For high volume sellers: How much time do you spend on ebay

[taerese]

For the high volume sellers doing in excess of 300 sales month or £50k annum. I would like to know how much time you spend on ebay daily. Is this your main job? If not, then how do you divide your time.

I am not a high volume seller but I have several other internet businesses some of which are not doing as much as my ebay but I believe they've got potentials, I find it difficult to divide my time most days and my ebay suffer as a result.

Care to share your secret formula?

[dealagreeproceed]

focus your time on what makes you the most dough then work your way down...

[yankee]

Delegate your time and hire for everything else.

Figure out what you do best and then do more of that. Find other people to fill in your weak spots.

Stop spending time on things that are unproductive or not cost effective UNLESS you enjoy doing it anyways.

Use a kitchen timer to manage your time. I try to never spend more than 19 minutes on one task at a time. I try to keep everything focused by using that timer and a schedule.

[Samtheman]

I joined aspkin today, I am a high volume seller on eBay selling over 3000 items a month

I am more than happy to answer your questions.

Q1 - How much time I spend on eBay Daily -

I spend approximately 15-30 minutes on messages (this can vary but on average each message takes 2-3 minutes, I ensure correct items are sent and the listings are accurate this prevents to many customers messaging back after a purchase so therfore saving time and money from refunds). I spend approximately 45 minutes on picking & packing about 100 orders a day. I will spend probably one day a month (how many hours it takes) to get stock from my supplier at a competitive price and source other items) sourcing everyday will take more time ofcourse but will open the doors for new products which means new trending items which means more sales which means more money LOL

Q2 - Is this my main Job?

I was working full time at a WareHouse, and at the time I just started selling on eBay.
So at the start its very easy to work and run your own business, but with time as your selling allowance increases so does the size of your business that is of-course if you get new items to list which I did and the business just rocketed from there. After 4 months my selling account had enough allowance to give me a great income and be my own boss so I decided to leave my job to solely focus on selling on eBay.

My opinion....

Focusing on too many things will result in doing everything wrong or doing very little overall.
Your eBay will suffer no doubt but why not stick to it knowing the potential is practically as far as you want it to go because an online business does not have a limit.

The Way I save time

I have a merge document, so I DOWNLOAD all my eBay orders and transfer it to a merge document what this allows me to do is sort all my sold items by title and variation saving me soo much time when picking items

Packing over a 100 items a day takes me no longer than 45 minutes, simply because of the way I have set it up. At the start I was cutting the paper with a scissor placing it onto the package and then sellatape to stick it on.

Now Its just a simple label which has the buyers address automatically transferred during the merge which is then printed and its as easy as 1 - 2 - 3 from there.

With time If you work on it things will get so much easier.

I am a high volume seller ask me any more questions and I will certainly have the answer

[Ebayorbust]

300 items a month isn't really a lot, is it?

It's 10 items a day.

[Haidukken]

Originally Posted by Ebayorbust

300 items a month isn't really a lot, is it?

It's 10 items a day.

This.

Also big difference if its £2 Phone cases that you can throw into an jiffy bag or bicycle crank that you need to package differently etc.

I average around 300 transactions a month, with packages ranging from average home printer size to small jizzy bag. I could probably throw 300 items to a jizzy bag AN HOUR, nevermind month

[epimetheus039]

Originally Posted by Samtheman

I joined aspkin today, I am a high volume seller on eBay selling over 3000 items a month

I am more than happy to answer your questions.

Q1 - How much time I spend on eBay Daily -

I spend approximately 15-30 minutes on messages (this can vary but on average each message takes 2-3 minutes, I ensure correct items are sent and the listings are accurate this prevents to many customers messaging back after a purchase so therfore saving time and money from refunds). I spend approximately 45 minutes on picking & packing about 100 orders a day. I will spend probably one day a month (how many hours it takes) to get stock from my supplier at a competitive price and source other items) sourcing everyday will take more time ofcourse but will open the doors for new products which means new trending items which means more sales which means more money LOL

Q2 - Is this my main Job?

I was working full time at a WareHouse, and at the time I just started selling on eBay.
So at the start its very easy to work and run your own business, but with time as your selling allowance increases so does the size of your business that is of-course if you get new items to list which I did and the business just rocketed from there. After 4 months my selling account had enough allowance to give me a great income and be my own boss so I decided to leave my job to solely focus on selling on eBay.

My opinion....

Focusing on too many things will result in doing everything wrong or doing very little overall.
Your eBay will suffer no doubt but why not stick to it knowing the potential is practically as far as you want it to go because an online business does not have a limit.

The Way I save time

I have a merge document, so I DOWNLOAD all my eBay orders and transfer it to a merge document what this allows me to do is sort all my sold items by title and variation saving me soo much time when picking items

Packing over a 100 items a day takes me no longer than 45 minutes, simply because of the way I have set it up. At the start I was cutting the paper with a scissor placing it onto the package and then sellatape to stick it on.

Now Its just a simple label which has the buyers address automatically transferred during the merge which is then printed and its as easy as 1 - 2 - 3 from there.

With time If you work on it things will get so much easier.

I am a high volume seller ask me any more questions and I will certainly have the answer

Or you could use this for your shipping Just Ship IT - Order Management Software for your Invoices & Labels

[epimetheus039]

Originally Posted by taerese

For the high volume sellers doing in excess of 300 sales month or £50k annum. I would like to know how much time you spend on ebay daily. Is this your main job? If not, then how do you divide your time.

I am not a high volume seller but I have several other internet businesses some of which are not doing as much as my ebay but I believe they've got potentials, I find it difficult to divide my time most days and my ebay suffer as a result.

Care to share your secret formula?

I was selling about 12k items/month at one point. Packaging 100 items from scratch takes about 1 hour. I'd recommend hiring someone to do this. It's my full-time venture for the past 2 years.

Put daily tasks everyday in the notes and what you need to have done.

[Trustfund]

i drop-ship so simple no hassle.......except returns.

[dan_ebay]

I have 2 main websites and a lot selling on ebay aswell..Just about time management to me, people have their 'perfect' way of stealth but I don't find it efficient so I've ditched half of it. I don't bother checking IP's more than once every few days, worst case scenario I'll get the same IP come up 2-3 times a month out of 1000s of logins, will that get me banned? No

I have 5 main accounts that I check messages on every day to start with but if my dsr's are good then I don't even bother with messages, just wait for them to open a case, if the dsr's go below 3.5% then I start reading them again, they sell fairly fast so its not really a issue. Don't care about 'top rated', the discount isn't worth the effort and I don't believe it makes any difference in the search results.

Then nearly half of my ebay turnover comes from'churn and burn' accounts, mostly because I can't be bothered with loads of banks and also I don't have to worry about looking after the accounts atall, I was setting a lot up myself but now I buy most from here, they cost £75 each, I hit the £1800 limit with around 35% profit after all costs and returns etc so I'm making £630 on each-£75, ditching it and getting more (bunneh can confirm) lol. These accounts I obviously don't care about so I don't bother reading messages, that saves a lot of time.

I have 2 people packing both part time, my items are only small so they can do around 60 items per hour each, only just got the second 1 and they have a bit of spare time now so getting them to print off orders from 2 of my main accounts(don't trust them to do all and know that my names are bill,terry,sam,john,james lol).
They're both under 21 so low wages (ones fit, will bang soon). I just think of this as each item is costing me a extra 10-12p to process and in my head factor it in.
For my websites I use virtual assistants, I have 1 full time and 1 part time both from a company in Singapore, they only cost me $600 total lol. I have the full time one building a pbn full time and the other just does random stuff.
Now that I don't 'need' ebay I'm really just taking the mick, I'm saving all the emails from paypal and mass mailing them with mailchimp, this is the only thing taking me a lot of time as I'm having to save them 1 by 1, just made a thread on this. But still worth it as around 1/50-100 each time is going on to my website and a fair amount of those will be returning customers

[Ebayorbust]

Originally Posted by Trustfund

i drop-ship so simple no hassle.......except returns.

Tick, tick, tick, tick..............

[realdeals]

I can only dream of what it must be like to pack 100 items in 45 minutes.

My items are all different and some very,very fragile so the best I can normally average is 5 to 10 minutes per item.

[realdeals]

Originally Posted by dan_ebay

Then nearly half of my ebay turnover comes from churn and burn' accounts, mostly because I can't be bothered with loads of banks and also I don't have to worry about looking after the accounts atall, I was setting a lot up myself but now I buy most from here, they cost £75 each, I hit the £1800 limit with around 35% profit after all costs and returns etc so I'm making £630 on each-£75, ditching it and getting more (bunneh can confirm) lol. These accounts I obviously don't care about so I don't bother reading messages, that saves a lot of time.

SO how do you withdraw money from them?

[Callidus]

Must be paying suppliers with each PayPal..cashing out that many PayPal's without a bank account attached is near to imposible

[Trustfund]

Originally Posted by Ebayorbust

Tick, tick, tick, tick..............

whats everyones problems with dropshipping? if you find the right products then its a breeze. when they need a return i just send the same/modified message to the supplier of that item and tell the buyer i will pay for shipping directly to our "Chinese warehouse".

Clearly you lot have a reason to dislike drop shipping please share your reason why as i see no flaws with this business model

[Callidus]

because so many people burn through accounts doing this because you have NO control over the quality of the goods, speed of shipping, whether the item is in stock or not etc etc. List is endless.

[Trustfund]

Originally Posted by Callidus

because so many people burn through accounts doing this because you have NO control over the quality of the goods, speed of shipping, whether the item is in stock or not etc etc. List is endless.

Thanks for the speedy response. i am hated by many Ebayers i simply find other people who dropship by using a combination of filters. go onto their store, find their best selling products copy and paste their titles into google. 95% of the time an aliexpress link pops up. i copy and paste the listing (5 minutes tops maybe 15 if i code up a template in html 5).

By doing this you almost always eliminate the bad products. as these items are top selling its most likely that 5 or more aliexpress sellers are listing this item. boom never out of stock list in high numbers.

Cant be too bad im 17 and got enough money after 4-5 months to buy a sl55 amg (used) and have enough left to pay of my first two years of University in the Uk outright.

next year (2016) im gonna open many many more european accounts and see how that goes.

spoke to a financial adviser to gain some insight into the taxation process and hes predicting me a 6 figure salary that year.

nothing better than putting an ad in a newspaper and the assholes who mock you at school at sitting infront of you in an interview pleading for a job.

But i understand what your saying though, its a touch and go model.But if you do it right with high selling limits across multiple stealths, its one of the most low risk business models.

not trying to brag just justifying my methods

[new2stealth]

Originally Posted by Samtheman

I joined aspkin today, I am a high volume seller on eBay selling over 3000 items a month

I am more than happy to answer your questions.

Q1 - How much time I spend on eBay Daily -

I spend approximately 15-30 minutes on messages (this can vary but on average each message takes 2-3 minutes, I ensure correct items are sent and the listings are accurate this prevents to many customers messaging back after a purchase so therfore saving time and money from refunds). I spend approximately 45 minutes on picking & packing about 100 orders a day. I will spend probably one day a month (how many hours it takes) to get stock from my supplier at a competitive price and source other items) sourcing everyday will take more time ofcourse but will open the doors for new products which means new trending items which means more sales which means more money LOL

Q2 - Is this my main Job?

I was working full time at a WareHouse, and at the time I just started selling on eBay.
So at the start its very easy to work and run your own business, but with time as your selling allowance increases so does the size of your business that is of-course if you get new items to list which I did and the business just rocketed from there. After 4 months my selling account had enough allowance to give me a great income and be my own boss so I decided to leave my job to solely focus on selling on eBay.

My opinion....

Focusing on too many things will result in doing everything wrong or doing very little overall.
Your eBay will suffer no doubt but why not stick to it knowing the potential is practically as far as you want it to go because an online business does not have a limit.

The Way I save time

I have a merge document, so I DOWNLOAD all my eBay orders and transfer it to a merge document what this allows me to do is sort all my sold items by title and variation saving me soo much time when picking items

Packing over a 100 items a day takes me no longer than 45 minutes, simply because of the way I have set it up. At the start I was cutting the paper with a scissor placing it onto the package and then sellatape to stick it on.

Now Its just a simple label which has the buyers address automatically transferred during the merge which is then printed and its as easy as 1 - 2 - 3 from there.

With time If you work on it things will get so much easier.

I am a high volume seller ask me any more questions and I will certainly have the answer

Hi, I am new here too (you can tell by my nickname, lol).

I do ~2000 orders a month. Similar process to yours: open each order in a new tab, check whats the product, type it in a thermal printer label template, copy the postcode, paste it into Royal Mail postcode checker, enter flat/house number, copy the whole address into a label template, print the label, go to next order). After doing this for all outstanding orders, I start packing, takes about 30-60mins.

Your system of working sounds to be more efficient though. Any chance you could share it with me?

I do similar thing with all my sales: export them from ebay as a CSV file, copy the data into excel template, it automatically does all the calculations for me - checks how much each item costs to me, shipping expenses, fees etc and gives me a profit figure - I always know exactly how much money I am making.

[wired]

I just sell stuff and chill out.

[dealagreeproceed]

Originally Posted by wired

I just sell stuff and chill out.

that's the only way to do it...

[dealagreeproceed]

Originally Posted by dan_ebay

I have 2 main websites and a lot selling on ebay aswell..Just about time management to me, people have their 'perfect' way of stealth but I don't find it efficient so I've ditched half of it. I don't bother checking IP's more than once every few days, worst case scenario I'll get the same IP come up 2-3 times a month out of 1000s of logins, will that get me banned? No

I have 5 main accounts that I check messages on every day to start with but if my dsr's are good then I don't even bother with messages, just wait for them to open a case, if the dsr's go below 3.5% then I start reading them again, they sell fairly fast so its not really a issue. Don't care about 'top rated', the discount isn't worth the effort and I don't believe it makes any difference in the search results.

Then nearly half of my ebay turnover comes from'churn and burn' accounts, mostly because I can't be bothered with loads of banks and also I don't have to worry about looking after the accounts atall, I was setting a lot up myself but now I buy most from here, they cost £75 each, I hit the £1800 limit with around 35% profit after all costs and returns etc so I'm making £630 on each-£75, ditching it and getting more (bunneh can confirm) lol. These accounts I obviously don't care about so I don't bother reading messages, that saves a lot of time.

I have 2 people packing both part time, my items are only small so they can do around 60 items per hour each, only just got the second 1 and they have a bit of spare time now so getting them to print off orders from 2 of my main accounts(don't trust them to do all and know that my names are bill,terry,sam,john,james lol).
They're both under 21 so low wages (ones fit, will bang soon). I just think of this as each item is costing me a extra 10-12p to process and in my head factor it in.
For my websites I use virtual assistants, I have 1 full time and 1 part time both from a company in Singapore, they only cost me $600 total lol. I have the full time one building a pbn full time and the other just does random stuff.
Now that I don't 'need' ebay I'm really just taking the mick, I'm saving all the emails from paypal and mass mailing them with mailchimp, this is the only thing taking me a lot of time as I'm having to save them 1 by 1, just made a thread on this. But still worth it as around 1/50-100 each time is going on to my website and a fair amount of those will be returning customers

masterplan

[NewToEbayUK]

You said:

Originally Posted by Trustfund

i simply find other people who dropship by using a combination of filters. go onto their store, find their best selling products copy and paste their titles into google. 95% of the time an aliexpress link pops up. i copy and paste the listing

.
I am rather confused - could you elaborate, please?

"... other people who dropship" - are you referring to other eBayers here? And do these eBayers dropship (ie stock, package and ship), and if yes, who does the selling for them?

Or, if you meant to say that these eBayers have the items they sell dropshipped by someone else, are you saying they have them dropshipped from AliExpress in China directly to the UK?