Hiya Have you thought about bringing back your books and getting rid of your container expenses? Enjoying your content; discussing with my brother on a daily basis! All the best.
well since you live in Scotland and its the middle of the dark of winter, everyone's depressed and no one wants to buy anything, but I guess by the size of your store you've been in this for a while and have seen what sales trends are from month to month already
Ebay has been very quiet recently here too. I think its only going to get much worse sadly. I have got my store down from 950 items to 390 and hoping in the next month to get it down to 200 before selling all the stock off. I feel there will be lots of distressed sellers in time and I might get back in when people will have to sell the inventory very cheap.
Vinted has been good for selling books for me! Espescially in bundles. They move fast and you dont need to pay for shipping/fees. Might be worth an experiment for some author/series bundles there.
I agree with you on that one. The only limiting factor on Vinted is parcel weight. You get 0-500g, 500g to 1kg or 1-2kg. This would then prevent heavy bundles being made. HOWEVER ( a big however ) is that when buyers have asked me to bundle up say two sub 1kg items on Vinted that would then come to 1-2kg it's all done automatically and I'm unsure as to how Vinted process this. I think the scope could then be there with bundling books provided the books were listed individually and it was the customer making the moves and selecting what they wanted and creating a bundle. A big heavy 3kg Atlas could not be sold though unless it was maybe listed in an incorrect category such as crockery so that the 2-5kg postal option were to become available. None of those pesky shop fees and additional 6p insertions over and above the 1500 featured shop allowance. I'm thinking say a 25p basic paperback selling for a £1 might be about £1.25 with buyer protection netting £1 profit compared with selling on Ebay where it might be something like £3.99 freepost but with fees to come off and postage to be bought that could leave for example 75p meaning only 50p was made so Vinted possibly could double the margin on cheap paperbacks.
I'm following your daily accounts and loving them! I'm not a second hand bookseller but sell art just on one platform and January has been horrendous for me too. Last year I did sell my own items on ebay from my own attic, I dont think I could ever be a reseller, but I made a fair amount from my unused items and stopped when I was getting near to the threshold of being reported to HMRC because it's just my old junk I bought and not a business. This year I might try some books (I have far too many) Have you ever thought about doing book fairs? I have no idea if there are any near enough to you to contemplate. My best friend is an antiquarian bookseller and specialist but she does book fairs and they are worthwhile to her. She also sells on Abe I have no idea if that would work for you? She does a bit on ebay but not much as the fees are so high. Book fairs are hard work and now she only does half a dozen a year as we both approach our retirement. Hang in there, I've been self employed for 40 years, there have been lots of ups and downs. It would be nice to end my career on a high and not a recession but hey ho!
I've long suspected that once you get to a certain level of stock you can get the maximum efficiency from Ebay. People with goals and ambition willing to commit and put that work in like yourself get punished after a while. It feels like after you get to a certain point with scaling on Ebay it becomes a case of diminishing returns where you have more listed but your sell thru rate % drops. Perhaps time to get into selling on Vinted Pro as others have mentioned as well as myself in another comment below.
In the same boat mate. Sales have completely dropped off a cliff the last 10 days. Pretty much just bringing in enough to survive, having bought loads of stock in December. I bulk sent 10% discounts on about half of my Ebay items and didn't get one sale from it so I think it's fair to say it's going to be a tough gig on Ebay this year.
My husband has written his first book and set up a website, but it takes a lot of traction on social media to get people to go to his website and to get his book "out there". Ebay is very slow at the moment, i'm sure it will pick up soon .... on the bright side I did pick up a bundle of around 100 books today, for free
It's not easy nowadays on Ebay is it I list twice as much just to make the same or less than 10 years ago it's very competitive out there and everyone is expert now with the inter web Comes time when you have to decide are your in the storage business or the selling business If you got stuff listed for 2-3 years it's not good ..Time to get rid As for cash flow took me ages to learn to skim off a certain amount into savings rather than straight back into new stock Once I did that it was a game changer cause now I can withstand the slow months without panic selling Anyway good content mate ....Keep plodding on
99.99% of money time and effort in running your own website is traffic. Remaining 0.01% is traffic conversion. Rest doesnt matter at all. I've been selling via my own website from 1998 to 2007. It was a chore back then. And today, its 1000 times harder. Almost impossible without serious marketing skills and money to back it up.
When i went self employed many years ago,Amazon was brilliant. Unfortunately once they grew their own business they then dumped me for no reason. (although i think it was because i would not tell them the wholesaler i sourced a lot of stuff from. Their predatory practice was to get that information then cut you out). There is still a lot of money to made on eBay if you are selective. I'm talking about DVD's and CD's, but if you do enough research then there is still money to be made. New and sealed items are usually get the best prices. I finally gave up due to age etc. but i do still see other people i know doing extremely well. Keep going as i know you will get there.
A book to look out for. A very thin paperback, i bought one for 10p at a jumble sale and sold for £30 on eBay. A Guide To British Psilocybin Mushrooms By Richard Cooper.
Hi Ian - I’ve recently created a website from scratch and successfully linked it to eBay. Happy to chat anytime, if a discussion will help, and walk you through what I can remember. Promise I’m not trying to sell anything… other than stuff via a eBay linked website - honest! 😂
Selling since 2009, this month is the worst ever, 1300 items listed and I make a lot less compared to 2018 for example when I had just around 150 items in my shop at that time. Also, my Amazon FBA are down around 70% compared to last January, and I had a lot less items in stock last year.
I really feel for you. I never did ebay so my income depended on it. i always worked full time and treated ebay as a profitable hobby. sometimes i found stuff that sold, sometime i had to get rid at a loss. some months were great, some weren't. and there seemed no rhyme of reason why. the golden mantra always used to be what works on ebay now won't work in six months time , and you had to be ever watchful. for a few years i did really well out of it, and despite what i just said it did afford me to take a six month break from work when i found some really good stuff to sell. eventually the searching out and the listing and the fees and the bloody postal charges milked the fun out of it. so i admire your determination and slog. but if what you are doing now ain 't getting the sales you might need to tweak your business model a bit.
Rooting for you. Always enjoy your content. Hope you can keep finding a path to making the book business work.
Hiya Have you thought about bringing back your books and getting rid of your container expenses? Enjoying your content; discussing with my brother on a daily basis! All the best.
well since you live in Scotland and its the middle of the dark of winter, everyone's depressed and no one wants to buy anything, but I guess by the size of your store you've been in this for a while and have seen what sales trends are from month to month already
Ebay has been very quiet recently here too. I think its only going to get much worse sadly. I have got my store down from 950 items to 390 and hoping in the next month to get it down to 200 before selling all the stock off. I feel there will be lots of distressed sellers in time and I might get back in when people will have to sell the inventory very cheap.
Vinted has been good for selling books for me! Espescially in bundles. They move fast and you dont need to pay for shipping/fees. Might be worth an experiment for some author/series bundles there.
You beat me to it…. Vinted is worth considering especially no fees or postage, and you can switch off certain postage options.
I agree with you on that one. The only limiting factor on Vinted is parcel weight. You get 0-500g, 500g to 1kg or 1-2kg. This would then prevent heavy bundles being made. HOWEVER ( a big however ) is that when buyers have asked me to bundle up say two sub 1kg items on Vinted that would then come to 1-2kg it's all done automatically and I'm unsure as to how Vinted process this. I think the scope could then be there with bundling books provided the books were listed individually and it was the customer making the moves and selecting what they wanted and creating a bundle. A big heavy 3kg Atlas could not be sold though unless it was maybe listed in an incorrect category such as crockery so that the 2-5kg postal option were to become available. None of those pesky shop fees and additional 6p insertions over and above the 1500 featured shop allowance. I'm thinking say a 25p basic paperback selling for a £1 might be about £1.25 with buyer protection netting £1 profit compared with selling on Ebay where it might be something like £3.99 freepost but with fees to come off and postage to be bought that could leave for example 75p meaning only 50p was made so Vinted possibly could double the margin on cheap paperbacks.
Look at pricing. I have been buying hardback books in slipcases recently - all sent at £3.39 shipping.
Obviously I don't know your position ..
I'm following your daily accounts and loving them! I'm not a second hand bookseller but sell art just on one platform and January has been horrendous for me too. Last year I did sell my own items on ebay from my own attic, I dont think I could ever be a reseller, but I made a fair amount from my unused items and stopped when I was getting near to the threshold of being reported to HMRC because it's just my old junk I bought and not a business. This year I might try some books (I have far too many)
Have you ever thought about doing book fairs? I have no idea if there are any near enough to you to contemplate. My best friend is an antiquarian bookseller and specialist but she does book fairs and they are worthwhile to her. She also sells on Abe I have no idea if that would work for you? She does a bit on ebay but not much as the fees are so high. Book fairs are hard work and now she only does half a dozen a year as we both approach our retirement.
Hang in there, I've been self employed for 40 years, there have been lots of ups and downs. It would be nice to end my career on a high and not a recession but hey ho!
I've long suspected that once you get to a certain level of stock you can get the maximum efficiency from Ebay. People with goals and ambition willing to commit and put that work in like yourself get punished after a while. It feels like after you get to a certain point with scaling on Ebay it becomes a case of diminishing returns where you have more listed but your sell thru rate % drops. Perhaps time to get into selling on Vinted Pro as others have mentioned as well as myself in another comment below.
In the same boat mate. Sales have completely dropped off a cliff the last 10 days. Pretty much just bringing in enough to survive, having bought loads of stock in December.
I bulk sent 10% discounts on about half of my Ebay items and didn't get one sale from it so I think it's fair to say it's going to be a tough gig on Ebay this year.
My husband has written his first book and set up a website, but it takes a lot of traction on social media to get people to go to his website and to get his book "out there". Ebay is very slow at the moment, i'm sure it will pick up soon .... on the bright side I did pick up a bundle of around 100 books today, for free
It's not easy nowadays on Ebay is it
I list twice as much just to make the same or less than 10 years ago it's very competitive out there and everyone is expert now with the inter web
Comes time when you have to decide are your in the storage business or the selling business
If you got stuff listed for 2-3 years it's not good ..Time to get rid
As for cash flow took me ages to learn to skim off a certain amount into savings rather than straight back into new stock
Once I did that it was a game changer cause now I can withstand the slow months without panic selling
Anyway good content mate ....Keep plodding on
99.99% of money time and effort in running your own website is traffic.
Remaining 0.01% is traffic conversion.
Rest doesnt matter at all. I've been selling via my own website from 1998 to 2007. It was a chore back then. And today, its 1000 times harder. Almost impossible without serious marketing skills and money to back it up.
When i went self employed many years ago,Amazon was brilliant. Unfortunately once they grew their own business they then dumped me for no reason. (although i think it was because i would not tell them the wholesaler i sourced a lot of stuff from. Their predatory practice was to get that information then cut you out). There is still a lot of money to made on eBay if you are selective. I'm talking about DVD's and CD's, but if you do enough research then there is still money to be made. New and sealed items are usually get the best prices. I finally gave up due to age etc. but i do still see other people i know doing extremely well. Keep going as i know you will get there.
A book to look out for. A very thin paperback, i bought one for 10p at a jumble sale and sold for £30 on eBay. A Guide To British Psilocybin Mushrooms By Richard Cooper.
Hi Ian - I’ve recently created a website from scratch and successfully linked it to eBay.
Happy to chat anytime, if a discussion will help, and walk you through what I can remember. Promise I’m not trying to sell anything… other than stuff via a eBay linked website - honest! 😂
Selling since 2009, this month is the worst ever, 1300 items listed and I make a lot less compared to 2018 for example when I had just around 150 items in my shop at that time. Also, my Amazon FBA are down around 70% compared to last January, and I had a lot less items in stock last year.
You can turn off all posted options except RM on Vinted…
I really feel for you. I never did ebay so my income depended on it. i always worked full time and treated ebay as a profitable hobby. sometimes i found stuff that sold, sometime i had to get rid at a loss. some months were great, some weren't. and there seemed no rhyme of reason why. the golden mantra always used to be what works on ebay now won't work in six months time , and you had to be ever watchful. for a few years i did really well out of it, and despite what i just said it did afford me to take a six month break from work when i found some really good stuff to sell. eventually the searching out and the listing and the fees and the bloody postal charges milked the fun out of it. so i admire your determination and slog. but if what you are doing now ain 't getting the sales you might need to tweak your business model a bit.
People waiting to be paid its been a long slog for everyone since Christmas hopefully it gets better for you im sure it will