Question
Mine were the worst ever.
How about yours ?
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I listed crud over the Olympics deliberately, so I can not really say. Ebay looked very flat from my observations though.
Next week is looking very good for me, so long as I don't get NARU'd before then.....
Cheers, Kevin
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2nd lowest of the year behind May - but September has already exceed August and we're only on the 9th 8)
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Finally picking up. August was way better than July. So far Sept is looking even better.
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We've only been selling since May. However, August was by far our best month. September is shaping up pretty well too.
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I've heard alot of people in the collectibles business complaining that sales were very low. Saturated markets?
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My sales have been good most of the year, and August blew the roof off my "projections". I cannot complain at all.
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I stopped selling in August a few years ago--this year I didn't actively sell, either, but made an amazing number of store sales. Definitely did not expect it. Hope the stores continue to do as well through the fall.
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Actually they were 2nd worst; July was the worst ever. But they did so much screwing around with the book categories that it was inevitable.
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Is August the cruelest month?
Got lots of bids in the second half, with over 90% sellthrough. Strong bidding brought quite good sales prices.
Sounds great, right?
Wrong!
I just finished an audit. Over 540 items awaiting payment. The oldest is from August 4, the most recent sale is this afternoon. The vast majority of these things sold in the last week of August.
I received 12 payments today. Yesterday there were 3. I don't like this trend. Used to be I could count on getting about 10% receivables daily.
I should have gotten about 50 payments today, or about $500 in revenue. What I got was 12 payments, for $158 in revenue. (Yesterday was worse.)
And as we all know, over time the payments decline.
Meaning, if you have 100 auctions ending successfully on August 23, you should receive something like 50% of your payments by August 30, another 30% by September 6, 10% by September 13.... (I usually assume a 10% deadbeat factor. Or at least I used to.)
As an entrepreneur, I have to ask myself what's happening.
-Nothing has changed in the payment and collections procedure, other than the changes eBay has implemented. We still send out invoices mere moments after the auctions end.
-A half-dozen or so have claimed today they never received any of our email, but that's a small percentage. So the mail is probably getting out as well as it ever did.
-I have lost a couple of major customers lately due to illness (theirs, unfortunately), so my mix is now about 70% angels/30% new customers.
-The late-payers/non-payers are both repeat and new customers.
I can only conclude that the ever-present major flaw in eBay's system -- the one nobody likes to talk about: the fact that bidders never HAVE to pay if they don't feel like it -- is now the predominant fact of life on eBay.
Pity the poor sellers who work their heinies off to get bids...and then get stiffed for their trouble.
My fellow sellers, we've been scrod.
fLuff
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