Power Sellers Unite

slythorne · Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 220

About halfway through last year I started using a spreadsheet to keep track of my eBay stuff. I have learned stuff over the past few months and made some major tweaks to the 2012 version.

So far I have:(not necessarily in this order)

Date/where(ebay/craigslist/etc)/how (auction/storefront)/buyer/descriptions/subcategory/qty/bid/
Shipping(charged)/Shipping(Actual)/Payment Method(paypal/COD/etc)/
Zip Code/Local?/Tax(calculated only if local)/Notes/Refund Date/Refund Amt/
Paypal Fees/Refunds of Paypal Fees/FAV fees
Calculations:
MTD Gross / MTD Shipping / MTD Paypal / MTD FAV* / MTD Net
(*I put the FAV in there just for a reference, but it does calculate it based on auction or storefront, and I don't sell in higher % categories)

On another spreadsheet, I have the summary where I enter in the MTD Gross, MTD Shipping, and any payments for eBay Fees, and this gives me a Year-To-Date summary. I also added in "% Fees" as I like to get reminded how much it really costs to sell on eBay.

I also have another spreadsheet to keep track of my purchase expenses

I know this may seem like a lot of work, but it doesn't take up much of my time and really helps me keep track of my business. Am I missing anything? The only other thing I am thinking of adding so far is shipment date.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

Ship 22,000 items and see if its still a viable tool!

slythorne · Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 220

I don't sell that many... do you have any real feedback to give, or are you just flaunting your sales again?

luckyalive · Joined: 27 Apr 2008 Posts: 590

"Ship 22,000 items and see if its still a viable tool!"

22,000 * $.01 profit margin = $220.00

Joking aside, why are you still selling on ebay? Once you are so big the obvious next step is to cut ebay out of the picture. The only reason to stay would be for items that may do better on ebay such as antiques. for mass produced crap it makes no sense as such sellers are like dime-a-dozen.

donaldjr:

Any programming experience - you could whip up your own custom program. In the past I've done this to create a bulk watermark program for pictures and one that assembled auction descriptions and photos into a html template. You might make a "front end" program for the spreadsheet files so you can view the information within larger individual editable fields in the program rather than the small spreadsheet cells.

Are you entering all of this information by hand? If so, I really think that's a waste of time. You might try finding software that will retrieve all this information from ebay for you and export it into a variety of formats. I believe GarageSale; for example, can export reports.

I really thinks its overkill to analyze this and that and make pie charts and so on. Its either profitable for your time or its not. A really simply system would be to set up a seperate checking account and a seperate credit card for your ebay selling - now you've got all your expenses and sales confined to two places, aside from petty cash sales and purchases which you could use a simply paper ledger for.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

donaldjr wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")I don't sell that many... do you have any real feedback to give, or are you just flaunting your sales again?

You can't see the flaw in manually recording every item sold in such detail?

Even when I was only selling 50 items a week that would have been a tedious waste of time. You may be mentally inclined to do such tasks. You may even take some pleasure in the process.

IMHO your time could be better spent on selling, customer service, or product acquisition.

I am all about efficiency. Efficiency of time. How things are packed. How often emails are checked.

Would I like to know on a daily or weekly basis what my profit is/was? Sure.

Am I willing to spend hours a week crunching those numbers to get exact figures? Absolutely not.

Calculate expected profit at the time the item is listed and move on.

luckyalive wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")22,000 * $.01 profit margin = $220.00

More like .05

As for moving on from ebay. Why surrender over $100,000 in easy sales to other sellers.

CS

slythorne · Joined: 31 Dec 2008 Posts: 220

For each invoice, it only takes maybe 15 seconds to enter the information into the spreadsheet. That for me equated to maybe 3 hours in all of last year.

Calculating "profit" at time of listing is counting chickens before they hatch.

One thing I learned from working for big business retail is that if you don't keep good books, it will bite you in the ass in the end.

"I am all about efficiency. Efficiency of time. How things are packed. How often emails are checked."

I pack well, pretty much have it down to a science and it only takes 30 second to pack most of my shipments. If you spend the time to write decent descriptions, you really don't have to worry about emails.

I take it when you talk about "efficiency", you are really talking about "employees"... because if you really sold that much stuff you would be spending your time listing & packing, instead of bragging on here about how big of a seller you are.

What works for one business model may not work for another... All you do is put down those who have no desire to be your competition. I take it you don't have many friends on the outside world either? I am happy to be a seller of quality used collectible instead of new crap and can really care less what you have to say.

cohibastore.com · Joined: 14 Sep 2006 Posts: 4908

donaldjr wrote (View Post): › docWrite("quote")I take it when you talk about "efficiency", you are really talking about "employees"... because if you really sold that much stuff you would be spending your time listing & packing, instead of bragging on here about how big of a seller you are.

1 - I simple observed it was time consuming. If it works for you, great. But 15 seconds for a seller moving 20,000 items a year (that's only 400 items a week/80 items a day) is about 90 hours or 2 weeks of work time. 2 weeks of extra payroll or time spent by the seller themselves. For a seller 1/4 my size its still big chunk of resources.

2 - I am lucky/smart/efficient and I am able to do it all in about 30-35 hours week except for the holidays. That leaves lots free time to explore other opportunities, hobbys, pester folks in the forum, or just sit on my but and have cigar as I did this afternoon. (After I shipped 110 items this morning.)

Schistosomiasis · Joined: 19 Jan 2010 Posts: 192

Hi Donaldjr,
It looks like you've included all the relevent information.
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I'm not sure which types of products you sell or how you obtain them, but would it be worthwhile to add a field for source? You'd be able to easily fnid how to reorder something. If you only use a few different sources, it might not be worth your time to bother with that.
.
I'll also suggest that every month you can download a sales report from Ebay with most of that info in it. Even if you like to keep your own notes, you may want to download that as well to compare.
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Good luck!