April 10, 2018

2018 Update

It’s been almost a year since I’ve posted some content here and after some time away I’ve come back to this place. For a couple years, I’ve focused heavily on turning my blog into an information share about my thrifting and flipping endeavors and I’m over it. I’ve been selling old stuff at flea markets and online since I was a kid. The last two years have been a fun experiment in documenting my trials online however when it comes down to it nobody is coming here for that content and the idea of producing more content on the subject makes me mildly ill. I am sure the flipping community…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in online sales, photography

April 19, 2017

1 Dollar Per Day Etsy Promotions Results

As promised, here are my results from the last month using Etsy’s promoted listings feature capped at 1 dollar per day. Sadly, I have no benchmark to run this against other than “likes” and actual sales. Sales were up for me just a tad bringing in 3 more than in the prior month. Likes were tremendous however, if you want people to “like” your products and you’re willing to pay for it; Etsy Promoted Listings is a must. I generally get 3-10 likes per day as opposed to less than that a week before this experiment. One odd thing did happen during this time period however that is worth noting….

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

March 7, 2017

Etsy Promotions Experiment

Since March has been a sluggish sales month so far, I decided today to start a Promoted Listings campaign on Etsy. Check back in April for a monthly sales report and ROI on this new campaign!

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

February 24, 2017

1 Year Later

It’s been a little over a year since I decided to actually pay attention to my hobby business and the results are in. I’ve been on and off flipping thrift store stuff since I was a teenager (35 now). With the encouragement of a good friend, I decided to make 2016 my benchmark. Financially, Etsy, my newest channel saw the most dramatic growth at roughly 500% YOY for January. Ebay is up roughly 20% YOY for January. One metric that I regret not tracking is listing count at the beginning and end of the month. Focusing on getting more listings up every week drove the annual growth of both platforms…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ebay, ecommerce, online sales

August 26, 2016

Setting Your Ebay Store on Vacation & Handling Times

It has been some time since my last post but this one hit home for me recently and pretty hard. I’ve been selling casually on eBay for 15 years. In 2016 I decided to formalize my effort with eBay and Etsy to make a solid stream of side income and so far in 2016, things have been going great. I’m paying for an eBay basic store subscription and have had one in the past, it works out OK, I’m a Top Rated Powerseller and make the most of the FVF credits/discounts and the USPS Shipping discount (this actually helps my business model to exist). So, we’re 8 months into 2016 and…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in digital photography, ebay, ecommerce, maritime, online sales, photography, tillamook county

November 18, 2015

Resolving a Negative Feedback on eBay

About once a year, I get dinged with a negative feedback on eBay. Fate swooped in on my 34th birthday and dispensed me one just yesterday and I figured that I should post about how I resolved it. Math up front. On average I sell 15-20 items per week and though I leave feedback for all my buyers, I usually receive a 10% return feedback as a seller and am luckily still running at a 100% positive. I offer free shipping (which I bundle into the Buy it Now price) and 14 day returns on all my items which gets me into Top Rated/Powerseller status and that fly final value…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

October 28, 2015

Free Reporting Tool for Ebay, Etsy and More

Just a quick post here. A few months ago, when I started getting back into the eBay flipping game I wanted to have a visual report to identify trends and show sales progress for free. The solution I ended up going with is called SumAll. SumAll is pretty cool in that you can plug all kinds of online engagement/sales channels into one interface and track trends for free. Of course they offer a paid suite that is probably super rad though for my activity that isn’t warranted. Check out the screen shot of the “Classic View” below which shows my last 12 months of activity on eBay, Etsy, YouTube &…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

October 11, 2015

First 100.00 on Etsy!

About a month and a half ago, encouraged by my buddy I launched a new shop on Etsy.com. I had a shop on Etsy years ago attempting to sell vintage prints from scanned slides. I had no sales there and after 6 months, I closed that situation down. The focus of this shop, much like that of my friend Josh was vintage men’s clothing with a keen focus on trucker hats. I got into selling hats on eBay a couple months before opening the Etsy shop because: People buy second hand hats (I wouldn’t have thought unless it was something super special) Most hats weigh under 13oz. and with ship via…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales

August 9, 2015

Lessons learned from my failed e-commerce startup

When Jenna and I were living in Pennsylvania, we frequented the oddball grocery stores in the Philly suburbs always looking for something new. One of the more interesting spots was the West Norriton Farmers Market. More of a grocery store than a farmers market with a geographic layout, this place has an interesting selection to say the least. I’ve always been into hot peppers, and the Caribbean and African section of the store had some tempting/daring products to offer. One of these was the best dried pepper product I’ve ever tasted. That product (2 cases of which are still in my closet) became the template for an e-commerce shop called…

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written by jhawthorne - Posted in ecommerce, online sales