Sales............stop start, stop start................COMPLETETLY DEAD again October 2024

[theglo-68]

Hi

Wonder if anyone else have noticed a sudden decline in sales since Jan 2024. Unsure what could have caused this.

We have started moving our business however we still have good amount of listings on ebay platform but sales died completely since 20/10/24 and today no SALES.

Has there been any changes to promoted listings by ebay that may have killed it.

Please advise.

[cardhawkuk]

The other point I was making is that its easy to get into a rut and carry on doing the same thing day in day out, which is what I have done for the last year and really made next to nothing on selling stuff on ebay, whereas by taking a step back and thinking differently, I have a different outcome. It needn't be investing on the stockmarket, but there is always more than one way to skin a cat. Some people make a good living selling on ebay, or other platforms, which is great, but for me it has been something of a fruitless exercise, so rethinking my world, I need to cut/end my time on ebay and focus on other solutions

'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ' as a very wise man once said - which is what I now realise I have been doing.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Fair enough.  I've dabbled in the past, but never using options.  I just could never be quite so risky.  🙂

I'm not so sure that I your brother in law is completely right, but I do understand what the point is.

Though it really isn't as simple as that I'm afraid.  It very much depends on what your selling, how much you have bought and the price paid, along with a few other more minor factors.

But he does sound like he is shifting lots of different stuff all the time, which makes sense for that kind of market.  

But the same can't be said if your buying and selling things that do sell slower, and there are plenty of them.  Just because something takes a few months to sell, does not necessarily mean that it's bad.

Though we do all of course get caught with stuff on occasion.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ' as a very wise man once said - which is what I now realise I have been doing.

Agree completely, which is why it's always wise to diversify as much as possible.

Maybe what your selling is just a little too niche.  Are there other places to sell, even if it's just the likes of facebook groups etc?  Or dedicated sites?

[cardhawkuk]

Agreed - it does depend on what you are selling. He sells cars and works on the basis if they haven't shifted he has spent too much so sends them to auction, gets what he can for them, and then puts that cash back to work. As he told me, cashflow is king, but if you insist on making a profit, you will go bust pretty quickly.

Its the power of compounding - its very easy to sit on something and think I will try to make 50% or 100% on this, and stick to your guns and it sits idle for 6 months. But if you buy something for £100 and take 10% profit, and reinvest that £110 and make another 10% profit on the £110, and keep repeating that process, it only takes 6 flips to be up 100% and from there the growth accelerates exponentially.

All stuff you will already know, and as we both know, there is no one answer that fits all - we're all just trying to make a living - which right now I don't feel like I am so changing tack.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

You talk a lot of sense however a 10% mark up won't work on a platform like this as I'm sure you are well aware. With fees of 20 - 30% a very reasonable mark up is crucial otherwise why bother ?  The issue is getting the balancing act right which can be very difficult and getting harder.

Horses for courses I guess. 

I do agree with a lot of what you have said though. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I think that they were referring to profit margin, rather than markup.

Without meaning to teach grandma to suck eggs....

Profit margin, is the percentage you make after you have removed all costs.

Markup, is the amount that you mark up the price from the cost of it, allowing for all the costs.

So you could make 10% profit, but markup the price by 50% for example.

[cardhawkuk]

I agree its all a balancing act, and horses for courses is right, but I was trying to highlight the value of turnover v stock - something I learned the hard way. For the "model" to work you need to make 10% profit net - so after fees etc, so to your point yes you need to make 30-40%  gross profit so ebay take their 20-30% and leaves you 10% profit.

I agree a 10% net profit seems very small, but if you can repeat that process again and again, even though ebay are creaming off a large chunk, you still see your £100 become £200 in 8 flips (I mistakenly said 6 flips earlier), but then in 5 more flips you are at £300 and in 3 more flips £400, 2 more flips £500 etc. If you can flip it 98 times at 10% profit each time you are now a millionaire Rodders! 

I know its all theoretical and cannot be replicated in practice - business and life is not linear like that -  but it shows the value of not having your money sitting in stock, but getting it churning/working. It's a lesson I wish I had taken on board a long time ago. Rejecting "offensive" offers when they were a quid or two below what I wanted for something, when I should have just thanks very much, I'll take your tenner and put it into the reinvestment pot. Within reason of course 🙂

I realise there is a lot of flipping going on there, and has a lot of assumptions ie you can keep finding new stock, but hopefully it helps explain the logic.

All good.

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

Exact words:

"But if you buy something for £100 and take 10% profit, and reinvest that £110"

[exponential_developments]

Ah.......there's my favourite word......EXPONENTIAL..............   😎

[therenewalworkshopltd]

That they may be, but profit margin is still not the same as markup.  And that all I was trying to point out.

The same still applies even in that statement.  You can happily trade on here making 10% profit on every sale.

[cardhawkuk]

I did that just for you!

[exponential_developments]

Uptick in inflation, thanks to the magical budget, won't take long for NI costs to get pased on to Jo  Public.

[d-klutter]

Definitely time for battening down the hatches. 

My modus operandi is sell whatever I can and buy absolutely nothing that is non-essential. Preserve whatever capital you can lay your hands on.

If its good enough for Warren Buffet then its good enough for me

[bravergrace]

Strikes me that there's a great deal that AI's doing already - and it's unfortunately encouraging misinformation and self-delusion.  

A combination of the previous queries preference on search engines, and the rabbit-hole of online "recommendations", is exploiting our reaction to new ideas,  unbelievable bargains and get-rich-quick schemes.  We see them as revelations - and the gullible are soon parted from their money.

I put a simple query into Google the other day, and got a very fast and surprisingly convincing AI answer, based (so it said) on information from official UK government websites.   

My query was along the lines of: "What age is a motorbike exempt from road tax in the UK?"

The answer was: "You don't need a license to drive in the UK if you are over 40 [ source: DVLA]".   

It then asked me to vote on  theisanswer - thus perpetuating the misinformation, as people "vote down" the stone cold truth in favour of amusing or welcome answers.  

My point is that some AI information is easy to spot as incorrect - but only if you're sceptical and already have a good understanding of the  subject you are "researching".  If you're naif, uneducated or simply in a hurry, you'll take it as gospel.

Human gullibility is already bad enough, without encouraging South Sea Bubbles and Freemen On The Land.

[exponential_developments]

Warren always has a pile of cash but the amount now would suggest he see's the market very overbought.

$325.2 B

He sold more Apple and Bank of America this last Q.

PE's are out the window again........... 

I agree absolutely with your plan, i did in January 2020, paid off very well, same situation now. In my opinion it's time to be contrarian.

[exponential_developments]

People will trust less, it's like Orwell's 1984, we did that for English lit at school, now it's frowned upon.....wonder why.

[d-klutter]

What's telling is he/Berkshire Hathaway now hold over 29% of AUM in cash which is historically high by their standards - last year it was just 20%. 

Either he sees the market as overbought or has a very big deal on the horizon, but agree with you its likely he sees the market as overbought. 

As he often says, "Cash is King", especially at times like these where there is so much uncertainty on so many fronts. 

Interesting times.

[d-klutter]

Lucky you - I got Jane Austen's "Emma" - approximately 400 pages and nothing happened.