Storage Auctions

Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - rulesforrebels

Pages: 1 ... 20 21 [22] 23 24 ... 84
316
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 11:14:10 AM »
Quote from: dbr831 on October 27, 2013, 09:49:58 AM
Yeah, I guess I wouldn't tell either.  Mostly I can't fathom the work involved if not drop shipping. I would imagine it's something pre-boxed that just requires slapping on a label but even so....

the work involved isn't bad. i dont sell anything prepackaged so its me counting out items and individually packing orders. obviously though certain things sell better than others so most items are the same and its easy to get into a roll and fly through them. i would say an hour or two of packign orders a night for myself probably about teh same for my partner. honestly teh biggest headache is not the packing but customers emailing and calling an hour after their purchase asking where the item is, where is tracking, people buying and then wanting to switch up their orders, etc. the customer service end is the biggest pain in the ass actually packing orders isn't too bad

317
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 11:08:57 AM »
Quote from: HomeGrownPromos on October 27, 2013, 11:18:24 AM
Suddenly Paypal is holding my funds too. I didn't get the courtesy of a call or even an email.

one thing to check out is to find out if its a rolling reserve or if its jjust the standard 21 day holds. if you have a rolling reserve you should see a pretty noticable bar at the top of your main paypal screen. ill attach a screenshot to show you.

318
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 11:06:25 AM »
Quote from: MovieMan on October 26, 2013, 04:27:48 PM
If you had just sold $220,000 in a month (with a net according to RFR of about 10%) would YOU let other people here know what the product line was ? I know I wouldn't and that's why I never asked him. He won't tell anyone here about it that's for sure.  ;D

movieman has it right. nnobody with a good niche will ever tell as it just brings competition. i will say i dabble in silver a bit but honestly i dont mind sharing that because most people dont have the funds to get into buying and selling at a serious level and secondly its not really a secret everyone knows everyone loves silver. the margins are small so you gotta make money on volume but honestly ive seen some new sellers come to the market and rack up like 1500 feedback in a like a 10 day to 2 week period, obviously probably big shots like coin shop owners and stuff but still just shows you how well that stuff sells.

319
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 11:04:24 AM »
Quote from: Travis on October 26, 2013, 02:06:05 PM
Rules, you're drop-shipping right?

no we actually handpack all ordres ourselves just myself and my partner. one thing which does help us, we have a good relationship wiht our supplier so he'll front 20k-40k in a product and let us get him the money shortly after. not really credit but more he understands it takes time for everything to clear through paypal and get to bank accounts and sometimes allows us to flip some product before paying him back.

i have been looking into other products to sell though both through wholesale cataglogues and also looking at terapeak to see whats hot. basically electronics dominate ebay, ipods, iphones, etc.

320
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 11:02:10 AM »
Quote from: alloro on October 25, 2013, 10:16:37 PM
I trust you pointed out to them, that if this action destroyed your business they would be liable for a major lawsuit!

no lawsuit, it's their website and their payment platform they reserve the right to do anything they want at anytime basically. honestly its my own fault for putting all my eggs in one basket in that i only use one payment platform. problem being in my industry its tough to get people to allow me to do merchant accounts. i've looked into propay, wepay, google wallet, etc and others.

obviously paypal is best for ebay and you have to have it. i could deal with the reserves if it was just ebay but my website also uses paypal so essentially all my money is going through paypal. im basically going to look for a new merchant processor and keep my ebay business going through paypal and do my website and phone orders through some other platform.

i hear even regular credit card merchants are starting to do these reserves. on the plus side the paypal women said to a point her hands are tied she has to follow policies but she did say keep my account in good standing and if im having money problems reach out to her and she'll try to help us out. i think in a month they are gonna reslease the 10k and then just hold the percentage.

321
PayPal / Re: I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 31, 2013, 10:58:24 AM »
Quote from: MovieMan on October 25, 2013, 06:23:17 PM
The following is a copy and paste from a thread you posted on Sept 28, 2013 about the wisdom of raising one's limit on eBay.

****


I never reached my limit while selling stuff from storage auctions but I wound up basically falling into a good source of merchandise that sells well on ebay consistantly. I was running into problems where I couldn't sell as much as the demand was because my limits were too low. I now have a 3.5 million dollar limit and don't have that problem. Even though I will probably never hit these lmits I still continue to get them raised. Also an FYI for anyone doing big stuff on ebay. Once you do over 250k in a month they will often hold up to 20% of your money each month for chargebacks and disputes. If you have high limits they wont do this.
For most people you'll probably never hit these limits yet I thought the same thing and am now glad I have the lmits I do. It costs nothing and takes 2 minutes to make the phone call so my attitude is why not do it.

*******

I guess you need to do some tweeking on your high volume sales given your original post in THIS thread. ;D

movieman, ebay selling limits are entirely different from paypal account limits. you can have an ebay limit of 100 million dollars but that doesn't mean paypal can't put a rolling reserve on your account.

322
eBay / Re: Is EBAY super slow lately or is it just me?
« on: October 31, 2013, 10:56:27 AM »
if you want to know if ebay is slow you need to sign up for a terapeak account. its not cheap like $80 a month but its amazing hte type of data you can get. just for example if you want to ask about a certain item or category i could tell you how many were sold, at what pricepoints, who sold them, what their listing keywords were, etc. im sure ebay ebbs and flows in business during certain seasons and such but basically if an item isn't selling there either isn't deman or it isn't priced right.

323
PayPal / I HATE PAYPAL!!! Reserves are killing my business!!!
« on: October 25, 2013, 02:01:44 PM »
lol, okay just wanted to vent. As usual going to roll with the punches and make it through this but long story short I get a call yesterday from Paypal Merchant Risk Department. Worried I was going to get shutdown. not that bad but pretty bad. They tell me my business in the past 60 days surpassed my entire year last year and that I'm in a high risk industry so they are going to immediately seize $10,000 from my account and hold 30% of my monthly incomming payments and hold for 90 days. In August I did $220,000 in sales. That's $55,000 they are holding plus the $10,000 they took up front.

We are a small business, we constantly are turning over money and inventory. This potentially could end my buisness, however the one saving grace the paypal people said they dont want to destroy my business they are willing to work wth me but I'm going to have to bring some more cash into the business or raise prices.

It sucks.

324
eBay / Re: Suspicious bidding
« on: October 24, 2013, 04:56:56 PM »
Quote from: StorageAuctionFinds on October 24, 2013, 02:18:12 PM
I figured reporting it wouldn't do much, but I had a few minutes to kill. Personal story though, I have a product of a certain brand I got out of a unit, it is a specialized part and very expensive to get new from regular sources. I acquired 125 of them, and put them on eBay for $25 each about 1/4-1/6 of what they retail new for. I was not getting very many hits and no sales for about a month, I did a quick search and another seller was selling an off brand of the same product but using the name brand as keywords in the title for $13 each. I used the report item link to report it for keyword spamming, within a few hours his listing was gone and I have sold 65 of these items in the last 2 months since it was taken down. So reporting may not work in every case, but it sure as hell helped my sales by taking down some competition.

good point. when your selling random one off things i dont think anybody really cares to report others. within certain niches like silver, specialty tools, specialty parts, things where a seller is always selling the same item competition developes among those in the niceh and they look for any reason to pop each other off and get each others listings taken down so in that case you reported them as probably did others in that niche or cateory and thats most likely why it got taken down.

in my category people put up tons of duplicate listings. sometimes i get them taken down, other times ill report daily for months and nothing happens. i dnt like being an ebay tattletale but i dont like people having an unfair advantage. if you can beat me straight up more power to you but dont cheat. a while back before i understood the rules i got popped for duplicate listings and they burried me in searches for like 3-4 months i had literally no business. when the penalty expired and i got ranking again i was doing 200k a month easy.

325
eBay / Re: Suspicious bidding
« on: October 24, 2013, 01:38:10 PM »
Quote from: StorageAuctionFinds on October 22, 2013, 10:22:00 AM
If he has his "other" bidders request to cancel transaction after auction is over, and he agrees, then final value fees are returned. I know because I have had 2 or 3 people win and then change their mind. Once the tranaction is cancelled final value fees are returned. Sometimes I relist and it sells for more, sometimes less, its the price you pay to play. Also, there are ways to report things like this to eBay if you felt so inclined, because what he is doing is definately againt eBays policies. He is most likely doing it as a way to have a reserve price without paying the reserve price fee. If you have a minimum you want just set the minimum opening bid to that amount or do a buy it now, or best offer and price it a little higher than you want to get.

edit: I just went and took a closer look at his listings, I was bored, and he is definitely shill bidding in my opinion. So, just for fun I reported 5 of his completed listings for artificially infalting price usin other accounts. If a few more people do it is well, it could really ruin his day. ;-)

Ebay is pretty good at tracking stuff like that. I doubt he's cancelling every transaction and doing this on a regular basis with the same couple accounts. Ebay recently contacted me and told me I was starting and ending too many listings and told me to stop. Basically I try out different formats for search terms and stuff and then will pull down a listing and try again. Ebay is pretty good at catching onto stuff and ebay likes to make sure they get their money. They would catch it it for weeks on end the same buyers keep buying things and then requesting to cancel transactions. Also not sure if his are auctions or buy it now but buy it now you have to pay instantly and once you refund you cant get a fvf back in my experience.

As for reporting him. Good to do but just so you know those reports where you click report item or report sellers basically do nothing. Yeah if enough people flag stuff they may do something but for the most part no. I talk to ebay reps on a regular basis and they will openly admit there's so many listings and so much going on that little if any activity is ever taken. I've taken to actually calling ebay on the phone and makin the rep look at individual stuff and mostly they say click the report button. When I press them and insist they do something they'll half heartedly either say they will or they will tell me they agree and wish they could do something but dont have authorization to take down listings or whatever else.

326
General Storage Auction Talk / Re: Putting together ideas for an ebook..
« on: October 21, 2013, 06:50:04 PM »
good info about publishing a book. when i got mine i was going to look into geting an isbn and then realized it gets pretty costly

327
eBay / Re: Suspicious bidding
« on: October 21, 2013, 06:43:09 PM »
sounds maybe like shill bidding but its kind of a stupid strategy as he's paying final value fees on all these listings which end with bids

328
eBay / Re: Suspicious bidding
« on: October 21, 2013, 02:38:24 PM »
I'm a little confused here but one thing I wanted to poinnt out that confused me at one point was ebay used to show the actual bidders bidding on an item so for example if your theebaydude and your the highest bidder the bid history would show theebaydude. Ebay a while back however made all this anonymous so that even though your name is theebaydude in the bid history it would show like "dcf284" Thats not actually a persons real ebay username its just a fake name they plugin there I'm guessing to keep things anonymous. It's possible this is waht your seeing and its not the same person buying.

329
General Storage Auction Talk / Re: Putting together ideas for an ebook..
« on: October 21, 2013, 02:11:58 PM »
I was going to say regardless of how great your book is written, I think the market for these types of books is a fraction of what it would have been a year or two or three ago so as long as you go into this realizing you'll probably sell a few books a month I don't see any downside to it, especially if you enjoy writing anyways.

I enjoy writing myself as well and on a topic like storage unit buying I already knew all the knowledge so there was no tedious research or anything like that involved, I literally just sat down and over the course of a few hours on a saturday afternoon the book just flowed. I think I did a few more quick readthroughs to edit and boom onto amazon it went.

If you just want to throw it up on amazon and makemoney passively you can do that. If you really want to sell some you may want to try to sell resale rights to some affiliate marketers or something like that and either charge more for books with resale rights or maybe get affiliates yourself or put it up on clickbank and have an army of people working for you promoting your book.

330
General Storage Auction Talk / Re: Putting together ideas for an ebook..
« on: October 21, 2013, 10:35:08 AM »
Prior to investing the time in writing this book think about how much time and effort its going to take you and how much you think you can make off of it. I'm not as involved in the storage auctions or the forums as I used to be so maybe I'm a little oout of it but it seems to me most of the hype from the shows and stuff has blown over, people are sick of storage wars, those newbies who wanted to try their luck buying units have pretty much come and gone. I think you missed the boat on writing a storage auction book.

Just do a quick search on amazon for storage auctions and look in the books category and there's 355 results. Not granted sometimes it pulls books off topic but just browsing thorugh first 3 or 4 pages it's all relevant content. How many buyers are still out there buying books and more importantly waht's going to make yours stand out from the other 355 books out there?

I have a storage auction book. In all honesty it wasn't somethign I put a ton of time into, I was stuck working on a saturday and wrote a quick guide maybe 50 pages long. I wasn't the first butI was one of hte earlier people to jump on the ebook band wagon, I was kind of inspired by glendon cameron as far as sharing knowledge for money to supplement my income on units since the market was getting tougher. I've sold a decent amount of books but like I said the hype has died down. Past few months I been making maybe $65 a month but its really slowed I think I sold like 1 or 2 this month. I'm ranked #7 on amazon too so keep in mind as a new book you'll get an initial bump if you join that special amazon program and offer it for free for a few days but after thatyour going to be competing for ranking with books that have been on the market for years.

Also, that's just amazon I'm counting theres other sites to buy ebooks nad other people wiht ebooks and progams selling them ontheir own website.

Pages: 1 ... 20 21 [22] 23 24 ... 84