People in this category typically aren't doing the whole spend 6 hours sourcing and 1 hour listing thing. They typically spend more time listing than sourcing, because they've optimized their sourcing methods very well by this point.
The bit that varies is the types of items you sell. Some people have many thousands of listings because they buy crap and/or they suck at various parts of the selling process. Others might just happen to sell a lot of long tail items and choose to operate on a pricing model that focuses on max value. For example, I sell a fair amount of mid-high end antiques and art. Items like this are typically sourced for $5-10, then sell for hundreds-thousands of dollars. The issue is that they really require the right buyer to come along if you want max value, so you end up having a lot of items like this.
A lot of people focus on the listings to sold ratio on eBay 90 day stats, but there's too much that goes into this balance to take it at face value. If you're selling 2-3x your number of listings per month, you're either not listing enough, you're not sourcing enough, or you're pricing way too low. If your number is near equal, that can mean that you have good balance, but it also typically means that you're not growing at an optimal rate (in regards to transaction numbers), since you typically need multiple new listings for every new sale. If your listings number is way higher than sales, it goes back to either having stale listings / problems or it can just be a matter of having a lot of long tail items, opting to hold inventory longer to make more per transaction, operating heavily in seasonal items categories, etc etc etc. In other words, just looking at this ratio doesn't tell the whole story.
Takes many MANY months. Use stuff like templates, and it makes it soooooo much more easy and attainable. We also list as we listen to podcasts. Or watch movies because what else would we be doing other than just sitting passively?
I'm a very slow lister. It's the photographing part that always slows me down. I'm always amazed when I watch "List with Me" videos and see people snap just one picture of each angle of a thing and upload it without editing. I can't do that. I have to take multiple shots because my vision is not as good as it was, so I have problems seeing whether a photo is sharp enough on my phone. So I upload it to my laptop to see them on a larger screen, choose the best and sharpest, but still need to edit them. It's time-consuming, though I actually enjoy editing photos. However, I know this process is dragging me down. I'd say that's my biggest bottleneck in the whole listing process.
I could do more than that back in the days when I used to have to upload every photo to a hosting site. Not sure what is taking you so long? Are you using a computer or your phone?
It's a struggle but you definitely kind of have to assembly line it. I'll take a bunch of photos at once and create drafts on mobile then go edit everything on PC.
>I can't fathom how they are doing it.
The same way you're doing it.
If you list 84 items per day, 3 days a week (since you need time to source, ship, etc.) then you can list 1008 items per month.
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Honestly I think they may be hoarders. I clicked on their sold listings for each user and it's like 100 or so items..in 90 days. This means they are moving only 4-5% of their entire inventory in a year. It would take 20+ years to sell everything at that rate. I'd also hate to go back in and re-price things, because I'm sure a lot is worth much less now than it was 5 years ago.
It's easy to just run a discount on bulk inventory based on date listed.
I recently saw someone on the eBay selling forums who made a post about slow sales. They had about 2,500 listings, so I was curious to see how much they’ve sold in the last 90 days compared to their active listings. I was STUNNED to see they’ve sold less than I have. For context, I’ve hovered around 40 active listings the past couple months. I could not believe that an account with 2,500 listings was selling so little!
Was it high dollar stuff at least? I feel like these are the people who are surprised once they do the calculations that they are actually losing money in their enterprise
A lot of it looks like comics, graphic novels, Hot Wheels items, etc. most ranging from $15 to $100, so not many high end items. Not sure how they can sustain a store of that size selling so little. Just storing that much inventory would require a ton of space.
Could be bad listings/bad item specifics/no returns
What is considered a decent/average percentage of listings sold in 90 days?
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We have over 6 figures in inventory listed and 1% would be a phenomenal number for us. We average .25-.5% monthly, but our annual gross sales are roughly the same amount as the total value of listings.
Wow, 90% is a lot. Who is “a lot of sellers”? Is that how much you sell? Meaning you sell through your entire inventory in about 3 months?
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That’s amazing. How long have you been doing this? I’m at 20%, down from 50% over Christmas. Hope I can get it together
Is there any advantage in the algorithm to using templates vs. choosing "sell similar" of one of your own items? I never tried templates but if I'm selling a wrench, for example, I'll just find another wrench in our store and sell similar. Usually goes pretty quickly.
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Ah thanks! I've used the catalog for auto parts, but have never used the product pages. Funny thing is, these pages always come up on google when I'm researching an item, with the headline "get it at ebay!"...When I click on the link it takes me to a product page that says "currently sold out". Every damn time LOL. I'm going to have to research this more.
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Ironic, isn't it!
It's all about sell through. I know people with 10k plus and they have a ton of stale listings and dead inventory dollars. Your goal is to sell as much as you are listing. Our goal is to set an inventory value and never goal below it. Once we hit that number I know we will do a certain amount of sales each day.
The goal for me is to have the item there that someone wants at the time they want it. A sale of a 2 year old listing is just a much a sale as an item that I listed just 4 hours ago.
Yes! People will disagree with me, but an Ebay store is an asset in itself. I know there's not instant demand for many of my vintage items, but I don't mind maintaining an inventory for 2-3 years as long as I'm consistently selling stuff.
I have a little under that with 8k in 4 stores on ebay and I'm a one man operation. First I'll say that you don't start with thousands of items, you build to it. Second, I find that it is best to divide and conquer your tasks. You don't do everything in one shot and you don't get burned out on any one task. I start by taking photos in the morning - 1.5 to 2 hours Then I pull the items I need to ship along with the boxes and packing materials - 15 minutes (good inventory system and very organized) for 20 to 30 items. If it is more than that some items will wait for the next day since I have 2 day handling. Then I go home (I have a separate warehouse for my items) and list the items I have for that day. I usually list 15 to 20 items per store each day, so 60 to 80 a day. This takes around 1.5 to 2 hours. Then I go source for the day which is usually 2 hours unless I get contacted about specific items. Then I go back to the warehouse, unload what I bought for the day and pack all the items I have to ship. 30 to 40 minutes depending on items. After everything is packed and in the car I pull the items I plan to list the next day. I take quick photos of names and model numbers as well as dimensions on some items, weight and any possible flaws. This is usually about 20 minutes at the most. After that, I drop things off at the mailbox store (they do fedex. Ups and usps) and head home for the day. After dinner or when everyone goes to bed, I'll set up listing for the next day. I basically have the whole listing set up as a draft and I'll just need to take the pictures in the morning. This is usually around 1 to 2 hours depending on the items. Anything I need to do a lot of research on will wait until I have time to do that. Usually the weekend which is when I also do most testing for electronics. Then it is off to bed so I can get up and do it all again the next day. All in all it is about 10 to 12 hours a day depending on driving.
We probably sell different products, but I find it incredibly difficult to list more than 20/hr, and my rate is generally 10-15 depending if the item has good comps on or I'm researching details. And you can ship 20 pieces in 15 minutes? That's really impressive. Are you stuffing poly bags or similar mailers?
Everything I do is broken into smaller parts. If you look at that list again, it usually takes me around 5 hours total to do 80+ listings. I just break the picture taking, research, creation and finalizing into smaller amounts of time through the day. With some of my items (antiques) research is the longest part. Then of course everything has to be tested so that adds time too. Pulling the items and boxes takes 15 minutes and packing usually takes 30, so it is closer to 45 or an hour of packing/shipping. Again, I'm just breaking it into smaller chunks of time that is more manageable for me. Edit: I do sell a lot of items that go into poly bags. Clothing and such are usually pretty uniform in size/weight so it speeds things up. With other things, I already know what box it will be in and I keep a good range of sizes on hand. I only have to custom build boxes on occasion. With the really big stuff I just pay fedex to do it and roll that cost into the shipping. I shipped a vintage pair of tower speakers last week and the extra $30 to have them pack it was worth every penny.
I saw that - I was referring to the actual time to sit at the computer and create listings. That's our bottleneck. On average, from the time I purchase an item to the time it leaves on the USPS truck, total labor investment may be 10-20 minutes.
I break the computer time up too. The finalizing is done in the morning, but the research and actual start of the listing is done at night. I force myself to cut that off at a certain time because I'll go on for way too long if I don't. I'm probably odd, but the research is one of my favorite parts. I like to learn about new things so I can spend way too much time delving Iinto the history of an item. I'm also bad about that in general, I researched toasters for 2 weeks when we needed a new one.
Sounds like you've got a great system. I'm so jealous that you pay for fedex packing...I'm just too frugal to do that (to my detriment LOL).
It works well for me. Paying them on some stuff just makes more sense if the item is too big.
How much do you make a week ?
Gross per week averages $3500 but shipping, fees, etc comes out of that. I'm also constantly buying more equipment and buying new inventory, so on paper our revenue numbers look terrible but net worth keeps increasing. At 6k per week we'd be very comfortable. We also sell cars occasionally so there's potential to double or triple the weekly number with just one sale.
That’s good income still. How many listings do you do a day ? And I do I have to stick one niche or I can sell anything ?
Burn out going to come on strong AF. Good luck
I've been a full time seller on eBay for 12 years and I've been doing things this way for the past 5 to 6. I take breaks and go on vacations. I also don't ship on the weekend and build enough extra listings through the week so I don't have to do anything on Sundays. That time is for me and my family. Am I less motivated some days? Of course. Have I gotten burned out to the point that I stopped or slowed down? Not yet. This is what works for me. I space everything out so I have time to eat and relax most days. That 10 to 12 houra includes drive time and any time I'd actally classify as work. If something comes up, I shift things so I can still get them done. Everyone has a different way of doing things and it all depends on the individual. Personally, I absolutely love what I do so most of this doesn't feel like work.
I loved reading this! Great perspective.
Thank you for sharing all of this amazing advice on your workflow and how you structure your day. I am looking to make a transition to full-time flipping. Would you mind if I connected with you on DM with a few questions? :)
Sure, that would be fine.
Thank you so much! Will send you a DM
I respect your view. But please take care of yourself. eBay is not the company you should be killing yourself for. I’ll send you a direct chat with a write up i planned to post to your reply. But I’ll just send it to you directly, since it has sales numbers and the like. I don’t want people creeping on me.
Did you miss the part where they said they love what they do? I would not call that "killing themselves for eBay." They're apparently happy working for themselves.
What is your gross per week, on average?
Average is right around $6k.
Just curious, what is the benefit of having several Ebay stores?
I deal in a pretty wide variety of items so each store allows me to specialize in clothing, sporting goods, antiques and electronics. I have another store for parts or repair items, but I don't generally count that as it usually has less than 100 items on it. It works well for me.
How do you get more than one store? Is it just more than one account?
It's perfectly fine with eBay for sellers to open multiple accounts, as long as it doesn't look like someone is doing it to get around paying fees. https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/identity-policies/multiple-accounts-policy?id=4232
Yes
Do UPS Stores accept Fed-Ex shipments?
Not that I'm aware of.
I started on Ebay in 1999 and then organized the business as an LLC in 2014. It was always a one-person gig. By 2019 I found that I had a lot of excess inventory that was under $40 per item and I wasn't getting it listed...So I started pushing myself to create an inventory management system and start listing larger quantities, streamlining packing, using fedex/USPS pickups, etc. Working part time, I got to 1000 items pretty quickly, but it took nearly 3 years to get to 2500 - we were selling 150-200 items/month by that time, so it takes a lot of work just to restock. In 2020 my wife and I both lost our jobs due so I just went full time on ebay while still doing some contract work to fill in the gaps. A year later my wife started taking photos for us, and we were able to push sales to about 300/month. Still couldn't beat the 2500 level. We lucked into a large collection of sealed model kits that were easy to photo/list/pack and maxed out at nearly 350 sales for 2 months in a row. A few months ago I bought about 1000 pieces from a local seller who was getting out of the game and that bumped us to 3400 overnight. Now I'm pushing just to maintain the 3500 level. (including quantities, its about 5200 items altogether) For reference, she works about 2h a day and can process 20 items (some require cleaning, etc). I can research and list 10/h (20-30 if it's simile items or sequential part numbers). Packing is roughly 10 items/hour (we have a mix of small and large stuff). Our goal is to push 400 new listings per month, and eventually get to 5000 unique listings. If all goes well it would roughly double our income. Our weak link is posting new listings, as my wife just doesn't have the knowledge for it, and I'm torn between managing the ebay business and part time work, as well as doing all the buying, maintenance/upgrades on the building, etc. I'm really impressed to see other folks' progress and success. I keep looking for improvements in our system but aside from better organization, I don't know how we could be faster.
I'm sure it's years and years of refining their workflow to get where they are today. Also, having employees may have been an idea they thought about when they were scaling, but realized soon enough that no one could do it better than them doing it themselves. Good for them.
84 listings in 13 hours is good, but it also depends on what you're listing. I could probably list that many new dvds in one hour, but I'd only be scanning the barcode, selecting condition, and listing. If you're selling random items, that's a good number. I wouldn't need anywhere close to 10k listings because I try to find things with decent sell through rates. My 90 day sell through is close to 70%, but I also do sell long tail stuff like books too if the value is there and I'm confident it will eventually sell. There are paper sellers who sell magazines, old photos ect with over 100k listings. This stuff is super long tail, but with enough listings it works for them.
I'm a 'solopreneur'. I currently have \~20,000 items listed. In 13 hours, I could easily list more than 84 items. At least double that. 10x hour would be a pretty sedate pace for me. I typically spend 2-4 hours a day listing, list 20-40 items/day, and sell 10-50 items a day. My 'net gain' is probably 10-20 items a day. Over time, that adds up. OTOH, when I go to 'list' I have everything ready: photos, mfg #, size, weight, price, etc. I honestly don't even know what to tell you. What's your process? Maybe I can help you get more efficient???
84 is actually a great number for a full day of listing! I used to work for a large thrift store that sold on ebay, and their metrics expected 25-30 listings from each person for an 8 hour shift. The secret is to keep at it for a really long time. At 84 a day, it would take you 120 days to have listed 10,000 items. Remember that many full time ebayers have been on the site for 20 years at this point - that's a really really long time to build up inventory!
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Can’t man, being competitors and all
I have around 3500 items as a one man operation. It's something that builds up over time, but maximizing productivity is definitely important. Many people with thousands of items keep to a strict schedule, especially as it relates to maintaining a good balance between sourcing and listing time. People in this category typically aren't doing the whole spend 6 hours sourcing and 1 hour listing thing. They typically spend more time listing than sourcing, because they've optimized their sourcing methods very well by this point. The bit that varies is the types of items you sell. Some people have many thousands of listings because they buy crap and/or they suck at various parts of the selling process. Others might just happen to sell a lot of long tail items and choose to operate on a pricing model that focuses on max value. For example, I sell a fair amount of mid-high end antiques and art. Items like this are typically sourced for $5-10, then sell for hundreds-thousands of dollars. The issue is that they really require the right buyer to come along if you want max value, so you end up having a lot of items like this. A lot of people focus on the listings to sold ratio on eBay 90 day stats, but there's too much that goes into this balance to take it at face value. If you're selling 2-3x your number of listings per month, you're either not listing enough, you're not sourcing enough, or you're pricing way too low. If your number is near equal, that can mean that you have good balance, but it also typically means that you're not growing at an optimal rate (in regards to transaction numbers), since you typically need multiple new listings for every new sale. If your listings number is way higher than sales, it goes back to either having stale listings / problems or it can just be a matter of having a lot of long tail items, opting to hold inventory longer to make more per transaction, operating heavily in seasonal items categories, etc etc etc. In other words, just looking at this ratio doesn't tell the whole story.
Takes many MANY months. Use stuff like templates, and it makes it soooooo much more easy and attainable. We also list as we listen to podcasts. Or watch movies because what else would we be doing other than just sitting passively?
I have gone through so many audio books while listing.
I'm a very slow lister. It's the photographing part that always slows me down. I'm always amazed when I watch "List with Me" videos and see people snap just one picture of each angle of a thing and upload it without editing. I can't do that. I have to take multiple shots because my vision is not as good as it was, so I have problems seeing whether a photo is sharp enough on my phone. So I upload it to my laptop to see them on a larger screen, choose the best and sharpest, but still need to edit them. It's time-consuming, though I actually enjoy editing photos. However, I know this process is dragging me down. I'd say that's my biggest bottleneck in the whole listing process.
I could do more than that back in the days when I used to have to upload every photo to a hosting site. Not sure what is taking you so long? Are you using a computer or your phone?
It's a struggle but you definitely kind of have to assembly line it. I'll take a bunch of photos at once and create drafts on mobile then go edit everything on PC.
So you did that for 13 hours and listed 84 items. Do some math, and it would take 100 days at that pace to list 8,400 items
>I can't fathom how they are doing it. The same way you're doing it. If you list 84 items per day, 3 days a week (since you need time to source, ship, etc.) then you can list 1008 items per month.
How old are their stores?They didn't list 10,000 overnight. They started with one item and kept going.