Let the Games Beg- er, Listing Continue?
Multiple times today I typed/wrote "McCall" (as in Scott) instead of "McCoy" (as in the pottery). eBay's search engine laughed at me.
On a related theme, I kept trying to describe the design of a glass candy dish as a [head of] cabbage or lettuce. Turns out that everyone else is calling it a rose. In my defense, the candy dish is green. And a butterfly perched on top a cruciferous vegetable made perfect sense to me.
And now, some touchstone statistics, of a sort, which will require some definitions of terms, both of mine and eBay's:
New items are the ones waiting for me in the shed. Today I went through and inventoried them, researched them to make sure they were worth the effort of listing, and priced them out at the same time.
"Descriptions" has lately been my mental term for items that are ready to be prepped except for having their descriptions written. Most of them are new items, but there's a few older items that I have to re-write. They're all tagged with "item.Descriptions", so that's where that comes from, even if it's the wrong part of speech. Just imagine your choice of swear words on either end of the term and you'll get the idea. I hate writing descriptions.
Prepped items are ready to be staged. Photos have been taken/edited/filed, details are noted, descriptions have been written, starting prices have been determined, and size and weight of the final package has been established. The photos are in their own file, but the rest of the information is in Evernote, and everything shares an ID number to keep it straight.
Staged items have had all their information loaded into TurboLister*, their titles written, and the photos attached. They're just waiting for the rest of the batch to be ready for uploading. BIN items go live immediately upon upload. Auction items are scheduled.
* TL is a horribly buggy program, but as long as I don't trust it, back-up/compact the database several times a day, and close out/reboot the program every couple of hours (at least) then it's slightly easier than the web interface.
Scheduled items are auctions uploaded and scheduled to go live the following Sunday at 9pm EST for 7 days. This means they'll wrap up the following Sunday at 9pm, which is what's important. Auctions ending in that time stretch - early enough the east coast is still awake, late enough the west coast is drifting online, and on Sunday when there's few other evening obligations - do significantly better than any other ending time. It costs $0.10 per item for the schedule option, but experience has shown this is far, far easier on my sanity than attempting to upload them all manually on Sunday evening, especially when there's a lot of them. (Theoretically there are programs that can do it for me. AHAHAHA. It's totally worth the $0.10 each.)
Active items are things currently listed. Mostly individual, where there's only one of an item available, but some multiple BIN listings.
Auction items are exactly what they sound like. The highest bidder at the end of the run time wins the item. Run times can vary from 3 to 10 days, but I almost always use the standard 7 days.
Buy It Now (BIN) items are a flat rate and available immediately. The can be individual listings or multiple listings where the buyer selects how many they want at time of purchase from the number actually available. (i.e. There are currently 38 quart size blue mason jars with lids showing as available, but they're priced individually and someone could just buy 1 or 3 or 15.) I lean strongly towards BIN items any time other than October - December.
Annnd - drumroll please - finally, the numbers:
91 New
83 Descriptions
87 Prepped - 3 BIN items, 84 Auction items
0 Staged (they were just uploaded last night)
54 Scheduled
65 Active - All BIN items
This doesn't include the "junk box" assorted items that have been sorted into category piles, but not made up into lots yet. Also doesn't include items being listed soon that have a month to sell before being combined into larger lots (i.e. patches), which will require new photos and at least re-weighing (they're padded envelope type items, so no extensive repackaging).
So that's 119 118 (sold one! yay!) listings accomplished one way or the other, and at least 261 still to wrangle in some fashion in, ideally, a little over a month. Granted, some of the New items may well be put off and end up in next year, but others (esp the box lots) are certain to overflow the gaps and I want two of the sheds cleared out as much as possible before January when sales drop off sharply.
Right, forward ho then.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth where there are
comments. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)
On a related theme, I kept trying to describe the design of a glass candy dish as a [head of] cabbage or lettuce. Turns out that everyone else is calling it a rose. In my defense, the candy dish is green. And a butterfly perched on top a cruciferous vegetable made perfect sense to me.
And now, some touchstone statistics, of a sort, which will require some definitions of terms, both of mine and eBay's:
New items are the ones waiting for me in the shed. Today I went through and inventoried them, researched them to make sure they were worth the effort of listing, and priced them out at the same time.
"Descriptions" has lately been my mental term for items that are ready to be prepped except for having their descriptions written. Most of them are new items, but there's a few older items that I have to re-write. They're all tagged with "item.Descriptions", so that's where that comes from, even if it's the wrong part of speech. Just imagine your choice of swear words on either end of the term and you'll get the idea. I hate writing descriptions.
Prepped items are ready to be staged. Photos have been taken/edited/filed, details are noted, descriptions have been written, starting prices have been determined, and size and weight of the final package has been established. The photos are in their own file, but the rest of the information is in Evernote, and everything shares an ID number to keep it straight.
Staged items have had all their information loaded into TurboLister*, their titles written, and the photos attached. They're just waiting for the rest of the batch to be ready for uploading. BIN items go live immediately upon upload. Auction items are scheduled.
* TL is a horribly buggy program, but as long as I don't trust it, back-up/compact the database several times a day, and close out/reboot the program every couple of hours (at least) then it's slightly easier than the web interface.
Scheduled items are auctions uploaded and scheduled to go live the following Sunday at 9pm EST for 7 days. This means they'll wrap up the following Sunday at 9pm, which is what's important. Auctions ending in that time stretch - early enough the east coast is still awake, late enough the west coast is drifting online, and on Sunday when there's few other evening obligations - do significantly better than any other ending time. It costs $0.10 per item for the schedule option, but experience has shown this is far, far easier on my sanity than attempting to upload them all manually on Sunday evening, especially when there's a lot of them. (Theoretically there are programs that can do it for me. AHAHAHA. It's totally worth the $0.10 each.)
Active items are things currently listed. Mostly individual, where there's only one of an item available, but some multiple BIN listings.
Auction items are exactly what they sound like. The highest bidder at the end of the run time wins the item. Run times can vary from 3 to 10 days, but I almost always use the standard 7 days.
Buy It Now (BIN) items are a flat rate and available immediately. The can be individual listings or multiple listings where the buyer selects how many they want at time of purchase from the number actually available. (i.e. There are currently 38 quart size blue mason jars with lids showing as available, but they're priced individually and someone could just buy 1 or 3 or 15.) I lean strongly towards BIN items any time other than October - December.
Annnd - drumroll please - finally, the numbers:
91 New
83 Descriptions
87 Prepped - 3 BIN items, 84 Auction items
0 Staged (they were just uploaded last night)
54 Scheduled
65 Active - All BIN items
This doesn't include the "junk box" assorted items that have been sorted into category piles, but not made up into lots yet. Also doesn't include items being listed soon that have a month to sell before being combined into larger lots (i.e. patches), which will require new photos and at least re-weighing (they're padded envelope type items, so no extensive repackaging).
So that's 119 118 (sold one! yay!) listings accomplished one way or the other, and at least 261 still to wrangle in some fashion in, ideally, a little over a month. Granted, some of the New items may well be put off and end up in next year, but others (esp the box lots) are certain to overflow the gaps and I want two of the sheds cleared out as much as possible before January when sales drop off sharply.
Right, forward ho then.
Crossposted to Dreamwidth where there are
comments. Comment here or there. ♥ Blue :)