Saturday, June 28, 2008

Wrong Pricing

I had put together a price book, and entered all items into a website store. I accidentally listed a $600.00 item $500.00. I will honor the price, but it cost a hundred bucks.

Bands

I had an order for a phone. One company said it was DualBand, another said TriBand. I had the DualBand company recheck, and ordered from the TriBand. A day later, the DualBand confirmed it was TriBand, and the TriBand said they made a mistake, it was DualBand. Then, the first company said it was DualBand, again.

WTF?!? This is a waste of my time and energy.

Names on Checks

I have a customer that writes checks out to "Company Name - My Name" and I've cashed this before. Today it was a problem. She insisted on a Business Account to use the check. I completely blew up right at the window, threw the pen at her and ripped up the check. I didnt mean to, but it cost me time, money and gas to get that stupid check the first time, now I have to go get another one. The business is about 30 minutes away on a good day, each way. What a waste. It had my damn name on it, who cares?

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Half Year Update

In November I started selling Apple iPods on eBay. In December my wife quit her day job to stay home with our son. I started importing generic MP3 players from China. In January, I was laid off and simply turned my part time business into full time.

The next few months were spent going in circles while I tried to find direction. I knew my end goal, but I did not know quite how to get there. eBay had a new CEO and turned evil, putting many big and small sellers like me out of business. Amazon was no better, and they have been holding over $2000 of my earnings hostage for 47 days, with 43 more to go. After chasing my tail, I came up with the idea that I could import Cell Phones, and sell them to local small stores in the Bridgeport and New Haven areas.

My wife had started a new job, cut herself, and was fired. A simple accident had turned into a corporate railroading. So, I filed a claim for Workman's Compensation and Unemployment. I don't know if we will get anywhere, but I do feel better knowing that the woman who started this is now in the hot seat by her own bosses for this mess. My wife did get a pleasant temporary job that will be ending at the end of July.

As you know I have my own businesses, where I sell Board Games, MP3 Players, and Cell Phones. If you wanted to see what I have been working on for the past few months, you can visit www.The-Game-Store.com and www.Portable-Fun.com The games I sell on eBay, but the Phones I sell locally to small stores, acting as a distributor. So far it has been going well. On Saturday I met with four owners, that own seven stores between them. They were as interested as my other customers are, so I hope this will be worth all the trouble. While this is a new thing for me, once I had the idea, and started putting the pieces together, I really felt this was a very good idea.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Repxchange.com

This place is great. They have collected an eBay Blacklist from thousands of sellers. Once you join (free) you can download a customized list of troublesome eBuyers. With the current state of dysfunction eBay is in these days, extortion has run rampant. This is an excellent first defense to stop buyers what have caused undue burden on us, the sellers.

A link to this most awesome (did I mention Free?!?!) website is http://repxchange.com So please stop by, give your support, and help may eBay safe again.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Bulk Listings

The good news is, I came up with a way to have my master Excel database merge with an HTML Template so i can bulk upload to eBay without any extra fees. The bad news is, I included code that is now off limits on ebay, so I have to fix them all either by hand one at a time, or pay about $8.00 in fees to re-list them all at once on my store. eBay blows.

OLA.com doesn't support bulk uploads. That was a waste of my $8.00 for the month. I really do need to cancel that account before I am charged again.

eCrater.com does bulk uploads... by hand! It takes them several days to process my upload. Then, it fails and I have to do it again. The sample file and the help docs directly conflict information, and neither way worked. I emailed them a few days ago, but haven't heard back. I'm not too thrilled by these people either.

iOffer.com has a bulk upload system that works great. The bad news is, I haven't made a sale in.. well, ever.

The-Game-Store.com gets a few visitors now an again from Google Base. I make like one sale a month. Boy, was that worth the effort.

Portable-Fun.com is pointing to eBay, but will soon being going to it's own store that I will host here. Yes, here. I have one machine that is a file server, email server, ebay image host, store server, bootleg software downloader, etc... if that machine ever dies, I am so screwed.

Just an Update

A big shout out to Kyle!

I came here to specifically give you a shout out and surprise you. But since you decided to request the shout out in the previous post, that kind of ruins the surprise.

I used to have so much to say on here, but I have just been so damned busy trying to make a friggin' sale. It's horrible out there. eBay and Amazon really ruined a good thing.

So, I have most of that brochure finished. It has evolved though and turned into a major undertaking. Originally, it was two pieces of paper stapled together. Really simple. But long story short, it turned into a 3 ring binder that has about a dozen double sided pages in it.

The goal is to supply 2 or 3 of them to the local cell phone stores. One with prices, the rest without. Then, they can leave it on the counter for customers to look at while they wait. This will get ALL the products I carry into everybody's hands. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense.

Just so we are clear, I didn't know a damned thing about cell phones when I started. I was trying to sell MP3 players to a cell phone store back then. It just just sort of made more sense to change my focus to what my customers would want. This goes back to one of my earliest posts on here. It doesn't matter what you sell, as long as it does sell at a profit.

One of the things I learned was that I was not charging enough. I was really trying to walk away with a dirt cheap price and look better than whoever they regularly buy from. But it took me a few orders of not making what I wanted before I realized I had to double what I originally thought. Between shipping, payments (Western Union), returns and haggling, I was just hurting myself. Not to even mention the time and gas driving around (Damn, I just mentioned it anyway).

In the end, I just came to realize that they were just as happy to have another place to buy from, even if I wasn't their number one.

OK, so that's where I am these days. Working on that book and making my one or two sales a day from my eBay store. Which is sad since I used to sell like 8 MP3 players a day until that "Best Match" garbage started. Now, I don't even bother listing auctions anymore, no one sees them anyway.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Brochure

I have been working quite a bit on putting together a catalog for my Local Cell Phone Store customers (that I dont have yet). I put together an 8 page brochure, then decided if i made a flip book without prices inside a vinyl 3 ring binder, It could be left on the counter for customers to look at while they wait to be helped. My one local store liked this idea a lot. So i am going to finish the catalog, set up the website, then go out and try to sell my products to local cell phone shops. From the response I have had, this could work. At least this way i wont get negative feedback!

eBay's New Ratings System

Yesterday I received 2 5-star Positive Feedbacks, and my ratings actually went DOWN. This just proves they are screwing with the numbers. Because of their screwed up system of "Best Match", me, and many other sellers, have watched out sales plummet. Good job eBay, Good Job.
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